Katie flinched at the knock on the door, then bolted to her feet and hurried to open it. To think the exorcist would arrive so soon. A week ago she would have thought this whole business was a bunch of malarkey, but now this unknown man whose contacts she dug up on a shady website was her only hope.

She flung open the door and stared. Instead of the old, venerable priest she had deep down imagined, there stood a young man with dark bags under his eyes.

"Hello," he said wearily. "I hear you have a problem with the supernatural."

"I—yes. Yes, please come in."

Katie let him inside, still staring. Something seemed to move under his worn shirt, something long and sinuous like a snake, and she could've sworn she heard a muffled giggle. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

The exorcist swatted at his chest, eliciting a squeak. "Just a clingy gap-woman I picked up on my last appointment. Don't mind her."

Katie laughed nervously, but the laughter quickly faded at his grim expression. That had to have been a joke, right?

"I—well." She swallowed, trying to find the words, and then they spilled out all at once. "My friend found this old tape, and we watched it together for a laugh, only it was cursed, and this woman crawled out—"

"Of course," the exorcist said, smiling wryly as if at a private joke. "The tape?"

"I left it upstairs, inside the VHS player..."

"I'll go take care of it." The exorcist speared her with a dead stare. "You must not come in, whatever you hear."

Katie swallowed and bobbed her head. The exorcist made his way upstairs and shut the door. There was an eerie silence, then a series of thuds that made her crouch and cower. Then the moaning began, and she covered her ears and trembled.

Ten terror-filled minutes later, the exorcist came out, and he wasn't alone. The woman from the tape clung to his neck, her long black hair covering her pink face and her bare feet floating in the air. Katie screamed and lurched back, hitting the wall.

"You—your—that's—"

"The ghost, yes," the exorcist said, sparing the cursed woman a glance. "My payment?"

Katie gaped, then shook herself off and handed over the bunch of banknotes she had prepared. "How..."

The exorcist sighed, and all the weariness of the world seemed to contained within it. "A quirk of parentage. My father is apparently pretty high up the ladder in the netherworld, and I inherited some of his power. And they"—he jerked his thumb at the ghost—"are attracted to it."

"That must be..." She trailed off, not sure what to say.

"It pays the bills," he said, slipping the money into his pocket. "Now excuse me, I have an appointment down in an abandoned tunnel."

She clasped her hands over her chest, hardly believing it was all over. "Thank you. Thank you so much!"

"Stay away from old tapes from now on." The exorcist nodded and trudged off, the ghost still hanging off his neck.

"What a noble man," she whispered.