“*What did you do to me?*” The thought, raw and sharp, was not Zoryan’s. It reverberated in his skull like an iron hammer on an anvil, bringing a violent heave of bile that was entirely uninvited. He convulsed against the restraints, vision smearing. Ice-cold panic ripped down his spine, prickling his skin with an alien terror he recognized as Liri’s. “*Get out of my head!*” he snarled, throwing the thought into the crowded dark behind his temples. He strained against the binding ropes, his muscles screaming, but a phantom inertia weighed him down, a deep, unsettling lethargy that felt foreign. “*Your head? This is my body! Or… it was. It *is*! This is all wrong!*” Her voice, once mocking and detached, was now frantic, trapped, and terrifyingly intimate. “*Move! Let me move!*” His right arm jerked without warning, snapping out in a stiff spasm. His palm clawed at the air, then slammed against the carved armrest. A jolt, sharp and unwelcome, shot up his arm. Liri was trying to take control. “*Stop it! You can’t just… drive!*” he bit out, fighting her. He felt a dizzying tug-of-war, his own will clashing with hers, a relentless pressure behind his eyes. His head lolled, then snapped upright, a sharp crack echoing in his neck. “*I have to! I can’t be… inside you! It’s repugnant! Release me!*” Her shriek resonated behind his eyes, setting off a brassy ringing in his ears. An abrupt, sickening impulse urged him to bash his skull back against the ornate, moth-eaten velvet of the chair, an urge so alien he recoiled. “*I’m not holding you! Get out!*” Zoryan thrashed, trying to break the ropes. His legs kicked out, but with a clumsy, disjointed motion, his left foot tangling with the right. He nearly toppled the chair, a guttural grunt escaping his throat. “*You’re doing it wrong! Give me your arm! Give me your left!*” Liri’s demand was imperious, even in her terror. Zoryan gritted his teeth, refusing. He was a detective, trained in self-control, in resisting interrogation, in enduring pain. He would not yield his own body to a ghost. But Liri was not asking. His left arm, without his conscious effort, strained against the ropes. It wasn’t strong enough. Frustration, red-hot and furious, pulsed from Liri. “*Use your teeth, you dullard! The rope is old!*” Zoryan’s jaw ached with the battle of wills. His head dipped, his lips parting, then his teeth closed on the rough hemp binding his left wrist. He felt the coarse fibers against his tongue, then the sharp bite of a phantom hunger that wasn’t his. He yanked, gnawing with a ferocity he hadn’t known he possessed, and the rope, frayed by time and neglect, began to give way. He tasted dust and old rot. The rope snapped. Zoryan’s freed hand flew to his other wrist, frantically fumbling with the knot. Her frantic energy pushed and pulled through his nerves, making his muscles tremble under conflicting commands. He tore the last binding free, wheezing for air, and pitched forward onto the cold stone floor. “*Finally! Now, stand up! We have to get out of here!*” Liri urged. Zoryan tried. He pushed off the chair, but his legs were leaden, his balance shot. His left foot moved when his right should, his arms flailed like a marionette with a tangled string. He staggered, his shoulder slamming into a grand, gilded pedestal supporting a massive stone bust of a stern-faced patriarch. “*Careful, you oaf! That’s my great-grandfather, Oberon Voronin! His likeness is priceless!*” Liri shouted into his skull as he grunted in pain. Zoryan stumbled again, his foot catching on the leg of the discarded chair. He pitched forward, arms windmilling. His outstretched hand, propelled by Liri’s desperate push, caught the pedestal just wrong. The heavy carving, chiseled with a sharp beard and hollow eyes, wobbled precariously. Zoryan froze, his own panic merging with Liri’s rising alarm. Too late. The pedestal tilted, then the bust slid, accelerating with a horrifying inertia. It crashed down, exploding into a dozen jagged shards of white stone, the crack deafening in the cavernous ballroom. Silence descended, thick and suffocating. Zoryan stared at the wreckage, his chest heaving. “*Priceless, you said?*” he muttered, his voice hoarse. Liri’s indignant fury flared against his ribs, laced with a bitter sting of grief. “*Oh, for the love of… you clumsy, destructive lummox! You just obliterated a piece of historical art!*” “*I didn’t do it! You were trying to escape!*” Zoryan shot back, surprised by his own venom. A prickle at his left wrist drew his gaze down. The silver keepsake from his grandmother still clung to him on its chain. “*My escape was far more graceful, I assure you! This is your fault! You insisted on occupying my…*” Her voice choked off. She recoiled, abruptly dragged backward as if hooked by an invisible cord. “*Wait… what is that?*” Driven by instinct, Zoryan touched the pendant. His skin met cool, polished silver. A dull blue spark flickered across the casing, and her voice muffled instantly, fading like a call behind thick lead. His limbs lightened as his marrow cleared. He yanked the chain from his wrist and threw it down. The silver clattered against the flagstones. In an instant, Liri’s translucent form reappeared, hovering a few feet away, her mouth slightly open. Her azure gown pulsed with a faint light, her expression a mix of indignation and profound bewilderment. “*You… you got me out!*” she gasped, her voice no longer inside his head, but an ethereal whisper in the ballroom. She looked at her hands, then back at him, her gaze dropping to the floor. “*That’s… that’s what did it! That awful, tacky thing!*” Zoryan picked it up, turning the metal over in his hand. “This?” It was an antique silver trinket, unadorned and scratched. He’d worn it since his grandmother gave it to him as a talisman. He looped the chain back onto his wrist. Searing frost hit his chest again, chased by Liri’s shriek as her silhouette collapsed into mist and got sucked straight into his sternum. He staggered and dropped the pendant, convulsing. “*Get it off! Get it off, you brute!*” she screamed in his head, the sound of her fear almost deafening. He tore the silver off, flinging it across the room. Liri reappeared in the air, gasping, her outline flickering. “*Never again! Keep that cursed trinket away from me!*” Zoryan rubbed his temples, a headache throbbing behind his eyes. “So, the pendant. It’s the… door.” He stared at her, then at the silver lying innocently across the room. A terrible, unavoidable truth settled over him. “You’re bound to this manor. You can’t leave. But if I wear this… you can come with me.” Liri’s expression shifted, the anger dimming, replaced by a calculating glint. “You’re a detective, Volkov. You’re supposed to solve my murder. And *I* am the only one who knows what truly happened. You want answers? You want to catch the Shadow Weavers? You need me.” His gaze was hard. “And you need a body. Your body is gone. You need *mine*.” He knelt, picking up the silver piece, weighing it in his palm. “This is the only way you can interact with the living world, isn’t it?” She said nothing, but hovered closer, her eyes fixed on the metal in his grip, then on him. Her silence was confirmation. Zoryan sighed, a long, weary sound. “Fine. A partnership. You’re my spectral insight, my extra pair of eyes in the unseen. I’m your vessel, your unwilling feet on the ground.” He looked up at her, his expression hard. “But if you ever try to make me destroy another priceless family heirloom, I swear I’ll melt this thing down.” Liri’s lips twitched, a faint, almost imperceptible smile. “Fair enough. We have a deal, Detective. Now, get us out of this dust trap. I have to see what Revensk has become.” Zoryan nodded, then hesitated. He couldn’t just vanish. Katarina Molchan, his captain, would have his hide. He pulled out his battered phone, the screen cracked, but still functional. He dialed. “Molchan. Volkov. I’m at the Voronin Manor. No, I haven’t found anything yet on the surface, but I’ve got a gut feeling about this place. Something hidden, deep in the archives. I need more time. Overnight, maybe. I think there’s a lead here, Captain. A big one.” He paused, listening to her skeptical, gruff voice on the other end, then offered a forced chuckle. “Yeah, yeah, I know. But you trust my instincts, don’t you? I’ll keep you updated.” He hung up as Liri hovered nearby, visibly amused. He didn’t want to imagine Molchan's expression if she knew he was bunking down in a haunted estate on a hunch. “Well, that’s taken care of,” he muttered, glancing at Liri. “Now what?” Liri floated past him, drifting towards a massive portrait hanging on the far wall, shrouded in cobwebs. It depicted a severe-looking man with a neatly trimmed beard and piercing eyes, a younger version of the marble bust he’d just shattered. “My father, Kazimir Voronin,” she whispered, her voice tinged with an unexpected reverence. She reached out, her pale hand passing through the canvas, then pointed to a hairline slit in the damask wallpaper behind the frame. “He kept everything. Every secret, every ledger, every piece of correspondence. Let’s see who wanted us dead.”

Two Drivers, One Body