Her Ghost Is My Star Witness

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They say Im a bottom-feeding defense attorney, a parasite who specializes in losing cases.

But the strange thing is, Ive never received a single bad review.

I remember the day it all shifted, standing in a sterile courtroom during a horrific murder and dismemberment trial. The defendant took one look at me and let his arrogance off the leash.

He jutted his chin out, his voice dripping with venomous privilege. "You have absolutely zero evidence. You can't touch me!"

Then, he pointed a manicured finger right at my chest and burst into a jagged fit of laughter. "Hiring a garbage lawyer like this? What, is the prosecution trying to get me acquitted?"

I didn't flush. I didn't yell. I just offered a calm, slow shake of my head and turned to address the room. "He's right. As it stands, the evidence is purely circumstantial."

The gallery exploded. The air in the courtroom grew thick with outrage, a chorus of voices branding me a failure, a sellout, a waste of breath.

I waved a hand, letting their vitriol wash over me, entirely unbothered. I turned back to the defendant, letting a slow, knowing smile stretch across my face.

"But Im entirely too tired to argue the minutiae of the law with you today," I said, my voice cutting through the noise like glass.

"So."

"I'd like to call the victim of this case to the stand, so she can say a few words herself."

The defendants smirk vanished. He stared at me, completely paralyzed.

My name is Simon. Simon Carmichael. I am a highly renowned attorney in my specific... circle.

Though, looking at me, my new client clearly had his doubts.

"Mr. Carmichael... why is your office door covered in paint?"

I didn't look up from the file. "Oh, a former client threw that on there. He was wishing my business a booming, fiery success."

"The paint is pitch black."

"Darkness absorbs the most heat," I replied smoothly. "Its a metaphor."

The client stared at me, hopelessly lost. He hesitated for a long, agonizing moment, the silence thick with his grief. Then, he gritted his teeth and slid the envelope of cashhis retaineracross my desk.

"I don't care," he whispered, his voice cracking at the edges. "You are the only lawyer in the city who hasn't slammed the door in my face. I have to believe in you."

I stared down at the meager stack of bills, plunging into a rare moment of introspection.

The client shifted nervously. "Is there a problem?"

I shook my head, snapping back to reality. "Im just going to put this out there right now: my final bill is going to be significantly higher than this retainer."

He looked down, doing some silent mental math, before his jaw set in a hard line. "If it means making that animal pay for what he did, I don't care what it costs. Ill give you everything I have."

Just then, my phone buzzed against the wood of the desk. A text from an old colleague.

Youre really taking the Trent Montgomery case? Are you out of your mind? You know what his family does to people who cross them.

My client saw the notification light up on the screen. He lifted his head, a profound, hollow sadness settling into his eyes. "Mr. Carmichael..."

I waved a dismissive hand, trying to inject some levity into the heavy air. "Relax, Thomas. Don't worry about it. These billionaire types, their revenge tactics are so predictable. Bribes, threats, maybe a little extortion. Besides, my entire family is already dead and gone. If they want to kill me, they can get in line."

Thomas just stared at me.

"Trent Montgomery. Twenty-seven years old. Only son of the Chairman of Apex Enterprises. Former high school classmate of the victim, Sophie."

I read his list of sins with an utterly blank expression, letting the sterile legal jargon clash against the horror of his actions.

"On the night of November 7th, the defendant, Trent Montgomery, stalked the victim, Sophie, to her residence. He assaulted her, and in an effort to cover his tracks, he murdered her, dismembered the body, and disposed of the remains in a municipal landfill..."

Trent slouched in his chair, wearing a bespoke suit that cost more than my life. He raised a hand, looking thoroughly bored. "Objection, Your Honor. They don't have a single shred of evidence proving I was the one who did that."

I didn't miss a beat. "The victims phone contained a photograph of you two together, alongside other individuals, time-stamped on the day of the incident. Care to explain?"

"Yeah. Like you just said, we went to high school together." He rolled his eyes, a smirk playing on his lips. "We ran into each other at a reunion thing, snapped a pic. Is taking a photo a crime now?"

I let out a low, cold laugh. "Then perhaps the defendant can tell the court exactly what he was doing between the hours of 10:00 PM on November 7th and 3:00 AM the following morning? Do you have an alibi? A witness?"

Trent picked at a stray thread on his cuff, pretending to think about it.

"After the reunion, I went home. Slept like a baby until the sun came up. And no, obviously I don't have a witness. I like sleeping alone. Though, if you're offering to join me, counselor, I'm pretty open-minded."

I fired off a few more pieces of circumstantial evidence.

Every single one was effortlessly batted away by Trents high-priced defense attorney, Hughes. But it was the exchange that followed that truly shattered the fragile air in the room.

Trent leaned forward, bracing his elbows on the defense table. The malice in his eyes was bright and venomous.

"What's the point of all this talking?" he sneered, looking directly at me. "Let me ask you one simple question: do you have any actual proof that I killed her? Hmm?"

Beside me, Thomass face drained of color, turning the shade of old ash. He clenched his fists so tightly his knuckles went white, his entire body trembling violently.

Trent could afford to be arrogant. He could afford to be cruel.

Because his father's money had ensured that every tangible piece of evidence had been scrubbed clean from the earth.

I requested a recess.

Hours of relentless verbal sparring hadn't so much as chipped Trents psychological armor, nor had we produced a single smoking gun. Next to me, Thomas looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to collapse into the abyss.

But honestly, the most pressing issue was the gallery.

The spectators had already begun rummaging through their bags, fully prepared to hurl whatever rotten garbage they had brought. They didn't throw anything while court was in session, but the moment I stepped out into the hallway, an entire row of people synchronized their disgust, spitting at my shoes.

Thomas watched, entirely bewildered. "Why do they hate you so much?"

"If you were them," I said, wiping my shoe on the carpet, "and you watched a lawyer lose case after case, yet keep showing up with absolute confidence only to lose again, youd hate me too."

"But... aren't you a famous attorney?"

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a small, rolled-up pennant that an angry mob had crowdfunded for me last year. I unrolled it.

It read: BOYCOTT THE SCUMBAG.

"I am famous," I corrected him. "I am the industry's most renowned, one-hundred-percent-loss-rate attorney."

Thomas just blinked.

As soon as Thomas returned to his empty house, he found an anonymous package waiting on his porch. Inside was a thinly veiled death threat.

I had no choice. I packed him into my beat-up sedan and drove him to my place.

Thomas sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window for a long time. Finally, the silence broke.

"Mr. Carmichael... I know I don't have the kind of money the Montgomery family has. If you need to drop my case to save yourself, I understand. I won't hold it against you. But you don't need to drive me out to the middle of nowhere to murder me to keep me quiet."

I scratched the back of my neck. "Who's murdering anyone? I'm just bringing you to my place to crash for a few days."

Thomas looked out the windshield, profoundly horrified.

"Wait. This... this underpass is your house?"

"..."

I coughed, a little embarrassed. "Underpasses are great real estate. Keeps you cool in the summer, freezing in the winter. Very open-concept."

Thomas tried to be polite. "Mr. Carmichael, if things are tough, you could just sleep on the couch at your law firm."

I waved him off. "I was secretly renting that office space. The landlord finally caught me yesterday, so I can't sleep there anymore."

Thomas stood perfectly still under the concrete bridge for a long time before he finally sighed and walked in.

I gave him the cot tucked against the farthest concrete pillar and took a seat near the edge of the shadows, watching the moonlight bleed through the smog.

Around 2:00 AM, the quiet of the night was broken.

It was a small, fractured sound. The muffled, suffocating weeping of a father whose heart had been entirely hollowed out.

"Sophie... God, Sophie, I'm so useless."

"If I had just stayed home... If I hadn't gone to the hospital that night..."

I leaned my head back against the concrete and let out a long, quiet sigh.

That night had been Sophie's birthday. Thomas had spiked a severe fever, and a neighbor had rushed him to the ER. Sophie had just gotten off her shift at a local diner, walking her usual route home, when she was intercepted by some old high school "friends" who dragged her to their reunion.

That was where Trent Montgomery locked eyes with her.

She had screamed for help.

But there was no one left to hear her.

The neighbor was gone. Her father was gone.

Thomas had passed Trent on the street that night, brushing shoulders with the monster in the dark. But he couldn't prove it.

When the police asked around, every single business owner on that street repeated the exact same, heavily compensated line.

"The security cameras were broken."

When the tears finally stopped and Thomas's breathing leveled out into exhausted hitches, I walked over and placed a hand on his trembling shoulder.

"I'm sorry," I said softly.

Thomass eyes were swollen, red, and raw. He shook his head frantically.

"Mr. Carmichael, I know you tried. You gave it your all. Every other lawyer laughed me out of their office. You were the only one who tried. I'm grateful."

I couldn't help but smile a little. "Thomas, I've never won a single case in my entire career, yet I have a flawless five-star rating online. Do you want to know why?"

"Why?"

I didn't answer him directly. I just gently wiped a smudge off the corner of the photograph he was clutching to his chesta picture of Sophie, smiling and radiant.

"I'll show you when we go back to court. But for the next few days, you cannot leave this spot under any circumstances. Can you promise me that?"

He hesitated, just for a second, before nodding with fierce determination. "Okay."

As soon as I secured his promise, I turned and left into the night. It took me about thirty minutes to reach the outskirts of the city.

I walked into an abandoned auto-shop, dropping to my knees right on the grease-stained concrete.

"Walter. I need you. My twisted little heart is having a crisis of faith."

Walter, an old man who looked like hed been dragged backward through a hedge, shuffled out from the back office, stifling a yawn. He didn't say a word, just kicked me squarely in the shin.

"What did you do this time? Help an old lady cross the street?"

"No," I rubbed my leg. "She tried to fake an injury to sue me, so I threw myself on the ground first and extorted her for cash."

Walter narrowed his eyes. "Did you give money to a homeless guy?"

"I felt bad for him, so I used his brand-new smartphone to take out a fifty-thousand-dollar loan in his name."

"Only fifty?"

"It's from a loan shark. The interest compounds by fifteen percent daily."

Walter seemed to accept this, looking down at me with mild approval. "Alright then. What's this crisis of faith you're whining about?"

I pressed my lips together. "This time... I actually want to help someone win their case."

"..."

Walter didn't look thrilled. "Just handle it off the books like you always do. A life for a life. Blood for blood. It's much cleaner."

I stayed on the floor, slowly walking him through every grueling detail of Thomas and Sophie's tragedy.

When I finished, Walter didn't say a word. He just pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his flannel pocket, lit one, took a drag, and immediately lit a second one off the cherry of the first.

"Kid."

"Yeah, Walter?"

His voice was rough, like gravel scraping over rusted iron. "If your dark little heart breaks... let it break."

I asked the question that had been eating at me. "Can I still practice the craft if I do this?"

Walter looked at me like I was an idiot. "Why wouldn't you be able to?"

"Because you explicitly told me that our lineage practices the art of the 'Scumbag.' You said if I ever showed genuine moral integrity, Id lose all my abilities instantly."

Walter didn't even blink. "I lied."

"?"

I stared at him, absolutely incredulous. "Why the hell would you lie about that?"

"One," he ticked a finger, "because I'm a scumbag and I enjoy lying. Two, because I have zero moral compass, and I wanted to make damn sure my apprentice had even less of one than I do."

"..."

I ground my teeth together. "Walter, do me a favor and take a trip out to the Mojave Desert."

"Why would I go there?"

"Because its empty, desolate, and isolated. Just you and the dirt, right where you belong."

"..."

When I returned to my cozy little concrete bridge, I was practically buzzing with the good news I had for Thomas.

But one glance at the shadows told me everything I needed to know. Thomas wasn't there.

I frowned, pressing two fingers against my temple, tapping into the tether Id subtly placed on him.

Damn it.

He hadn't left on his own. He'd been taken.

Meanwhile, eight miles away, on the top floor of a private, members-only club owned by Apex Enterprises, a raucous celebration was in full swing.

"Trent, my man, you are a legend. Slipping right through the cracks again!"

Trent stood in the center of the room, casually swinging a bottle of expensive champagne, a wicked, jagged grin on his face. "What can I say? It pays to have a father who owns the city."

One of his buddies took a long drag from a cigar, shaking his head in mock sorrow. "Gotta admit though, isn't it kind of a shame? You were obsessed with Sophie for years, and you only got to play with her once."

Trents smile slowly decayed. A dark, ugly shadow crossed his features as a memory flickered behind his eyes.

"It's her own fault for not knowing her place."

The buddy laughed nervously, desperately trying to change the subject. Trent shoved the bottle into a bucket of ice and headed for the private restroom down the hall.

As he stepped out of the loud, thumping bass of the club, he paused, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Why the hell is it so freezing out here?"

A pair of long, impossibly pale hands draped over his shoulders. The voice that whispered in his ear was flat, devoid of any human warmth.

"Trent."

"Who the hell" Trent spun around, annoyed, throwing a blind kick that connected with absolutely nothing but empty air.

A second later, his pupils dilated to the size of saucers.

"Sophie?! You... you... how the hell are you here?!"

Sophie tilted her head, offering him a sweet, terrible smile.

"I'm dead, Trent. You strangled me with your own hands. Did you forget?"

"Ahhhhh!!!"

Trent scrambled backward, losing his footing and crashing onto the expensive carpet.

His blood-curdling scream pierced through the heavy oak doors. His buddy rushed out into the hall, looking frantic, and hauled Trent up by the armpits.

"Bro, what is wrong with you? How much did you pre-game?"

The buddy looked down and wrinkled his nose. There was a sharp, distinct smell of urine.

Trent was completely unhinged. He grabbed his friend by the lapels, shaking him violently.

"Its Sophie! Its her! She came back!"

The friend panicked, slapping a hand over Trents mouth. "Dude, shut up! You're hammered. Do not say that name out loud here. Let's just get you inside."

"She was right there! Right in front of my face! Didn't you see her?!"

His friend looked up and down the opulent hallway. Nothing. Not even a waiter.

"Trent, you're having a bad trip, man. This is my fault. I shouldn't have brought her up."

Trents eyes were completely unfocused, darting frantically around the empty corridor. He muttered, his voice trembling.

"Her hands were like ice... Shes back. She came back to drag me to hell..."

"It was her! I swear to God, you have to believe me!"

The buddy nodded frantically, just trying to placate him. "I believe you, man, I believe you. You're just exhausted. The trial took it out of you. Let's get you home."

As he practically dragged Trent toward the private elevator, he was already typing furiously on his phone, calling Trents private concierge doctor.

As the ping of the elevator faded into silence, I stepped out from the blind spot of the security cameras.

I looked at the empty air beside me, my voice low.

"I didn't pull your soul back across the veil just so you could play haunted house, Sophie."

Sophie materialized, looking down at her translucent hands, suddenly looking very small.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just... I saw him, and I couldn't control it."

I didn't reprimand her further. Instead, I bypassed the elevators and slipped into the emergency stairwell, descending deep into the bowels of the building. After a few minutes of navigating the damp, concrete labyrinth, I found what I was looking for: a heavy, reinforced steel door.

I didn't hesitate. "Sophie. Phase through. Tell me what's on the other side."

She melted right through the solid steel. When she phased back out seconds later, her ethereal face was twisted in genuine horror.

"There's so many of them..."

"What?" I frowned. "So many of what?"

"Kids! There are so many kids down there!"

I immediately pulled a small, ash-colored talisman from my pocket, slapping it against the doorframe to mute any sound. I took a deep breath, channeled a surge of kinetic force into my palm, and blew the heavy steel door off its hinges.

The scene inside was sickening.

On the left side of the cavernous basement, about a dozen children were huddled together, terrified and dirty. On the right side, tied to a chair, was a single adult.

It was Thomas.

His hands and feet were bound with zip-ties, and a greasy rag was shoved deep into his mouth.

When he saw me step through the ruined doorway, he began thrashing wildly. I crossed the room in three strides and yanked the rag out.

I rubbed my temples, exhaling a long, exhausted breath. "Thomas. I specifically told you not to leave the bridge."

Thomas looked up at me, his eyes brimming with desperate apology.

"I know, Mr. Carmichael, I'm so sorry. I just... I kept thinking about Sophie being all alone in the dark. I just wanted to go home and burn some of her favorite things so shed have them on the other side. But when I got there..."

When he got there, the Montgomery familys fixers had been waiting.

I shook my head, my gaze drifting over to the huddled mass of children. "Where did you all come from?"

The kids looked at each other in sheer terror. Finally, the oldesta girl who couldn't have been more than twelvefound her voice.

"We're... we're from Saint Judes Foster Home."

Thomas spoke up, his voice hoarse. "Mr. Carmichael... I heard the guards talking. Theyre running an auction down here tonight. They're going to sell them. Please, you have to"

I shot him a withering look. "Do I look like a superhero to you? How the hell am I supposed to smuggle fourteen people out of a billionaire's fortress?"

Thomas shrank back, looking thoroughly defeated.

Thirty minutes later.

Walter slowly opened his eyes from his nap, blinking against the harsh light of the auto-shop, to find a baker's dozen of traumatized children staring at him.

Walter stared back. The silence stretched.

"Kid."

"Yeah, Walter?"

"I taught you how to lie, cheat, and steal. At no point in your curriculum did we cover human trafficking."

"Sue me," I replied flatly, dropping a bag of convenience store sandwiches on the table.

"..."

10

Once Thomas was safely stashed away in Walter's back office, I forced him to set up a new social media account.

Leaving out the parts that involved the supernatural or things that would get us killed instantly, I had him record a video detailing exactly what Trent Montgomery had done, laying out the timeline, the destroyed evidence, and the intimidation tactics.

Sophie hovered near the ceiling, slowly shaking her head. Her voice was an echo. "Apex Enterprises controls everything. The moment he posts that, theyll have it scrubbed from the internet."

I looked up from my work, my face a mask of righteous indignation. "No, they won't. I believe that justice always finds a way in this world."

Sophie stared at me. "Okay. Then what exactly are you doing right now?"

I didn't stop chanting under my breath. "Weaving a digital-metaphysical warding hex into the server architecture to block their IP scrubbers."

"?"

The hashtag about the only son of Apex Enterprises murdering a girl and laughing in court caught fire almost instantly. It was a digital wildfire.

[This animal needs to be locked under the jail!]

[That poor girl. She was so young. Is the justice system really this broken?]

But soon, the PR machine woke up. The comments supporting Thomas began to vanish, replaced by a flood of highly coordinated skepticism.

[Fake news. Look at who he hired. Simon Carmichael? This whole thing is a grift for clout.]

[Wait, who is Simon Carmichael?]

[He's the lawyer who is so bad, he once turned his own client from the plaintiff into the defendant, and turned a parking ticket into a life sentence.]

[The first one is funny, the second one takes actual talent.]

[Wait, he turned a parking ticket into a life sentence?]

[?]

From that moment on, the entire internet's focus aggressively derailed, entirely fascinated by my catastrophic legal track record. Apex Enterprises deployed their million-dollar bot farms, and they barely made a ripple against the sheer meme-power of my incompetence.

Sophie floated down, looking genuinely awestruck. "You're sacrificing your entire professional reputation to protect my dad's video. Aren't you worried you'll never get another client?"

Walter, who was lighting his fourth Lucky Strike of the hour, overheard her. He let out a bark of laughter.

"Why would he care? He litigates for dead people, too."

"?"

11

The day court reconvened, the media circus had reached a fever pitch. Due to the overwhelming public pressure and internet virality, the judge had allowed the trial to be live-streamed.

[Here for the legend. I just want to see how this Carmichael guy manages to lose this one.]

[I hate rich kids as much as the next guy, but let's be real. If Carmichael is on the case, this whole thing is probably a scam.]

At the defense table, Trent looked exhausted, the bags under his eyes dark and bruised, but his arrogant sneer was still firmly in place.

"You don't have evidence," Trent said to the camera, his voice dripping with condescension. "You can accuse me a million times, and it won't change a thing."

Next to him, his attorney, Hughes, offered a cold, satisfied smile. After all, during the last session, I had been completely helpless against him.

I stood at the plaintiff's table, resting my hands on the wood. I let a long, heavy silence build in the room.

"It's true," I said finally, my voice echoing in the microphone. "I have no further earthly evidence to present."

The courtroom erupted.

Someone in the back row completely abandoned decorum, screaming out, "You absolute failure! My dog could argue a better case!"

"Whoever hired Simon Carmichael is cursed!"

Thomas sat beside me, his head bowed, completely silent. Even the live-stream chat was giving up.

[Is this guy a comedian or a lawyer?]

[I am fully convinced Carmichael took a bribe from the defense.]

[How do I report a lawyer to the bar association? Watching him makes my blood boil.]

But just as the judge reached for his gavel to restore order, I raised my voice, cutting through the chaos like a knife.

"But I do have one question for you, Trent. Are you willing to swear an oath? Right here, right now. Swear to God that you did not kill Sophie."