Breathtaking it would be, if Lila had any to take. She traverses the mansion, its shining candelabras, opulent silk rugs spanning wooden floors, and a grand, spiraling staircase lined with iron railings in lavish patterns.
 Beside her, Ben whistles, and she's tempted to shush him. Not a spectral sound he makes will be heard, not by mortal ears, but the structure before her is so commanding of its respect, its deference, that anything less than a paean seems an offense.
 "Remember," he mutters, "we're here for the ring."
 And amidst her awe, the mission comes back to her. A bargain in the After, a signet ring put at a headstone, and the promise of memories for two wandering, amnesiac spirits. An awakening or another letdown, but in the years since her blank demise, meeting Ben, her only like, and the inception of their partnership in the business of closure, the odyssey of the living world, she's learned to draw her vigor from elsewhere. "...Right. You go downstairs, I'll go up."
 "Wait!" He rakes back his dark locks, fixes his tie, and runs his hands down the length of his suit, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles. He looks an old-fashioned man, though the boyish grin on his face suggests everything but. "Am I worthy?"
 Lila appraises him, then glances over her own attire: an ornate, black gown adorned with lace and silk, modern, but just as formal. Funereal. Almost a shame that it's entombed underground somewhere and not gracing a storefront in some city square. But it's all she has left beyond her name, and apt for her new existence. "We're good."
 She starts up the stairwell, enthralled again by the splendor, but pauses as her gaze strays upward, where once still crystals of the chandeliers sway slowly, gently clinking, and their radiant glow flickers, throwing uncanny shadows across the foyer.
 "Lila?" Ben whispers. She peers over the railing and finds him frozen before a large mirror. No reflection greets him in the dust-blanketed surface, but that's to be expected, a quirk of the phantasmal condition. She steps down and approaches him, suddenly conscious of a change in the atmosphere. A sickly feeling flares in her stomach, swelling dread, countered only by her lingering wonderment, fascination. And studying the mirror again, she tilts her head, watches a frosty film creep along its edges until it gathers in the center.
 Suddenly, the silence is pierced by an unearthly wail, a lost soul's sorrow that resounds in every ghastly fiber of her being. Ben nudges her. "This house has a tenant, and I don't think she's happy that we're here."
 "But we need that ring! Those memories!" Lila grabs his shoulders, taking in his uncertainty, the alarm in his expression, and the weariness beneath it. "Ben, you've been searching for decades. Longer than me. So long. This could finally be it for you. You could remember. You could rest.."
 There's the slightest droop in his posture, the billow of his sigh in the frigid air. He braces himself, nods, and they're scrambling through the hallways, a deafening whine ringing out after them as they scour each room, leaving no drawer closed, no closet untouched, kitchen to bedroom to antiquated study. A small, gold band with a flower's insignia, Lila recalls, lost in a labyrinth of elegant souvenirs and mementos, tokens of lives well-lived passed through generations.
 "I-I can't find it!" Ben's words are overtaken by the thunder of stomping, like soldiers in conquest, a stampede of savage creatures, and carved legs of plush furniture are shuddering with wrathful force, enveloped in a mystical sheen that tells her not even an incorporeal body will be spared this fury. And almost answering her thoughts, a cacophony of sharp shrieks startles her from tables driven across the floor, leaving wide gashes in their wake.
 Lila stumbles as a chair streaks past her and crashes into the wall. She shouts for Ben, who leaps out of the way of a towering candelabra that plummets to the ground, its curled arms shattering. And the torturous whine assails the study, stretching out into a shrill keening. He whimpers. "I don't want to die again."
 "We won't! We—" She yelps and ducks, narrowly evading the massive stone of a sculpture that rams into a corner at her rear. The cold, empty gaze of a gargoyle meets her own. It's a blow that would surely have ended her existence or Ben's. And for what? Her intrigue? Her tantalization? An awful guilt stirs within her as she regards her partner's cowering form.
Awful.
"It's not worth it!" she yells, reaching for Ben. "Let's go!"
But her grasp is intercepted by the clutch of another, phantom fingers closing over her hand, and the guilt inside her is echoed, expanded a hundredfold, the closest thing to pain she's ever experienced in this state, profound, unbearable.
The figure before her fluctuates, an amorphous silhouette, no discernible features beyond a vicelike grip, then settles suddenly. The image of a desolate woman, ashen, brown skin, remnants of flesh in gossamer and bronze, a mass of dark coils cascading over a tattered, white nightgown.
Ben rises from behind a desk, face downcast, until he glances at her and his eyes widen. "She...she looks just like you."
Lila is tossed into a sea of memories. A twin. A missing half of her. Lena. The pair growing up in the mansion, affluent beneficiaries of their father's prosperous business. She's seeing his crow's feet, their mother's smile lines, picnics and parties in frilly dresses amongst the vast yard's topiaries, later calamity, their parents in a fatal car accident, and the issue of inheritance. A disagreement, turned heated argument, turned fiery quarrel, and finally, her younger sister's palms sending her plunging off a balcony. She hears the sickening crack of her skull against concrete, and it thrusts her back into the present, gasping, tears spilling as she wrenches her arm from Lena's hold.
"It was her," Lila whispers, voice wavering. "My sister, my killer."
"An accident!" Lena sobs, falls to her knees. "My gravest sin! And the grief, the agony, it claimed me, destroyed me, kept me here! I'm sorry! Forgive me! Please!"
"How could you?" A coalescence of horror and outrage builds into an inferno at her core, the streams at her cheeks like lava, the betrayal above it all, breaking her apart. Too much.
"I did something terrible once, I think." It's Ben, fixing Lena with a solemn stare, approaching them. "That must be why I've been like this so long. Like her. Lost. Trapped. Condemned. I've never found my life or my memories, perhaps I never will. Perhaps I'm not worth them."
He pauses and clenches his jaw, peering down at an object in his hand, a golden glint.
The signet ring.
"But I believe the closest I get is helping you, helping others." He gives it to Lila and leads her to her twin, where they sit together, exchanging careful glimpses, pleading looks. "It's dreadful, I know, where fate leaves us, the things that linger. But the people we were have passed. It's done. Don't let it consume you anymore. You deserve to rest now. Both of you."
Conflict roiling, Lila edges closer to Lena, softly weeping, feels the lull of her ire, love unfolding for her little sister, reminiscences of tenderness, consolation. Forgiveness. She embraces her, and finally, there's the decisive pull of the After.
"What about you, Ben?"
"...I'll be here." He assures, pain in his smile, tragedy in his eyes. 
The ring dissipates.
And as she fades, whole at last, Lena by her side, she hopes to someday meet him again.