"She's... sort of...?" he says. "It's hard to explain. Harder than usual, even."

"That's something," snorts Bella. "Well. After what happened last time I don't think I care to take risks in this department. It's a pity, I'm sure they would have had fun."

"I don't know, she seemed nice enough to me," he says. "Albeit in a slightly creepy way. Definitely fewer axe murderer vibes than Addy."

"I've never murdered anybody with an axe," says the same voice out of thin air. "Well, I'm pretty sure. Not in a while, anyway."

"I highly doubt Addy has ever murdered anyone with an axe either," remarks Bella. "And the terrorist alt seemed decent company to start with too, albeit aesthetically bizarre. Less bizarre," she concedes, "than intermittent discorporation."

"He had scars, I bet," the still-discorporated ghost says wistfully.

"That one? Yeah. Can you not build yourself scars if you want them?" Bella says. "Or does that not count?"

"Alice doesn't have any scars at all," Bella volunteers. "They didn't grow back after he set himself on fire that one time."

"Mm. Did he use to have," she licks her lips, "these?"

"Nope. Had the injuries briefly but he let them heal."

"He must bounce back pretty good, your Alice."

"Occupational necessity," says Bella, smirking.

"Ooh, this I gotta hear."

"I'm making a habit of not explaining the details, but suffice it to say I plan for me and Alice to both live forever, and I wouldn't want that to interfere with his hobbies or vice versa."

"Aren't you precious," she says affectionately. "Can I see him pretty please, even though we're both awful terrible people?"

Bella ushers him in. [I'm pretty sure your shiny new species is immune to being traumatized in any lasting way,] she says. [Although I wouldn't like you to go around taunting anyone with this information, the Emperor survived five years in small pieces in a dungeon believing his mate was dead and he is perfectly functional now. As long as I'm alive I don't think you can get to an irrecoverable state, and I have every intention of remaining alive.] "Alice, this is a female ghost version of you who has not introduced herself. Ghost, this is my Alice, as described."

Alice opens his arms. "Hi, me!"

Lazarus makes an incredulous sound, which was not his reaction the last few times she did this.

"What's going on?" Bella asks. Lazarus or Alice or both could answer her, whichever one knows.

"Ghosty Alice is inhabiting him the same way she was inhabiting those bodies she kept making out of and dissolving into thin air," Lazarus explains rapidly.

"...I don't feel possessed, or anything," says Alice.