His work determined that the moths killed in this way are suicidal. As corroborating evidence, he cited the global human suicide rate of .0074 percent. When you figure there are an estimated 200 trillion moths and butterflies, it makes sense that millions would kill themselves every night. It’s simple mathematics.

It was accounted a strange coincidence when Dr. Seckenheim himself committed suicide after his marriage ended.

Ghosts do not often commit murder. They haunt. They instill fear. They might so inhabit a person’s psyche as to drive her to suicide. But actual slaughter is rare.

Drake’s father was murdered by a ghost, and on that day Drake became a ghost hunter.

He inhabited the darkness. He learned about betrayal and lonely hearts and the isolation of eternity. He drank in whispers and sang of misfortune.

She could, with the blessing of the church and the backing of the most consequential families, fall in line with her father’s wishes, marry the homosexual, 14 year old son of King Wilhelm, and be condemned to a decadent court life replete with luxuries opulent and excessive beyond the wildest dreams of the ordinary vassal–knowing true love only in the margins while abandoning her free will as a necessary sacrifice to uphold the sanctity of the kingdom, the honor of her family, and the dignity of her gender.

Or, suicide.