"Great, I tell you two to follow ONE rule and you break it in two seconds," Serina groaned, seemingly holding a conversation with someone behind me. However, when I turned to look back, nothing greeted me except dingy bookstore air. Yeah, I screamed again. 

Serina groaned before leaning down to look at me laying on the floor. 

"I guess I can't keep it a secret anymore, huh," she grinned at me before helping me to my feet.

"What... WHAT IN THE WORLD IS GOING ON?!" I shout, trying to push past her to the exit, but she's surprisingly strong and she manages to keep me at bay. 

"If you'll let me explain before going batshit crazy maybe you'll realize it isn't as bad as it seems," she mutters before leading me back to the seating area from before. 

"Sit down, ask some questions, whatever you need to hear so you don't go screaming out the door," she plops into a seat across from me, waiting for my response. 

"Uhh, alright. First, what are the voices?" I start. 

Serina grins. "Paige and Lucas, two spirits trapped in this bookstore. I make sure they don't scare people in return for a place to hang out. The one messing with books would be Paige, it's kinda her thing." I hear a childish giggle behind me but there is still only air around us. 

"You wanna see them?" Serina asks.

"What do you mean?" I respond, sweat pouring down my face. What in the world was this lady on about? I needed a way out, and fast. 

"You see, I don't actually run a bookstore. Well, at the very least it isn't my main gig. That would be my work as a judge," I sigh a bit, but my newfound relief was short-lived as Serina continued, "Not a normal judge of course, but a judge of the dead." 

"What the hell does that mean?!" I question. 

"Basically I'm the one who will judge you when you die to make sure that you end up in the right place based on how you lived. You know, god of the underworld stuff." She jokingly holds her arms out in a zombie pose before laughing.

"I basically have my life to play around with my powers before my eternal servitude upon my death, so I use that to help souls trapped in our world to pass on or to slow the spread of black magic. It's a tedious job, but I need some kind of cover for taxes, so that's what this place is for,"  She gestures around the store. 

"Soooo, you're a weirdo." I mutter. Of course what she was saying had to be total bull, so she was either high, drunk, or both.

"Oh, Joey Vargas, I can assure you that I'm the real deal. If you don't believe me, then allow me to prove it," she grins again before pulling out a phone from her back pocket. 

"Yo Necro, bit of help please!" She says, and the phone glows as it's engulfed in a cloud of purple mist. After a minute the cloud disperses and the phone is replaced with a large black tome accented with what looked to be purple jewels. 

Satisfied, Serina opens the book and begins whispering something to herself before she eventually finds the page she's looking for. Then she raises her right hand to me while still looking down at the book.

"May the blind see which should not be seen, pierce the veil and break the seam. Rewrite the laws of dead and life, to find the broken and end the strife," as Serina spoke the same mist from before flowed around her hand before slowly advancing towards me and engulfing my vision. 

When the mist cleared away, I was suddenly faced with two people instead of the one from before. 

"It seems to have worked perfectly Seri," the new figure said, gesturing to a set of markings running around my right arm. 

"Who the hell are you..." I muttered, trying to comprehend all of the rampaging thoughts charging through my brain. The young man turns to me with a smile. 

"Lucas, pleasure to meet you Joey Vargas," he says with a slight bow that makes 'Seri' burst into laughter. 

"Now whenever you're with me you'll be able to see the spirits around us. Nifty, right?" I was too shocked at the sequence of events to form a coherent sentence, so I merely nodded. 

"Glad to have you with us Joey, welcome to Paranormal P.D."