Sad fact: lots of kids know how to use knives and guns. I'd been one of them, but instead of pursuing a life of crime, I'd trained to be a shamanic mercenary.  This meant that while my friends were at dances and football games, I'd been out banishing spirits and wrestling down monsters with my stepfather.  On the upside, I grew up never fearing muggers or any other assailants.  On the downside, an adolescence like that really screws with your social development. It meant I'd never really been like other kids.  I'd had some friends, but compared to theirs, my world had been terribly stark and terribly deadly.  Their dramas and concerns had seemed so petty next to mine, and I could never fully relate.  As an adult now, I still couldn't really connect to kids because I had no shared experiences to draw on. Which made my job today that much more difficult. "Go ahead, Polly," crooned the girl's mother, smiling with over-plump lips.  Too much collagen, I suspected.  "Tell her about the ghost." Polly Hall was 13 but wore enough make-up to rival a 40-year old whore.  She sat slouched against the back of a couch in her family's perfectly decorated house, chewing gum loudly, looking everywhere but at us.  The more I studied her, the more I decided she probably did have problems.  I suspected they had less to do with supernatural influences and more with having