"The time machine first arrived during the summer. I was outside, mowing the lawn, when it insinuated itself into the shrubbery."So begins "But Always Meeting Ourselves", a darkly comic tale by Leo Hunt about gardening, memories and the terrible consequences of being able to go back."The time machine first arrived during the summer. I was outside, mowing the lawn, when it insinuated itself into the shrubbery. The time machine was a tall yellow cylinder, like a can of pop someone had stretched. I remember it smelt like the carpets at my grandmother’s house, which I had crawled across as a child. I turned off the lawn mower. A slot opened in the machine and my future self climbed out."So begins "But Always Meeting Ourselves", a darkly comic tale by Leo Hunt about gardening, memories and the terrible consequences of being able to go back. Originally published in issue thirty-six of Neon, this short story is now available as an individual eBook edition. Read more about it at www.neonmagazine.co.uk, or visit Leo at coldstarharbor.tumblr.com.

It's been a few months since Luke Manchett inherited a Host of eight hostile spirits from his dead father and made a deal with the devil to banish them. Luke's doing his best to blend in to the background of high school, to ignore the haunting dreams spawned by his father's Book of Eight, and to enjoy the one good thing to come from the whole mess: his girlfriend, Elza. And then it all begins again. Ash, a strange new girl with stark white hair, requests his help—and his Book of Eight—to save her twin sister, who was attacked by a demon. Ash knows a lot more about necromancy than Luke and seems to know what she's doing, but can she be trusted? As Luke is drawn into a spiral of ever more dangerous favors, he finds himself not only summoning the deadliest members of his father's Host, but returning to Deadside in a terrifying quest to save what he holds dearest—or die trying.

When Luke Manchett's estranged father dies unexpectedly, he leaves his son a dark inheritance: a collection of eight restless spirits, known as his Host, who want revenge for their long enslavement. Once they figure out that Luke has no clue how to manage them, they become increasingly belligerent, and eventually mutiny. Halloween (the night when ghosts reach the height of their power) is fast approaching, and Luke knows his Host is planning something far more trick than treat. Armed with only his father's indecipherable notes, a locked copy of The Book of Eight, and help from school outcast Elza Moss, Luke has just thirteen days to uncover the closely guarded secrets of black magic and send his unquiet spirits to their eternal rest—or join their ghostly ranks himself.

Now that last year's nightmare is in the past, Luke and Elza have started college, and Luke's mum has moved on, too, with a new boyfriend named Darren. Life is returning to something like normal — until Luke and Elza spend New Year's Eve at Darren's cottage and find themselves transported to the forest near Dunbarrow with no knowledge of how they got there. Gray fog is spreading through town, the sky is awash with green light, and something is clearly very wrong: a great spirit from Deadside, known as the Barrenwhite Tree, has broken open the gateway between the living and spirit worlds, leaving Dunbarrow to be taken over by the world of the dead. Together with Luke's old friends from school, who seem oddly unaffected by the plague of insanity unleashed on the town, Luke and Elza need to find a way to close the gateway while they still can. Not only that, but the devilish Mr. Berkley is abroad in Dunbarrow with an agenda of his own — and he hasn't forgotten Luke's...