Anne-Marie had a forgettable face, but she could shoot. As a girl, she went hunting with her father, and quickly gained a reputation as one of the best shots in Louisiana. She was ten when her father died in an accident, and she given to her grandfather, Marcel's custody. He was an eccentric scholar who had spent a lifetime studying the use of masks in primitive religious ceremonies, and had stumbled upon a secret.
Her grandfather discovered that a mask, properly endowed with spiritual power, not only concealed the wearer's face but also allowed him to become a spirit, liberating him from the constraints of reality. He and Anne-Marie spent many years travelling to remote corners of the world to talk to shamans of obscure tribes, and they learned much of these ancient magics. Marcel had created a spirit mask, and Anne-Marie was well on the way to making one of her own when disaster struck.
There are those who know of the powers Marcel was dabbling with, and who thought he had gone too far. The Black Council was one such group, and they reached out through their agents to stop him. Perhaps he never realized the danger he was in, or perhaps he thought the warnings were a bluff. They were not. Anne-Marie was a freshman in college when her grandfather was killed. It appeared to be nothing more complicated than a meth addict, trying to rob him and accidentally killing him. Anne-Marie knew that he had been sent by the Black Council, through their agents.
She finished her spirit-mask, not from a heavy wooden carving, but from a velvet carnival masque. Using the power of the masque to become a spirit, she hunted down the people responsible for her teacher's death. First the killer died, and then the people behind him. And the people behind them. With every death, though, a new layer of the conspiracy was revealed to her, and a new target. At times, she wonders if she was mistaken, if there was no grand conspiracy and her mentor's death was what it appeared to be to the police, a robbery gone wrong, but she has gone too far to turn back, now. Much too far.