Snippet of something I've had boiling in my head for a while, inspired by one of my oddly self-consistent dreams.
She felt it at the last moment. A whisper of disturbed air as a stubby knife slashed from thin air, tracing a red welt across her shoulder as she staggered away. Good! The ghost was clueless, probably just a street tough. Grey iron didn't hold an edge, but if they'd stabbed-- she cursed loudly and threw herself flat as the knife flashed through the air again. Wide by a mile but they were going for the kill this time.
She fumbled in her bag for her own knife. The odd triangular blade the ghosts liked to use. Not as good as a long one, but stronger. It gleamed dully in the dusty light as she took a low stance, stepping along the wall and spitting on her hand. She could feel him. Definitely a him. Any moment...
The phantom knife drove for her heart. She jerked aside, letting it strike the wall. The tip snapped off with a loud crack, and viper-like she dashed the spittle onto her own knife and lashed out. The dagger crunched and her gorge rose as she realised she'd struck a joint. No pity to spare here, she twisted it and ripped it back into her world. Ghost blood sprayed across the room but never made it to a surface.
Breath bated, she waited. No change. The ghost was down for the count, or maybe dead if those were ribs. She dried her dagger carefully - bad idea to carry wet grey iron, may as well walk down the street waving your purse - and finally glanced around the room properly.
Derelict. A single high, small window streamed sunlight down, picking out swirling motes. A table cleared of dust on the other side of the room, but no sign of her friends.
Stepping over the ghost's body - force of habit, she couldn't touch it, it might not even be there - she moved over to the table.
Also sort of an exercise in conveying setting information without expositing or being confusing. Any thoughts on how I did on those? Also feedback in general would be nice. I am way out of the writing habit.
I kinda like that scene.
The way knife - fights are usually depicted, and the way you depict one, is sort of questionable to me. It's kind of like... a knife is rather light, yes? Very many stabbing attacks can be made in a rather short time. Taking even a few of those is probably lethal.
There's this moment where your protagonist drops to the floor, rummages in her bag, and then stands back up. Presumably this took at least a few seconds, during which she was prone and her hands were occupied. During this interval, she could have been maimed or killed very quickly, right? It would have made sense if he was just toying with her with the first slash, and then saw that she was armed and decided to get serious, but you established that he was trying to kill her even before she drew her own knife. So when she falls flat, what's to stop him from falling along with her and stabbing her in the liver fifteen times? A knife is not a sword or a mace that needs to be drawn back and swung - it takes virtually no time to make a stab with a knife.
So unless there's some other limitation that prevents a ghost from attacking quickly, he's being kinda dumb here. And him being a street tough, one would assume that he would know how to handle a knife. So that seems a little inconsistent to me, but that's about the only nitpick that I have.
As far as setting information goes, I got this: ghosts use tools and have preferences; the tools are real/corporeal in their own right; ghosts either are invisible and incorporeal or can become so (perhaps they exist as a corporeal entity in a parallel place from which they can reach out?); ghosts can be killed by grey iron wetted with saliva (possibly other genetic material?), but doing this exposes the owner of the material in question somehow. Is that right? All in all, I thought the background information was nicely woven in with the actual scene, it wasn't jarring or anything.
