"Eric!"
The ghost looked up at Charlotte walking through the door to his room with a distinctly unfriendly expression on her face. Come to think of it, it hadn't been a particularly friendly shout, either.
The magician marched her way right up to his nose and glared up at him with all the intimidation her petite frame could muster. Eric looked down, a trifle awkwardly, since she was, quite literally, under his nose, with a expression of calm bemusement. She wasted no time in making her intentions behind this visit clear. "Eric, I need that healing spell. Now."
The ghost took a small step away and looked her up and down. She was wearing a floating, diaphanous Egyptian robe, the kind of tiara that usually symbolized a princess in the more low-grade stage productions, and rather nice ballerina slippers. None of it went together particularly well, and neither was any of it the nun items he had asked for. He shook his head and sighed. "Charlotte, we've been over this before. You need to come here-"
She cut him off. "Yes, I've heard it before. But we need this, really. Johnathan collapsed before we got back to the statue just now and I had to drag him even though I was bleeding too. Can't you make an exception?"
Eric folded his arms and stared at the girl stonily. "No."
"Ooh! You know we sold those to Vincent DAYS ago to pay for potions! Unreasoning tyrant! Vicious slave-driver!" She was getting quite worked up, and the former vampire hunter knew she could go on for quite awhile. Jonathan had the bad luck to struggle through the door right then, immediately dropping his heavy pack and collapsing on the steps. Charlotte glanced at him, saw he was all right, and luckily ignored him to rant at Eric some more. "See? Jonathan has to carry around all that, just because we don't know when you'll want some horrible obscure thing for one of your silly, ridiculous quests and we can't sell any of it to Vincent to get money so we're always too poor to BUY anything! This is all your fault, you miserable pirate!"
The ghost cocked an internal eyebrow at the new and radical use of 'pirate'. Just then, Jonathan seemed to get some of his strength back and looked up. With the tired eyes and messy hair, he looked exactly like a puppy. It was rather cute, really.
The pathetic tone of his voice just helped the metaphor along. "Come on, Eric, just once? She's really telling the truth, and you can't be so cold and unreasonable. You should've seen the scythe Death had."
"I have seen it. 30 years ago or so, I recall. I don't remember having a healing spell back then, though. We were lucky if we found some meat and didn't have to fight a resurrected minion. Ah, back then you see, it was just me and John..."
"Nevermind!" Charlotte cut him off again, her patience at hearing his wonderful old war stories apparently worn out. Eric had to admit he felt a little hurt, he'd only told them about his and John's fight with Death ten times...or was it fifteen? He was still trying to remember while the young women pushed past him, dragging her companion along. "We'll go get some more potions from Vincent, then, if you're going to be such a cold-hearted, cruel, zombie! Come on Johnathan, there has to be something we can sell..maybe the clothes off out backs, I don't think Eric will ask for those anytime soon..."
Jonathan threw another hangdog look his way while being pulled past, which had much the same effect on the ghost as Charlotte's shameless grab for sympathy. Eric turned to watch them walk into Vincent's room, turning back as the familiar sound of haggling over sale prices and the vicious insults began. There was "merchant", "blood from a stone", and the well-loved "gouger", all being flung with much more alacrity than you would expect from Charlotte's sweet face.
He hoped Vincent hadn't gotten anything new in. "Zombie" had nearly filled out his bingo card.