Material Girls

by EGB Fan

Suspicions are aroused when what looks like the beginning of a bridal killing spree coincides with the unheard of and probably madeup National Wedding Dress Day. Coincidence...?

Extreme Ghostbusters: Material Girls

Witness reports say that when Mary York reached the altar, she suddenly produced a large kitchen knife from within the folds of her meringue wedding dress and stabbed her fiancé a total of eighteen times as mortified guests looked on in horror. It was Reverend Samuels who eventually tackled Miss York and was able to wrest the knife from her hand. The best man and two of the bridesmaids then restrained the enraged bride while Reverend Samuels contacted the police.

"Why would someone do that?" wondered Janine Spengler-nee-Melnitz.

"Get married, you mean?" Jessica Venkman was the thirteen-year-old daughter of Janine's boss, and felt extreme contempt for a great many things in life. "Beats me."

"I mean," Janine said patiently, "why would you stab your husband-to-be eighteen times on your wedding day?"

"Well," said Jessica, "stabbing isn't that reliable – you might as well make sure."

"Jessica!"

"What?"

"You're disturbed."

"Well I'm not as disturbed as Mary York. What is she?" Jessica attempted to look at the article on Janine's desk. She was sitting on the desk herself, facing away from the Sunday newspaper, and so had to twist her head quite considerably. "Twenty-three. It is downright idiotic to get married at twenty-three. Obviously she realised this before the wedding, and so secreted a knife amidst the folds of that…" – she pulled a face of sheer disgust as she looked at the pre-wedding photograph included in the article – "dress. I mean, why in God's name would she have agreed to marry him? 'I now pronounce you man and marginalised subhuman sidekick. You may kiss the bride whether she wants you to or not.'"

"Jessica, marriage isn't like that," argued Janine.

"No, of course not, Mrs. Spengler," retorted Jessica.

"Honestly, you're just like your father."

"No I'm not. He got married."

"Are you never ever getting married, then?" asked Janine. "Not even at City Hall in your jeans with two witnesses?"

"Janine, please – I'm an independent woman," said Jessica.

Janine frowned. "So am I."

"Ha, yeah, whatever. I mean, look at this." Jessica picked up an envelope that her eyes happened to alight upon at that moment. "See what that says? See it?"

"Yes," Janine said curtly, snatching the envelope from Jessica's hand. "It says To Dr. and Mrs. Egon Spengler, but that isn't my fault. They got our name off some computer."

"Our name," Jessica muttered contemptuously. Then the latter remark seemed to sink in, and she said, "What? Why?"

"Take a look," offered Janine, slipping a small white card out of the envelope and handing it to Jessica. "Your mom and dad must have gotten one of these too, surely."

Jessica read the ostentatious gilded lettering on what turned out to be a party invitation, her eyes widening with abject horror as they moved over each word:

Dear Dr. and Mrs. Spengler,

You are cordially invited to attend a party in honour of National Wedding Dress Day at the Waldorf Hotel. The party starts promptly at 8pm on Friday 23rd June. There is of course a dress code: you have to wear your wedding dress!

Jessica stopped reading. "National Wedding Dress Day!" she spat. "There's no such thing! It's a marketing scam! Egon doesn't have a wedding dress, does he?"

"Of course not. I think he just has to wear a nice suit or something."

"You're not going, are you?"

"Um." Janine looked warily at Jessica's horror-struck expression. "I'm not telling you."

"So what, did every married couple in New York or something get one of these?"

"Well… yeah, I think so."

Jessica looked thoughtful for a moment before lowering herself from the desk and making her way over to the pole in the middle of the room. "DAAAD!" she called urgently, through the hole in the ceiling. She then marched over to the nearby staircase, and waited.

Soon enough, Peter Venkman appeared. Before he had a chance even to open his mouth, never mind say anything, Jessica waved the offending invitation in his face and demanded, "Is this what you and Mom are doing on Friday?"

"Stop waving that around, Jess, I can't see it."

Jessica obeyed, holding the invitation perfectly still in front of Peter's eyes.

"Oh." He looked sheepish. "Yeah."

"Why would you keep that a secret?"

"We knew how you'd react."

"Does Oscar know?"

"Um… does it matter?"

"You could have told me, you know," Jessica said accusingly. "What did you think I was going to do?"

"Well," said Peter, "your mom didn't want to tell you because she thought you might think less of her for wanting to go."

"She wants to go?" Her tone of voice illustrated Dana Venkman's point beautifully. "So which wedding dress is she going to wear?"

"Must you say 'wedding dress' like most people say 'abscess'?" asked Janine.

"Presumably," said Peter, ignoring the interruption, "the second one."

"This whole thing," said Jessica, "is more farcical than the Iraq war and twice as lame."

"The proceeds go to cancer research," Peter said defensively.

"Proceeds?" Jessica glanced at the invitation, scanning over the section she had yet to read. "Twenty bucks a head? Oh my God! That's extortion! You know what they should have done?"

"What should they have done, honey?" Peter asked obligingly.

"They should have taken all the money it must have cost to get the names of all the married couples in New York, make these stupid invitations and send them all out, hire the Waldorf Hotel and the caterers and the God-knows-what-else, and given that to cancer research! Who are they, anyway?" she wondered, glancing again at the invitation. "Pioneers for Women's Health? I've never heard of them."

"That doesn't mean they don't exist," said Janine.

"So none of this money goes to men?" asked Jessica. "So like, Dad, if you got like cancer or something, wouldn't you be entitled to any treatment that was developed with the proceeds from this wedding dress party?"

Peter sighed. "I don't know, Jess. Is it really such a big deal?"

"Well, if you felt you had to lie to me about it…"

"Nobody lied. You didn't want to know about it, did you?"

"Well… I guess not." She stole one more glance at the invitation in her hand. "I'm going upstairs for a while, ok?"

"Sure, ok," said Peter, by which time Jessica was already past him and halfway up the staircase.

"That girl," said Janine, "has got a real attitude problem."

Peter looked more surprised than offended. "Because she doesn't like wedding dresses?" he asked innocently.

"Because she's rude," countered Janine. "You shouldn't let her talk to you like that."

"Oh, come on, Janine, she just doesn't take anybody's shit. Like you," he added brightly.

"You weren't giving her shit," Janine retorted. "And neither was I. You should have heard the way she talked to me just now. She's rude."

While Peter started to defend his daughter (by pointing out characteristics usual to the average thirteen year old and listing the dire consequences of trying to discipline them), Jessica herself was upstairs showing the invitation to yet another married man: Garrett Miller, a member of the younger team of Ghostbusters.

"Did you get one of these?" she asked.

"Of course," Kylie Griffin jumped in. She was sitting close enough to Jessica to recognise the invitation (she had seen it before). "He's married. He's on some database somewhere. Big Brother is watching you."

Kylie was not the only occupant of the room besides Garrett and Jessica: Roland Jackson was there too, not daring to voice his opinion that the wedding dress party actually sounded like fun. Kylie's boyfriend, Eduardo Rivera, was out with their two small daughters. Jessica was glad of this: she didn't want to get into a debate about clothes with five-year-old Conchita.

"Was it addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Garrett Miller?" asked Jessica.

"Undoubtedly," said Kylie.

"It was," confirmed Garrett. "And before you ask, yes, that did annoy Jo."

"Why are you so down on the whole idea, Kylie?" Roland asked mildly. "No one's asking you to go."

"I just think," said Kylie, "that the whole idea sounds incredibly lame. But like you say, it's nothing to do with me."

x x x

"Kylie, are you coming to the wedding dress party?"

Kylie froze in her tracks. She simply could not believe her ears. There she was, about to go home to her family, and Janine had come out with a stumper like that!

"I can't," she said eventually. "I, I don't have a wedding dress."

"You don't have to," Janine said brightly. "Listen to this." She began reading the small print on the back of her (by now rather battered) invitation. " 'Your unmarried friends don't have to miss out on all the fun! Bring along your bridesmaids who were unlucky enough not to catch the bouquet, and make sure they wear the dresses they wore for your wedding!'" She looked up. "You did catch the bouquet, didn't you?"

"I, um… yes," faltered Kylie.

"So are you coming?"

"I don't think so."

Janine frowned. "Why not?"

"Well," Kylie said defensively, "because it's a wedding dress party. It's sounds… you know… not like my idea of fun."

"You don't like the dress, do you?" Janine said accusingly.

"I… I… what?"

"You don't want to wear the dress again!"

"Of course I don't want to wear the dress again!" snapped Kylie, beginning to get annoyed by this conversation. "I wore it to be your bridesmaid! It was a one-off!"

"You hated wearing it!"

"Janine, for God's sake, it was eight years ago!"

x x x

"I think it was the eight years ago remark that did it," Kylie later confided to Eduardo. They were at home, their daughters were asleep and they were eating leftover chicken in front of near-silenced repeats of Frasier. "I didn't actually deny hating the dress."

"Did you hate the dress?" asked Eduardo.

"Of course I didn't hate the goddamn dress!"

"Whoa, sorry. I thought you looked kinda cute in it."

"Cute? Ok – now I do hate it."

"Sorry," said Eduardo, "I didn't mean cute. You looked… alluring."

"If I were Jessica I'd accuse you of objectifying me."

"Well I'm glad you're not. As much as I like Jess, I don't think I could live with her."

"Oh God," groaned Kylie, suddenly falling forwards and burying her face in her lap. "What am I going to do?"

"Go to the party?" Eduardo suggested.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Well because… because…" – she sat up again. "Because why should I go to a party I can't afford and I really, really don't want to go to just because Janine's paranoid about some stupid… very nice dress?"

"You've lost it, haven't you?"

"No I haven't lost it," Kylie jumped to her own defence. "I just… don't know where it is."

"Oh, Kylie," Eduardo smiled indulgently. "I do love you."

"I have not lost it," Kylie insisted. "It's definitely in one of two places."

"Which are…?"

"Well, I know for a fact it isn't here. I mean, when we moved here we had Conchita and all her stuff as well as ourselves, and we definitely didn't bring it. Did we?" she added, a very faint trace of hope in her voice.

Eduardo shook his head. "Don't think so."

"Ok," said Kylie, "so that means it's either at Carl's house. Or."

"Or?"

"Or… the attic apartment."

Eduardo was silent for several very long moments. Kylie eyed him warily, trying to gauge his reaction. Finally he said, completely deadpan, "The attic apartment."

"Yes. You know, where I was living when they got married."

Eduardo nodded. "Yes, I remember. The one you stopped renting when you found out you were pregnant about five and a half years ago."

"The very same," Kylie had to admit.

"Wow. Janine'll kill you if she finds out."

"Why?" Going from being very cool and collected, Kylie suddenly raised her voice a few frantic decibels. "It's not her dress! It's mine to lose! I mean, for God's sake, I never thought I'd ever have to even see it again! It was a wedding! It was a one-off!"

Eduardo strongly suspected that she would have gone on all night if it had not been for the phone interrupting her. Kylie stopped short, her mouth poised open ready to say more, before she finally crossed the room to answer the trilling summons.

"Hello?"

"Kylie, hi, it's Beth. I'm sorry to call so late, but - "

"Beth, hi!" Kylie greeted Eduardo's sister-in-law with wild enthusiasm. "Hey, listen, have you ever seen any pictures of Egon and Janine's wedding?"

"Um… I think so," said Beth, sounding understandably taken aback.

"Good. Do you remember the dresses her sister and I were wearing?"

"Um… vaguely."

"I don't suppose you know whether mine is somewhere in your house, do you?"

"Well, not off the top of my head," Beth said apologetically. "Why? Do you want it?"

"No," said Kylie, a little too quickly. "I'd just like to know where it is."

"Oh, well… I can have a look for you sometime this week if you'd like."

"Oh Beth, you don't have to do that." Yes! Please!

"Really, it's no trouble," Beth insisted. "Listen, Kylie, I'm calling because… well, Carl just got off shift and… you heard about that bride who stabbed her fiancé eighteen times, right?"

"Ah-ha."

"Well, I mean, Carl wasn't actually working on the case or anything, so the details might be a bit sketchy…"

"There's nothing wrong with the details!" Carl's powerful voice was clearly audible somewhere in the background. "And it's nothing to do with ghosts!"

"Ghosts?" echoed Kylie.

"It happened again," Beth began to explain. "Today. Another church wedding. Only this time it was… well, weird. Weirder," she corrected. "For one thing, the bridesmaids were all trying to kill people too."

That was enough to rouse Kylie's suspicions. "Go on," she said.

"And when the bride killed the groom… what she actually did was… well, she punched him in the chest and ripped his heart out with her bare hand."

Kylie's jaw dropped. "Are you serious?" she marvelled.

"Well, that's what Carl says," answered Beth.

Kylie was silent. All she could think was, This may well turn out to be a very good excuse not to go to the party.

"So… will you check it out?" asked Beth.

"Of course. First thing tomorrow. If we can," Kylie assured her. "Thanks for letting me know."

"No problem."

"And… Beth?"

"Yes?"

"Are you going to this wedding dress thing on Friday?"

"Oh, well," Beth said sheepishly. "No. It's not Carl's kind of thing."

"Not Carl's kind of thing," muttered Kylie, all of ten seconds later, as she returned to Eduardo and the sofa. "Is that a happy marriage? Is it?"

"You're too judgemental," said Eduardo. "Y'know, when I was a kid, my dad used to go out to work and Mama used to stay home and bake bread."

Kylie scowled. "I know. That's why she gave me that bread maker for my birthday."

Eduardo rolled his eyes. "Not this again."

"I mean it's so difficult to come by in New York, isn't it – bread."

"Kylie…"

"She thinks I'm stupid. She thinks I couldn't bake bread in the oven if I wanted to."

Eduardo couldn't help laughing. "Are you saying you could?"

"Sure I could," said Kylie. "Anything she can do, I can do better."

Eduardo judged it to be time to change the subject. "Can I ask you a question about your parents?" he said.

Kylie shrugged. "Sure."

"Did they have like a big white wedding with flowers and shit?"

"Oh yes," Kylie laughed dryly. "Jill wore a strapless kind of tube – I mean, that's all it was really, a tube – and a push-up bra, and pretended to have a cleavage. She was twenty-one and he was twenty-four. No wonder it didn't work out. They barely knew each other." She paused. "So… what about yours? Did your mother wear long sleeves and a collar and a chastity belt?"

"Kylie!"

"What?"

"Stop getting at my mom."

"I was only joking," Kylie said defensively.

"She wore a sort of… you know… dress," Eduardo told her. "And, judging by the pictures, she looked exactly like Rose will in about twenty years."

Kylie nodded resignedly. She and Eduardo both looked very like their mothers, and consequently so did their children. She said, "I can't imagine Rose ever wanting to get married. Oh, speaking of which…" – she had only just thought to tell Eduardo what she had heard from Beth.

"I predict many wedding cancellations in the near future," was his response.

"Well." Kylie pursed her lips. She knew how much importance people placed upon their painstakingly planned wedding ceremonies. "Let's hope so."

x x x

"Well," said Roland, "if there was anything here, it's gone now. I knew it would be."

"God, Roland, you're so smug," said Garrett. The younger team of Ghostbusters had taken the Ecto-1 to the scene of the latest psychotic bride attack and given it a thorough sweep with their PKE meters. "Who's paying us for this, anyway? I mean, Beth won't do it, will she?"

"We're being community spirited," said Kylie. "We don't want any more bridegrooms and wedding guests being brutally murdered, do we?"

According to that morning's news (on all the main media), Beth had been quite correct about the bridesmaids: the bride's best friend had attempted to strangle the vicar, while the younger sister had flown at her own mother with a pair of particularly sharp hairdressing scissors. Both victims had lived and were now recuperating, the former at home and the latter in hospital. The bridegroom, of course, had not been so fortunate: his heart did indeed appear to have been ripped from his chest.

"According to the news," said Roland, "neither the bride nor the groom ever actually came here before their wedding. They never went to church at all. I don't get why people have church weddings when they don't go to church. A lot of them don't even believe in God, from what I gather."

"Same reason non-virginal brides wear white, I suppose," said Kylie. "Because that's just how it's done."

They had only been allowed to enter the church after the police had finished doing their thing, and even now there were several areas that had been cordoned off. There were a few spots and splats of blood on the stone floor, all surrounded by police tape. Not that crossing it would have done them much good: the PKE trail was stone cold.

"No point in us going to scene of the first incident, then," Kylie surmised.

"I suppose…" Eduardo did not like the idea he'd just had, but for some reason he said it anyway. "I suppose we could go to the police station and try talking to that chick. Girl. Woman."

Garrett laughed scathingly. "Are you sure you're not married to her, Eddie?"

"Garrett, don't be a prick," snapped Kylie. "Yeah, good idea. She might even have residual PKE traces on her or something. Will Mary York still be there as well?"

Eduardo raised his eyebrows. "You're asking me? I don't know."

"Worth a try," said Roland.

x x x

"Ghostbusters?" shrieked an anguished female police officer behind the front desk. "Oh no!" She looked around desperately. "Does anyone know if Carl Rivera's in?"

"We don't wanna see him," Eduardo said quickly.

"I was hoping he'd get rid of you," retorted the police officer. "Whatever it is, I can't help you."

"We need to talk to Angela Simmons," Roland said mildly.

"No one can talk to Angela Simmons. She's in custody."

"How's she doing?" asked Kylie.

"How's she… How the hell should I know?"

"Can you find out?" asked Garrett.

"No I can't!"

"Isn't there anything you can do to help?" pleaded Kylie. Then a thought occurred to her as an image of the infamous party invitation popped into her head, and she asked, "Where's the dress?"

"What dress?"

"The wedding dress."

"It's in the evidence locker."

"Can we see it?"

"No. Now go away, please, or I'll call someone."

Garrett was ready to get angry, Kylie felt unsure what to do and Eduardo didn't much want to be in the police station anyway. It was Roland who motioned silently for them all to move away, and they obeyed, though Garrett was reluctant to do so.

"So what are we supposed to do?" he demanded, once they were standing out in a near-empty corridor. "Wait until some other poor sucker has his heart ripped out?"

"Literally and metaphorically," muttered Kylie.

"Of course not," said Roland. "We need to get a look at that wedding dress. Kylie, go ask him," and he pointed to a slightly short and skinny male police officer who was filling a foam cup from the coffee machine on the wall.

Kylie looked extremely dubious. "Do what?" she said.

"Go on, ask him," Roland pressed. "Use your feminine wiles."

"I don't have any feminine wiles."

"Sure you do, babe," said Eduardo.

"It's worth a try, isn't it?" added Garrett.

As much as Kylie hated the idea of prostituting herself, she could see no other way of gaining access to this elusive evidence locker. So she took a deep breath, turned on her heel and strode over to the police officer who was getting coffee. She wondered if she ought to adopt a more ladylike walk, but she was at his side before she could even begin to figure out how to do this.

"Um… excuse me," she ventured.

The officer fixed her with a reassuring smile. "Can I help you, Miss?"

Garrett, Roland and Eduardo watched – Garrett with mild interest, Roland with bated breath and Eduardo with some discomfort – as Kylie tilted her head to one side and began talking to the attentive police officer. She swayed to and fro a little bit, and it was fairly obvious from the way her hands were clasped behind her back that she was thrusting her breasts out at him. The police officer was nodding sympathetically, which had to be a good sign. Kylie then turned and gestured towards her three companions. The officer nodded and approached them; once he was past her, Kylie relaxed her body and her face took on a look of utter revulsion.

"This way, gentlemen, if you please," said the police officer, who had told Kylie that his name was George.

"I can't believe I just did that!" Kylie hissed furtively, falling into step beside Eduardo. "I feel so cheap!"

"You did great, babe."

"I think I need to take a shower." She was rubbing both of her upper arms with the palms of her hands, trying to soothe an uncomfortable prickling sensation.

"We have to look at the wedding dress first," Eduardo said reasonably.

Officer George Something pulled open the evidence locker for them, and then stood back. The dress was contained within a large polythene bag, on which the odd smear of blood was visible. The dress itself was spotted with deep red stains.

"That's warped," said Roland, as he approached the open locker with his PKE meter. After their bad luck that morning, he hadn't expected to get anything from the dress, but it gave him a surprisingly strong reading.

"So what now?" demanded Garrett, when the initial excitement was over. "Kylie, I know you're not prepared to do what it'll take to get this guy to let us take the dress out of here."

"Um…" Kylie was still thinking fondly of showers. "Can we find out where the dress came from originally?"

"I can find that out for you, Miss," George volunteered, "if you don't mind waiting."

Kylie quickly decided that she did not want to hang around at the police station any longer. She told the others she was going to catch a bus back to the firehouse (or as near as she could get) and take a shower, finishing, "Come and let me know when you have something."

She left, and then Garrett, Roland and Eduardo were led to a reasonably comfortable waiting room. George then left them, and this was followed by a very long wait. For some reason, there didn't seem to be much else to talk about besides wedding dresses. Garrett thought they were cumbersome and ostentatious, and anyway weren't they all exactly the same. Roland thought they weren't that bad. Eduardo offered no opinion. Finally, after what seemed a ridiculously long amount of time, George returned with the address of the shop that had sold Angela Simmons her wedding dress.

x x x

Gloria Lyle looked scandalised when two uniformed men piled into her shop, and then turned to hoist another's wheelchair up the step in the doorway. She was in the middle of fixing a net curtain – or possibly a wedding veil – to the silky chocolate coloured tresses of a bare-shouldered young woman in a long white dress. An older, taller, plumper version of the young woman was also present. There was no room for doubt: she just had to be the bride-to-be's mother.

"Oh wow, you look beautiful," said Roland, addressing the young woman.

"Really?" Her face lit up considerably. "Are you sure?"

"Oh yes," Garrett chimed in. "You know what? I think that's the one."

The young woman turned slowly round, very nearly tripping on the folds of the dress, until she was facing a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. She sighed lovingly at her reflection, her eyes welling with tears.

"You know what?" she almost sobbed. "I think you're right!"

"Don't be too hasty," warned Gloria Lyle. "Would you like to try the green one on again?"

"Green?" Roland's eyebrows shot skyward. "You can get green wedding dresses now?"

"Oh, it's very nice," the young woman informed him. "Maybe I should try it on again…"

"Do," Eduardo advised. "You don't want to rush into anything."

"You're right," she said, holding out her hand to the older woman. "Come on, Mom – I'll need your help with this."

"That's the other thing about wedding dresses," remarked Garrett. "It's physically impossible to put one on without assistance."

"Excuse me," said Gloria Lyle. "Can I help you three gentlemen?"

"Well," Garrett said smoothly, "it's really more a case of us helping you."

It took him less than a minute to say his piece. Seconds after this the three men were outside the shop, the door closing firmly behind them.

"I don't think Gloria Lyle believes in ghosts," Eduardo remarked.

"Well," said Roland, "we might as well get back to the firehouse. We can tell Egon and co. what we found out, and then we need to start figuring out what to do next."

He drove them back to the firehouse, being careful to slow down when he reached the garage, because you just never could tell when there might be a small child running about. Not this time, though: Janine and Egon's twins were creating mini volcanoes on the roof, and the little Riveras were with Beth that day. Though her parents didn't know it, Conchita was currently helping her aunt to look for Kylie's misplaced dress while Rose played with a load of her cousin Kevin's old toys that they had unearthed.

"Hey, Janine," said Garrett, as she was the only person present. "Where's Ky?"

"Do I look like I care?" snapped Janine.

Garrett shrank back instinctively, and then looked enquiringly at Eduardo. Eduardo, assuming that Kylie would want him to be discreet about the whole bridesmaid dress business, made a how-should-I-know face and then started up the stairs. He soon found Kylie in the rec room, taking the opportunity to do a bit of reading. Her hair was wet from the shower and she was on the sofa with her feet tucked under her, but she stood up when she saw her three teammates entering the room.

"Hey," said Eduardo. He approached Kylie and put his hands on her arms in a soothing gesture, beginning to lay the groundwork for the news he was going to have to break to her. "Are you feeling better?"

Kylie shrugged. "I suppose so. It's not really the kind of thing you can wash off, though."

"Guess not," Eduardo said carefully. "We, um… found out where the dress is from… and then we, we, we went there."

"And?" prompted Kylie.

"Well… the wedding dress saleslady person wouldn't let us do anything. So we…"

When it became obvious that Eduardo had completely chickened out, Garrett took over: "We came up with a plan in the car on the way back."

"You're not going to like it," added Roland.

"You don't have to," said Eduardo, tightening his grip on her arms slightly, "if you don't want to."

"Yes," Garrett said emphatically, "you do have to. Our plan is this…"

x x x

Oscar Venkman (as he liked to be called these days, though officially it was still Wallance) was a sensitive soul – more sensitive than the average eighteen-year-old boy, perhaps. His mother always said it came of being a musician. So it was that, as soon as Oscar opened his front door to Kylie, he sensed that she was far from happy.

"Are you all right?" he asked anxiously.

"I'm fine," Kylie said bitterly. "Are your parents in?"

As it was a Monday, she was hoping that Dana would be somewhere with her orchestra practising Bach or somebody on the cello. However when Oscar showed Kylie through to the kitchen, there was his mother, folding freshly spin-dried jeans and t-shirts. Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Oscar made a lunge for the pile of clothes on the table so as to extract anything of his before his sister got her hands on it.

"Oh, it's you," Jessica said to Kylie, appearing the kitchen doorway. "I Googled National Wedding Dress Day yesterday. There's no such thing."

"That doesn't surprise me," Kylie had to admit.

"Jess, where's Dad?" asked Oscar.

"How should I know?"

Oscar left the room with an armful of faded baggy jeans and a promise to locate his stepfather, leaving Kylie to explain the situation to Dana. Jessica stuck around and listened. She had been encouraged by her mother to make a start on the homework she had to do over the summer. After ten minutes of staring at an extremely boring poem about London, she felt she deserved a break.

"We did ask Janine," Kylie said apologetically, "but she's sort of… well, not talking to me, and - "

"Why?" asked Jessica.

"I'm not telling you."

"Why not?"

"Because it doesn't matter, ok?"

"Have you done any work yet?" demanded Dana.

"Mo-om, it's still only June!" moaned Jessica.

"You're not doing all of your homework on August thirty-first again," retorted Dana. "Now go upstairs and get started."

Jessica went upstairs with absolutely no intention of doing her homework. Moments later Oscar reappeared with Peter, and Kylie explained to him what had to be done. Part of her hoped that Peter might give some excuse and say he was unable to fulfil his role in the venture, but she also knew that this would only delay the inevitable. Perhaps it was for the best that he was only too happy to play along.

"I know why you're so keen to do this," he said to Dana, as the unlikely trio strolled towards the cab Kylie had waiting outside the house. "It's because you know you're never going to get to do it with Jess."

"Well, perhaps," shrugged Dana. "Kylie, why the long face? This might be fun."

"I don't like being looked at and judged and objectified," said Kylie, opening the rear door of the taxi. "Is this woman going to want to touch me?"

"Probably," Dana said apologetically.

The cab driver, as Kylie knew from her journey with him between the firehouse and the Venkmans' home, was one of the chatty ones. When Kylie quoted at him the address she had got from Roland, the driver said blithely, "Getting married, are you?"

"Oh… yes," muttered Kylie.

"Who's the lucky guy?"

"My boyfriend."

"When's the big day?"

Were people really this interested in complete strangers' weddings? Kylie suspected that a lot of women would be only too happy to jabber inanely about their men and their bridesmaids and their dresses and their flower arrangements and such for hours on end, but she really didn't want to. She just said the first date that flew into her head: "July eighteenth." This happened to be Eduardo's birthday.

"Cutting it a bit fine with the dress, aren't you?"

Kylie blinked. "Am I?" Who the hell had to take more than a month to buy a dress?

"We've been everywhere with her already. She just can't make up her mind – can you, honey?" simpered Peter, clearly enjoying himself.

The cab driver chuckled. "My daughter was just the same. We were looking for months before she found the dress of her dreams."

The driver talked about his daughter's wedding for the remainder of the journey. Kylie was tempted to jump out of the cab when they got caught in traffic. Dana, she noticed, seemed extremely interested. As to Peter, he was just enjoying the deceit.

It was almost a relief when the cab pulled up outside the shop. The driver knocked a little off the fare, saying he was giving them a discount because there was a bride-to-be in the party. Dana felt very deceptive. Kylie thought it served him right.

"So what sort of thing are you looking for?" asked Gloria Lyle.

Kylie was tempted to answer, "A wedding dress," but she knew she had to try not to appear the fake that she was. Finally she asked, "You got anything Goth?"

Gloria Lyle blinked. "Goth?" she echoed, politely yet dubiously.

"Something black that I could maybe attack with a pair of scissors?"

"Honey," Dana stepped in, putting her arm around Kylie – for show, presumably. "Maybe we could try something a little more… traditional."

"All right," said Kylie, if that was the quickest way to get this over with.

Peter was standing over by a rack of long white dresses that all looked the same from a distance, and probably not that different close up. Kylie wondered if it was possible to get snow blindness in this place. Peter was beckoning her towards him.

"Say you want to try this one on," he hissed furtively, waving a dress with a lot of complicated straps and buttons in front of her face.

"But it's hideous," Kylie objected.

"I know, but it's also impossible to get into. You and Dana and that woman over there can all cram into a cubicle while I check this place out."

Admittedly that was what they were there to do, so Kylie conceded and took the dress from Peter.

"That's too big," Gloria Lyle decided. "I'll go out back and get one in your size."

Five minutes later Gloria Lyle, Dana and Kylie were all crammed into a small cubicle, and Peter was able to whip out his PKE meter. As he heard sounds of struggle emanating from within the cubicle, he wondered whether they ought perhaps to have recruited a more willing participant. But with that said, he couldn't think of anyone the right sort of age who'd want to do this, off the top of his head.

"Oh my God!" gasped Kylie. "Are you sure this is my size?"

"It's supposed to be a tight squeeze, honey," Gloria Lyle assured her.

It was about ten minutes later that Kylie said, "Right, get this off me."

"But don't you want to take a look in the - "

"No I don't. There's no way I could spend a whole day in this thing – get it off!"

The sequence of sounds was repeated in reverse, until finally Kylie emerged from the cubicle, looking a little short of breath. Peter grabbed her arm and took her aside.

"Buy one," he said simply.

"Do what?"

"Buy one. Kylie, the meter's jumping off the scale, and it is definitely the dresses."

"What, all of them?"

"Every one."

"But Peter, these things cost like two thousand dollars," argued Kylie. It sounded even more ridiculous when she said it out loud.

"No they don't," said Peter. "Not all of them. I found one that's only six hundred. I'll pay – it's no big deal."

"Wow, oh my God, I think I'm in love!" Kylie exclaimed dramatically, when Peter had thrust said six-hundred-dollar dress into her arms. "This is the one. It's perfect."

"You have to try it on," said Gloria Lyle.

Kylie frowned, beginning to tire of this woman. "No I don't have to," she argued.

"Sure you do," Dana chimed in.

Kylie found herself shepherded back into the small cubicle against her will, where she was packed into yet another ugly and uncomfortable dress. She supposed it must only cost six hundred dollars (ha!) because it didn't have too many unnecessary accoutrements, like a boned bodice (whatever the hell that was supposed to mean) or tiny little embroidered rosebuds.

"The reason," said Kylie, as they left the shop – she with a brand new wedding dress and Peter with an extra six hundred dollars on his next credit card bill – "that wedding dresses are so goddamn expensive is because people will actually pay two thousand dollars for them. I mean, they can't actually be worth two thousand dollars."

"Things are worth what people will pay for them," Dana said sagely.

"Maybe," said Peter, "we ought to hit a couple more places. Don't look at me like that, Kylie – you're scaring me."

"You want me to go through all that again? No way!"

"Well, what if all the other wedding dresses around here are possessed too? We only know that one psychotic bride got her dress from there."

"Well there have only been two," muttered Kylie.

"Not forgetting the bridesmaids," said Dana. "Where did they get their dresses?"

"Well, yeah, but look, it's getting pretty late," said Kylie, and it wasn't just an excuse – it was getting on for four thirty. "Can't we just call it a day for now and get this wedding dress to Egon for analysis?"

Peter couldn't help chuckling at that.

"It's amazing the things you find yourself saying," remarked Kylie. "Once I said, 'Come on, guys – we have to get this burnt toast to Egon for analysis!'"

After several failed efforts they were eventually able to flag down another cab, and Kylie was forced to chat about her imaginary wedding yet again. She was dropped off at the firehouse, and then the cab drove off with Dana and Peter still in the back.

"What's this?" asked Egon, as Kylie threw a large rectangular box at him.

"A possessed wedding dress."

"Possessed?"

"Or something. Y'know, we ought to check the newspapers and stuff for forthcoming weddings – it's probably going to happen again."

"Indeed," said Egon. "And this wedding dress party concerns me. I think I'd better run a PKE meter over Janine's wedding dress this evening."

"I should have told Peter to do the same thing with Dana's," Kylie realised.

"I'll call him. And Winston and Kaila too, I suppose."

"And Ray?"

"I don't really remember what sort of dress she was wearing, but yes, it can't hurt. Kylie, do you happen to remember what Jo was wearing when she married Garrett?"

"Um… cargo pants and a tank top, I think."

"Well, tell him it might be an idea to give them the once over, if she still has them."

"Can't hurt," agreed Kylie.

She trudged upstairs, and was extremely pleased to be greeted by her two small daughters, whom she hadn't seen since early that morning (before the day started to go downhill). They were sitting in the middle of the floor with Eduardo, playing with some slightly aged looking toys that Kylie had never seen before in her life. After delivering the cargo pants and tank top message to Garrett, she went to join them.

"Find any nice wedding dresses?" Eduardo asked dryly.

"Ha! There's no such thing," retorted Kylie.

"There is," argued Conchita, Kylie and Eduardo's older daughter. "Haven't you ever seen a Hindu wedding?"

"No," Kylie admitted. "Have you?"

"Only in pictures. Um… Mommy…"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

Whatever Conchita had to say, she seemed reluctant. Eduardo apparently knew more than he was letting on: he was keeping extremely quiet, and trying to make himself look busy with two-year-old Rose and a stuffed lion.

"Me and Beth had a look for the… um…" – Conchita indicated her own skirt, having picked up on the fact that the whole thing was very hush-hush.

"And…?" Kylie asked warily.

"We didn't find it."

"Great," muttered Kylie. "Well, thanks for looking." She picked up the nearest toy to her: a teddy bear with clumps of wax in its fur. "Is this what you found instead?"

"It's a bunch of Kevin's old toys," Eduardo explained. "He left that one next to a radiator with a load of wax crayons."

"Ooh, Roland," said Kylie, as Roland wandered in from the kitchen. "Are your mom and dad going to the wedding dress party?"

"It sounds stupider every time you hear it, doesn't it?" remarked Garrett.

"Um, probably, I don't know," answered Roland.

"Well," Kylie went on, "if your mom's wedding dress appears – I mean, I assume they had like a church wedding and stuff, right?"

Roland cocked an eyebrow. "Why would you assume that?"

"Because there seem to be about five women in the world who want none of that."

"Well, yes, they did actually," Roland confessed. "Do what if my mom's wedding dress appears?"

"Check it for paranormal activity."

"Oh, ok."

"Do we know anyone else who might want an excuse to wear her wedding dress again? Besides Janine etc."

"All the married women in New York?" suggested Garrett.

"If you'd bought a dress," Roland said to Kylie, "that cost upwards of a thousand dollars, wouldn't you want to wear it more than once?"

"I don't know," said Kylie, "because I would never be so reckless."

x x x

After the conversation petered out, they all went their separate ways. When Garrett went home to Jo, they spent a few minutes scratching their heads in front of her open wardrobe, trying to remember exactly which cargo trousers and which tank top she had got married in. Eventually Garrett realised that it would be far simpler just to turn on his PKE meter and make a sweep over the entire wardrobe.

"All clear," he announced brightly, which Jo felt was disappointingly anti-climactic after all that. Then they had dinner.

Roland asked his mother whether she and his father planned to go the wedding dress party. She said she wasn't sure. Then they had dinner, during which Sharon Jackson deliberated over whether the enjoyment promised on the party invitation would be worth the hassle of digging her wedding dress out of the attic.

Conchita and Rose had dinner, prepared by Kylie (only because it was her turn), before being bathed and put to bed by their father. Kylie fed the cat and then kicked back on the sofa with a newspaper, listening with half an ear to what was going on in her daughters' shared bedroom. Basically they were both firing questions at Eduardo about all the old toys they had insisted on bringing home. What were their names, where had they come from, who had given them to Kevin, when, why, which ones did Kevin used to play with most… Kylie almost felt sorry for the guy.

"Do you know what I like most about those kids?" Eduardo asked, when tiredness had finally overwhelmed Rose, and Conchita was reading a simple chapter book.

"What?" asked Kylie.

"They think I know everything."

Kylie laughed. "They think you're the greatest guy in the world."

"Deluded, I know." He sat down next to her.

Kylie couldn't help feeling a little bit jealous sometimes. She felt that she had a good relationship with her children, but she had never had that kind of relationship with her father. She knew fathers and daughters were supposed to adore each other, stereotypically anyway, but it had just never been like that for her.

"Guess what we're doing tomorrow," said Kylie.

"What, you and me?"

"You, me, Roland and Garrett. Look." She thrust her newspaper into his hands, and pointed at a small announcement. "We're going to Jim Richardson and Elaine Wood's wedding so we can stop Elaine if any demons compel her to kill Jim."

"Sounds like fun," Eduardo said dryly.

"Why do people announce their weddings in the paper?" wondered Kylie. "I mean ok, it's a big deal to them, but like the whole of New York is supposed to care."

"We care," Eduardo pointed out.

"Yeah," Kylie conceded. "This time."

They had dinner. Specifically they ate the cold slices of pizza that Conchita and Rose had lacked the metabolism to finish. Kylie then suggested they wash the dishes that had somehow piled up during the day (in spite of the apartment having been empty of people for more than eight hours – weird how that happens); she washed and he dried.

"You're quiet," remarked Eduardo.

"So are you."

"Oh, sorry."

"I was just thinking," Kylie confessed. "It seems a funny time to want to do this, really, what with everything that's been going on…"

"What are you talking about?" asked Eduardo, visibly confused.

"I…" No, that wasn't the way to start. Or was it? Shit, how did people do this? "Would you maybe think about marrying me?"

Eduardo just stared at her for an uncomfortably long time. Ok, he was surprised. That was understandable. Kylie seemed to remember that he had tried asking her to marry him some five and a bit years ago, and she had seemed very anti. They weren't yet twenty-two at the time – it would have been a bad idea, Kylie had reasoned. And after that, well, she hadn't seen the point: they were living together, eating together, sleeping together, producing children – there was nothing they could have done that would have made it anything more. Besides which, Kylie had always enjoyed annoying Eduardo's mother by living in sin with her son. But now… well, the joke was beginning to wear a bit thin, to be honest.

And besides, she knew it would make him happy.

Finally Eduardo said, "Are you serious?"

"Completely," said Kylie.

Then, reassuringly, his face relaxed into a smile. "Yes!" he said; and predictably he then pulled her into a passionate kiss, which led them to the bedroom and the inevitable celebratory screw.

When Kylie had previously envisioned this scenario, that part had always come later, after she had specified that her seemingly sudden decision had absolutely nothing at all to do with all the wedding dress palaver that had been going on. In fact, it wasn't a sudden decision at all: she had been considering it for a little while now. She really wanted him to understand that. And besides, there were a few small things she wanted to make clear before he totally accepted her proposal. Apparently, though, he had already done that – so she put it all to the back of her mind and concentrated on enjoying making love to him.

They had to drift to opposite sides of the bed afterwards, simply because it was so damn hot. Kylie felt pretty drowsy herself, but wanted to drag Eduardo back to reality before he fell into one of those blissful sleeps. She started by saying, "You don't mind me proposing, do you?"

"Kylie, where were you just now?" Eduardo murmured sleepily. "I'm ecstatic."

"You don't feel emasculated or anything?"

"No, not very."

Not very. She had been hoping for something a bit more definite, like an absolutely not. She wondered what to say next, in order to lead up to what she really wanted to say. But he was nearly asleep: there was no time for beating about the bush.

"Listen," said Kylie. "There are a few conditions."

That woke him up all right. "Conditions?"

"Hold on," she said, climbing off the bed.

"What conditions?" pressed Eduardo, hauling himself into a sitting position as Kylie clambered into an old t-shirt that was lying around.

"Well," she began, going back to the bed; "first condition is, I'm not taking your name."

"Ok." That one didn't surprise him.

"And there is to be no referring to yourself as 'we', and no introducing me to people as 'my wife'."

"Right," said Eduardo, a little uncertainly. "So the first time I say to somebody, 'This is my wife'…?"

"I'm leaving you."

"I'll be careful, then. Anything else?"

"A couple of things," said Kylie. "We have to wait until after your birthday."

Eduardo hadn't expected to be married to her in a month or less anyway, but still he asked, "Why?"

"Twenty-six is still too young."

One month seemed unlikely to make much of a difference, but it was a harmless whim, so Eduardo agreed to reconsider his decision on his twenty-seventh birthday.

"And," said Kylie, "you are not to treat me any differently from how you treat me now."

Eduardo frowned confusedly. "Why would I treat you differently?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't," Kylie said hastily. "But I mean stuff like trying to tell me what to do, or demanding that I do all the housework, or expecting me to perform in bed, or - "

"Kylie! I would never do anything like that!"

"Right." She was compelled to look away, he looked so genuinely hurt. "Good."

"For God's sake, Kylie, I'm not Carlos."

"All right, I'm sorry, forget it."

"Do you want to marry me?"

"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to," snapped Kylie.

"Right," Eduardo said, his voice sounding unmistakably tight. "Anything else?"

"Yes."

"Go on."

"We don't tell anyone."

"Oh, now you're just…"

"Eduardo, listen to me." She moved closer to him and grabbed his goatee, swinging his face round to look at her. "I don't mean never tell anyone. I just want to wait until after we're married."

Eduardo sighed. "Why?" he asked warily, telling himself to reserve judgement until she had said her piece.

"Because," began Kylie, in impossibly reasonable tones, "today has confirmed what I already knew: people go completely insane if anybody mentions marriage or weddings. Even seemingly normal, sensible people like… I don't know… Janine. I mean, God, you remember her wedding. It even made me turn stupid. Remember me that morning?" She was consciously trying to remind Eduardo of a truly fantastic time they'd had – the first time they slept together – because he still didn't look happy with this conversation. She raised the pitch of her voice in an attempt to imitate her own flustered tones that morning: " 'We're going to be late for the wedding, Eduardo – you have to go home and get changed!' I feel quite ashamed of that now," she added, with a small smile.

"Why does that mean we can't tell anybody?" He wasn't smiling back.

"Well, can't you imagine it? They'll be trying to persuade us to have a church ceremony, and when we say no to that it'll be a party, or bringing all our families here – I just don't want the hassle." Realising that sounded selfish, she added, "Do you?"

Eduardo shrugged. "I guess not."

A horrible thought struck Kylie, and she had to ask, "You don't want a big wedding, do you? Because we're not having one."

"Fine. Whatever you want."

"What I want," Kylie said evenly, "is to marry you as soon as possible… after your birthday, of course… with the minimum amount of fuss. That's not unreasonable, is it?"

"Not when you put it like that," Eduardo conceded. "So we're not even telling them?" He jerked his head in the direction of his sleeping daughters' bedroom.

"They'd never keep it a secret."

"Right."

"But obviously they'll be there for the…" – she paused, because "ceremony" sounded too grand a word for what she had in mind. "When we get married – them and maybe the parents… or someone. We'll need witnesses, obviously. But look, I'll organise something, ok?"

"You'll organise something," Eduardo echoed dryly.

"We…" – oops, she was breaking her own rule already. "You and I will organise something. Ok?"

Eduardo shrugged. "Sure."

He was beginning to sound like he just might change his mind before his birthday after all. Kylie, recognising a very deep hole when it was caving in around her, stopped digging. She thought guiltily of the serene afterglow she seemed to have dragged both herself and Eduardo out of, and began to regret not saving that little conversation for another time. She thought about persuading him to make love again but, not wanting to be manipulative, she instead lay down and tried to sleep.

x x x

Janine looked pissed off. Really pissed off. Eduardo still seemed pissed off. And, as Kylie stooped to loosen the straps in the pushchair, she noticed that Rose looked pissed off too. But then, Rose almost always looked pissed off. That wasn't Kylie's fault, as far as she knew. But she was obviously going to have to apologise to Eduardo (even though she wasn't entirely sure what she had done), and as to Janine – well, she simply had to convince her that she thought the bridesmaid dress was lovely. If only she could do so without giving away her dreadful secret…

"Look, Janine," Kylie said tentatively, approaching the reception desk. "I really didn't hate the - "

"Oh, don't worry about that, Kylie," Janine interrupted. "It's not important now."

"It's not?" After all that? she added silently.

"No. Because if Egon gets his way there will be no wedding dress party."

"He can't do that," remarked Kylie. "He's tried calling people and getting them to cancel things and close things down because of ghosts before. Nobody ever listens to him."

"As a matter of fact," Janine went on, "the PKE scan we did on my wedding dress last night turned up absolutely nothing. But Egon's still saying he won't go with me to the party, and he's saying he'd rather I didn't go."

"You're not going to not go just because he tells you to, are you?"

"He didn't tell me to."

"Even so," said Kylie, "you don't have to do what he wants. He's not your father." She sensed that Eduardo was still behind her. Perhaps she shouldn't be saying stuff like this now. But then again, why the hell not?

"I know," said Janine. "But he kind of does have a point. I mean, just because there's nothing wrong with my wedding dress doesn't the party won't turn - "

The phone rang. Janine picked it up straightaway. "Hello, Ghostbusters… Oh, hi Kaila… Really? Good – me neither…"

Kylie was able to deduce from Janine's side of the conversation that Kaila Zeddemore's wedding dress was an entirely ghost- and demon-free zone.

Once she had hung up, Janine took up more or less where she had left off: "I mean, it'd probably be sensible not to go. But it seems a shame not to, because my father spent an absolute fortune on that dress, and it's a really nice dress, and you only get to wear them once…"

"But it's not like the dress was so important," reasoned Kylie. "I mean, you didn't marry Egon for the dress; you married him for him. And you get him every day. Surely that's what matters." She glanced over her shoulder. Eduardo had taken the girls upstairs. Shit.

"Well, yes, you're right," Janine conceded. "It would have been nice, though. But anyway, speaking of the bridesmaid dress…"

Kylie's heart skipped a beat. "Yes?" she said, with as much composure as she could muster.

"Egon said he might want to check it out, and my sister's as well, seeing as the bridesmaids seem to be homicidal as well now."

Kylie nodded stiffly.

"He might not, though – it depends how things go."

"Right."

"Kylie," said Janine. "I'm sorry I was so tetchy about the dress. Hormones?" she added sheepishly.

"Oh… don't apologise," said Kylie, feeling guiltier by the second.

The phone rang again.

"That might be Ray about the whole dress business," said Janine, picking up the receiver. "Hello, Ghostbusters…"

Kylie didn't wait to find out whether it was Ray or not. She trudged upstairs, and was touched to find Roland looking through a heavily illustrated book with Conchita and Rose. He was helping Conchita to read the story – something about a witch and a creaky gate – and encouraging Rose to talk about the pictures. Kylie knew she should be doing all that herself. How much guilt could one person take?

"Where's Eduardo?" she asked. Garrett, she knew, was just starting a shift at the hospital where he spent about half of his working life. He would have to give the report on Jo's wardrobe when he came in later.

"Kitchen," Roland replied at once.

"Thanks."

Kylie traipsed through to the kitchen, where she found Eduardo loading the fridge with plastic cups – something for when the kids got hot and tired later on, most likely.

"Eddie," said Kylie, and he looked up. "I'm sorry I upset you last night. Please forgive me, because I am really going to need your support if Janine finds out I lost that dress."

Eduardo looked genuinely concerned. "Might she find out?"

Kylie nodded morosely.

Eduardo put his arms around her, stroked her hair and said soothingly, "It'll be ok."

"Eduardo," ventured Kylie. "What exactly did I say to piss you off so much?"

"Doesn't matter."

"It does."

"All right then," he conceded. "It really bothers me that you would think I'd change after you married me."

"I don't think you'd change," argued Kylie. "I was just… checking."

Eduardo pulled away slightly and gave her a withering look.

"Yeah, ok, it was dumb, I'm sorry."

He kissed her forehead. "It's ok."

Janine chose that moment to walk in and say, "Not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, no," said Kylie, stepping back from Eduardo. "We were just discussing what to have for dinner tonight."

"Ah-ha, well – Egon wants to see you, Kylie. He's in the lab with the dress."

"Dress?" echoed Eduardo.

"We bought a wedding dress," explained Kylie.

"You bought a wedding dress?"

"Yes, and it belongs to Dr. Venkman – I have absolutely no intention of ever wearing it again, so don't get any ideas."

She made her way to Egon's lab, and was immediately confronted with the forefinger signal meaning that she was required to wait one minute. Egon was on the phone, looking slightly pissed off. Surely, Kylie reasoned, this couldn't be her fault as well.

"I really think it could get very dangerous," he was saying, with forced patience. "Surely you've heard about the brides who are… Well, yes, I know some of them haven't been, but isn't it better to…?"

It took Egon less than the promised minute to give up. With a sigh of exasperation he replaced the receiver on its cradle and said, "No one listens to me."

"Trying to change the minds of the people who organised the party?" asked Kylie.

"Yes."

"Well, there is a possibility they're the ones behind this whole thing. Did you hear about Jessica's amazing discovery that there's no such thing as National Wedding Dress Day?"

"Yes, Peter passed that on to me," replied Egon. "He also told me that he's investigating some more wedding dress retailers with that friend of Oscar's who colours her hair with peroxide… what's her name…?"

"You mean Ella?" asked Kylie.

"Yes, that sounds about right."

"She's eighteen! That's far too young to get married!"

"She isn't really going to get married, Kylie. Now listen, I've asked Peter to buy me another wedding dress. This one" – he gestured towards the white (or was it cream? or ivory?) dress draped across his desk – "is completely useless."

Kylie couldn't believe it. "It is?" she boggled.

"It is. All I got from it were a few entirely meaningless residual PKE traces yesterday evening, which have since dissipated."

"Oh no," sighed Kylie. "I guess Peter didn't check quite all the dresses. Like he didn't have time," she added scathingly, shuddering at the memory of her seemingly endless ordeal in the changing cubicle. "He just bought the cheapest one."

"Typical," remarked Egon. "How many dresses did you try on?"

"Just two: that one and a more expensive one there wasn't room to breathe in."

"So what's the difference," mused Egon, "between this dress and the ones Peter got high readings from?"

"Perhaps it's something to do with this one being cheaper," suggested Kylie. "Or a little bit less overpriced, I should say."

"All right," said Egon. "So why is it cheaper? What's different about this one?"

"You're asking me?"

"Well, does it look or feel any different from the other one you tried?"

"I don't know," Kylie said irritably. "Just because I'm a woman doesn't mean I have to know about dresses."

"But you've worn it," reasoned Egon.

"Yes, I know. Egon, wedding dresses all look exactly the same to me, ok? And that one, aside from the fact that I could more or less move in it, didn't feel any different than the other one I tried on."

"Do we know for certain anything was amiss with the other one you tried?"

"No, we don't know that at all. Nobody tested that one."

"Well," said Egon, "perhaps you'd better take a PKE read. You know what's been happening to women who have worn wedding dresses lately. Some of them," he corrected, as he approached Kylie with a PKE meter. "The spokesperson for that women's cancer charity graciously pointed out to me that it only happened to two brides out of the five who got married locally this week."

"The ones with richer parents, perhaps?"

"Perhaps, but we have no proof of that – let's keep our minds open. Well, there are a few residual PKE traces on you, but it's no more than what you come back from any other job with. You should be all right – but come and see me again if you get the urge to kill anybody."

Kylie nodded. "I will."

"Now then, did you know there's a wedding this afternoon?"

"Jim Richardson and Elaine Wood, yes. You want us to go and… see if anything happens?"

"Please," Egon nodded. "Thank goodness there's only one today."

"Well, it is Tuesday," Kylie pointed out. "I mean, imagine that, expecting people to come from all over the country on a weekday – I think it's rude."

"It's their wedding day."

"People still have to work."

"Yes, well." He couldn't be bothered to argue. "Kylie, I wonder, is the dress you wore at my wedding easily accessible?"

"Oh, well…" faltered Kylie. "It's, um… it's not very convenient…"

"All right then," Egon said dismissively. "Don't worry about it."

Kylie blinked. "Are you serious?"

"Well, there's no point you crawling around attics or whatever it is you'd have to do. After all, there was nothing wrong with Janine's dress last night – and we can always check her sister's if we really want to. Now, Kylie, I suggest you go upstairs and start planning your strategy for this afternoon's wedding while I try and find out a bit of history for all of these dresses."

x x x

"Isn't it rude," said Roland, "to just gatecrash a wedding?"

They had just stepped out of the Ecto-1, and were approaching the church. Several guests had already arrived, and were milling around outside. About two thirds of them wore brightly coloured tailored suits and expensive looking hats; the rest – the men, incidentally – all wore penguin suits and looked alike from a distance.

Garrett shrugged. "Don't think so. Back home in Brooklyn we've got this lady who just goes to people's weddings whenever there's one on."

"Why would she do that?" asked Kylie.

"Well," said Garrett, "I guess she must be one of those people who 'love weddings'."

Roland cocked an eyebrow. "You're not one of those people who hate weddings, are you, Garrett?"

"I don't love weddings and I don't hate them," Garrett replied reasonably. "Is anyone else feeling a little bit underdressed?"

He had a point. Gazing on the assemblage of wedding guests was rather like looking at a flock of tropical birds. Flamingos sprung to mind, but there were plenty more colours than pink and red. The Ghostbusters had wisely decided not to go in uniform, although Garrett was nursing a trap and Kylie had her proton pistol with her, just in case they were needed. They had hoped to look fairly inconspicuous, but (as they should have predicted) nobody else was wearing jeans.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't gonna dress up for this thing," muttered Kylie. "Let's just get in there, find a nice discreet pew and hope no one notices us."

There was some debate as to how near to the front they should sit; Eduardo wanted to hide at the back so as not to be challenged by some interfering aunt, while Garrett insisted that they had to be near the altar so that somebody could launch themselves at Elaine Wood if she started trying to kill her fiancé. It was, of course, Roland who suggested the obvious compromise of sitting somewhere in the middle. Garrett wondered whether to use his own chair and stick out at the side, but soon decided to make himself a bit less obvious by sitting on the pew with the others.

The church gradually began filling with guests, and after about ten minutes a couple of suited men wandered in and stood near the altar. A little more time passed, and after another fifteen minutes or so Kylie leaned over towards Eduardo and hissed, "How much longer before this broad shows up?"

"I don't know," shrugged Eduardo. "Don't you remember how long it took for Janine to wander in at hers?"

"No," said Kylie, "because I was in the bridal party, duh."

"Oh yeah."

"It's rude to keep people waiting like this. I mean, they came all this way…"

"You don't know how far these people have travelled," Roland pointed out.

"Yeah, well," muttered Kylie.

"I'll have to tell you about Carlos and Beth's wedding sometime," Eduardo smiled wryly. "It was huge – no one was allowed to talk about anything else for months."

"Yeah? How old were you?"

"A month off six."

"God, you must have been so bored."

Eventually, of course, the bride put in an appearance. Elaine Wood and her bridal party arrived at the big double doors just in time to see a middle-aged woman, who was wearing a hat draped in lace, make a lunge for the man next to her.

"Oh my God – Mom!" shrieked Elaine, as her parents began a violent wrestling match on the church floor. "You're wrecking the wedding!"

Roland, Eduardo and Kylie had already moved to the front most pew by this time, and Garrett (who'd had to transfer himself into the wheelchair) wasn't far behind them. Kylie, who was not particularly strong, grabbed Elaine's mother's wrists and attempted to pull the enraged woman away from her husband.

"Elaine!" Kylie called down the aisle, her voice echoing off the stone walls. "Can you come and give me a hand with this, please?"

"Are you all right, Mr. Wood?" added Roland, as he helped the poor half-strangled man to his feet.

"What the hell is wrong with her?" fretted Elaine, as she and Kylie between them managed to restrain her struggling mother.

"I'm not entirely sure," Kylie confessed. "Who's got the PKE meter?"

Eduardo, Roland and Garrett all looked blank.

"Oh, for God's sake!" said Kylie, exasperated. "Well, Elaine, it's quite likely something to do with her clothes. Can you help me get them off her, please?"

Elaine blinked. "What?"

"Really, it might help," Kylie insisted.

As Kylie and Elaine tore the skirt, blouse and jacket from Mrs. Wood (the extremely ostentatious hat having been knocked off in the struggle), Roland looked around awkwardly at the bewildered wedding guests. He was wondering whether or not to offer some sort of apology when he noticed that Elaine's mother, now stripped to a (thankfully modest) slip, looked about to faint.

"Mrs. Wood, are you all right?" he asked, placing a steadying hand on her arm.

"I… I…" Mrs. Wood stammered.

"Told you it was the clothes," said Kylie, snatching the crumpled salmon pink jacket from Elaine. "Elaine, how much did that wedding dress cost you?"

"That's none of your business," bristled Elaine.

"Well," Kylie went on, "I think maybe you should take it off."

"What?"

"Don't you have a change of clothes?"

"No! What is it with you and undressing everybody?"

"It was her clothes," Kylie insisted. She was holding the ensemble in her arms and clutching it to her chest. "Look, she's snapped out of it now – in a minute she'll be back to normal and wondering why she's standing there in a slip. I'm taking these to the car," she added, now addressing her three teammates, "so I can give them a PKE read. Then we'll take them back to Egon."

Kylie marched out of the church, leaving Roland to comfort a now distraught Mrs. Wood, and Garrett and Eduardo to try and pacify the enraged wedding guests. When she was outside Kylie caught sight of a police car and a police motorcycle, and instinctively quickened her pace. However she stopped short when a burly police officer stepped into her path.

"Carl!" she exclaimed. "You weren't dealing with the wedding killings! What the hell are you doing here?"

"I requested to come along because I had a feeling you clowns would be here," retorted Carl. "And I was right! You're making off with the evidence, aren't you!"

"This isn't evidence," argued Kylie, hugging the clothes tighter to her chest. "There's no blood on them or anything."

"What are they?" demanded Carl.

"They're the clothes the attacker was wearing, all right?"

"We'll be needing those. Hand them over, please."

"I don't see what you could possibly do with them."

"They might prove significant."

"But we need them," argued Kylie. "There's definitely something paranormal going on here, and the clothes are the key. She stopped attacking when Elaine and I took these off her."

Carl cocked an eyebrow. "Well in that case," he said, "we'll need to test them."

"For what?"

"Hallucinatory drugs, or some such. It's quite possible to drug fabrics, you know, and if the clothes really are the link – well, that seems to me the most likely explanation."

"Oh, Carl, I don't think so."

"Kylie," said Carl, through gritted teeth. "I am asking you nicely…"

"What's going on?" demanded Eduardo, appearing suddenly at Kylie's side.

"Your girlfriend is stealing evidence, Eddie."

"You wouldn't find anything on these," Kylie insisted. "Not without a PKE meter. You could at least let me do a scan."

"Let her do a scan, Carlos," urged Eduardo. "That sounds like a compromise."

"My name is Carl," barked Carl. "And I'm not letting you contaminate that evidence any further. Now hand it over!"

"Carlos, chill out," Eduardo said irritably, putting an arm around Kylie.

"Tell her to give me the goddamn clothes, Eddie, or I'm going to have to arrest her."

"What makes you think I'd do it because he tells me to?" snapped Kylie. "We aren't all like your wife, you know."

Carl blinked. "What has Beth got to do with any of this?"

"Well, you - "

"Look, never mind about that. I'm getting out my cuffs, Miss Griffin…"

"Oh, all right, here," muttered Kylie, throwing the bundle of clothes contemptuously at Carl's feet. "You can have your stupid evidence if it means that much to you."

"It does," said Carl, as he gathered up the clothes. "Thank you for your cooperation. You ought to keep better control over her, Eddie."

Kylie let out a noise of sheer fury, and made to follow Carl towards the church. She stopped, however, as Eduardo grabbed her wrist and said, "Please don't."

"Didn't you hear what he just said?"

"Yes, but it doesn't matter what he thinks, does it? Jeez, you're fighting with him worse than I do these days."

"Yeah, well," said Kylie, snatching back her wrist. "That's because he's a lousy sexist piece of… of…"

"Hey, was that Carl stealing our clothes?" asked Garrett, as he and Roland approached the other half of their team.

Eduardo nodded.

"I didn't even get a chance to run a PKE meter over them!" fumed Kylie.

"Well," Roland said soothingly, "never mind. Dr. Venkman is buying Egon a new dress, and we'll just have to report back with as much as we can. Now the puzzling thing is, of course, that Mrs. Wood was neither a bride nor a bridesmaid."

Garrett nodded. "She could have gotten that stuff from anywhere."

"And the bride and the bridesmaids all seemed to be fine, last we saw," Roland went on. "So I guess what we need to do is go back in there and find out where Elaine's mother bought that suit from."

They all agreed on this, and headed back towards the church, only to be confronted again by Carl.

"Leave before you really piss me off," he said simply.

Garrett was all ready to get annoyed, and Kylie looked like she would happily attempt to force her way past Carl in spite of being considerably less than half his size. Eduardo, however, looked no more ticked off than he usually did when his brother was around, and Roland just wanted a peaceful life.

"Let's go," said the latter. "We can try and contact Mrs. Wood some other time."

"She's going to be in custody indefinitely," retorted Carl. "And if her clothes don't contain any suspicious substances, she's going away for attempted murder."

"Carl," Roland said reasonably. "Can you please do us a favour and try to find out where she bought her outfit?"

"Why should I?"

"Well, because we'd be very grateful. Come on, you guys – let's go."

x x x

Nobody was looking forward to reporting their failure to Egon. Inevitably it was Roland who took on the task, as he always did with jobs that nobody else wanted.

"Yes, well, never mind," Egon said, slightly irritably. "As you say, you can always find out more from that family some other time. Meanwhile I have the fourteen-hundred-dollar dress Peter and Oscar and Oscar's charming friend kindly brought me this afternoon, and I've also arranged an appointment with the chairperson of Pioneers for Women's Health first thing tomorrow."

Roland looked blank.

"The charity organising the wedding dress party," Egon elaborated.

"Oh. Right. Why? What are you going to say to… her… him…?"

"Her. I don't know. I'll think of something. Of course, if she turns out to be a demon, I won't have to say very much at all. Oh, Roland, while I think of it," he added. "How big was this Elaine Wood?"

"Um." Roland was faintly surprised by the question. "About average. Bigger than Kylie and smaller than me."

"And the mother? Was she particularly small?"

"No, not really. But I wouldn't say she was big."

"Hmm…" Egon said enigmatically. "And Kylie was restraining her for a short while by herself, you say. About how long was it before Elaine came to assist?"

"Not long – maybe ten seconds," said Roland. "Is it important?"

"Well it might be," replied Egon. "You see, what puzzles me is that Angela Simmons somehow found the strength to rip out a man's heart with her bare hand, while Elaine Wood's mother was apparently overpowered by two ordinary women and, prior to this, successfully restrained by the smaller of them for approximately ten seconds."

"Yes, I see what you mean – that is pretty weird," Roland agreed.

"Well, no doubt there's an explanation. We shall see what occurs after my meeting."

x x x

"What exactly are you going to say to this woman?" asked Janine.

"Well," said Egon, "that depends."

"On what?"

"On whether she actually is a woman."

They were in Janine's Volkswagen Beetle, making their way to the small office rented by the people of Pioneers for Women's Health.

"Aren't you jumping to conclusions?" asked Janine, braking as the car approached a severe looking traffic jam.

"Not at all. I am simply prepared for all eventualities."

"So if she isn't a demon, what will you say?"

"I shall explain the situation to her," Egon said reasonably, "and try to persuade her not to go ahead with her party plans."

"Haven't you already tried that?"

"Well, I don't remember whether I've spoken to her directly, but that's academic really – these things always work better face to face."

"Ah-ha," Janine said sceptically. "Look, Egon, I wouldn't be too cocky if I were you. This is a charity organisation, and they've put a lot of money into this thing, and now they can only hope that they make some kind of profit. If they cancel the party, they will have bankrupted themselves."

Egon heard more or less the same thing from Gillian Kazwini when he and Janine were invited into her shoebox of an office. As she talked, Gillian perched on a small office chair that was squeezed behind her desk. Egon was standing, as he had insisted that Janine take the only other chair. However the room was perfectly respectable in spite of the limited space. Gillian, an apple-cheeked thirty-something woman with neat her, an equally neat pencil skirt and an ironed silk blouse, kept a very tidy office.

"Personally," she said, with the collective reasonableness of every negotiator in the world, "I don't believe in ghosts. Furthermore, I hardly think that items of clothing can be held responsible for their owners' behaviour."

"Look," Janine stepped in. After ten minutes of Egon taking the malevolent ghost angle with this woman, she realised it was up to her to try a different approach. "Let's just forget about ghosts for the moment. Please just consider the recent murder attempts in this city, Ms. Kazwini. The two successful murderers were wearing wedding dresses. Two bridesmaids also made an attempt on people's lives, one of them with a large pair of scissors. And yesterday our team had to tackle a murderous mother of the bride. The only link we have is wedding tackle."

"How do you know it was the clothes?" reasoned Gillian Kazwini.

"Our colleague investigated no less than fifteen bridal wear stores yesterday," Egon jumped in. "Eight of them were high in PK activity, five moderate and one relatively low."

"And the other?"

"One had no PK activity at all – but then it only sold about five dresses, and they were extremely cheap, according to my colleague."

"Dr. Spengler," Gillian Kazwini went on, with noticeably less patience than she had been using up until that moment. "As I believe I have explained numerous times this morning, we are a charity organisation. We have had to take out a considerably large loan to finance this party. If we cancel it, not only will we be unable to fund cancer research, but everyone involved will have their homes repossessed. Now will you please just leave me alone?"

Egon began to protest, "But you - "

"Right," snapped Gillian Kazwini. "I'm getting sick of you now!"

However much Egon might have suspected Gillian Kazwini of being a demon, he was totally unprepared for what happened next. Ms. Kazwini suddenly picked up the hefty stapler from her desk and aimed it directly at Egon's head. It hit him pretty hard, and he swayed slightly. In the second it took him to recover, Gillian Kazwini had vaulted over her desk and was brandishing a large angle poise lamp.

"Ms. Kazwini, please calm down!" Egon panicked. "Surely we can come to some sort of - "

She then hit him with the lamp twice, the second time with enough strength to smash the cold light bulb against his head, and even send him onto the ground. A second later Gillian Kazwini was looming over Egon, now with a particularly sharp looking letter opener in her hand. She was about to strike, when an ominous crack suddenly sounded behind her and she collapsed on top of Egon. Unsurprisingly, there stood Janine with a large metal filing cabinet tray in her hands.

"Thank you," said Egon, pushing Ms. Kazwini's unconscious form off himself and rising to his feet. "Well, I suppose we ought to call the police."

Janine bit her lip. "It doesn't look good for us, does it?"

She headed straight for the phone, and Egon whipped out his PKE meter. He didn't really want to be removing any of Gillian Kazwini's clothes, so he had to do as thorough an examination as he could while she was still there wearing them.

"Er, hi," Janine said to the person who responded to her 911 call. She wasn't quite sure how to start. How did one go about reporting something like this? "I've, um, just hit someone over the head with a file drawer because she was attacking my husband… Well, she's unconscious right now…"

x x x

Roland, who was taking advantage of the hot weather by doing some work up on the roof, laptop open at his side, looked up hopefully when the door clicked open.

"Sorry to disappoint you," said Kylie, when she saw his expression. She was carrying a glass of water, which she handed to Roland. "Want this?"

"Thanks." He took the glass from her, and she sat down next to him. "Sorry, Kylie. I was hoping you'd be Egon. Are they not back yet?"

"No – we could probably start getting worried fairly soon."

"Yeah, well, I was hoping you'd be Egon because I want to run something by him." Roland gestured at the wedding dress draped over his lap. "I think I've got a lead on Ella's dress. From what I've been able to detect from this fabric, it seems to me that it originally came from some kind of insect or arachnid demon."

"What, like Janine's ex?" asked Kylie.

"That Gregor guy who turned her into a bug?" Roland shrugged. "Sure, why not?"

"Right," Kylie nodded. "So, if it's the fabric that's causing this… are we thinking maybe a spider of some kind?"

"Could well be."

"Great, now we're getting somewhere." Then suddenly she gasped and slapped her forehead. "Duh, of course! Silk! This dress is made of silk, isn't it?"

"Um…" Roland glanced down at the dress. "Sure, I guess. Dr. Venkman said it cost over a thousand dollars, so I certainly hope so."

"Those other brides must have been wearing silk as well," Kylie ploughed on. "And the bridesmaids, obviously. Mrs. Wood… we ought to find out her first name, really… anyway, she was definitely wearing a silk blouse. And that's why the cheap dresses are harmless – they're made of… I don't know, something cheap. Not silk."

"Ok, good," nodded Roland. "So why have there only been five of them? More than five women in this city wear silk, and men do too."

"Well," Kylie said slowly, "we can only assume – and hope – that this demon of yours hasn't been able to distribute very much of its silk yet. I think what we should do next is phone a few wedding dress proprietors, don't you?"

She jumped to her feet and made her way down to the ground floor lobby – not bothering to acknowledge Garrett, Eduardo or Slimer as she passed them – with Roland following close behind. She was about to pick up the phone on the reception desk, but it started ringing at the exact moment her hand touched the receiver. With a small sigh of exasperation, she picked it up.

"Hello, Ghostbusters?"

"Kylie, it's Egon."

"Egon!" exclaimed Kylie, her face flooding with relief. "Where the hell have you been all day?"

Egon explained that he and Janine had spent the day being continually questioned by police due to the unfortunate incident in Gillian Kazwini's office that morning.

"And you had to wait all this time for your phone call?" asked Kylie, feeling rather disappointed in the NYPD.

"Yes, well, some of Eduardo's criticisms of the police would seem to be founded," Egon replied calmly. "Now listen, my first thought was that Gillian Kazwini might indeed be the malevolent supernatural being behind all this. But now I'm not so sure. She regained consciousness just after the police arrived and started trying to kill both of them, which bodes well for Janine and me, and our claim that it was self-defence. Which of course it was," he added hastily. "I think it was the clothes again, Kylie."

"Was she wearing any silk?"

"Well, yes, now that you mention it," answered Egon. "She had a silk blouse."

"Great," muttered Kylie. "I wonder how many more people have access to it."

"To what? You think it's the silk?"

Kylie explained her theory, and Egon seemed to like it.

"Yes, an insectoid creature could well be consistent with the very little I was able to get from Gillian Kazwini," he said. "Right, I want somebody to get on the database, and somebody else to get into some books, and try to narrow it down some more."

"I was just about to phone some stores and see if I can find out where they got their silk," said Kylie.

"Right, good idea, well done. Now Kylie, Janine and I hope to be out of here soon, but if by any chance we're not back by about five…"

"Someone will stay here with the twins," Kylie assured him.

"Thank you," said Egon. "I'll see you soon… hopefully."

After hanging up, Kylie went to Eduardo and suggested that he take the girls home and stick them in front of The Little Mermaid or something (Conchita's personal favourite, in spite of her mother's attempts to steer her more towards Mulan). Roland offered to give them a lift, which was gratefully accepted, and Eduardo went with instructions to call Beth and ask her very nicely if she would take Conchita and Rose the following day. Hopefully, Kylie reasoned, the team would be out vanquishing this possibly-spider demon for most of the morning at least.

When Roland returned in his Mustang, Garrett was tapping his way through various databases and websites as Kylie flicked through an old book whilst simultaneously talking irritably into the telephone.

"Why on earth is that information classified?" she demanded. "That's ridiculous… Oh, come on – I'm not going to rob any silk manufacturers! …So, if you're worried I'm going to rob them, that must mean they're local…?"

Fairly soon, Kylie gave up. She slammed down the receiver and nudged the phone towards Roland, who was standing on the other side of the desk.

"I've phoned four of the places where Dr. Venkman found high PK activity and none of them will tell me who supplied their silk!" she fumed. "Can you please call the next one, Roland? Garrett won't," she added pointedly.

"Come on, Ky, it'd sound weird – a guy calling to enquire about silk," reasoned Garrett. "Let us not forget that no manufacturers of gentleman's clothing seem to have been buying it," he added.

"Oh, don't be ridiculous."

"They'd think I'm a trannie!"

"Hey, where are the twins?" Roland asked suddenly.

"The twins?" echoed Kylie. "They're right…" – she looked up, and did a quick double-take. "Oh shit, where are they?"

"I'll find them," said Roland, and made his way quickly towards the stairs.

"Garrett, you were supposed to be watching them," scolded Kylie.

"So were you."

"Huh! You try watching two kids, reading an ancient text and trying not to lose your temper with the bitch proprietor of a bridal wear store you've got on the phone."

Kylie had expected Garrett to argue, but instead he said calmly, "I'm sorry, Kylie. I haven't been able to find anything much on this thing either." He gestured towards the computer monitor. "I've… had stuff on my mind."

Kylie raised her eyebrows. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"I don't know… maybe. It's just stuff to do with… my marriage… and stuff."

"Already? Jeez, Garrett, you haven't even been married a year."

"Oh, the marriage is fine," said Garrett. "At the moment, anyway. But I've been investigating… you know… ways of getting around the kid problem."

"Oh." Kylie, realising that she had a slight headache from all that reading, crossed the room to sit on the desk that had Garrett behind it. "You can't be having problems already. Are you even trying yet?"

"No," said Garrett, "we're not. We haven't put our names on any lists or anything. It's just… reading about it… it's pretty discouraging. The hospital where I work has a lot of literature on IVF, and quite frankly it sounds more trouble than it's worth. It has a ridiculously low success rate, and it costs several thousand dollars every time you want to try. And Jo and I don't have several thousand dollars."

"Which leaves adoption, right?"

"Yeah. Jo says it'd suit her fine if she didn't have to be pregnant and give birth to our kid… I guess I have to believe her."

"Believe it," said Kylie. "I dreaded childbirth ever since Grandma Rose told me the mildest labour pain is comparable to the worst period pain. And she wasn't wrong."

"Your Grandma Rose told you that? Wasn't she of the generation who used to go away somewhere rural to have babies and pretend that kind of thing didn't happen?"

"Don't be ridiculous – she had my grandmother in a hospital."

"But your great-granddad was in the lobby handing out cigars, though, wasn't he? Oh look – we're digressing. Jo says she's happy to adopt, and I do believe her. But…"

"You watched season two of Desperate Housewives, didn't you?"

"I did actually," Garrett admitted. "Maybe it's rare, but these things can happen. It happened on Sex and the City too – the birth mother changed her mind before the baby was born. Which is better than after, like what happened to Eva Longoria…"

"Garrett, that's TV."

"I know. But it's still a long and complicated process. We'll have to go through all these checks, and then we'll have to submit a portfolio with letters of recommendation and stuff, like we're going for a job interview. And then after all that, we'll have to wait by the phone for as long as it takes for some knocked-up teenager to decide she wants us to take care of her baby."

"Garrett!"

"Well, it's true. And that might never happen. It's a pretty stupid system, if you ask me. I was on the net the other day, reading about adoption in other parts of the world. Like, in the UK, once the baby is out of its mother's care she has absolutely nothing to do with it. She gives it to Social Services, who approach a couple who want to adopt – after the baby has been born, when they're at the stage where the mother can't take it back even if she wants to – and the adoptive parents and the birth mother never have anything to do with each other."

"That sounds rather… clinical," remarked Kylie.

"Perhaps," said Garrett, "but it sounds a lot more efficient. And safer. You know… emotionally. But it's irrelevant, really, because this isn't the UK. Anyway." He took a deep breath, deciding it was time to move on. "You find anything in those books?"

Kylie shook her head. "Nothing much. The only mention of spiders I can find is Arachne."

"Who?"

"Oh Garrett, come on, you should know this stuff. Arachne is from Greek mythology. She challenged Athene… you know – the wife of Zeus?"

"Zeus, king of the gods, yes. Do go on."

"She challenged Athene to a weaving and spinning competition."

"As you do."

"Well," said Kylie, "Arachne won, and Athene was so angry that she - "

"Turned the chick into a spider?"

"Good guess."

"Right," said Garrett. "So… this silk business is nothing to do with that?"

"I don't really see how it can be. Arachne probably never existed, and even if she did she'd be dead by now, and she never hurt anybody in the story, and there was no way she was big enough to produce enough silk to keep New York in wedding dresses."

"So… we're stuck?"

"For now it seems we are. But." Kylie hopped down from the desk. "I've still got twelve-odd stores to call."

She was hanging up on the eleventh distributor of overpriced wedding dresses on her list when Janine's Beetle finally pulled into the lobby.

"Egon!" exclaimed Kylie, as Egon climbed out of the car. "No one will tell me where they're getting the silk from! It's a perfectly reasonable, harmless question – what the hell is wrong with everybody?"

"I don't know," said Egon. "I suppose you'll have to locate the source of this silk by more covert means tomorrow."

"Hey, what about the party?" Janine asked suddenly. "If it's only new silk this is happening with, surely that means everybody's old wedding dress is fine."

"That seems logical," mused Egon, "but we can't be too complacent. We shall just have to wait and see what happens."

x x x

Shirley Lannon was not usually busy on Thursday mornings, and decided to use this one to go over her books. She had been putting it off, because she knew the business hadn't been doing brilliantly over the last couple of years. She blamed New York. In this city, everybody wanted everything instantly. Instead of boiling a kettle for cup of coffee, they shoved a polystyrene cup underneath a vending machine. Instead of commissioning a wedding dress, they bought one off the rack in ten minutes.

Barely had Shirley opened her order book before the door to the shop burst open, and in piled possibly the strangest party she had ever had to accommodate.

"Er… hi," ventured the short young woman with appalling hair and makeup. "You… make wedding dresses, right?"

"I certainly do." Shirley got to her feet. "Will you be needing one?"

The young woman sighed. "Yes. If I just have a chat with you about it, I'm not… committing myself to anything, am I?"

"No, no," Shirley said through a forced smile. She was quietly thinking, Please, not another cheapskate. "Who are these…?"

"These?" The woman glanced over her shoulder at the three men behind her, as though she had been unaware of their presence. "Friends of mine."

"None of them is your fiancé?"

She laughed, perhaps a little over-dramatically. "Don't be ridiculous."

"Ok, well." Shirley approached the prospective customer and grabbed her face in her hands, making her flinch slightly. "What's your name, dear?"

"Kylie."

"You weren't planning on getting married in that makeup, were you, Kylie?"

"I don't know. Probably."

"Oh dear."

"Why?"

"Yes, well, it's hard to tell with this makeup, but I think you're a winter."

Kylie blinked. "I'm a what?"

"You have a very nice figure." Shirley moved her hands down Kylie's body, squeezing her in a few places and looking her up and down appraisingly. "Will it be a white wedding? Some of the women who come to me refuse to wear white because they aren't… you know… pure," she said in a whisper. "But I think that's just a tad ostentatious, don't you?"

"Not really."

"Like these women who insist on leaving 'obey' out of their wedding vows."

"Well I'm certainly not going to ob- "

"Silly, isn't it?" She was staring at Kylie's breasts now, and somehow gave the impression of wanting to weigh them in her hands. "So you want a white dress, yes?"

"No," said Kylie, folding her arms across her chest, and Shirley's eyes snapped up to her face. "I was thinking black."

Shirley's expression fell. "Black?" she echoed, as though Kylie had just told her she had a terminal disease.

"Yes, black. I want it to be Goth. Like, rips on the bodice and a cobwebby skirt – something like that. Not real cobwebs," she added, catching Shirley's horror-struck expression. "Just… you know… an old net curtain or something, dyed black."

"An old net… Look… Kylie… If you really don't want to wear white, I can do red or… or… well, there isn't much call for other colours… Oh, but I have got some lovely teal fabric in the back."

"What, like green?" said Kylie.

"No – teal," bristled Shirley. "How about I take you through to the back and you can take a look at some of my fabrics?"

"Yes." Kylie had to hold back a huge sigh of relief. "Let's do that."

Shirley seemed to have forgotten that Kylie had companions. She didn't even seem to see them, although between them they took up a considerable amount of space. Kylie was led through to a room at the back of the shop; Eduardo, Roland and Garrett immediately started snooping around.

"Oh, I don't believe it," Garrett said quietly, after only about a minute had passed. "She's left her order book wide open on the table."

Kylie, meanwhile, was having to put up with being molested again. Shirley Lannon had her practically tied up in a ream of green – excuse me – teal material and, with Kylie's chin in her hand, was turning her face this way and that.

"Say what you like about teal, but it does go with your eyes," said Shirley.

"Yeah, whatever," Kylie returned dismissively. "Your ad said you had silk."

"Silk?"

"Yes. You brought me here to show me fabrics, so where's the silk?"

"Oh, well," faltered Shirley. "I do make silk wedding dresses, but only for the…"

"What?" prompted Kylie. "The elite?"

"Well… for those who can afford it."

Kylie was beginning to feel an urge to hit this woman. "Why would you assume I can't afford it?" she demanded. "Because I'm a bit rough around the edges? You don't know the first thing about me!"

"I… I… can you afford silk?"

"I can, as it happens," Kylie lied. "My father earns sixty thousand a year." That was half true. He earned thirty thousand.

"I'm sorry," said Shirley. "I didn't mean to cause offence. I understand, dear – it's that time of the month, isn't it?"

"Huh!" exclaimed Kylie. "Yeah, must be, because I can't get pissed off at any other time."

Shirley was, at long last, speechless.

"I think," Kylie said primly, "that I shall make my purchase elsewhere, thank you."

It was only when she was marching through the door to the main part of the shop that Kylie remembered what she was actually doing there, and realised that the others might not have had enough time to accomplish their mission. However they were all there waiting for her, Garrett even looking a little impatient.

"Ready to go?" asked Kylie.

Roland nodded, and Garrett said, "Absolutely."

"Oh, wait, please." Shirley stumbled out of the back room. "You can't do this to me, Kylie. I need the money! This business isn't making any profit! I've had to start doing work on people's crappy old dresses just to keep my head above water!"

Kylie, to her immense frustration, could not think of a cutting remark. So instead she simply walked out of the shop with her head held high.

"That woman is unbelievable!" she fumed, as soon as they were all sitting in the stationary Ecto-1.

"What did she do?" asked Garrett.

"Well," said Kylie, "she assumed just from looking at me that I couldn't afford silk."

"You can't afford silk."

"That is not the point. But look, let's just forget about her, shall we? What did you guys find out?"

"Well," said Roland, "Garrett found her order book open on the table. She switched suppliers a couple of months ago. She's now getting her silk very cheap – which you would, I suppose, if your wedding dress making business was in trouble – and we even have an address."

Kylie raised her eyebrows. "You do?"

"Yes. The demon might not actually be there, but it's definitely a good start."

"What if the silk's imported?" Kylie demurred. "That would mean the demon's in another country. How would we get around that?"

"I don't think it can be imported," said Roland. "Imported silk costs a fortune, but she's been buying it at five dollars a yard."

"And that's cheap, is it?"

"For silk, yes, it's extremely cheap. If it's real."

"It's probably not real," said Eduardo. He had taken Kylie's hand, and was idly circling the inside of her wrist with two fingers.

"Right, let's go," Roland said decisively, turning the key in the ignition. "We've wasted far too much time sitting here talking."

They had been on the road for all of two minutes when Garrett suddenly asked, "Is this a legitimate business we're going to, or what?"

No one knew. It certainly was not a famous institution, and it was only when the team was standing outside a very small warehouse whose grimy old sign read Chalford Fabrics: est. 1897 that they were able to hazard a guess that this was indeed a legitimate business, and they had only recently started producing cheap evil silk.

"Look at this," said Roland, pointing at a sign in the window. " 'Quality silk at only five dollars a yard. We deliver.'"

"That dress Dr. Venkman bought cost over a thousand bucks," Garrett remembered. "Wedding dress retailers have been selling this stuff on at the usual prices. It's a pretty good scam."

"I knew wedding dresses were overpriced," muttered Kylie. She was frowning down at her PKE meter. "They've got a demon in there all right."

Roland brightened visibly. "They have?"

"Yes."

"Great. We have to disable it and do something about all of their silk. Of course, those fifteen wedding dress places still have quite a lot of it for sale…"

"We'll worry about that later," asserted Kylie, pushing open the front door. "The first thing we have to do is take care of the, um, hi," she changed tack quickly when she noticed three pairs of eyes on her, blinking through the dust and gloom. Between them these eyes belonged to a suited young man sitting by a computer, a woman with a telephone and a few ring binders and a bespectacled gentleman approaching old age. "We're here about the, um…"

"Cheap silk," Garrett put in helpfully.

"Oh!" the elderly man exclaimed delightedly. "Well, it really is very good silk, you know – cheap at the - "

"Why is it so cheap?" Garrett interrupted him. "It wouldn't be because it compels whoever wears it to kill… would it?" he added, with mock-politeness.

"Mr… sir," Roland interjected, taking a step forward. "We are Ghostbusters, and we have reason to believe that you are harbouring a malevolent demon somewhere in this building. Kindly show us where it is, and we'll relieve you of it."

"What?" shrieked the old man (Mr. Chalford, perhaps, or a descendant of the original Mr. Chalford?). "This is completely ridiculous! Get out of here immediately!"

The building was small – tiny for a warehouse – and there didn't appear to be very many places to hide a demon of any substantial size. However Kylie had spotted a small door in the far corner of the room.

"What's in there?" she asked reasonably, jerking her head towards the door.

"Basement," the woman by the phone said robotically. "Staff only."

"Now look," said Garrett, "I don't want to have to use force, but if you - "

"Hold on," Eduardo interrupted, and he gestured his three teammates outside. The narrowed eyes of the old man watched them suspiciously as Eduardo said, "Roland, do you have your cell phone? Call the police."

"The police?" echoed Roland. "Why?"

"Because," Eduardo said reasonably, "these people are selling silk at five dollars a yard. If it wasn't for the demon, that would either mean it was fake or stolen, or they're using little kids for labour or something. Or you can say you think they're doing drugs in there – that would definitely make them come."

"And then…?" asked Roland.

Garrett rolled his eyes. "Come on, Roland, it's obvious. The police come and kick in the door to the basement, find the demon, and then we run in and trap it. Job done."

He made it sound ridiculously simple. Roland called the police, and Kylie decided she was going to nip into the next street to buy a newspaper. Five-dollar-a-yard silk had to be selling, she reasoned, and she'd be surprised if there had been no more attacks since Tuesday.

"You know more about policing than you pretend to, don't you?" said Garrett.

Eduardo shrugged. "You pick these things up."

"Well," said Roland, as he hung up, "I said there was suspiciously inexpensive silk here and that I've seen people wandering in and out with large amounts of money and suspicious substances."

Eduardo winced. "Couldn't you have said something a little more credible? They don't like anonymous tip-offs much anyway."

Roland frowned. "Well why didn't you call them, if you can do so much better?"

"If there's no cops here in half an hour," said Eduardo, "I'll call again from a payphone. They can't ignore two tip-offs about the same place."

As he was speaking, Kylie rounded the corner with her head buried in a newspaper.

"Hey," she said, not looking up. "I was right: there were two more murders yesterday and three attempts, and another attempt late last night."

"Two more people are dead?" Roland asked anxiously.

"Unfortunately, yes. You were right, Roland: we need to do something about the silk still on sale to the public."

"I don't suppose that article says what they were wearing?" Garrett asked dubiously.

Kylie shook her head. "No, but I don't suppose it matters now."

"It might," argued Roland. "The other day Egon was wondering why some people under the silk's influence seem to be much stronger than others. You remember, Kylie, you and Elaine Wood were able to restrain Elaine's mother, whereas one of the brides – Angela Simmons, wasn't it? – was able to tear out a man's heart."

"Well," said Garrett, "she was wearing a whole wedding dress as opposed to one little shirt. It's probably as simple as that."

They hung around for thirty-two minutes, wondering whether they really were out of sight of the old man and his near-silent workers in Chalford Fabrics, before Eduardo announced that he was going to find a phone box and make another call to the police.

"What did you tell them?" asked Roland, when he got back.

"The door's locked and I can hear somebody screaming inside."

Garrett and Kylie both looked faintly surprised; Roland looked positively scandalised.

"It'll get 'em here," shrugged Eduardo.

And get them there it did. Twenty minutes later a blaring squad car screeched into the small street and four heavily armed male police officers jumped out. The four Ghostbusters all moved back instinctively as the officers charged at the warehouse with guns poised by their ears, one of them shouting, "OPEN UP! NYPD!"

"Wow, they really are like that," remarked Garrett. He was reminded of NYPD Blue.

Surprisingly it was Eduardo who said, "Only some of them."

The largest police officer kicked down the door before there was time for anybody to open it. Eduardo told himself that this would have happened anyway even if he hadn't specified in his tip-off that the door was locked. There was quite a lot of shouting coming from inside the building, and a few unidentifiable sounds of struggle. Finally however, after several seconds, things quietened down – that is until a cry of "HOLY SHIT!" emanated from within.

"That's our queue, I think," Garrett said casually, making his way towards the chaos.

"Is there something we can do to help?" Roland asked smoothly, as he stepped into the small warehouse behind Garrett.

"Stay back, son," advised an ashen-faced and sweaty police officer, as he stumbled out of the door leading to the basement. "There's… there's… creatures down there!"

"Actually it's… they are demons," said Kylie, noting the officer's use of the plural. "And we're Ghostbusters. Can we please take a look?"

"I wouldn't advise that, Miss," the same police officer said. Then, his three colleagues evidently speechless, he turned to the proprietor of the warehouse and demanded, "Where did you get those things?"

"New Zealand," the elderly man said sheepishly.

"Illegally imported animals!" the police officer bellowed accusingly. "That's an arrestable offence!"

"Come on," urged Garrett, wheeling his way towards the basement door. "Let's do this thing."

"Hey, I was right, it is spiders!" Kylie exclaimed triumphantly, as she started down the stairs. Then she stopped when she realised what she was seeing, and added, "Oh my God – look at all of them!"

About a dozen spiders roughly the size of Alsatians were on the floor of the darkened cellar, spewing out long, thin reams of soft white cloth. There was a neat pile of the same stuff in one corner; presumably someone came down at intervals to collect it from underneath the spiders. Nobody recognised these particular demons. Of course Australia and New Zealand were both rich in oversized spiders; possibly these were the result of some kind of demonic mutation. But now was not the time to deliberate.

"I'll get more traps," volunteered Roland, and he turned to retrace his steps.

"I don't get it," said Garrett. "Here we have fourteen" – (he had counted) – "giant spiders that produce evil cloth that compels whoever wears it to kill. So why are they working for three geeks, and why don't they care that we're here?"

"Look," said Kylie, pointing to the legs of the nearest spider (or six of them anyway – the other two were involved in the silk-spewing process); "they're chained down. How on earth did they manage that?"

Detecting no threat from the spiders, she ventured further into the basement. It was so dark down there, she very nearly disappeared from view.

"Kylie, where the hell are you?" demanded Eduardo.

"I'm right underneath you," said Kylie. "We've got pods down here."

"Pods?" queried Garrett.

"Yes, pods. With baby spiders in them, presumably. They've been growing them down here. God, they might have been incubating this lot for moths! Or years!"

"All so they could sell a bit of silk?" asked Garrett. "That seems a little extreme."

"Well, this place doesn't exactly scream profitable business," Eduardo pointed out.

At that moment, one of the police officers came charging into the cellar with his gun at the ready. He immediately fired two shots in the vague direction of the spiders, and might well have continued if Eduardo hadn't grabbed the hand holding the gun and shouted, "Are you insane? My girl's down there!"

"Your what?" Kylie's voice wafted indignantly from below.

"Kylie, are you all right?" Garrett asked calmly.

"Yes, I'm fine. What's going on up there?"

"This asshole is firing bullets at the spiders," Eduardo said acidly, still glaring at the trigger happy police officer. "Will you put that thing away? You're gonna kill somebody one of these days!"

"These things are probably impervious to bullets anyway," said Garrett.

"Yeah, and they're harmless chained down like this," added Kylie, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. "Besides which, we can handle them. Oh, Roland, good – how many traps did we bring?"

"Four," Roland said simply. "Not including the one on your back."

"Two or three to a trap," calculated Kylie. "That's all right, I suppose. And we'll have to destroy these pods as well."

"Pods?" said the police officer. "We'll be needing those as evidence. And the spiders."

"You can't have the spiders," snapped Kylie, unhooking a ghost trap from her back. "We're going to deal with them. Now will you please stop pointing that gun at me and do something useful? This silk is infected."

"Infected? With what – a tropical disease?"

"Um… sort of, yes," said Kylie. "And it's been distributed all over the city. I hope you're going to do something about that."

"I… I… I'll have to talk to my chief about that."

"Good, you do that. Come on, guys – let's deal with these spiders."

x x x

Carl Rivera had been ploughing through paperwork for most of the day, and was currently enjoying the feeling of having just put down his pen for the last time. He decided to call his wife.

"Beth, hi," he said, when she picked up. "I might be able to knock off a little early this afternoon."

"Great, hon," Beth said cheerily. "Do you want me to fix you something to eat?"

"Yeah, that'd be great."

"You do remember we've got the girls today?"

"We do?" Carl hadn't remembered, but it didn't bother him too much. He had a soft spot for both of his nieces, though for one more than the other. "Well I've had a tough day. I hope Rose isn't going to give me any of her backtalk."

"She's drawing around coins at the moment," Beth told him.

"Drawing around…? Jeez, that kid's as crazy as her mother."

"Well, it keeps her quiet."

"Yeah, well, if Eddie isn't careful Kylie's gonna turn those girls into… ah crap. Look Beth, I gotta go. I might not be early after all."

He hung up, watching despairingly as Officer John Wilder crossed the room with two large circular ghost traps trailing from each hand and another under his arm.

"Carl, hey," he said sheepishly. "Look, if it's not too much trouble, we need you to talk to your kid brother. We've got him and some other Ghostbusters in custody."

"Custody?" Carl raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

"Well, they were very disruptive on a job a couple of hours ago. Actually, we think Eddie might have enticed police to go the scene so that the Ghostbusters could gain access to the building. I mean, we can't prove it, but a man with a Hispanic accent did call and tell us what now seem to be a bunch of lies… Listen, what should we do with these things?" He held up the traps in his right hand. "Should we put them in the evidence locker, or…?"

"Actually," Carl said hastily, "as much as I hate to admit it, I think you should let the Ghostbusters take those with them when they go."

"You think we should let them go, then?"

"Well, I'll have to talk to them first, but… yeah."

Carl asked Wilder for the details of the case, and no more than a minute after he had them he was bursting into the room where the Ghostbusters had been asked to wait. He marched straight over to Eduardo and dragged him to his feet by his collar.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" bellowed the older brother. "Prank calling the police is a serious offence, you know! And you can't just go around trapping evidence! We now have no proof that those people were harbouring exotic pets!"

"Pets?" echoed Kylie, hurrying to Eduardo's side. "They're demons, Carl!"

"Can you get your hands off me, please?" Eduardo added.

Grudgingly Carl let him go with a grunt of disapproval.

"So what happens now?" asked Roland. "We really need to get our spiders back to the firehouse. Egon will probably want to study them."

"They're illegally imported animals," barked Carl.

"Carlos, they're demons," said Eduardo.

"Humph," muttered Carl. "Well, in answer to your question… um…" – he looked at Roland, but no name came to him – "I guess I'll have to pull a few strings to get you out of here. You can't take your daughters out my house if you're in a cell all night."

"Indeed we can't," Kylie said dryly. "Carl, do you know what's happening about the silk they've been selling? Even though the spiders are trapped it might well be under their influence still."

"That silk is illegal," said Carl. "It will all be confiscated, and the people who bought it will be charged for handling the produce of illegally imported animals."

For some reason, Garrett couldn't help smiling. "Really?" he asked.

"Yes, really. Now do you wanna get out of here or not?"

"Yes," they all said in unison.

"Then stop asking stupid questions. And Eddie, if I ever have to do anything like this again because of you…"

Eduardo raised his eyebrows expectantly.

"No more baby-sits," Carl finished, trying to end the sentence on the same threatening note he had started it with.

x x x

Throughout the remainder of that day, and most of the next, Garrett felt faintly disappointed with that case. "Anti-climactic" was the word he used when describing it to Jo, as they were sprawled on the sofa eating pizza on the Friday night.

"Would you rather have been killed?" asked Jo.

"I suppose not."

"Well I'd rather not be a widow at twenty-five, if it's all the same to you."

Garrett began to wonder what Jo would do if anything untoward did happen to him, and hoped that she would find happiness with someone else. Someone who could give her a baby. He was beginning to feel a tad guilty for not telling her that he was worried about the whole child issue, nor even that he had started to read up on the subject. They had discussed it before they married, of course. Jo had said that she loved Garrett more than she wanted a child. She must have loved him a lot.

His thoughts took him back to the fantasy of having a son that he had once confided to Kylie, Eduardo, Roland and that ex-yuppie with a malevolent wishing well whom they had been looking after at the time. Garrett had been eighteen; you just didn't think about future complications at that age. He remembered his comments about racing the kid in "his own little chair".

"Garrett," Roland had said. "You might have a son who can walk."

"Well," Garrett had replied flippantly, "I guess I could love him anyway."

Paraplegia or no, it was still a nice fantasy, and he was only just beginning to realise exactly how much he wanted it to come true. Or a daughter would do just as well – he was in no position to be fussy. Garrett was beginning to think uncomfortably of an episode of The Jerry Springer Show he had once watched for some unfathomable reason: a childless couple had organised their own donor sperm, using a penis rather than a pipette. Fortunately his train of thought was interrupted by the phone.

"Garrett, good, you're home," Egon's voice buzzed down the line. "Listen, we're at the wedding dress party just at the moment."

"Who's we?"

"Me, Janine, Peter, Dana, Winston and Kaila… I haven't seen anyone else I know. I can't reach Ray on the phone, though. Now listen, we've got a bit of a problem. Some of the women are attacking the other guests with various objects that are lying around, and in some cases their bare fists."

"But that makes no sense," objected Garrett. "We…" – he stopped as he heard a loud crash, followed by a faint squeal. "Egon, are you all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine – I was just attacked by a young lady brandishing a punch bowl, but Janine seems to be dealing with her now. And you're right, of course: I don't see how the infected silk can have reached these women. But the fact remains it seems to have done so, and I wondered if you could come and help us. We're tearing the dresses off people at the moment, and it seems to be working. The police are here, but they are refusing to undress anybody."

"Damn that incompetent NYPD. Ok, Egon – I'll be there as soon as I can." He hung up, then turned to Jo and said, "Babe, I don't suppose you feel like giving me a lift to the Waldorf Hotel?"

"What for?" Jo asked reasonably.

"A few dozen brides on a murderous rampage."

"Oh." She set aside her pizza and jumped to her feet. "This I gotta see."

It was certainly a sight worth seeing. It was just beginning to get dark and, as Jo's car pulled up as close to the hotel as it could get, several white-clad women of all ages were illuminated in the headlights. Most of them were either hitting somebody else, pulling the hair of a fellow bride or running at somebody with a large blunt object.

"I'd better start ripping the dresses off these people," said Garrett, as Jo brought his wheelchair round to the passenger door.

"I'll help," she offered.

"You don't have to do that."

"I want to."

"Well… be careful."

"Yuh-huh, sure," Jo said dismissively.

After he had torn the bodices from a few women and left them dazed in the hotel lobby, Garrett began to realise that most of the ladies present seemed to be the ones being attacked rather than attacking. He just could not figure it out. Carl had said all the silk was going to be confiscated. This made absolutely no sense.

"Dr. V, hey!" said Garrett, as he suddenly bumped into Peter whilst making his way through the crowd. "Dana's not attacking anybody, is she?"

"Not last time I checked."

"Why are you taking pictures?"

Peter glanced down at the camera in his hand. "Jess would love a photo of this."

Garrett scanned the crowd, and saw exactly what Peter meant. Jessica would love seeing the wedding dress party reduced to this – she would say it served everyone in attendance right. Garrett then noticed that a bride with a large table lamp was drawing blood from a balding man, and he hurried over to help.

"Hi," Garrett greeted the hapless victim. "Look, this may sound a little strange, but you have to get the dresses off them. It'll really help – I promise."

Spreading the word like this made the task so much easier. Twenty minutes later a dozen or so women in torn wedding dresses were standing unsteadily in the hotel lobby, being interrogated on the spot by police. Things had calmed down quite considerably (although several people were muttering about demanding their money back), and Jo had managed to find Kylie.

"This," said the former, gesturing towards the assembly of flustered brides in front of them, "is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my entire life."

"Why do people like those dresses so much?" asked Kylie. She had hoped fervently to avoid that party, and would certainly have done so if Eduardo hadn't been in the shower when Janine called and reasoned that it would be easier for Kylie to go.

"They're ugly, aren't they?" said Jo.

"I don't know about that… but they aren't very nice. Not nice enough to spend two thousand dollars on anyway – or even six hundred."

"Two thousand dollars? Shit!"

"Hey, there you are," said Garrett, appearing at Jo's side. "Look, I've found Roland. He's so clever – he's figured it out."

"I should have spotted it sooner," said Roland, his voice just dripping with self-reproach. "Kylie, you remember what that Shirley What's-her-name said? She's been adjusting people's dresses to make enough money to stay in business." He gestured around the room. "Well, obviously several of these women outgrew their dresses over the years."

"Of course!" exclaimed Kylie. It seemed so obvious now. "And she probably wasn't the only person offering that service either."

"Hey, Ky, look – there's someone in a teal wedding dress," Garrett said brightly.

"That's not teal," argued Roland. "It's more like bottle green or something."

"It's hideous," remarked Jo.

"Oh, and here's Janine," added Garrett, as Janine approached. "Hey, Mrs. S – looking ravishing as usual, if I may say so."

"All brides are beautiful, Garrett," Janine deadpanned. "Kylie, why aren't you wearing the bridesmaid dress?"

Kylie blinked. "Why aren't I…? Why the hell should I be wearing the bridesmaid dress?"

"Well, you're at the party now. You might as well have put it on."

"Janine, for God's sake! You're just getting silly about it now."

"Why? You're staying for the party, aren't you?"

"No I am not staying for the goddamn party! And I think I told you the dress isn't easily get-at-able… just at the moment."

Janine frowned. "You never told me that."

"Oh." Kylie looked sheepish. "Well, perhaps I told Egon."

"Why isn't it easily get-at-able?" demanded Janine.

"Because," said Kylie, "I have moved home twice since your wedding. All right?"

"So where is it?"

"Well it's… it's just… it's in Carl and Beth's attic." Wow, what a whopper.

"And the other problem with wedding dresses," Garrett said, turning away from the argument, towards Roland and Jo, "is that they must get so damn not. I mean, most people get married in the summer."

"Wedding dresses," said Jo, "are stupid."

Garrett quietly began wondering how Jo would be with a daughter, if they ever managed to get hold of one. The young Miss Miller would be no princessy wannabe bride with a mother like Jo, that was for damn sure. Being father to Jo's daughter would probably be something like having a son. Peter Venkman, Garrett remembered, had said once or twice that he sometimes felt as though he had two sons rather than a son and a daughter.

Peter, meanwhile, was shaking out the Polaroid he had taken for Jessica and beginning to suspect that he might feel a little sad in the knowledge that he would never get to treat her to an extravagant wedding. Even if she someday broke her vow never to marry, she certainly wouldn't want a big wedding with all the trimmings.

His children, Peter reflected, were beginning to grow away from him. Earlier that year Jessica had become a teenager, and Oscar… well, he had become a man. They no longer told their dad everything, as they used to. Oscar was keeping quiet about his dealings with his biological father these days and, since sometime the previous year, Peter had been nursing a strange and unfounded suspicion – based solely on some kind of sixth sense – that somebody of the young, male and unrelated variety had been kissing his only and beloved daughter.

"You took a picture?" Dana was at his side now.

"I seem to have, don't I?"

"Why?"

"Well, you know how Jess loves being right."

"Peter, do you wish I hadn't made you come?" Dana asked suddenly.

"Not really," said Peter. "Why?"

"Well… this whole thing is kind of… well… stupid."

Peter couldn't help laughing. "So let's go home."

"Oh no – no way," said Dana. "I want Jess to think I had a good time here."

"You're not trying to get her to like this stuff, are you?"

"No." She didn't sound convinced. "I just hate it when she's smug."

"Honey." Peter put his arm around her. "You're never going to be a mother of the bride. You do realise this, don't you?"

Dana took a deep breath and then let it go in a long, wistful sigh. She knew it couldn't be much longer before she gave up that hope altogether.

THE END