This chapter is dedicated to Grace Dark, whose fic And The Rest Is Ancient History is a must read. Grace, one word: shrinkage. ;-)

You can't really tell a story like mine while you're picking your way out of a cave, even when your companion has a pair of nifty floating flaming marshmallows to light the way It's a time when you need to put your full concentration into the task at hand.

"Besides," I told Gracie, "I want to tell it with the proper, uh, ambience, you know. In the tower, with the space heater going, maybe a cup of hot chocolate. Not to mention that it's so cold and damp down here that my balls are trying to crawl back up into my body cavity to get warm."

She snickered. 'Another "involuntary reflex"?'

"Laugh all you want now," I told her, as we emerged into the late afternoon/early evening light, "but when I call in that bet we've got going right now, I'm not gonna leave the room. Get my drift?"

'Better make sure it's a nice warm room,' she riposted. 'Not that I'd mind the cold, but I'm sure you wouldn't want to let my hopes down.'

"Aaaah. Not now with the sultry, okay? I'm busy."

'Since when do I listen to what you say?'

I went over to the truck, hot-wired it, and moved it into the cave mouth, out of sight. Then I did the same with the SUV.

'You're sure no one will spot them there?' Grace asked, as I gathered stuff together.

"Reasonably sure. Even if Batsy does swing by the cave, he, uh, he doesn't drive in and out that way, the ground's too uneven and there were no tire marks. This property is like an anthill, with all the caves under it. Plus, there's supposed to be a hard rain tonight, which'll wash away the tracks we made going in—and bring down a lot of leaves to cover up what's left."

I wrapped first the electromagnet coils and then the ladder around my waist and secured the ends to my belt, then hefted the bags I planned on carrying. "Not too bad—oh, hell. I forgot the laptop. Too bad you can't schlep some of this."

'Sorry,' she said cheerily, as we set out through the woods to the more cultivated part of the estate.

I looked at her. She was looking cute in a striped sweater-jacket thing in her favorite colors over a pair of jeans that showed off her legs. The infamous shoes were now pink suede fleece-edged boots. Just the kind of thing a real girl might wear for a walk in the park. "Or maybe it's a good thing you can't, because if you were solid, your wardrobe would weigh a ton."

'Ha!' Her head jerked back and she staggered, clapping her hands to her chest like a wounded gunfighter in an old movie. 'You got me—Mr. Clothes-horse.' She straightened up. 'Like you can talk, with all those different shirts and socks of yours. You do not have a leg to stand on, buddy.'

She made me laugh, as she so often did, for one reason or another. "So, uh, how did a sweet girl like you spook all those people into clearing out? I didn't think you'd really be able to do it. Otherwise, I'd have come up with something else."

'I thought you were being too nice.' she said. 'I'll show you some of what I did, but I'll need you to get a ways ahead of me first.'

"Okay," I shrugged, and I walked twenty more paces before I looked back. "How's this?"

In those few seconds, she'd changed. Literally. From looking sleek and groomed, her hair was now stringy and straggly, and she wore a narrow, short black dress. Her dark stockings had runs in them; I could see blood-encrusted scrapes going down her legs and arms, and she was standing like it was an effort.

She suddenly dropped to the ground, face down, then raised herself on her arms, her hair sweeping the grass. I heard the crunchy, popping wrench of bones breaking as her lower body flopped around and turned backward, so from the waist down she was facing up. Her hands clenched like claws, her head bobbed up, and she growled, 'Get out,' in a low, gritty voice.

"Not bad," I admitted.

'Gettt ouuut!' she repeated—and started scuttling toward me at an incredible pace. 'Getoutgetoutgetoutgetout!'

I stood my ground. Right before she would have crashed into, or rather, through me, she stopped. 'You're supposed to run.' she told me, accusingly.

"Um, c'mon? Who are you trying to scare here? I'd give that a good solid 'B'."

'A "B"?' she said, sounding offended while she stood up and changed back to normal. 'Why only a "B"?'

"The bit where your legs turned backward was a little too 'Exorcist'." I told her. "I had to take off points for that. But the sound effects were A-plus, and I liked how fast you were. It's hard to, uh, see how people in a movie get so scared of something they could outrun."

'What would you suggest instead of the backward legs thing?' she asked, as we began to walk again.

"Could you, uh, sprout some more legs, maybe? Fuzzy tarantula ones, or like scorpion's legs?"

'I don't see why not, but let me practice first. That wasn't the only thing I did to scare them, but we really need to be indoors where there's an upstairs to get the full effect.'

"An indoors with an upstairs, huh? How about…that?" I swept my arm in a gesture encompassing the folly and its surroundings.

'Oh. Oh, wow.' Grace stopped to take it in.

I was glad we'd gotten there while there was still sunlight, because I knew it was an impressive sight. The rocky hillside to the left of the waterfall was planted with seasonal flowers, gold and purple, yellow and orange, and the trees blazed above them. The waterfall didn't go straight down to the little lake, but cascaded over rocks on the way down. The tower looked like it needed a princess with one of those upside-down ice cream cone hats hanging out of a window, and the forest continued behind and on the other side of it. "Will that do?"

'Just about…Race you!' She took off.

"What? Hey, no fair, ghost girl! You're not carrying anything and you aren't solid either."

She waited for me at the foot of the tower, where a locked gate barred the way. "What, can't you, uh, pass through cold iron or something?"

'Sure I can. No problem.' She stepped in without hesitation. 'I'm just waiting for your sorry ass to catch up.'

"Let's not go getting personal now…" I unlocked the gate and reached around to lock it again once I was in. I had substituted my own locks months before, and mine were much better. If/when Batsy or his designated representative tried to get in, they would need to go for a blowtorch rather than a bolt cutter. It looked just as real from the inside, all flagstone floors and rough-hewn stone walls. We climbed two flights of spiraling stairs up to where they stopped.

'Houston, we have a problem.' Gracie pronounced, looking up at the locked trapdoor well above our heads. A few feet of metal staircase hung down from it, but out of reach.

"Nope. The rest of the stairs are in storage somewhere, I'm guessing, but not to worry, I brought my own."

Putting down the laptop and my bags, I uncoiled the rope ladder from around my waist and attached the hooks to it. Swinging the hook end above my head, I caught on the bottom step of the metal stairs, and climbed up. Grace rose off the floor to hang in the air next to me.

"This lock here, this is a dummy. It's there for show. See?" I showed her how the screws were loose. "That way it'll look locked even when I'm at home. The real lock is on the inside, and I'm the only one who knows about it." Shoving on the trapdoor, I demonstrated that it would not budge. Then I uncoiled the electromagnet and plugged it into the handy socket not six inches from the trapdoor, and used it to draw the bolts from the inside, right through the wood. Now when I pushed, it swung up easily, and I stepped up onto the third floor of Wayne's Folly.

…Or maybe I should call it Batsy's Belfry instead. After all, it was a bell tower. And if anybody had bats in their belfry, it was him. Well, me too. Although Grace was more like a specter in my skull, a phantom in my pants, a ghost in my gonads…

'I heard that.' said my sassy girl. 'Hentai!' She did like to get in the last word.


A/N: The bell tower described in this chapter is a real place, although I am imagining it a little differently. If you look up Longwood Gardens, then use their search to find the chimes tower, then go to the west gardens heading there's a great picture of it about two-thirds of the way down. I have wanted to live there since I was about eleven.