A/N: Thank you, Magdalena Roth! This works so much better when I actually know where everyone is. :)
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Sebastian Kane stared at the burned-out ruins of what once had been the Borehamwood Asylum. It had changed quite a bit since the turn of the century. Now it stood on what was ostensibly private land, a much-complained-about eyesore that the owner was forever saying he was going to tear down, one of these days. Sebastian wondered if the owner would be more or less enthusiastic if he knew there was a ghost living on the premises, attacking and quite possibly murdering women, young girls, and whatever poor homeless person ventured too close to the area. Normally he would have said more enthusiastic, but these days ghosts and haunted houses seemed to be all the rage; a large part of the teenage and young adult population was wandering around in black clothing, white makeup, and spouting poetry that would have made a 19th century consumptive sit up and smack them.
He knew better. Tragedy was not something glamorous, ghosts were not curiosities to be fawned over, and the darker magics could kill. Sorcery had been in his bloodline for ten generations, and he had grown up intimate with the knowledge of the darker side of the world. His hand tightened around the crystal handle of his walking stick, remembering his own youth in a much more conservative and yet much darker time. That had been one good thing about Meredith's mother: she had been perfectly willing to keep the vast majority of his past from their child, allowing her to grow up without the burden of a family history that bordered on dynastic.
Not that any of that mattered now. Well, perhaps it mattered a little. The family line he had turned his back on years ago had made it a point to marry only those with magical abilities themselves, whether latent or active. Meredith was quite possibly the most powerful witch in her age group in the region, perhaps in the country... at least, she would have been if she'd known. But Sebastian had seen what had happened to those who were given too much power as a matter of course, of heritage. He'd nearly been one of them himself. He wasn't about to allow his daughter to become that kind of monster.
A flicker of movement caught out of the corner of his eye drew his attention back to the here and now. He took a couple slow, deliberate steps forward; step step tap. step step tap. The flicker appeared again, and he almost passed it off as a leaf blowing in the wind. Then he felt the wind of someone rushing at him, and just in time to duck low enough for the clawed fingernails to go raking through his hair.
"Damn!"
He stared at the Jackal with a look of mingled horror and disgust. No wonder the four children had come out of the house in such a wreck, if this was the average sort of ghost Kriticos had imprisoned. It gibbered and twitched at him as he held it at bay with the magics implanted in his walking stick. The crystal knob at the end glowed, lighting the clearing around him.
"All right, then..." he murmured. "What am I going to do with you?"
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"Oohhh Goddess, I could sleep for a week." Laurel moaned as she dragged herself back into the house. They were all feeling drained, having made the drive home only with the benefit of a bottle of No-Doz. Merry went straight into her room and curled up on the bottom bunk in her bed; Dennis would have been willing to bet that she had been asleep even before her head hit the pillow. He simply toppled directly over onto the couch, planting face into throw pillow and groaning. He hadn't felt this exhausted in... ever.
"Why am I so tired?" he mumbled, not really expecting an answer.
"Re-enacting a traumatic event on the spectral plane is enough of a hassle," Amber said, going straight into the kitchen and pouring herself a huge glass of orange juice. "Doing it and then staying up a good 6 hours after you should have gone to bed is a pain in the ass." She yawned hugely and then proceeded to drain the entire glass in three huge gulps. Dennis watched with wide-eyed bemusement.
"You saw Merry downing all those Power Bars, right?" Laurel asked him, struggling with her shoelaces. She was so tired that it was taking her a couple of minutes to untie each shoe, with pauses in between to stare at them as though she was recalling just how to do it.
"Yeah..." Dennis said slowly.
"I can't believe she eats that crap. It tastes like cardboard."
"But it's nutritious cardboard," Laurel pointed out wryly, finally getting her shoes unlaced and kicking them off halfway across the room. "She'll have less of a headache that way, when we wake up..."
Another yawn cut her off.
"That's not a bad idea..." Dennis tried to push himself up into a sitting position and then gave up, flopping back down. "I'm starving."
Amber nodded, rummaging through the fridge till she found what looked like a bag of oranges, a loaf of bread and a packet of deli meats and cheeses. "Your body's exhausted. No more energy. Which means you need to sleep for a week and eat a whole cow. Only problem is figuring out which order to do it in."
Laurel shrugged. "Magic is energy intensive work..." she yawned again, and then staggered to her feet. "Me, I'm going for the sleep first. I can't keep my eyes open any longer, and I'd probably fall asleep in mid chew." Amber started to giggle. "Yeah, you'd like that, falling asleep in my mayonnaise."
"Damn straight."
Laurel flipped her off and tottered into Merry's room. "Scoot over," she muttered, and Dennis heard Merry make some sort of sleep-noise in response before he saw Laurel almost fall over onto the bed, then stop. "Sonofa... guyyyys? I need your help with her."
Amber, who seemed to have chosen food over sleep for the immediate future, stuck her head in. Dennis rolled himself off the couch and manage to achieve standing position. "What's up?"
"She forgot to pull out the futon again..."
Laurel was leaning up against one of the weirder beds Dennis had seen. It looked as though someone had taken a bunk bed and replaced the bottom bunk with a king-sized futon. The bottom bunk was currently folded up into couch position, and therefore took up very little space. Unfolded, it could probably have taken up a quarter of the remaining room space.
"Hoo boy. Merry..." There was a muffled groan from the pillows. "Merry, get up. We need to pull out the futon."
"Fugginel." She didn't so much get off the futon-couch as roll off of it, pulling herself upright on the bunk bed ladder and leaning against it. "You gedda do it," she muttered, looking blearily at Amber, who shrugged.
"Fine by me... hey, Den... gimme a hand with this? Laurel looks like she's fallen asleep standing up."
She did, too. Dennis chuckled as he leaned over and helped Amber pull out the bottom bunk. He'd been right, it did fill up just about a quarter of the available room space. Laurel immediately rolled into it, followed shortly by Merry. Amber stared at her friends, amused. "So what'll it be for you, sleep or food? Keeping in mind that Merry's father will probably wake us up sooner than we'd like and we'll have to go off after the next ghost."
"Well, when you put it that way, I'd rather eat in a car than sleep in a car." Dennis grinned weakly. "And I think I'm more tired than hungry."
She looked him up and down critically. "As skinny as you are, I'd think you'd be hungry all the time. Okay, crash down. I'll take the top bunk." Dennis blinked.
"What?"
"Better for all of us if you just crash in her room," she called over her shoulder. He blinked again.
"What... why?"
Amber turned and gave him a measuring look that made him shift uncomfortably and feel as though he'd failed some sort of test. Then she sighed. "I don't know all of what went on in the house... or the Ocularis, or whatever you want to call it. But I do know that you got up close and personal with at least one ghost, maybe more than one. If they're still loose, now that we've killed one of them, the others might know it. By the time Sebastian's done with the Jackal, they probably will. Once tied together, always tied together, at least on some level. And they won't like us banishing them, and a lot of those ghosts were sick, violent. So they'll be coming after us."
Dennis swallowed hard. He hadn't thought of that. "And Merry's wards... shields... whatever are stronger than mine."
Amber nodded. "You've been doing this for a few weeks. Merry's been doing this all her life. And all her life she's lived in this house, this room. Those protections are layered so thick the room's practically sound-proof. You'll be safer in there."
"When you put it that way..." He paused. "Uh... shouldn't I get the top bunk?"
She laughed. "Sometimes I forget how ... well, never mind. Den, you're all grown adults, and it's not like any of you has the energy to do anything. Trust me, it's fine. No one's going to think any less of you either way, but I'll probably have the energy to climb the ladder to the top bunk, and you look like you're about to pass out right now."
"When you put it that way..." he repeated with a wry grin.
"Now go to sleep."
"Yes, mother," he laughed, and stretched out on the outermost edge of the bottom bunk. Amber disappeared through the doorway and came back a few moments later with an armful of blankets, tossing them haphazardly over the three.
"Sleep well," she chuckled, and went back to the kitchen.
Dennis stretched out and closed his eyes, still exhausted, but the strangeness of being in one big bed with two women was keeping him awake. He rolled over onto his side, watching both women sleep. Merry's darker brown hair stood out against Laurel's and moved slightly with the even breathing of deep sleep. Laurel had half-buried her head under a pillow and was snoring quietly. He found himself smiling.. weeks ago, he hadn't even imagined that he'd be alive now, much less curled up in a bed with two decidedly beautiful women. Not to mention charming, intelligent, and fun to be around. Good friends... when was the last time he'd had a friend? Too long. And the best part... they understood. They understood everything, the visions, the ghosts... and they accepted it. Amazing.
He felt himself starting to drift off, a slight smile on his face. Just as he was about to fall asleep, Moon leapt up onto his side and padded into the bed, curling up with his head in the curve of Merry's hip.
it's about time, the cat said cryptically.
Dennis thought about asking what he was talking about, but by the time the thought had completely formulated he was asleep.
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"Don't touch me!" the spectre said, even as it reached out to claw at Sebastian. He stepped back as he gestured forward with the staff, blocking the ghost from touching him. "Keep away!"
"I won't touch you," Sebastian murmured, a faint note of pity creeping into his voice. "Unfortunately you don't seem to be willing to keep away from everyone else."
"Get away from me..." the misshapen ghost whimpered and writhed abruptly, sinking into a heap on the ground and twitching as though it were suffering a grand mal siezure. Limbs twisted upon themselves in a hideous parody of the strait-jacket it once wore, which flickered in and out of vision. "Get away!"
Reason first, he decided. There might be just enough sanity left in the creature, mingled with the right kind of delusion, to believe what he would tell it. "Ryan Kuhn," he began, not moving closer, speaking in a calm and even tone of voice: the kind of voice to talk jumpers down from bridges. "Do you know where you are?"
"Get away..." it whispered from a supine position on the ground. "Get away..."
"You are no longer in the asylum, Ryan Kuhn. You have not been in the asylum for centuries. The asylum is gone."
"Get away!" it shouted, waving its arms. It stood up and started coming at him with talons extended. Sebastian backed up as quickly as he could. "Get away get away get away get away..." One talon brushed his arm and he gritted his teeth with the sudden pain. Blood began to well up. "Don't touch me!"
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn," he almost shouted, and the spectre stopped in mid-advance. Sebastian froze where he was, too. "You have been dead for many, many years. There was a fire..." his voice was calm again, quiet. "Do you remember?"
"Fire..." the manic eyes quieted for a second. "Fire! Hot! Burning..." the arms started to flail again. "Burning! Burning!"
Sebastian sighed and stayed where he was, waiting for the convulsions to subside. The Jackal thrashed its caged head, feet kicking out from under him and sending him tumbling to the ground again, writhing in pain. Burns were starting to appear on the body now, angry and glowing and red. They appeared, welled up, and burst in rosettes of flame. It seemed to go on for hours, and Sebastian took the brief opportunity to clean up the cut on his arm in a handkerchief. Thankfully, it didn't look deep. Not for the first time, he was glad that he'd come out himself instead of sending the girls to deal with this ghost. If the Jackal had encountered three women, he might very well have done worse to them than just a scratch on the arm. An image of Meredith covered in bite wounds and claw marks flashed through his head, and he shuddered.
"Ryan Kuhn..." he snapped out, but the spectre didn't pay any attention. He had to lash out with his staff, a small bolt of energy coruscating from the crystal at the end of the staff to the creature's chest. It arched backwards, screamed, and then fell still.
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn. There is no more burning. There are no more doctors. Everyone is gone away." They're all dead too, he thought wryly, but didn't say it. He took a risk and kneeled down by the creature, the glowing crystal lighting his face in a way that would have made living men shiver had they seen it.
It looked up at him as though finally seeing him for the first time, and did not shudder or quake. It blinked rheumy eyes at him through the bars of the cage around its head, and bared hideous teeth. "Gone away?"
"All gone," Sebastian confirmed tiredly. "And now you can go, too."
"Go home?"
Sebastian suppressed a shudder. He didn't know where the ghost originally came from, but it surely remembered, and the last thing he wanted to do was to send it someplace more populated. It would probably go back to some place like New York City, too. Then again, one more horror would probably get lost in the shuffle, there. "No..." he racked his brain for a second, trying to think of how to approach the problem. "Go here." Inspiration struck, born of too many encounters with New Age teenyboppers, and he gestured at the slowly increasing light coming from the staff. "Into the light." Inwardly he winced at using such a hackneyed phrase that wasn't true anyway.
"Into light..." the ghost reached forward, extending a taloned hand to touch the crystal. Sebastian watched it, eyes narrowed, hoping the ghost was enough of a Christian to have vague memories of concepts such as 'light of heaven.' He really didn't want to have to share his staff with the thing.
The ghost began to dissipate into hundreds of tiny points of light, and Sebastian quashed a sigh of relief. He maintained the pose, smiling what he hoped was a kindly sort of smile. He watched the ghost realize its own demise and accede to the natural order of things, passing into the next world. Just before it disappeared entirely it turned its eyes back to him, smiling back with a face that made Sebastian want to vomit.
"Thank you."
And then it was gone.
He made it a few steps, leaning heavily on his walking stick, before he had to lean up against a tree and catch his breath. Not only had that been nerve wracking, it had been sickening to boot. He waited a few minutes and then slowly made his way back to the car, straightening up a little as he recovered his strength. With any luck, by the time he got home the other four would have returned and rested, leaving them with only ten more ghosts to banish. Perhaps they would split into smaller groups next time. He wanted this over with.
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Sebastian Kane stared at the burned-out ruins of what once had been the Borehamwood Asylum. It had changed quite a bit since the turn of the century. Now it stood on what was ostensibly private land, a much-complained-about eyesore that the owner was forever saying he was going to tear down, one of these days. Sebastian wondered if the owner would be more or less enthusiastic if he knew there was a ghost living on the premises, attacking and quite possibly murdering women, young girls, and whatever poor homeless person ventured too close to the area. Normally he would have said more enthusiastic, but these days ghosts and haunted houses seemed to be all the rage; a large part of the teenage and young adult population was wandering around in black clothing, white makeup, and spouting poetry that would have made a 19th century consumptive sit up and smack them.
He knew better. Tragedy was not something glamorous, ghosts were not curiosities to be fawned over, and the darker magics could kill. Sorcery had been in his bloodline for ten generations, and he had grown up intimate with the knowledge of the darker side of the world. His hand tightened around the crystal handle of his walking stick, remembering his own youth in a much more conservative and yet much darker time. That had been one good thing about Meredith's mother: she had been perfectly willing to keep the vast majority of his past from their child, allowing her to grow up without the burden of a family history that bordered on dynastic.
Not that any of that mattered now. Well, perhaps it mattered a little. The family line he had turned his back on years ago had made it a point to marry only those with magical abilities themselves, whether latent or active. Meredith was quite possibly the most powerful witch in her age group in the region, perhaps in the country... at least, she would have been if she'd known. But Sebastian had seen what had happened to those who were given too much power as a matter of course, of heritage. He'd nearly been one of them himself. He wasn't about to allow his daughter to become that kind of monster.
A flicker of movement caught out of the corner of his eye drew his attention back to the here and now. He took a couple slow, deliberate steps forward; step step tap. step step tap. The flicker appeared again, and he almost passed it off as a leaf blowing in the wind. Then he felt the wind of someone rushing at him, and just in time to duck low enough for the clawed fingernails to go raking through his hair.
"Damn!"
He stared at the Jackal with a look of mingled horror and disgust. No wonder the four children had come out of the house in such a wreck, if this was the average sort of ghost Kriticos had imprisoned. It gibbered and twitched at him as he held it at bay with the magics implanted in his walking stick. The crystal knob at the end glowed, lighting the clearing around him.
"All right, then..." he murmured. "What am I going to do with you?"
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"Oohhh Goddess, I could sleep for a week." Laurel moaned as she dragged herself back into the house. They were all feeling drained, having made the drive home only with the benefit of a bottle of No-Doz. Merry went straight into her room and curled up on the bottom bunk in her bed; Dennis would have been willing to bet that she had been asleep even before her head hit the pillow. He simply toppled directly over onto the couch, planting face into throw pillow and groaning. He hadn't felt this exhausted in... ever.
"Why am I so tired?" he mumbled, not really expecting an answer.
"Re-enacting a traumatic event on the spectral plane is enough of a hassle," Amber said, going straight into the kitchen and pouring herself a huge glass of orange juice. "Doing it and then staying up a good 6 hours after you should have gone to bed is a pain in the ass." She yawned hugely and then proceeded to drain the entire glass in three huge gulps. Dennis watched with wide-eyed bemusement.
"You saw Merry downing all those Power Bars, right?" Laurel asked him, struggling with her shoelaces. She was so tired that it was taking her a couple of minutes to untie each shoe, with pauses in between to stare at them as though she was recalling just how to do it.
"Yeah..." Dennis said slowly.
"I can't believe she eats that crap. It tastes like cardboard."
"But it's nutritious cardboard," Laurel pointed out wryly, finally getting her shoes unlaced and kicking them off halfway across the room. "She'll have less of a headache that way, when we wake up..."
Another yawn cut her off.
"That's not a bad idea..." Dennis tried to push himself up into a sitting position and then gave up, flopping back down. "I'm starving."
Amber nodded, rummaging through the fridge till she found what looked like a bag of oranges, a loaf of bread and a packet of deli meats and cheeses. "Your body's exhausted. No more energy. Which means you need to sleep for a week and eat a whole cow. Only problem is figuring out which order to do it in."
Laurel shrugged. "Magic is energy intensive work..." she yawned again, and then staggered to her feet. "Me, I'm going for the sleep first. I can't keep my eyes open any longer, and I'd probably fall asleep in mid chew." Amber started to giggle. "Yeah, you'd like that, falling asleep in my mayonnaise."
"Damn straight."
Laurel flipped her off and tottered into Merry's room. "Scoot over," she muttered, and Dennis heard Merry make some sort of sleep-noise in response before he saw Laurel almost fall over onto the bed, then stop. "Sonofa... guyyyys? I need your help with her."
Amber, who seemed to have chosen food over sleep for the immediate future, stuck her head in. Dennis rolled himself off the couch and manage to achieve standing position. "What's up?"
"She forgot to pull out the futon again..."
Laurel was leaning up against one of the weirder beds Dennis had seen. It looked as though someone had taken a bunk bed and replaced the bottom bunk with a king-sized futon. The bottom bunk was currently folded up into couch position, and therefore took up very little space. Unfolded, it could probably have taken up a quarter of the remaining room space.
"Hoo boy. Merry..." There was a muffled groan from the pillows. "Merry, get up. We need to pull out the futon."
"Fugginel." She didn't so much get off the futon-couch as roll off of it, pulling herself upright on the bunk bed ladder and leaning against it. "You gedda do it," she muttered, looking blearily at Amber, who shrugged.
"Fine by me... hey, Den... gimme a hand with this? Laurel looks like she's fallen asleep standing up."
She did, too. Dennis chuckled as he leaned over and helped Amber pull out the bottom bunk. He'd been right, it did fill up just about a quarter of the available room space. Laurel immediately rolled into it, followed shortly by Merry. Amber stared at her friends, amused. "So what'll it be for you, sleep or food? Keeping in mind that Merry's father will probably wake us up sooner than we'd like and we'll have to go off after the next ghost."
"Well, when you put it that way, I'd rather eat in a car than sleep in a car." Dennis grinned weakly. "And I think I'm more tired than hungry."
She looked him up and down critically. "As skinny as you are, I'd think you'd be hungry all the time. Okay, crash down. I'll take the top bunk." Dennis blinked.
"What?"
"Better for all of us if you just crash in her room," she called over her shoulder. He blinked again.
"What... why?"
Amber turned and gave him a measuring look that made him shift uncomfortably and feel as though he'd failed some sort of test. Then she sighed. "I don't know all of what went on in the house... or the Ocularis, or whatever you want to call it. But I do know that you got up close and personal with at least one ghost, maybe more than one. If they're still loose, now that we've killed one of them, the others might know it. By the time Sebastian's done with the Jackal, they probably will. Once tied together, always tied together, at least on some level. And they won't like us banishing them, and a lot of those ghosts were sick, violent. So they'll be coming after us."
Dennis swallowed hard. He hadn't thought of that. "And Merry's wards... shields... whatever are stronger than mine."
Amber nodded. "You've been doing this for a few weeks. Merry's been doing this all her life. And all her life she's lived in this house, this room. Those protections are layered so thick the room's practically sound-proof. You'll be safer in there."
"When you put it that way..." He paused. "Uh... shouldn't I get the top bunk?"
She laughed. "Sometimes I forget how ... well, never mind. Den, you're all grown adults, and it's not like any of you has the energy to do anything. Trust me, it's fine. No one's going to think any less of you either way, but I'll probably have the energy to climb the ladder to the top bunk, and you look like you're about to pass out right now."
"When you put it that way..." he repeated with a wry grin.
"Now go to sleep."
"Yes, mother," he laughed, and stretched out on the outermost edge of the bottom bunk. Amber disappeared through the doorway and came back a few moments later with an armful of blankets, tossing them haphazardly over the three.
"Sleep well," she chuckled, and went back to the kitchen.
Dennis stretched out and closed his eyes, still exhausted, but the strangeness of being in one big bed with two women was keeping him awake. He rolled over onto his side, watching both women sleep. Merry's darker brown hair stood out against Laurel's and moved slightly with the even breathing of deep sleep. Laurel had half-buried her head under a pillow and was snoring quietly. He found himself smiling.. weeks ago, he hadn't even imagined that he'd be alive now, much less curled up in a bed with two decidedly beautiful women. Not to mention charming, intelligent, and fun to be around. Good friends... when was the last time he'd had a friend? Too long. And the best part... they understood. They understood everything, the visions, the ghosts... and they accepted it. Amazing.
He felt himself starting to drift off, a slight smile on his face. Just as he was about to fall asleep, Moon leapt up onto his side and padded into the bed, curling up with his head in the curve of Merry's hip.
it's about time, the cat said cryptically.
Dennis thought about asking what he was talking about, but by the time the thought had completely formulated he was asleep.
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"Don't touch me!" the spectre said, even as it reached out to claw at Sebastian. He stepped back as he gestured forward with the staff, blocking the ghost from touching him. "Keep away!"
"I won't touch you," Sebastian murmured, a faint note of pity creeping into his voice. "Unfortunately you don't seem to be willing to keep away from everyone else."
"Get away from me..." the misshapen ghost whimpered and writhed abruptly, sinking into a heap on the ground and twitching as though it were suffering a grand mal siezure. Limbs twisted upon themselves in a hideous parody of the strait-jacket it once wore, which flickered in and out of vision. "Get away!"
Reason first, he decided. There might be just enough sanity left in the creature, mingled with the right kind of delusion, to believe what he would tell it. "Ryan Kuhn," he began, not moving closer, speaking in a calm and even tone of voice: the kind of voice to talk jumpers down from bridges. "Do you know where you are?"
"Get away..." it whispered from a supine position on the ground. "Get away..."
"You are no longer in the asylum, Ryan Kuhn. You have not been in the asylum for centuries. The asylum is gone."
"Get away!" it shouted, waving its arms. It stood up and started coming at him with talons extended. Sebastian backed up as quickly as he could. "Get away get away get away get away..." One talon brushed his arm and he gritted his teeth with the sudden pain. Blood began to well up. "Don't touch me!"
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn," he almost shouted, and the spectre stopped in mid-advance. Sebastian froze where he was, too. "You have been dead for many, many years. There was a fire..." his voice was calm again, quiet. "Do you remember?"
"Fire..." the manic eyes quieted for a second. "Fire! Hot! Burning..." the arms started to flail again. "Burning! Burning!"
Sebastian sighed and stayed where he was, waiting for the convulsions to subside. The Jackal thrashed its caged head, feet kicking out from under him and sending him tumbling to the ground again, writhing in pain. Burns were starting to appear on the body now, angry and glowing and red. They appeared, welled up, and burst in rosettes of flame. It seemed to go on for hours, and Sebastian took the brief opportunity to clean up the cut on his arm in a handkerchief. Thankfully, it didn't look deep. Not for the first time, he was glad that he'd come out himself instead of sending the girls to deal with this ghost. If the Jackal had encountered three women, he might very well have done worse to them than just a scratch on the arm. An image of Meredith covered in bite wounds and claw marks flashed through his head, and he shuddered.
"Ryan Kuhn..." he snapped out, but the spectre didn't pay any attention. He had to lash out with his staff, a small bolt of energy coruscating from the crystal at the end of the staff to the creature's chest. It arched backwards, screamed, and then fell still.
"You are dead, Ryan Kuhn. There is no more burning. There are no more doctors. Everyone is gone away." They're all dead too, he thought wryly, but didn't say it. He took a risk and kneeled down by the creature, the glowing crystal lighting his face in a way that would have made living men shiver had they seen it.
It looked up at him as though finally seeing him for the first time, and did not shudder or quake. It blinked rheumy eyes at him through the bars of the cage around its head, and bared hideous teeth. "Gone away?"
"All gone," Sebastian confirmed tiredly. "And now you can go, too."
"Go home?"
Sebastian suppressed a shudder. He didn't know where the ghost originally came from, but it surely remembered, and the last thing he wanted to do was to send it someplace more populated. It would probably go back to some place like New York City, too. Then again, one more horror would probably get lost in the shuffle, there. "No..." he racked his brain for a second, trying to think of how to approach the problem. "Go here." Inspiration struck, born of too many encounters with New Age teenyboppers, and he gestured at the slowly increasing light coming from the staff. "Into the light." Inwardly he winced at using such a hackneyed phrase that wasn't true anyway.
"Into light..." the ghost reached forward, extending a taloned hand to touch the crystal. Sebastian watched it, eyes narrowed, hoping the ghost was enough of a Christian to have vague memories of concepts such as 'light of heaven.' He really didn't want to have to share his staff with the thing.
The ghost began to dissipate into hundreds of tiny points of light, and Sebastian quashed a sigh of relief. He maintained the pose, smiling what he hoped was a kindly sort of smile. He watched the ghost realize its own demise and accede to the natural order of things, passing into the next world. Just before it disappeared entirely it turned its eyes back to him, smiling back with a face that made Sebastian want to vomit.
"Thank you."
And then it was gone.
He made it a few steps, leaning heavily on his walking stick, before he had to lean up against a tree and catch his breath. Not only had that been nerve wracking, it had been sickening to boot. He waited a few minutes and then slowly made his way back to the car, straightening up a little as he recovered his strength. With any luck, by the time he got home the other four would have returned and rested, leaving them with only ten more ghosts to banish. Perhaps they would split into smaller groups next time. He wanted this over with.