Author's Notes: I almost forgot to post this! And there's really no excuse as I did have it ready after all. Instead of having trouble writing this like I have been with all the fics I've written this and last week I actually got this one done with ease. But it just slipped my mind I guess. Well better late than never right?
Ghost Slayers
Chapter Forty-three
By Relm
Even though Zelgadis had argued that it would be cramped in the Ghost Slayermobile if he went along both he and Lina forgot that Sylphiel and Amelia would both have their cars. Naturally both of Lina's workers would want to drive their own cars to work.
However that was moot anyway since Zelgadis didn't go along. And even though Sylphiel would normally rather drive to work she opted not to this time. Given that she got pretty much no sleep the night before she didn't feel safe driving. So Sylphiel decided she was going to ride with Lina. And given that Gourry had no memory he was quick to cling to Sylphiel (emotionally not physically) so he decided that he wanted to go in the same car as Sylphiel.
So the trio of Ghost Slayers and one transparent police detective took two cars as they drove back to HQ. Three people in one car and one person following with the other.
Lina let out a yawn as she herself was still a bit tired. She spied a look at her backseat passengers. Sylphiel looked both very tired and stressed while Gourry was happily looking out the window looking marveled by the sights he saw. Lina couldn't help but chuckle as Gourry reminded her a little of a small child or an enthusiastic dog.
"So where are we going?" Gourry asked breaking Lina from her thoughts.
"We're taking to where we work." Sylphiel explained.
"Oh. What do you guys do?"
"We're ghost slayers." Lina piped up.
"Okay... and what do ghost slayers do?"
Lina just shook her head. "Seriously? We slay ghosts Gourry!"
"Oh. Okay." And with that Gourry went back to looking out the window.
Lina let out another sigh.
...
The first thing Lina noticed when she parked the Ghost Slayermobile was that Filia's car was already in the lot. She couldn't help but let out a dark chuckle as this sight. No doubt Filia would be in a foul mood.
"You may not want to go up there." Zelgadis warned Lina while approaching the car.
"Hurricane Filia has landed?" Lina joked.
Zelgadis nodded. "She's pretty mad. Be ready to dodge things."
"Why is Miss Filia mad for?" Amelia wondered. Sylphiel also looked on in confusion.
"Xellos followed her home last night." Zelgadis explained.
"Ahhh..." Both Sylphiel and Amelia exclaimed in unison.
"Who's Xellos?" Gourry wondered. "And why is that guy see-through? Is he a ghost?"
Zelgadis opened his mouth to answer but Lina cut him off.
"He's just like you." Lina explained while shooting a glare at Zelgadis as she knew exactly what the transparent librarian was going to say.
"I'm a ghost?" Gourry squeaked looking at himself in horror. He knew back at Sylphiel's apartment building that he could see-through himself but for whatever reason he hadn't clued in why he should be concerned by it.
"No you aren't." Lina responded in irritation. It was bad enough that Zelgadis was being so depressive about his state that Lina didn't need a hysterical Gourry on top of things.
"Oh good that's a relief! I was worried there for a moment!" A bright carefree smile returned to Gourry's face.
Right away Zelgadis shot a questioning look that conveyed 'Is he for real?'
Lina sadly nodded back. She was glad that Gourry wasn't going to be overly upset but at the same time having him blissfully ignorant was annoying too.
...
Upstairs Filia sat the break room table drinking coffee. You knew it was a bad sign if Filia was drinking coffee. Filia's beverage of choice was never coffee; she was a tea person. There were other signs of things being off with Filia. Her hair was a mess and there were bags under her eyes.
As soon as Lina and the others walked into the room Filia was glaring an angry red glare at them.
"Good morning!" Xellos greeted them with an extra cheerful voice and smile which was a stark contrast to Filia's dark disposition.
Filia's glare traveled back to Xellos whom she continued to glare at while she drank her coffee.
"Hi Filia." Lina greeted her blond haired worker nervously.
Filia glanced at Lina narrowing her eyes. "Hi Lina."
"So how's it going?" Lina's voice was sugary sweet with trepidation.
Filia didn't answer she just went back to drinking her coffee.
"Oh ignore her." Xellos cut in. "She's just a grump when she doesn't get enough beauty sleep. And sadly as you can see she definitely needed it."
Ordinarily such a comment would garner a violent reaction from the blond haired ghost slayer but as it stands she was just too tired to care. "Zelgadis can you hit him for me?"
Zelgadis cracked his knuckles. "With pleasure!"
"Hold on there Rocky!" Lina motioned for Zelgadis to stop. "No fighting. Just because Filia says to doesn't mean you can go and beat up the guy."
"Guy?" Gourry looked at Xellos with confusion. "I thought he was a girl."
Xellos snapped his head to stare at Gourry with his eyes wide open. "Excuse me? I am not a girl!"
Gourry shrugged. "Well you look kinda girly."
Filia let out a chuckle that quickly died on her throat. "Wait, that's Gourry and I can see through him... The book got him too?"
"I'm surprised you noticed at all." Lina grumbled sarcastically.
"I'm tired so sue me!" Filia grumbled back.
Gourry looked at his reflection in a mirror on the wall and then looked at Filia. "Is she my sister? 'Cause we look alike."
Filia looked at Gourry with a mix of annoyance and confusion. "So clearly his memory is shot too."
"You do look like you could be related." Xellos commented.
"Why is he see-through?" Gourry wondered looking at Xellos.
"Gourry we've been over this!" Lina exclaimed in exasperation.
"Do we know anything about his attack?" Filia injected.
Sylphiel nodded. "Officer Zoanna called me earlier. Gourry was working in the file room downstairs in the police station and he didn't come back up. The case files that he was supposed to be filing had been left on the table and not put away. And there's no way he could have left the room without anyone seeing. Officer Zoanna is going to see if he can let us see the security camera footage."
"Well I take it you told him exactly what happened to Gourry then?" Filia mused taking another sip of her dreadful coffee. She hated the stuff but she didn't think she could stay awake otherwise. "Just as well, he knows the kinds of things we deal with so he'd understand. But I don't think the camera footage would be that helpful. Probably will just show a ghostly red hand emerging from the pages of the demon book grabbing Gourry and making them both disappear."
Gourry shivered. "That sounds scary!"
"It could be helpful." Sylphiel retorted hopefully. She had to believe that there was a chance that they could solve this mystery quickly. It horrified her to think that Gourry was going to be stuck in a ghost like form for the rest of his life.
"That's assuming the camera even got the footage. You know how it is with ghosts and demons, their energies disrupt electrical equipment like cameras." Filia shot back.
While her workers were arguing amongst themselves Lina was on a different train of thought. She left the lunch room and sped off to the offices. She returned to the lunch room with a large rolled up piece of paper, some push pins and a red marker.
"What's that Miss Lina?" Amelia asked.
Lina didn't answer she instead proceed to tack the paper up on the wall. It was a map of Sailune. "We know what the book does to its victims but the question is why are they being attacked?" She drew little circles on the locations of the attacks. Each spot was pretty spaced out.
"Well if you connect the dots it makes a triangle." Amelia observed.
Filia snorted. "It's three points; of course it makes a triangle."
Sylphiel went and grabbed a ruler from one of the cupboard drawers and measured the distances between the points. "The distance between the first attack site and the second is the same as the distance between the second and the third. However it's a much shorter distance between the first and the third."
"That's what I was thinking." Lina mused. "The book could be following a pattern. Making the fact that we know some of the victims a coincidence that it's just because of where they work."
"If we assume that the next attack will be an equal distance from second to third then the forth attack should occur in this radius." Sylphiel measured it out and drew a circle on the map.
"First place was a library, second a university and third was a police station... All points are important places in the city. So what do you see that's important along that circle?" Lina posed the question to her workers.
All the ghost slayers and demonic book victims looked at the map closely.
Slimer entered the room and looked at his friends in curiosity. He floated over to them and looked at what they were staring at. It made him frown in confusion as he didn't understand what so special about a piece of paper on the wall. Losing interest he focused on something else, like the belch his stomach was gurgling to expel. Putting his full effort Slimer belted out that belch so that it was as loud and as long as he could manage.
Lina, Sylphiel, Amelia and Filia barely acknowledged the offending noise while the male counterparts of the room jumped at the sudden noise.
Xellos disappeared and popped up right next to Filia and Gourry did the same with Sylphiel while Zelgadis just flinched.
"What is that?" Gourry screeched pointing at Slimer.
Slimer flashed him a gooey smile and waved.
"That's a ghost." Lina stated matter-of-factly.
Gourry screamed and cowered behind Sylphiel. "A GHOST! EEEEEE!"
"Gourry it's okay." Sylphiel tried to reassure Gourry whom was clutching onto her shoulders very tightly in fright. She couldn't help but blush at the contact. "That's Slimer, he's a friendly ghost."
"Oh that's a relief!" Gourry relaxed and went to introduce himself to Slimer. "Hi I'm Gourry."
Lina almost smacked her head in disbelief. "You were just frightened by Slimer and now you're introducing yourself?"
"Sylphiel said he was friendly. And trust Sylphiel. She always tells the truth." Gourry beamed with a big happy smile.
"Does that mean you remember things now?" Lina questioned Gourry.
Gourry thought hard for a moment. His eyes lit up when he came to a realization. "Nope! Not a thing!"
There were collective groans chorusing around the room.
"I think the better thing to be interested in is the fact that he had been grabbing Sylphiel by the shoulders." Zelgadis pointed out. "Instead of going right through them."
"That's right! He was touching me!" Sylphiel exclaimed and then blushed again thinking how bad that sounded.
"Yes well we know you guys can manage to touch things physically already! Let's get back to the map!" Lina growled annoyed that the focus was being taken away so easily.
"Okay there's a hospital." Zelgadis pointed to one point on the circle.
"A church." Sylphiel pointed out another.
"The theatre." Filia added.
"The museum." Amelia also pointed out.
"And a park and a train station." Lina concluded. "That's a lot of places the next attack could be. Assuming that Zelgadis was victim number one and Xellos and Gourry were numbers two and three. There could be lots of other victims out there that we don't know." She let out a heavy depressive sigh. The further along they got into this mystery the farther away Lina felt they were to an answer. It was very frustrating.