Slimer arose from beneath the floor, leaving one of his trademark slime patches. Gabby wasn't sure what he would be doing in the supply closet, but she thanked the gods that he was there. She made muffled noises with her taped mouth to get his attention, although it would have been hard to ignore her.
When Slimer turned around, he gave a dumbfounded look. He floated closer to look over her body. He then floated there in a confused and curious daze until he finally decided to rip the tape off of Gabby's mouth.
Gabby couldn't be happier to feel the dry, pulled skin around her lips.
"Thank you so much, Slimer," she said.
"Errr… hazovagovani?" he asked.
Gabby took this to mean, "Why are you tied up in a closet?"
"The guys put me in here because they found out about my witch powers," she whispered, "You know… the ones that made that rain cloud that put out the trash can fire a while ago?"
"Oh! Yeah!" exclaimed Slimer.
"Do you think you can untie me and get Janine to unlock the door? She has spare keys."
Slimer crossed his arms and pouted. "Eh… ezoregadorrra?"
Gabby took this to mean, "I don't know… what's in it for me?"
"If you do this for me, I'll give you quesitos," said Gabby in a sing-songy tone.
Slimer's eyes widened at the new word. He couldn't resist the possibility that this offer could be a food item.
"Quesitos?" he asked.
"Yes," said Gabby, "They're twisted, flaky pastries that are filled with sweet cream cheese. Oh, you'll love them."
Slimer became lovestruck by this offer. He started salivating and panting while his eyes crossed. If he had a physical heart, he would have told it to be still.
"I promise that if you untie me and get Janine to unlock the closet, I will swing by one of bakery near my house and get a dozen of them all for you. Comprende?"
Slimer nodded his body excitingly. "Yes, YES! ¡Comprende!"
"Now, get on it!"
Slimer quickly untied the ropes that bound Gabby's wrists and ankles, letting her experience a little bit more freedom. Oh, how she was happy that she could move again and not have to feel the cold floor anymore. She stood up and brushed herself off, making sure not to touch or step in the slime puddle that Slimer left.
Slimer happily phased through the floor again, no doubt with the promises of sweets on his mind. Now, all Gabby had to do was wait.
And she didn't have to wait for long. She soon heard the sound of heels clacking up the stairs in a panicky frenzy.
"All right, guys!" said Janine, "What is this about? No, seriously, what is this about?! Slimer tells me that you tied up and locked Gabby in the supply closet!"
"Yes, because she's a witch," said Peter.
"A witch?!" Ah, yes. Here we go. Janine was going full Brooklynite and nothing was going to stop her.
"Yes, Janine! We have no idea what kind of power she has! She's probably caused all sorts of bad things to happen since she got here!"
"Like what?"
"Like when I got explosive diarrhea the morning after we slept over at Tully's! She probably caused that with some sort of curse!"
"Or… hear me out…" said Winston, "We ate all sorts of foods that shouldn't have been combined into a single meal for the sake of giving us nightmares."
Peter sighed. "All right… so what about the leaking ceiling several weeks ago?"
"Well, it was raining and we haven't kept up on repairs to this building lately," said Ray.
"What about the other day when I got a packaged cookie that didn't have a single chocolate chip in it?!"
"C'mon, Peter," said Winston, "Why would she go through the trouble to do that?"
"Because she can, Winston!
"Well, I'm not stalling any further," said Janine, "I don't care if she's turning into a werewolf as we speak, I'm getting her out of there!"
"Janine, you're compromising the safety of everyone here! She could put a hex on us!"
"Oh, go hex yourself!"
Finally, Gabby could hear the key jiggling in the lock. Once it clicked, Janine opened the door. Oh, how it felt good to see the light again. Sure, it was artificial light, but Gabby didn't care. Another thing she didn't care for was seeing Peter. The man who had helped her use a proton pack for the first time had shown his true colors that day. He gave her the icy stare of an accuser. Gabby tried staring back like a territorial animal. Who did this man think he was? Whoever he was, he was no longer the person that Gabby had feelings for.
Ray didn't look nearly as accusatory. If Peter and Gabby were territorial animals, then Ray was the frozen, frightened chipmunk that tried its best to stay out of the way.
"Um… welcome back, Gabs?" he said.
Gabby took a deep breath and snorted in her mounting frustration. Now that she was free, she desperately wanted her power back.
"Where is my wand?" she asked. It took everything she had to not explode at everyone there.
"I'll go fetch it, okay?" said Ray, "No need to get testy, now." Ray's voice shook as he ran into the other room.
"Alllllllll right, let's all go into the conference room," said Janine, "I'm sure we can sort this out."
Everyone sat at the table in the conference room. At that moment, it was a rectangle of awkwardness and bitterness. The tension was so thick that a professional woodsman would have to bring in his best chainsaw, or at least that was true between Gabby and Peter. Gabby at least felt a surface-level sense of calm now that she had her wand back. It was like a security blanket, except it wasn't as cuddly and it gave her power that she couldn't always trust herself with. And if she couldn't always trust herself with this power, then it was no surprise that these other people couldn't trust her, either.
"How did you get out of your bind anyway?" asked Winston, "We tied and taped you up pretty good in there."
"Slimer helped me," said Gabby, "He's also the one who alerted Janine."
"I knew that floating booger would conspire against me," said Peter with his arms crossed.
"Now that we're here and settled down… Peter…" said Janine. She leered at Peter as she said his name. She turned back to Gabby. "Let's hear what you have to say. You have the floor."
Finally, Gabby was being given the space to explain herself. If only she knew where to begin.
Oh, wait, she did know. She could start with what she was. She cleared her throat.
"Like I said back at Carnegie Hall, I am a witch," she said, "I use magic to bend reality to my will and peer into other realms. And, no, that doesn't make me evil."
"So… spells?" asked Janine, "Like… abracadabra and stuff?"
"Well, the magic I do isn't like stage magic, although there is a performative aspect to it. Some spells just require you to say stuff and point a wand but others require rituals and objects and, most important of all, a circle drawn on the ground."
"Like a Satanist!" exclaimed Peter, "Just like those ones who torture those kids in daycare centers!"
"Peter, hush!" said Janine, "This is her time to speak!" Janine turned back to Gabby. "Do you use cauldrons at all?" By now, Janine was sounding less irritated and a bit more excited.
"Oh, yes. Cauldrons are used in rituals."
"And candles?"
"Yes."
"And what about crystals? And tarot cards?"
"Yes to all of that."
"Can you show me a spell right now?"
Gabby thought about what small spell she could cast at that very moment. She looked around and saw an animatronic dancing flower placed on the shelf. It was currently motionless but looked quite fab with its sunglasses and guitar. It also looked pretty fab with its orange-red coloring.
"Can you grab that plastic flower on the shelf?" asked Gabby.
Janine got up and did what she said, placing the toy in the center of the table.
Gabby imagined a cool blue color as she moved her wand in tiny motions.
"Caeruleo, caeruleo, caeruleo," she chanted. The tip of the wand glowed blue. The toy flower turned from its original orange-red to the cool blue that she imagined.
Janine's eyes lit up as she gasped in amazement.
"Oh my god," she said, "That is… so… COOL!" She squealed while grasping her shaking hand. "Even since I was a little girl and I would watch Bewitched, I've always wanted to meet a real live witch! I have so many more questions to ask you but I feel like I need to write them down first or else I'll forget them."
"You think that's cool?" asked Peter, "You think it's cool that a human has god-tier powers? It's not! It's dangerous!"
"And she used those 'dangerous powers' to turn a toy blue," said Winston. "I don't see anything wrong here."
"She's putting on an innocent façade, Winston. How do we know that she doesn't have ulterior motives?"
Nothing quite irked Gabby like being referred to in the third person while she was sitting right there.
"Peter, she's a woman with power," said Janine, "What's the matter? Are you afraid of powerful women?"
"Not going to lie, Margaret Thatcher does legitimately terrify me," said Ray. Ray had been suspiciously quiet during this emergency meeting.
"Well, we've busted plenty of ghosts that were caused by people misusing magical powers," said Peter, "That alone should tell us that they can't be trusted with them. If Gabriela here wants to continue being a ghostbuster, she has to renounce these powers, renounce the demonic forces and be a normal person again!"
How DARE he. How dare this man try to take away the power that Gabby had. For all her life, she had to struggle with being a small person, not just literally but in other ways as well. She was a woman. She was Hispanic. She came from a family that tried to do their best with what they made from their small business. These were the three levels of suffocating systemic soil that buried her, which people like Peter happily walked on. She was hopeful that going to university would give her a chance and join the others who could walk around on the dirt and look at the sky, but oh how naïve she was. Now, her magic, the force that gave her confidence and the ability to alter her destiny, was being confiscated. It was the force that made her not so small, not so buried.
Then again, of course The Patriarchy would do that, along with the gang of other hierarchies that she found herself near the bottom of. But The Patriarchy, like magic, was an abstract concept that existed everywhere around her and therefore it was difficult to target her ire at it. But she could target her ire at Peter. That was good enough.
"You know what, Peter?" she said as she stood up, "Maybe you should renounce being an ass!"
Everyone gasped.
"Feisty one, isn't she?" remarked Peter, not at all phased. "Maybe if you eat some chocolate, take a bubble bath and head to bed, you'll feel better in the morning, okay, sweetheart?"
Gabby grabbed her wand and concentrated her energy into it while thinking of storm clouds. Her anger was at a level where she didn't even need to chant a spell in order for the thundering storm clouds to appear above everyone in the room.
Ray panicked and grabbed Peter by the arm.
"Eh… Peter?" he said, "I wouldn't make her angry if I were you."
Winston looked around and started to break a sweat.
"Yeah," he said, "She is a witch after all."
"Damn right, I'm a witch!" she said. "Peter, ever since I became a ghostbuster, you've been treating me as if I were less than everybody else. We're all supposed to be helpful and useful and yet I'm an afterthought and you never want to hear what I have to say!"
Along with the clouds and thunder came raging wind. Janine hurriedly grabbed the paper that started to fly about but she wasn't successful in grabbing every sheet.
"Oh, so you can make clouds and electricity and wind?" asked Peter. Through it all, he didn't budge from his chair or flinch at the anomaly that was occurring in the room. It seemed that he was one of those people who became desensitized to the supernatural after witnessing it a certain number of times whereas everyone else around him still had the instinct to become frightened. "You're going to have to do better than that, toots."
Gabby was inspired to do even more than what she was doing. She grabbed her wand and aimed it at Peter.
"Levitate… levitate… levitate!" she said.
Peter's chair began floating in the air, causing him to pay full attention to what was going on.
"Whoa!" he said.
He grabbed onto his seat while trying his darndest to stay exactly in the center. His hair was standing up straight from the electricity in the air.
A lightning bolt cracked from the clouds and hit the center of the table, causing a deafening bang along with a puff of smoke. In the center of the table was a scorch mark and an indent.
"Gabby, for God's sake!" said Janine as she hugged all of the paper she grabbed, "We get it! You're angry! Stop this now before you hurt people!"
Gabby took a deep breath and looked at the chaos she was causing. Her own hair was starting to stand up on end. She saw that Ray was scared enough that he was hugging Winston real tight. Winston didn't look like he cared. He was surprisingly relaxed through all this. Or maybe he was hiding his fear.
Gabby had to stop this.
"Cease!" she called out. She guided her wand into a circular motion. After she did this, the wind stopped and the clouds started to clear. Peter's chair abruptly stopped floating and took heed to gravity. When it fell back onto the ground, one of its legs broke, causing both the chair and Peter to fall backwards.
"I'm not going to work with somebody who doesn't respect me or what I have to offer," said Gabby. "I'm leaving!" She turned around and left the room without saying a word, making sure to slam the door behind her.
"All right, can everybody agree that was kind of awesome?" said Winston.
Gabby turned around, remembering something else that she wanted to say. She opened up the door but made sure she stayed out of of the room. She looked Janine dead in the eye. By now, Janine's hair was just as frazzled as the rest of her.
"Oh, by the way, Janine…" said Gabby, "Peter said that your baby has the best cuts of meat." She then shut the door behind her once again.
"What?!" said Janine.
"No fair!" said Peter, "She's taking that way out of context!"
Gabby brought out her inner moody teenager and locked herself in the bathroom. She wrapped her arms around her bent legs and let the tears leak from her eyes. Now that her secret was out, her career as a ghostbuster was compromised. Ray may have said that he wasn't going to let anybody know about her being a witch but how could she trust him? How could she trust anyone? She didn't know what would happen if her God-fearing parents found out about her witchcraft. She had been so successful in hiding it from them. She was old enough that they could kick her out of the house. She had put her coworkers in danger with her magical outburst, so it wasn't like she could live here, either.
She could look up some halfway houses. At least that was better than living under a bridge.
While Gabby was stewing in her misery, she heard a knock at the door.
"Hey, Gabs?" said Ray's voice, "Can we talk?"
Gabby didn't answer. She figured that if she didn't speak, he would go away. But she was wrong.
"I understand if you don't want to talk but I have some things to say. For what it's worth, I don't agree with what Peter did."