"Dr. V, have you got a minute?"

The curiously tentative note to Janine Melnitz' voice was unusual enough to make Peter Venkman lift his head from the issue of Playboy he'd been scanning with great diligence. As the Ghostbusters' secretary pushed open the gate and came into his office he shoved the magazine quickly under his desk blotter and tried to pretend he hadn't had it in his hands.

"I saw that," Janine retorted in more usual tones. "I knew you weren't in here working."

"Five minutes break," Peter said self-righteously. "I've been doing the billings all morning." His voice rang with sincerity. This time he really had been working hard instead of sitting in here amusing himself while Egon and Ray worked in the lab on one of their latest experiments and Winston completed the latest oil change on Ecto-1. He'd just started on the magazine. That didn't mean he hadn't intended to kill a couple of hours reading it.

"Yeah, right," said Janine with heavy skepticism, carefully ignoring the stack of finished statements that sat on the corner of his desk in a neat pile.

"So what can I do for you, Big J?" Peter asked quickly, noticing the envelope she held in her hand and realizing something about it was bothering her. Though he and Janine maintained a surface friction that both of them enjoyed, Peter could always tell when something disturbed the red-haired woman.

The letter proved to the subject of her foray into his office. "This came today." She proffered the envelope, an uneasy look in her eyes. "I've been sorting the mail and I found it. I've got a bad feeling about it."

Peter snatched it from her hand and looked at it, noting the name on the envelope. 'Dr. Raymond Stantz, c/o Ghostbuster Central, New York, NY 10012.' "It's for Ray," he observed, then he saw what had alerted the secretary. "And it's from a law firm. Kramer and Dudley, in Midtown. Never heard of 'em. You're right, Janine, this can mean nothing but trouble. You don't suppose somebody is suing our little boy, do you?"

"Well, if they are, at least they're not in here with a subpoena. I just had a bad feeling when I saw the return address. Letters from lawyers aren't that great. It could even mean," she concluded with horror, "that Ray has inherited something."

Peter grimaced in shared understanding. Most inheritances weren't something to shun, but Ray's track record in that department wasn't the best. "Like another haunted castle or joke shop?" Ray's last two inheritances had not exactly benefitted Ray, between the ghosts in Scotland and the Imps that had made their lives miserable right here in New York. Worse than that, inheritances also meant someone had died, and Ray had been acting his normal, cheerful self lately. If a relative of his had passed away, he didn't know it yet and a letter like this was a lousy way to break the news. On the other hand, he had never met his Uncle Andrew MacMillan, and the Joke Shop character had left Ray the business because he considered Ray to have a lousy sense of humor. Well, Peter had to agree with that a little. Sometimes Ray's humor went over the top, but really, Peter wouldn't have it any other way. It was part of what made Ray what he was, and none of the team could have done without him.

"Do you think it means trouble, Peter?" Janine asked, grabbing back the letter and peering at it suspiciously as if she suspected Peter of damaging it.

Peter nodded. "You kidding? It's from a lawyer. It's bound to mean trouble--anything from a lawyer does. I'll take it up and give it to him." He braced himself for the task. If someone had really died, Ray would need his buddies standing by, and if anyone was planning to take him to court, well, they'd have Peter Venkman to reckon with. Starting for the stairs, Peter hoped the letter really didn't contain bad news.

Ray and Egon were busy in the third-floor lab, talking in that esoteric shorthand they'd developed over the years as they'd designed more gizmos to track and monitor the spirit world. When Peter appeared in the doorway and stood for a moment listening to their byplay neither of them looked up from the circuit board that absorbed them, though Ray did say, "Hi, Peter," in a cheerful voice before making a remark to Egon about 'transference energies and cross-rip potentials'. Egon moved his hand in a gesture that could have passed for a greeting but which might also have been a random motion. When Egon Spengler was absorbed in his work, he could overlook flood, famine and beautiful women in skimpy bikinis.

"Hey, guys," Peter greeted them as he entered the room, propping himself against the table in front of them. "Got a minute?"

"Not now, Peter, we're working," Egon said in that absent way he had when he was responding automatically to an external stimulus and had no idea what he was really saying. He wasn't being consciously rude because he probably hadn't actually registered that Peter wanted something yet.

"Thought so, Egon," Peter responded, grinning wickedly, used to Egon in this mode. "Interesting experiment. Did you know your hair has turned chartreuse?"

"Has it? That's nice," Egon responded, one hand patting his hair automatically. Then his mind backtracked what Peter had said and looked up, his brows narrowing in a frown. "Peter . . . " he chided.

"Well, it coulda. You never know what goes on up here. There have been enough holes in the ceilings--and the walls--and the floor for me to lose count. Who knows what you two mad scientists will do next."

Ray grinned. "Nothing's going to blow up today. That's not what we're doing. We're working up a way to intensify the readings when we encounter dimensional portals or potential cross-rips, so we'll know in advance how dangerous they are. It's gonna be great, Peter. What've you got there?" he concluded, nodding at the letter in Peter's hand.

"This?" Peter held it up. "I think you're in trouble, Ray. Some law firm's writing to you." He slid his eyes sideways to Egon, cornering him with a look. Egon glanced at the envelope and back at Peter as if realizing some of the possible implications, and set aside the tools in his hand. The physicist could read Peter's warning expression easily enough.

"To me?" Ray grabbed the letter out of Peter's hand. "Maybe it's about that patent I'm registering on the trap modifications," he said with a cheerful smile, tearing the envelope open with the eagerness that bespoke a nature so optimistic that letters from law firms could only bring good news. Pulling out the sheet of paper, he read it quickly, and then his face crumpled dramatically into sadness. "Oh, no, that's terrible," he moaned, the transition from eagerness to misery so rapid Peter felt a kick of alarm in the pit of his stomach and he took an involuntary step closer to Stantz, reaching out to pat his arm sympathetically.

"What's terrible?" Winston asked from the doorway, concern on his face. Janine must have sent him up.

"Mr. Howard's dead," explained Ray in a small, sad voice, the letter that had brought him the news clutched tight in one fist. "Gosh, that's awful. He was such a nice man and I didn't get over to see him nearly enough."

"Who's Mr. Howard, Ray?" Egon asked, frowning. Like Peter, he evidently felt the name was familiar, but he couldn't place it either. The two of them exchanged a concerned look. It didn't sound like one of Ray's relatives, but it was still someone whose death disturbed him.

Winston was the one who remembered. "I know, that guy you knew when you were a kid," he burst out, snapping his fingers as he recalled the man. "The old dude who had all those pulp magazines, the time we were trying to stop Cthulhu and you said you'd read something in one of them that would help us defeat the big nasty. That's him, isn't it Ray?" Egon nodded as if he'd just recalled the man himself, and Peter thought of the time they and Alice Derleth had spent the afternoon pawing through dusty old magazines to find a way to prevent the Old One from taking over the world.

The occultist nodded, running a distracted hand through his auburn hair. "Yeah. When I was a kid, I used to go to his place all the time before we moved up to Morrisville. He was one of the few people who encouraged me when I was a kid, and I thought he was great! I always meant to look him up when I came back to the city to go to Columbia, but I never did, not until we needed information." He hung his head at that realization.

"Hey, but you've visited him since," Peter pointed out quickly, determined to cut in before Ray could let guilt for his supposed lack of visits get to him. "I remember you mentioning it a couple of times. He had a spooky old place. Did you ever check it with your PKE meter?"

Ray shook his head. "No, I never took it with me when I went over there. I'd go and he'd let me read some of his old magazines and then we'd talk about them. He remembered all those stories so well. He had all the classics. He even had the very first issue of Amazing Stories from 1926. And all the issues of Astounding Stories even from before Campbell was the editor. Most of his stuff is even in mint condition. It's great." Ray gasped and looked at the letter again, smoothing out the involuntary crumples on the paper, his fingers moving apologetically. "Wow," the occultist said breathlessly, his eyes wide in astonishment. "This says he left his pulp magazine collection to me. That's what the letter's about. The lawyer said he left it to me because he knew I would appreciate it more than anyone else he knew." His eyes misted a little and his shoulders slumped. "That's really nice of him, but I sure wish I'd gone over there more."

"You did go over, though, Ray," Peter reminded him, draping an arm around Ray's shoulders and giving him a comforting squeeze. "He obviously thought highly of you, or he wouldn't have thought of you in his will. He wanted you to have something pretty special, something that meant a lot to you both. Hey, is it valuable? Maybe you could sell them all for major bucks and we could--"

"Peter!" Ray said sharply, pulling away and straightening up, his face lightening a little as Peter had hoped it would. "I'm not selling them. I want to keep them."

"Shoulda known," Peter muttered under his breath, glad when Ray lifted his head and glared at him. That was a good sign. "A lot of moldy old magazines that will be a prime cockroach breeding ground and he wants to keep them. Probably under my bed."

"No way, Pete," Winston objected with a wicked grin. "They'd never fit. There's too much junk under there already."

"That's right, pick on Peter," complained the psychologist, knowing the familiar teasing would be good for Ray at the moment.

"Finish your letter, Ray," urged Janine from the doorway where she stood, arms folded, leaning against the door frame. "I'm really sorry about your friend."

"Well, he was pretty old and he had a bad heart," Ray conceded sadly. "His doctor told him he had to slow down and he didn't like it. But I'm sure gonna miss him. He was a really nice old guy." He glanced at the page again, eyes widening as if he'd found a new complication, and the other three Ghostbusters eyed each other uneasily at the expression on his face. "That's funny."

"What's funny, Ray?" Egon asked, shifting closer.

"The lawyer says I'm supposed to inherit all his books, and Mab."

"Mab?" echoed Peter blankly. "Isn't that something out of Shakespeare?"

Egon lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "You read Shakespeare, Peter?" he asked with heavy skepticism.

"Well, not unless I hafta," Peter defended himself, hoping Egon wouldn't remember he had a Collected Works of Shakespeare left over from college down in his office. He kind of liked Shakespeare but it was one of the things he read on the sly, half-afraid it would ruin his carefully-cultivated reputation.

"Mab is Mr. Howard's cat," Ray informed them thoughtfully. "I only saw her once, but she's big and black and furry, and she didn't come over to make friends like most cats do when I see them. She only hissed at me and disappeared, you know how cats do?"

"You mean your friend left you an attack cat?" Peter asked without enthusiasm. "Oh, great. It'll probably try to sleep on my pillow and claw me when I want to go to bed. I don't think I like this, Ray."

"Mab's kind of spooky," Ray agreed. "But the poor thing's probably miserable, missing Mr. Howard and all. I bet I can make friends with her. Come on, guys, can we keep her? After all, Mr. Howard left her to me."

Peter exchanged a wary look with Egon. There were times when it was hard to refuse Ray anything; Peter could remember Ray's enthusiasm about the firehouse when they'd first seen it and Egon was insisting it should be condemned until Ray came sliding down the firepole babbling about how great the place was. Of course they'd wound up buying it. There was something about Ray . . .

"The cat is your responsibility to dispose of, Ray," Egon replied. He heaved a sigh. "Fortunately, none of us is allergic to cats."

Peter remembered that remark of Egon's when Ray brought Mab home. Maybe they weren't allergic to cats as a general rule, but Peter decided he could get allergic to this one pretty quickly. Ray had brought the pulp collection home first; it was huge and filled all the spare corners of their storage area, not to mention the boxes that spilled over into the bedroom and lab for Ray to sort through in his spare time. Once they were stored, Ray went off to the vet who had been keeping Mab since Mr. Howard died. He returned with a cat carrier that was making loudly annoyed noises and shaking in his hand and toted it up to the lab where the other three were waiting. Janine followed him in curious pursuit, arriving as he settled the carrier on the lab table. He talked to it soothingly, reassuringly, then opened it.

There was a moment's pause, then the cat stilled. The carrier stopped bouncing around, and after another second or two, a black nose emerged, followed by the biggest cat Peter had ever seen. It looked even bigger than the old Maine Coon cat he'd had the year he was nine. Cautiously the cat stalked out of the carrier, promptly pretending it didn't exist. Moving to the furthest end of the table, it turned around three times, then sat and began to wash itself.

"Wow, it's big, isn't it?" Ray asked, enthusiastically. "I'd forgotten how big it was."

"Indeed, Ray," agreed Egon. "I don't think I've ever seen a bigger cat in my life."

"Yeah, the cat from the black lagoon," muttered Peter.

"Pretty cat," Slimer observed from his drifting position near the ceiling. "Slimer likes it. Nice kitty."

The cat cocked its head and looked up at Slimer, made a strange cat face, and turned away again. Slimer shivered and didn't venture closer. The little green ghost looked as if he'd met his match.

Having dealt with Slimer with a look, Mab turned to study the Ghostbusters in turn. She stared at Ray first, for a long time, as if she had realized Ray was her owner or, more likely, that she now owned Ray. Cats tended that way, Peter knew from experience. Ray melted under the cat's green-eyed look. "Isn't she pretty?" he enthused, stretching out his hand cautiously for Mab to sniff, then scratching behind the cat's ears. She allowed the touch and seemed to enjoy it, but drew back delicately after a second or two as if she didn't want to let Ray think he had won so easily.

She considered Egon next, taking a step in his direction and looking him up and down as if measuring his height. Her gaze passed on to Peter, and he found himself caught in the compelling green gaze for a heartbeat, as if the cat could actually read his thoughts. It was not a comfortable feeling, but then Mab was not a comfortable cat. Peter didn't offer his hand to her, half-afraid she would take a swipe at him with her claws. There was something about her that didn't encourage liberties. Next she looked at Winston, then moved along to Janine. Her eyes narrowed as she studied Janine and she made a little sniffing sound. Janine stared back, gave a similar sniffing sound and edged closer to Egon.

"It doesn't like me," she told the physicist in an undertone.

"I don't believe it likes anyone, except possibly Ray," Egon replied. "As long as we can deal peacefully with it, that's what matters. It didn't try to attack Slimer, nor did it fear him. Some animals, as you know, are afraid of ghosts, or at least react negatively to the presence of noxious spirits."

"Noxious spirits," huffed Slimer in high dudgeon and folded his skinny arms across his chest.

"Hey, that's right." Ray ran his hand down Mab's back. "She's pretty blasé about Slimer." Mab allowed the touch and even purred; at her size, it sounded almost as loud as a well-tuned engine. "More so than Peter is," Ray added, a teasing light in his eyes.

"Hey," objected Peter, drawing himself up to his full height. "I'm not afraid of Slimer, I just don't like being slimed, and you don't, either, Ray, so don't act like you do."

"Ray loves Slimer," the little ghost said and drifted down to hug Ray around the neck, slime dripping down the occultist's neck inside his shirt. Before Ray could push the ghost away, Mab suddenly sprang up, hissing and snarling, jumped onto Ray's shoulder, and slashed at the ghost, who screeched ear-splittingly and zipped upward, straight through the ceiling. Ray screeched just as loudly as the cat's claws dug into his shoulder, and grabbed for the cat to disengage her. Mab's muscles bunched and she leaped back to the table, easily eluding Ray's grab. Once back in her place, she curled her tail around her and proceeded to wash her left shoulder smugly. The gesture was almost insulting.

"Are you hurt?" Winston asked, dragging up a chair and pushing Ray into it.

"Nah. She just clawed me for a minute," Ray replied, lifting the material of his shirt away from his shoulder and studying the wounds. "She was just staking her claim, chasing Slimer away," Ray concluded. "Hey, it's bleeding."

"I hope she doesn't mind if we touch you to get you cleaned up," Peter said, one eye on Mab as he helped Ray ease the shirt off his shoulder. There was a double set of claw punctures there, but they weren't very deep and, though they were slightly reddened, they weren't bleeding much.

"We'll have to clean that up," Winston said practically, fetching the first aid kit.

"It's nothing. I used to get clawed and scratched a lot on the farm when I was a kid," Ray insisted. "She didn't mean to hurt me. Mab will get used to Slimer and everything will be fine, you'll see."

Mab finished her grooming, edged closer, and nudged Ray's other arm with her nose. When he looked at her, she sprang into his lap and leaned against him contentedly. He began to stroke her head. "See," Ray concluded. "She's fine. She just needs to get used to us. Pet her, guys."

"Not if you paid me," Peter objected, eyeing Mab warily. There was something about the cat that made him really uncomfortable, and it wasn't simply because she'd clawed Ray by accident. He didn't mind her chasing Slimer either. That alone had been worth it, to see the little spud panic like that. But there was a far-too-knowing look in Mab's green eyes as if she could read Peter's very thoughts, and he didn't like it. Peter hoped the cat would settle down quickly, knowing it would help Ray get through the loss of his friend if he had something to concentrate on. He wished Ray only had the books to think about. Though they might take up a lot of room, at least they didn't have claws.

Ray awoke in the middle of the night, uncertain of what had disturbed his rest. He'd gone to sleep with Mab curled around his feet, making him warm and comfortable, but the weight had gone from there. She was probably off making her midnight rounds of the firehouse, hunting for mice and exploring her new territory, witnessed by the fact that Slimer was here, drifting comfortably over Peter's bed, his little blanket covering him, hugging Ray's Mr. Stay-Puft doll to his chest. The other three guys were asleep, too; the familiar chorus of their nocturnal snores such a part of the usual night sounds in the dormitory that Ray usually didn't hear it unless he thought about it. Mab was nowhere in sight; she hadn't deserted his bed for one of the others' and she didn't seem to be asleep on the rug or the table.

The moon was full and moonlight, brighter than the glow from the streetlights, shone into the room, making it nearly as luminous as a cloudy day. As Ray lay there, drifting, half asleep again, he sensed a movement in the doorway, and he turned his head to investigate.

A strange woman stood there, tall and elegant and completely naked, her hair a thick, flowing mass of ebony, drifting down nearly to her knees, one long tress flowing forward to lie between her full breasts. Her pose was unselfconscious, her nudity completely natural, yet she was the most beautiful thing Ray had ever seen. His mouth a little open he stared at her, unable to tear his eyes away and, as if becoming aware of his glance, she turned her head in his direction and studied him. Her face was beautiful and terrible at the same time as if power could spring from her hands like lightning. Ray found himself trapped in her gaze as her eyes gleamed brightly, as if they could burn into his very brain with the intensity of the look. For a moment, he felt dizzy, as if the world had shifted, then the sensation faded entirely and he felt like himself again. It didn't occur to him to reach for the PKE meter on the stand beside his bed to take a reading, and he didn't think she was a burglar; most burglars didn't come calling without a stitch on. Ray lowered his eyes quickly, aware of growing arousal at the sight of her beauty, and when he looked up again a moment later, she had vanished without a trace.

Was it only a dream? He got up carefully and went out into the hall, where he stood at the top of the spiral stairs peering down to the second floor. No one was moving on the stairs. His hand on the railing, he would have felt a vibration if anyone was there; the motion would translate itself through the metal. She couldn't have gotten all the way down before he arrived at the top, not unless she could fly.

Maybe she had been a ghost, a succubus, to judge by his now-fading physical reaction to her and her nudity. Ray ventured into the lab to see if she had come in there instead and to get a PKE meter. He found a sleepy Mab curled up on the table, lifting her head to stare at him, her eyes glowing in the moonlight like green coals. She yawned, stretched bonelessly, and lowered her head again, not particularly interested when Ray picked up a PKE meter and returned to the bedroom door, where he activated the device.

The antennae stirred gently, and the screen lit up with residual readings. A few faint and fading beeps disturbed the night and made Slimer open his eyes and gaze at Ray across the room.

The little ghost sniffed, zipped over to Ray's position and sniffed again. "Slimer thinks you have major trouble, Ray," he said in clear and fluent English. "Something really weird was just here and Slimer doesn't like it."

Ray's mouth fell open in disbelief. "Slimer?" he faltered. "I never heard you sound like that before."

"Sound like what?" Peter grumbled sleepily, opening his eyes with obvious reluctance. "What are you doing running around taking readings in the middle of the night, Ray?" He pushed himself up against the headboard of his bed and wrapped his arms around his drawn-up knees, a cavernous yawn scrunching up his face. He knuckled his eyes, encircled his knees again and looked at Ray expectantly.

"There was a naked woman here just now, Peter," Ray burbled. "She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw in my life and she stood right here--" he pointed to the floor where he was standing--"and looked at me! Gosh, she was really pretty and she had a great body." He blushed at his remembered reaction to her, but Peter wouldn't be able to see that in the dark.

Peter heaved a disappointed sigh. "How come I never have dreams like that?" he asked ruefully. "I was dreaming about the IRS coming after me with pitchforks and hitting me with bananas, and you get naked ladies. I always knew there was no justice in life."

Winston muttered a complaint and pulled his pillow over his head, but Egon sat up and reached for his glasses. "What are you doing with the meter, Ray?" he asked, staring at Ray in the bright moonlight.

"Egon, there was a naked woman here," Peter said in tones of great disappointment. "I missed it, but Ray's taking readings because all naked women set off PKE meters, right, Ray?"

"Something set it off. I've got residuals," Ray replied, frowning at Venkman. "It wasn't a dream. I've got negative valence manifestations, Egon. They're fading now, but they were pretty powerful. It wasn't a normal naked woman."

"No, it was a beautiful one," Peter said mournfully. "And I missed her."

"That's not all," Ray continued, gesturing at the spud, who continued to hover near him. "Slimer talked to me just now as clear as one of you." Winston pulled the pillow off his head, giving up on the thought of sleep and listened.

"Yeah, right, Ray," Peter argued, eyeing Slimer skeptically. "We've all heard the spud. He isn't going to win any debate awards."

"I'd question that, Peter," Slimer said.

Ray's mouth fell open, but the other three didn't look as if they'd heard anything unusual. "If that's Slimer's idea of clear speech, then I'm not going to sign him up as a translator," Peter retorted.

"I'd have to agree with Peter," Egon said, getting out of bed and coming over to join Ray. He switched on the bedroom light, blinking for a moment in the sudden brightness, then he removed the meter from the occultist's hand and studied the screen, his eyes widening behind his glasses. "Hmm, this is indeed fascinating. I've never seen readings exactly like this. Something was definitely here." His words pulled Peter out of bed and he joined them in the doorway while Winston sat up and rubbed his eyes.

"But what about Slimer," Ray persisted, gesturing at the little ghost. "He just said, 'I'd question that, Peter.'"

"Well, I hate to break it to you," Peter said, reaching out to ruffle Ray's sleep-tangled hair, "but what I heard was sorta like a raspberry, and a slurred, 'wanna bet?' You know, typical Slimer stuff."

"Really?" Ray asked, turning to Egon for confirmation.

"Quite right, Ray," Egon replied. "Slimer didn't speak clearly. He certainly didn't say what you claimed he did."

"Gotta agree with that, homeboy." Winston yawned gapingly and stretched, arms above his head. "So there was a naked lady here and now Slimer talks like a debate champ? I think you've been dreaming, buddy." He wandered over too. "Send a little of the dream my way. I like naked women as much as the next guy. But it was just a dream."

"Not entirely, Winston," Egon corrected, holding up the meter. "Something was here. I'll need to study these readings. I'd postulate a physical entity of a type we haven't encountered before. The readings aren't as strong as that of the Bogeyman, but they are much on a level as Shanna, the banshee, for instance."

"So you're saying we had a banshee in here, Egon?" Peter prompted him as if he wanted to get it clear, though his enthusiasm had drained away. The banshee had briefly controlled him and once the whole incident had ended Peter had displayed some bitterness over the event, not to mention embarrassment because he'd made a fool of himself in front of his friends. "I didn't know they ran around in their birthday suits. Doesn't having a banshee show up mean somebody's gonna die?" His voice cracked on the last word. "I don't like this."

"I didn't say it was a banshee, Peter, simply that the readings were at a similar level of power. As you will remember, Shanna had great power. Yet none of us were hurt."

"Speak for yourself, Egon," Peter said, narrowed eyes lingering on Ray. "The banshee made me act like an idiot."

"You mean more of one than usual?" Winston asked, sotto voce.

Peter glowered sleepily at him then decided to ignore it. "Besides, it looks like Ray has been affected this time. Our little boy is hearing things, and raving about naked women. I know Ray's not completely innocent around women but he doesn't usually babble about naked ones. And what's more he's blushing."

"I am not," Ray defended himself, avoiding Peter's knowing gaze.

Peter clapped him understandingly on the shoulder. "It's okay, Ray, you're allowed."

"Did the cat react to her?" Winston asked, looking around for Mab. "I know she didn't mind Slimer, but I don't think she'd like ghosts popping in uninvited. Animals usually don't."

"She was asleep over in the lab when I went in to get the meter," Ray replied. "She woke up and looked at me and went right back to sleep."

"I guess being a watch-cat isn't one of her specialties," Peter said, scratching his head and trying to smother a yawn. "Yo, spud?"

"Did you want something, Peter?" Slimer articulated clearly.

"What did he say?" Ray asked quickly.

"He said, 'Whhtt, Petaw?'" replied Peter, giving a good imitation of Slimer's usual speech patterns.

"Gosh," blurted Ray. "I'm hearing Slimer differently than you guys are. When he talks, I hear him sound as clear as you three, and he makes sense. But you say he sounds the same old way. Do you think she, well, did something to me?"

"Did something like what?" Egon asked, intrigued. He turned the meter on Ray and took a reading. "Hmmm."

"What do you mean, hmmm, Egon?" Peter asked, eyes narrowing. "Are you saying the naked lady did something to our buddy here?" Concern crept into his voice as he added, "Where is she? I'll blast her."

"Yeah, right, Pete, after you take pictures, huh?" Winston teased before turning to Egon. "Is Ray all right?"

"He does not seem to be injured, but there is a strange overlay interfering with his normal biorhythms. It's not as if he had been possessed; we'd be able to tell that by comparing his present readings with his normal ones, but there's something different. It's as if his readings were boosted, enhanced, rather than altered. Ray is still Ray, but he's Ray with a slight difference. I would be inclined to suspect he could detect ghosts now without a meter."

"Wow!" breathed Ray, enthralled with the idea. "Really, Egon? That's great!"

"Great, Ray? Somebody messed with you," Peter pointed out tightly, gripping the occultist by the shoulders and shaking him lightly. "And what has it got you? You can do Slimerspeak with the best of them. So what about side effects, Egon?" He let go of Ray and turned to face the blond. "Humans aren't meant to detect ghosts without meters. She might have done more harm than good." His face was tight with concern, and anger at the thought of someone interfering with Ray. Peter tended to be suspicious and his concern for his friends was well documented, but Ray didn't feel as if he'd been hurt. Aside from that one moment of dizziness, he felt no different than usual.

He told them about the moment when the world had rocked. Egon's eyes lighted with interest and he stalked across the hall. "I think we should adjourn to the lab so that I can run tests on you, Ray," he called over his shoulder, encouraging the others to join him. "I don't know who the woman was or what made her come here. Perhaps she was drawn here by the ectoplasmic residue of all the ghosts we have ever trapped."

"Yeah, and maybe she's manipulating Ray to let them go," Peter suggested in a wary voice. "It's not normal for naked women to show up in the firehall. Maybe it's something I could get used to, but not if they're gonna mess with Ray. Can we reverse it? We know Ray's normal biorhythms. Isn't there a way to pull off the overlay?"

"I don't want it pulled off," Ray objected. "I want to find out about it. I think it's neat to hear Slimer this way, and I want to find out what else I can do. As long as it doesn't hurt me, can't we let it stay, at least long enough for Egon to run tests on me?"

"I must admit, Peter, it seems to have done no harm to him as yet," Egon replied. "I do remember being able to sense the presence of ghosts in my altered state when my molecules were reversed by the atomic destabilizer. If Ray can do it now, it could be a very useful fringe benefit, providing there is no cumulative effect and no unpleasant side effects. Like you, I'm unwilling to take risks with Ray's life, but we have no proof at this time that Ray's life is in actual danger. The moment we do, we will, of course, take steps to reverse the process. Until then, we should study it."

"I don't know," Winston objected. "We don't know this naked woman meant well, after all. The effects might not even be reversible. I think that should be the first thing we find out, how to stop whatever it is. Once we know that, then we can do it any time we have to."

"Maybe I should ask Slimer some questions," Ray volunteered. "He's making sense when he talks to me. What if he always does and we just can't understand him?"

"Slimer as the next Einstein? I don't think so, Ray." Peter shook his head lugubriously. "Slimer hasn't suddenly gotten smart because of whatever happened to you."

"Unless he's always been smart and we didn't know it," suggested Ray, excited at the possibility. "If he couldn't explain clearly, how would we know if he were smart or not."

"Slimer has always known things about the spirit world," Egon replied. "Some of them he has been unable to vocalize, either because of his garbled speech or his incapacity to deal with the concepts in question. It appears that Ray can now translate Slimer better than before, unless what he is hearing is not actually Slimer but the entity, expressing itself through Slimer in an attempt to lull Ray into complacency."

"Really, Egon?" Ray sat at the lab table, reaching out automatically to stroke Mab's silky fur.

The cat lifted her head, looked at him, and said in a scratchy little cat voice, "That feels wonderful. Keep it up."

Ray's mouth dropped open and he yanked his hand away, staring at the sleepy animal. "Mab talked to me!" he blurted.

"You heard actual words?" asked Egon, running his meter over Ray and the cat. "I simply heard purring."

"No, Mab talked," insisted Ray, eyes wide with awe. "I heard her. She said it felt good when I petted her."

"Hmm." Egon studied the meter's screen. "I'm getting a blurred reading now, as if some of it has rubbed off on Mab from you touching her. However, Slimer's readings are unchanged." Mab lifted her eyes and studied Egon as if she had understood him. Maybe she could, if it had rubbed off. Egon shook his head. "No, they're fading now. Mab's readings are what I should consider normal, for a cat. Touch her again, Raymond, and we'll see if there was a transference."

Ray stroked Mab's back again and she sighed, "Niiiice," in fluent English. Egon shook his head. "No, nothing now. It must have been a transference, no more. I'm reading nothing strange, except from you, Ray, and that isn't altering."

"But she's still talking, Egon."

"I bet she is, Dr. Doolittle," Peter said, shaking his head. "This talking to the animals routine might get you a shot on Geraldo but I don't know if I like it."

"Why not, Peter?" Ray asked. "Afraid they'll talk about you? I can understand animals now! It's wonderful! We've got to see if it works on all animals. Just think how much easier it would make it for us on busts. Besides, I've always wondered what animals thought."

"Only you," Winston said with a tolerant smile. "Egon, if you're not picking up anything but fading residuals and Ray seems to be fine, how about we go back to bed. We can continue with this in the morning when we're fresh and able to think better?"

"Great idea, Winston," Peter lauded him. "Even better, we sleep in late to make up for it. Any way you can set your PKE meter to go off if any more beautiful naked women show up, Spengs buddy?"

"I will set the meter on the stand beside my bed," Egon agreed. He looked like he wanted to consider his research right now and work through the night, but he gave in to the others. "In the morning, Ray, we will see if your sudden facility in animal speech persists. The cat reacting to being petted I can understand, but Slimer suddenly becoming fluent? There's been no evidence to suggest a higher intellect with Slimer."

"Any change with the spud would be one for the better," Peter argued. "The meter will pick up any changes in Ray, won't it?" he asked suddenly, looking at the occultist with sudden concern. "I don't want to wake up and find out Ray's turned into an animal or something like that."

"There's no evidence of any such thing, Peter," Egon said, shaking his head at the idea of such a theory. He added, "I'll place a second meter on the stand beside Ray's bed. If there are even minute changes the device will react and we'll awaken. I'll set it to react more loudly than normal, but will filter out the present readings. Only if they change will the alarm go off." He picked up a screwdriver and began to make small alterations in the meter's settings as they started back for the bedroom. Mab yawned, hopped down from the table, and followed, curling up at the foot of Ray's bed once more. Whatever had happened to Ray didn't seem to alarm the cat.

Peter woke up once in the predawn stillness of the firehouse. Egon was snoring softly, but the other two were sleeping fairly quietly. Though it wasn't light yet, the dark was not as tangible as before. Peter popped up and looked over at Ray and Winston to make sure they were there and all right; with strange women coming into the bedroom, it was better to check. Ray was a tightly curled lump under his blankets, only his hair and the top of Mr. Stay Puft's head visible, and Winston had kicked off his covers and was sprawled, arms and legs flung wide. Both seemed fine.

Curious, Peter turned his head toward the door, then he got up and went into the hall. Had something moved in the lab? Wishing he'd had the foresight to lug his pack over to his bed so he'd have it to hand, he tiptoed forward to investigate, prompted by a hope of seeing the same vision Ray had seen.

The woman was there. She was tall, as tall as Peter, and she seemed to have yards of dark wavy hair. Peter was disappointed to discover she'd donned one of Egon's jumpsuits and was zipping it into place as he watched, concealing the charms he'd been looking forward to seeing.

"Are you spying on me, Dr. Venkman?" she asked without raising her head. There was the faintest of accents in her voice but not enough to place it. He thought it was European but he could pin it down no closer than that.

"Spying?" he echoed self-righteously. "In case you haven't noticed this is our firehouse. We live here, not you." He gazed into the beautiful face and added with a cocky grin, "though we could make an exception in your case."

"If that is a-a proposition, I am not impressed," she said, magnificent eyes flashing.

"A guy's got to try. But running around naked in our bedroom kind of gives me a different impression of you."

"I had nothing to wear then. Now, I do." She gestured at herself.

"Yeah, and I've gotta say Egon never made that jumpsuit look so good," Peter told her. It was certainly tight in interesting places.

"Do you never stop, lad?"

Peter shook his head. "Come on, tell me who you are. What do you want with us? You didn't come to make off with our souls or anything nasty like that, did you?" Even with someone this lovely bantering with him, he couldn't completely repress his concern that his friends might be in danger, particularly Ray, since he'd been the one who had suffered from the original sight of her. That Ray didn't consider it suffering didn't make Peter feel any fondness for the perpetrator of the changes in his friend.

"Souls, is it?" Amusement flashed in her face. "You have a highly suspicious nature, my boy. And indeed, you are a fine figure of a man. A girl might find herself tempted, indeed she might." She put out her hand and stroked his cheek. Peter felt the flesh tingle under her fingers as if she were sparking electricity but he didn't pull away. Instead he reached out and put his hands on her shoulders, drawing her slowly toward him, fascinated when she came willingly, molding herself into his arms and lifting her face to his.

Feeling as if things were getting out of hand and at the same time going just exactly the way he wanted them to, Peter covered her lips with his.

Fire flashed, the room reeled, and the next moment, Peter had his arms full of an empty uniform, He staggered, struggling to catch his balance. He blurted an outraged yell as something small hit him in the stomach, driving the breath out of him and pushing him over backwards to sit down hard, gasping. Time spun out, the silence broken only by Peter's wheezing for breath and the padding of urgent bare feet toward his position.

"Peter?" Egon's voice held concern as he bent over the man on the floor. "What are you doing down there? Are you hurt?"

"Hit . . . in stomach . . ." he panted as he fought to catch his breath. "She . . . she was here again, Egon. Wearing . . . your jumpsuit." He held up the bunched fabric he was still clutching. "Gotta say you never really did it justice like . . . she did."

"And knowing you, you tried to get too friendly," Egon reproached him sternly, holding out a hand. Peter clasped it and was hauled to his feet. With his PKE meter in his other hand, Egon snatched his jumpsuit and ran the detection over it. "Hmmm," he said.

"She was friendly, too," Peter defended himself, rubbing his stomach ruefully. "Until then she wasn't exactly pushing me away, Egon. Besides, she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. I've gotta say Ray called that one right. And she liked me. She said that a girl might find herself tempted."

"Tempted doesn't necessarily mean she would choose to act, Peter. You should seriously attempt to control your hormones. At your age--"

"Hey, no snide remarks about Dr. Venkman's age, Egon," Peter chided him, shaking his finger in Egon's face. "Well, you genius you, what do your readings say?"

"They are the same as last time. Your biorhythms were not altered as Ray's were. And she wasn't tempted enough not to hit you in the stomach before she, er, melted away."

"She didn't melt, Egon. She was just gone. Poof. One minute, I've got a solid woman in my arms, and a gorgeous woman to boot, the next I've got your jumpsuit which isn't exactly exciting, and something hit me but it wasn't like she punched me or anything. It was more like whatever happened that transformed her and I just got caught in the backlash. Egon?"

"Yes, Peter?" Egon asked without looking up from the meter.

"Is she a ghost?" Peter heard the wistful note in his voice.

"No, I should say not. She's a physical entity who can apparently de-solidify. I'll need to do some research to see if I can find other instances of similar entities. In any case she is not human as we know it and involvement with her could prove far more dangerous than one blow to the stomach." He eyed Peter sternly. "I trust you will take that into consideration should you have dealings with her again. I should hate to break in a new partner at this stage of the game."

Peter grinned, warmed by the concern, however expressed. "Yeah, I'll be careful, Egon, now I know she can defend herself and vanish in a puff of smoke."

"Maybe she's a shape changer," Ray offered from the doorway, speaking around a huge yawn. "And she changed into a fly or something and flew away, and you didn't notice?"

"Sure, Ray. She's no Odo," objected Peter though it wasn't a bad theory. "But I've gotta say you called it on how gorgeous she was."

"Yeah, but what does she want here?" queried a drowsy Winston. "Is she drawn to all the ghosts in the containment unit? Does she want to let them loose or something?" He knuckled his eyes enthusiastically. "It's too early to get up."

"That's usually my line," Peter objected sleepily.

"True, but you say it at the wrong time," Ray put in. "Gosh, Peter, you saw her and interacted with her. Can you understand Slimer better now, or Mab?"

"Yo, Spud!" Peter hollered. "Get in here, front and center."

Slimer swooped through the door, his mouth open in a ghostly parody of a yawn, not a pretty sight at the crack of dawn. "Aye aye, Peter," the little ghost responded in his usual garbled speech.

Peter shook his head. "No, he sounds the way he always does. I didn't get the gift of the ghost gab or whatever it is. Just one quick kiss. Sorry, Ray, but I got the better end of the deal."

"No, you almost got incinerated by a powerful entity," Egon reminded him sternly. "There seems little point in returning to bed at this stage. Raymond, did Slimer sound 'normal' to you?"

"Clearer than normal," Ray responded. "He said 'Aye aye, Peter,' but he sounded a lot clearer than he usually does."

"So whatever affected you is still in place." Egon glanced up at the wall clock. "Nearly six. I may as well stay up and run some tests."

"Well, count me out," Peter said, rubbing his eyes and looking longingly at his pillow. "Six is not a civilized hour, and I want to get in some more sack time." He stretched, then he padded back to bed, and was asleep in moments.

When Peter finally surfaced it was after nine, and he suspected with a little effort he could have managed another hour or two, but he pushed himself up and listened for a minute. He could hear Egon and Ray talking in the lab though he couldn't make out the actual words they spoke. The thought of whatever the naked woman had done to Ray propelled Peter out of bed and made him scurry around for clean clothes and head for the shower. Beautiful as she had been, the woman had no right to mess with Ray, even if she had meant it well. They had no reason to suspect her intentions were honorable, however. Ray didn't seem to be hurt, but there was no way of telling what the long-term effects of being able to understand animals might be, or if Ray could still do that. Understanding Slimer better might be helpful, Peter had to concede, though it wasn't number one on his list of priorities.

He emerged from the bathroom, clean, shaven and dressed and met Egon crossing the hall from the bedroom. "I must say I am impressed, Peter," the physicist greeted him.

"Yeah, people usually are, but what did I do this time?" asked Peter warily.

"You don't usually make your bed and tidy the bedroom so well," Egon replied and returned to the lab.

Peter ventured over and peered into the bedroom. His bed was neatly made and he knew he'd left it undone. Cautiously he advanced further, opening his closet to toss his pajamas and dirty underwear on the floor, only to find all his clothes had either been hung neatly--and somehow pressed in the process--or stuffed into his laundry bag. Peter stared at it blankly, then, inspired by the sight, he put his dirty clothes into the laundry bag and went over to peer under his bed. All the dust bunnies and candy bar wrappers were gone. This was great! Mab lifted her head from her coiled position on Ray's bed and stared at him curiously for a moment before shifting position to take advantage of the wedge of sunshine that slashed across the bed.

Shaking his head, Peter headed for the lab. "Okay, who cleaned?" he demanded suspiciously. Maybe this was a joke on him, and he wasn't sure if he liked it after all.

Egon looked up from the electrodes he was attaching to Ray's head. "Why am I not surprised that you didn't?" he asked whimsically.

"Egon, when did I have time? I got up and headed right for the shower. Is this some kind of trick to confuse and upset Dr. Venkman?"

"Clean rooms upset and confuse you? Gee, Peter, no wonder you never put anything away," teased Ray, reaching up to check the connection of the last electrode.

Peter made a face at him. "No, honestly, guys, who did it?" he persisted.

"Don't look at us," Egon replied. "I've been quite busy. This is actually fascinating, Peter. Ray's biorhythms are essentially unchanged, but there's an energy level that spikes when he claims to hear animals speaking. We tested it on a pigeon on the ledge just now."

"It said, 'nice day, good seeds,'" Ray explained with a huge grin.

"Well, I can see that talking to pigeons isn't going to be the latest parlor trick." Peter chuckled. "What you ought to do is try it on dolphins and great apes and make a real breakthrough. Big bucks, talk shows, the whole schmear."

"We don't have any dolphins or gorillas around here," Egon reminded him.

"Maybe she cleaned the bedroom for you, you know, the lady," suggested Ray excitedly.

Peter hadn't thought of that. Maybe she was here right now, invisible, watching him. He'd better be careful what he said in case she was listening even now. "Hey, great. Shows she wasn't mad at me for cozying up to her like that."

"She did, however, make her point. Should you encounter her in future, Peter, I trust you will be wary. Remember, she is a powerful entity, and should she become angry, she might well be able to harm you, even strike you dead."

"I'm not too keen on the 'strike you dead' part," Peter admitted as the physicist checked the readings on his equipment. "Where's Winston?" He was pretty sure Winston hadn't cleaned up Peter's closet. While it was possible their fourth teammate might conceivably sweep out under the bed, he wasn't likely to make it, iron Peter's clothes or anything of that nature.

"I sent him out for several animals for experimentation," Egon replied. "He's got a friend who plans to loan us his dog for the day and his girlfriend has two parakeets. We'll try with them. I didn't want to get new animals."

"Got it," Peter agreed instantly, picking up on Egon's reasoning without having to think about it. Ray would have been unwilling to return them afterwards especially if they had to go to the pound, and pretty soon they would have been hip deep in animals. "Better to borrow. And Winston can tell his girlfriend what the parakeets said. That'll give him a few brownie points."

"Hey, that's it! Maybe it's a brownie," offered Ray, looking up, resembling a victim of a crazed experiment with all the electrodes fastened to his temples, forehead and chest. "You know, cleaning up. Brownies do things like that."

"Yeah, right, Ray," said Peter with heavy skepticism. "She sure didn't look like a brownie to me."

"And how many of them have you ever seen?" Ray demanded, prepared to defend his position.

"Well, when you put it like that . . . But I always thought they were little guys with long beards wearing pointy hats, not six foot women with knee-length hair."

Ray picked up a notebook Peter hadn't seen before, one with elaborate red-leather binding and a metal lock. "What's that?" Peter asked.

"It's Mr. Howard's journal," Ray informed him. "The attorney gave it to me. I've been looking at it."

"Did he have brownies?" Peter asked.

"Well, if he did he didn't say so," Ray replied. "But he did talk about a 'dark shape' he saw hovering outside his house one night. He mentions it in here not too long before he died." He flipped the pages, searching for the mention of the incident.

"It didn't look like a beautiful woman, did it?" Peter asked in hopes of distracting Ray from the loss of his friend. "Or make him able to talk to dogs and cats? Hey, maybe if he could talk to Mab that's why he left her to you, because if anybody could figure out a talking cat it'd be you, Ray."

"That's possible," Egon replied. "But Ray showed me the passage in the book, and I don't believe the black shape has anything to do with beautiful women or Mab. It sounds like a powerful entity or collection of entities of an unknown type and, even more alarming, there are several pages that have been removed from the book right after the first mention of them. While that could be because of anything, the fact that it so closely follows this mention does cause some concern. Now that Mr. Howard has passed on, I feel we should take readings in the vicinity of his house and make sure there's nothing there. While Ray has his magazines and his cat, the bulk of his possessions were left to his relations who live out of state. The shape may be a ghost who is fixated on the house, a focused repeater, or it may have simply been passing when Mr. Howard happened to notice it. It's doubtful it would follow the pulp magazines here, yet I would feel better if we could test and measure the house just to be certain."

"It could be some kind of bogey," Ray ventured. "That's usually black and seen at night."

"You mean something like the Bogeyman?" asked Peter, glancing sideways at Egon to see how he would react to the mention of his one-time nemesis.

Egon shook his head, looking, if anything, completely calm. "There are a host of spirits called bogeys, bogles, bug-a-boos, and the like. The Bogeyman, per se, was no doubt originally a member of this class, but had become more powerful over the years. Most of the spirits of this type appear only at night and do resemble dark shapes. In some cultures such entities are synonymous with the Devil."

"Oh. Good," said Peter weakly. "I didn't want to hear about this. You mean there's something big and nasty out there?"

"Well, Mr. Howard saw it just a few weeks before he died," Ray put in, a show of sadness flickering across his face. "I started at the end of the journal and have been working backward. I don't think it could have been what killed him. The doctor says it was a normal heart attack. But sometimes people can be scared into heart attacks. And we haven't had any reports of an entity that matches what Mr. Howard saw. It could have just passed over the city the one time or he might have misinterpreted something. But whatever it was, it wouldn't have turned into that woman. That's not how bogeys operate. They aren't often shapeshifters."

"My readings have indicated nothing so powerful as that," Egon replied. "As you know, Peter, I take daily readings of New York to study the ambient and latent PK levels of the city. It's one method of determining when something powerful might be planning to cross over into our dimension. As you will remember, before the coming of Gozer, there were many more ghosts than we've since determined to be normal for this area. And when Proteus arrived, the same thing held true. We were kept quite busy before his actual arrival. Should an entity as powerful as a major demon choose to make its appearance, we would have had some warning of it simply by the way our work intensified. It's true that over the past month we have had a gradual build-up of the ambient PK energy, but not to levels high enough to cause a general alarm. We have been busy, but not so busy as we were before Gozer, Proteus, or some of the other major entities we've faced."

"So what do we do about it?" Peter asked, realizing something was wrong, even if Egon couldn't exactly pinpoint it. The odds were that Mr. Howard's dark shape didn't have anything to do with it, but Peter didn't like to take chances. "Go out looking for this nasty thing?"

"Not at this time, though we will go to his house and take readings in a little while just to be safe," Egon replied. "We don't know if it was even real. Mr. Howard could not fully document it. Sit still a minute, Ray, I want to check the preliminary readings." He busied himself in front of a small screen with gridlines running across it. Peter raised an eyebrow at Ray, whose eyes twinkled.

"Hmmm," said Egon, his tones thoughtful. "From this, you are evidently in no danger, Ray. I would say that what you received from our night caller was a temporary enhancement of your normal senses, specifically geared to enable you to communicate with other species. In fact, in our culture, most of the 'other species' you'd attempt it with would have limited intellectual abilities, such as the pigeons. Mab's remarks were specifically directed to her own comfort and her enjoyment of being petted. Only Slimer appears to have said anything sensible, and it is possible that your mind simply translated his actual speech into something that meant the same thing but which sounded more intelligent, because you want Slimer to be intelligent. You have always understood him better than the rest of us in any case, and he is evidently more intelligent than animals, though not as intelligent as a human being."

"Wait a minute, Egon," Ray objected, holding up his hand to gain the attention of the physicist, who was so caught up in his theorizing Ray had to break in. "Maybe animals are merely a sideline of it all. Maybe she wanted me to be able to understand ghosts better. Some of them are even harder to understand than Slimer. If this bugaboo thing has been popping in and out, we need to find out about it. If we could question the ghosts we bust, we might find out more. Maybe she was trying to help us because she knew the black thing was coming. Maybe it even messed with Mr. Howard's journal and tore those pages out."

"If it is indeed some type of bogle, I should take readings that would specifically match such an entity," Egon decided. "Though the odds of it tampering with the journal are not very high."

They heard footsteps on the spiral stairs then and a scrambling of toenails as Winston led the dog up to the third floor. Across the hall, Mab let out a hiss of annoyance and Peter, who went to the doorway to see, watched Mab swarm across the room and levitate in the way of cats to the top of Egon's wardrobe, where she proceeded to hiss and snarl and express herself in tones of catlike disgust. The dog broke free of Winston and lunged, jumping up and down beneath the cat, barking at the top of his lungs.

"He's saying, 'I'm gonna get that cat, I'm gonna eat that cat, oh, good, it's a cat, I'm gonna get him!'" translated Ray, jumping up and pulling off the electrodes in order to run into the bedroom.

"Yeah, Ray. I can see we'll get tons of useful information out of your Doctor Doolittle routine." Peter couldn't help grinning as he and the others hurried to the bedroom after the occultist. Understanding animals was all very well, but so far none of them had said anything remotely interesting.

Winston snatched at the dog's leash and yanked it back, and Mab stood up, arched her back, all her fur standing on end and making her look twice her normal size as she hissed and spat at the dog.

"She's saying the dog is stupid and boring," Ray ventured. "She's teasing it and making fun of it, and the dog is really mad at her."

"Well, I wouldn't like it if she made fun of me," Peter muttered.

Mab hissed and meowed, her eyes briefly on Peter.

Ray stifled a laugh, making Peter eye him suspiciously, but instead of translating, the occultist made a dive for the end of the dog's leash and he and Winston pulled the animal from the bedroom. Egon retrieved the hastily-abandoned birdcage and pulled the bedroom doors shut. Through them, Peter could still hear Mab scolding.

"She doesn't like dogs," Ray said apologetically to the floppy creature who had evidently forgotten all about the cat the moment the door had closed. "Dogs have chased her and teased her. Think how you'd feel."

The dog looked up at Ray, cocked his head, then sat down and proceeded to scratch behind one ear. He was a cocker spaniel, a little overweight but in pretty good condition. Ray bent down and rubbed behind his ears. "Is that the place?"

The dog made a sound that Peter assumed was an affirmative because Ray continued to pet him. Finally he and Winston led the animal to the lab, Egon following with the birdcage.

Peter opened the bedroom door just enough to poke his head in. "Hang in there," he told Mab, somehow compelled to reassure the feline. "We won't let him in again."

The cat was still sitting atop Egon's wardrobe but she was engaged industriously in washing and didn't so much as gaze in Peter's direction. She made a little sniffing sound.

"He's not staying," Peter continued. "He's just temporary. Hang in there, kiddo." He backed out again, uncertain of his motivation in reassuring the cat when from Ray's reaction it had evidently said something derogatory about him earlier but once he'd assured Mab she wasn't threatened, he shut the door again and headed for the lab. There he found Ray was involved in an earnest conversation with the dog, which involved explaining where he was and why, and promising to feed the animal as soon as they were done. The dog didn't seem to mind being in the lab as long as he got fed, and Ray's bits of 'translation' didn't indicate any higher thought or concerns for other than his comfort or his feeding, except now and then to explain what interesting smells were in the lab. Peter had a pretty good idea Ray was giving them the actual translation, because it was pretty boring. If Ray had wanted to make it up, he would have invented something a lot more interesting than, "lots of Egon-smell at table," and, "something weird coming." Dogs apparently were fluent in understanding English, even if they were not great conversationalists. Peter shook his head.

Just then there was a new disturbance as Slimer popped into the lab and the dog barked furiously once then tried to press himself into Ray's leg in abject terror.

"Not now, Slimer," Ray said quickly. "You're scaring Georgie."

Slimer muttered something that sounded like, "Well, he scared me first," and went away again, the picture of offended dignity.

"He says we shouldn't bring strange animals in here without warning him. He lives here and they don't," Ray paraphrased.

It was probably a valid point. Slimer was in essence their mascot, which made him a kind of pet, and the introduction of other pets, however temporary, must seem like a threat. Peter didn't like understanding how Slimer felt, but he did understand and had ever since Egon had pointed out that Slimer was a ghost who lived with guys whose job it would be to bust ghosts, and then asked Peter how he'd feel in the same situation. Peter might not always like Slimer but he was essentially a fair man and could guess how the spud must feel. First the cat and now a dog. Peter would probably not be really charmed if the guys started bringing in other Ghostbusters. Pushing aside his sympathy for Slimer before the guys noticed it, he came forward, grinning. "Looks like talking to animals isn't going to be as much fun as you thought it would be, Ray."

"No, I think it's great," enthused the occultist, smiling happily at Peter as he scratched Georgie's ears. "Because what if we go on a bust and can't find the ghost? The client's dog or cat might be able to point us in the right direction. Georgie knew Slimer was coming before he got here. And you know what else they say, that dogs and cats can tell when an earthquake is going to hit. I've got a parapsychologist friend out in Southern California and he says his cats hide under his bed every time there's going to be an earthquake. He's doing research on it. When he sees them head there at a run, he makes for the nearest doorway, and he hasn't been wrong once."

"Yeah, Ray, and I hear cockroaches can tell too," put in Winston, sneaking a sideways glance at Peter. "Maybe we should keep a stock of them. Earthquakes can hit Manhattan after all and it'd be a good idea to be prepared."

"Yeah, except the last couple earthquakes I can remember had paranormal origins," Peter reminded them. "There was the pillar of Manhattan going flooey without its orange guck, and Marduk, and that Egyptian bug guy who wanted to sacrifice me. Besides, I don't think we need any more cockroaches around here. There's enough already."

"Inevitable in this city in a building as old as this," Egon reminded him, waving his meter over Ray as the occultist leaned down to listen to Georgie's snorts and growls.

"Yeah, well, it's undignified, Egon," Peter insisted, trying to pretend that dignity was more important than his fear of roaches. "I mean this place is a national monument after all. It ought to be cockroach-free."

"We might do better if you didn't keep all those candy wrappers under your bed or ever wiped off the counter when you've made yourself a snack, Pete," Winston pointed out, grinning hugely.

"Hey," objected Peter and changed the subject quickly before the other two jumped on this bandwagon. "Anyway, there are no candy wrappers under my bed. Go and look if you don't believe me."

"Brownies cleaned under Peter's bed," Ray informed Winston in an amused aside.

"Say what?"

"Well, something did," Peter confirmed. "I have a feeling something sneaked in with all those magazines Ray's got stacked all over the house. I remember that Howard guy's place. Tons of magazines but spick and span for the perfect setting for the next Edgar Allen Poe convention. Maybe he had brownies, too."

"Maybe Mab did it," offered Ray with an excited grin.

"Yeah, right, with her little tail," scoffed Winston.

"Maybe she's a shapeshifter and turns into the woman," Ray continued to theorize. "We never saw the woman until Mab got here after all. It could have been her. Isn't it great?"

"An intriguing theory, Ray, but it falls apart," Egon reminded him. "I took readings of Mab last night, as you'll recall, when you said she was commenting favorably on being petted. There was a momentary surge of transferred energy when you touched her then she read completely normal, for a cat. Since your energy overlay is not high, a brief touch would do no more than stir the meter. Rub Peter's head, as an example."

"I hate that, Egon," Peter complained, but allowed Ray to tousle his hair in the name of science, though he had his comb out immediately to settle it again. Egon took a reading of Peter. "Hmm," he said.

Georgie said, "Don't pet him, pet me," as clearly as Egon might have said, but when Ray lifted his hand again, Peter could only hear him making doggy noises.

"Yikes," Peter exploded, taking a couple of involuntary steps backward, gesturing wildly at the Cocker Spaniel. "The dog talked."

"Yeah, he said I shouldn't pet Peter, I should pet him," confirmed Ray. "Gosh, Peter, isn't it exciting? Do you understand him now?"

"No. Not after you stopped touching me," Peter admitted. "It must be touch-transferrable."

"Wow, this is great!" Ray's eyes were wide with fascination. "Egon, we've gotta run a lot more tests."

Peter groaned. "Is there any room for breakfast in the middle of all this testing?" he asked hopefully, trying to gesture the guys toward the stairs.

"Peter, this could be a major scientific breakthrough, and you're thinking of food?" Egon shook his head and took a reading, without moving from where he stood. "It's what happened last night with Mab. The energies Ray possesses were, in essence, shared when Ray touched you but withdrawn again when he moved his hand. Ray, take hold of my arm. I want to see if it is consistent, and if touching someone bleeds energy off you, or whether you simply enhance the other person."

Ray nodded happily and encircled Egon's wrist with his fingers. Egon bent down to speak to Georgie, his eyes widening in astonishment as the mutt snuffled and grumbled in doggy language.

"How very fascinating," Egon breathed, his eyes wide, his glasses sliding precariously down his nose. "Actual communication with another species. This is intriguing, Raymond." Just before the glasses could slide off altogether he reached up and shoved them into place with his forefinger. "I suggest we summon Slimer before we continue with the testing. It's possible what he will have to say to us will be more useful than Georgie's conversation. And I'm not detecting any lowering of your energy field by sharing it, Ray, any more than your normal life energy would be dispersed by touching someone. Let's see if it works as well if someone touches you. Peter, Winston, gather around. I'll call Slimer." He raised his voice and called the spud as Peter and Winston closed in, Winston grabbing Ray's other wrist and Peter draping his arm around the occultist's shoulders.

Slimer arrived in a few minutes, trailed by Janine, who looked at them curiously, an eyebrow shooting up at the apparent intimacy of their pose. "Cozy," she said, shaking her head, her eyes alight with amusement. "I didn't know this was what it was like when I wasn't here. I would never have thought it of you guys."

"Janine, come closer," Egon instructed, ignoring her teasing. "Touch Ray. I want to try an experiment."

"Well, if you say so." She edged in and took his free hand. "What kind of an experiment? A love-in?"

"It looks like a silly one to me, Janine," said Slimer, giggling. "All you guys bunched together like that. Humans are funny."

Janine's mouth dropped open and she stared, wide-eyed, at the little green ghost. "I never heard Slimer sound so clear in all my life."

"I hate ghosts," moaned Georgie, cowering against Ray's leg. "Don't let him get me, guys. He's scaring me."

"EEEEEGONNN!" screeched Janine, eyes widening. Yanking her hand free she jumped backward, regarding them from the doorway, her hands on her hips. "That dog is talking! I can understand everything he says!"

"Precisely," agreed Egon. "We had a visitor in the night who somehow enabled Ray to understand the language of animals and, evidently, ghosts. The experiment was to determine if touching Ray would enable us to share the experience. It does not bleed off to us permanently. When we let go, we hear Slimer normally and Georgie speaks in the way of animals, in other words incomprehensibly."

"Yeah, and dogs aren't the world's best conversationalists either, Janine," Peter informed her, "though when Egon's caught up in one of his experiments he isn't much better. We'll have to keep Ray around to see if we can make sense of Egon's gobbledegook at times like that." He let go of Ray and took a step or two backwards. "It gets even better, Janine. Some mysterious thing is cleaning my closet, and Ray thinks a big, black demon is about to destroy Manhattan."

"Typical," sniffed the secretary. "So tell me about your midnight visitor. I thought you had alarms and stuff like that to keep anybody from breaking in."

Egon opened his mouth to explain but Peter jumped in first. "She was beautiful and when she appeared to Ray, she was in the buff. When she appeared to me she was wearing Egon's jumpsuit. Makes a guy wonder."

Narrowing her eyes, Janine eyed Egon suspiciously. The physicist spread his hands to proclaim his innocence in matters involving beautiful, naked women. "I never saw her, Janine," he defended himself.

"Yeah, that's what they all say." She turned to study Ray, who blushed under the attention. "And you're the last guy I would've thought it of, Dr. Stantz. Sneaking women in here is more Peter's style. Especially naked ones."

Peter opened his mouth to object, realized Janine knew of two women he actually had sneaked into the firehall, though they hadn't been naked when he brought them in, and left Ray to manage his own defense. Ray did it well, though his cheeks were still a little too pink. The occultist must have really enjoyed the view, thought Peter, hiding a grin. He could tease Ray about this for weeks.

"She was a physical entity, a powerful manifestation with a negative valence on the meter, Janine," the occultist protested. "She wasn't like one of Peter's girlfriends but some kind of spirit. A shapeshifter, maybe. Gosh, she was beautiful. We think the big black whatever-it-was that Mr. Howard saw might be after her, and maybe that's why she's here, because we could protect her."

"I think that's a somewhat unwarranted assumption, Ray," Egon challenged. "Mr. Howard's mysterious entity may have been his imagination. We have nothing other than marginally higher ambient energy to substantiate anything powerful manifesting in the entire Tri-State area. And there is nothing at all to tie your female entity to what he saw, other than the fact that you were reading his journal this morning while I ran tests on you."

"Yeah, but we didn't have any manifestations at all until we got all his magazines here," objected Ray, gesturing at the boxes that held part of Mr. Howard's collection. "I bet that has something to do with it."

"Haunted pulp magazines," Peter said with a grin. "Well, it makes a crazy kind of sense, doesn't it? Those stories already have weird things in them."

"What we have are several different things which may or may not be connected to each other," Egon replied practically. "I believe I will take a reading of the magazines, simply to guarantee they are not behind this." He chose the nearest box of magazines and activated his meter. It reacted, but only faintly, as if the books in themselves were not remotely involved, except that at some time in their past they had been exposed to power.

"Hmm," said Egon, adjusting dials. "Even less than I detected on Mab last night. And there's no reading on Georgie at all."

Ray looked at the books and then back at Georgie who was sitting as far from Slimer as he could get. "I wish I could've talked to Lassie," Ray muttered under his breath, clearly disappointed in what the Cocker Spaniel had had to say.

Peter grinned wickedly. "Ranger Bob, Ranger Bob!" he said in an urgent, doggy voice, "Timmy fell down a big hole. Now's our chance to run off together."

Ray gave him a swat on the arm. "Come on, Peter, Lassie would never say that."

"Only guy I know who cries at Lassie movies," Peter teased him, smiling when Ray pulled a face at him.

"I like Lassie movies," Ray insisted.

"Yeah, and naked women in the bedroom."

Ray's face flamed and he avoided everybody's eyes. "Aw, Peter . . . "

"If you two are done playing, I suggest we make a quick trip to Mr. Howard's home and take readings. Winston, make sure Georgie is secured. I wouldn't want him escaping and disturbing Mab while we're gone."

"What about the birds?" Winston asked, gesturing one-handed at the birdcage while the other clipped the dog's leash to a wall bracket.

"They don't even listen to me," Ray said in disappointment. "Maybe I should try a dolphin."

"Yeah, Ray, we'll rent you Flipper for the duration," Winston said with a smile. "We'll get a big tank and put it next to Ecto. Maybe the lady was living in the books or something."

"You mean like a ghost. A haunted magazine?" Ray brightened at the very thought. "Maybe that's it, Egon. One of the stories was so powerful she came to life."

"In a pulp magazine?" Egon asked with heavy skepticism as they made their way down the stairs, stowing the meter in his pocket.

"Aw, come on, Egon, there were wonderful stories in the early pulps. Some of the really big names were writing for them."

"Yeah, all about ray guns and Martians," Peter put in as he clattered down the stairs in Ray's wake. When they reached the ground floor, he turned to the secretary. "Janine, honey, mind the menagerie when we're gone. When we get back, Ray's gonna ask them how much work you did."

"More than you, that's certain," the secretary retorted as she returned to her desk.

Mr. Howard's house was unoccupied and locked up tight. Egon tried every door and even several of the windows until Peter urged him to cut it out before somebody called in and reported them as housebreakers. Reduced to studying the house from the outside, Egon walked up and down in front of it, taking readings at various spots while Ray trailed behind him, the ecto-scopes over his eyes, pausing now and then to stare up toward the roof.

"Don't they look cute," Peter said to Winston as the two of them leaned against the side of Ecto and watched the scientists do their thing. "Think we could rent them out, uniforms and all? Sort of the New York version of the changing of the guard, even if the jumpsuits don't match those red costumes with the fuzzy hats."

"You could help, Peter," Egon called over to him. "Pull out the magnetometer and see if you can detect any recent afterimages."

"Right, Egon," Peter called back, trying to sound incredibly put upon. "Is that the big grey thing or the big black thing?" As he asked the question, he pulled out the device in question and began to adjust it automatically, looking up to see Egon throwing him a knowing smile as he realized Peter knew exactly what he was doing, which he should after years of Ghostbusting. Though it was often possible to pull the wool over Ray's eyes, fooling Egon was much more difficult and usually entailed sneaking up on him while he was hip deep in research.

As soon as the device was running, Peter studied its readout screen, frowning as he saw what looked like a series of overlapping shapes teeming on the screen. They were too faint to be current, but they had imprinted themselves on the area through frequent visits as fixed repeaters did in haunted houses, and from the way the numbers were changing as Peter shifted the detector toward the house, they were not only plentiful but powerful. This didn't look good.

"Uh, Egon," Peter called, gesturing the physicist over and pointing at the screen. "I think you oughta see this, but I don't think you're gonna like it."

Egon and Ray converged instantly, gathering around the screen and frowning. "Look at that!" Ray burst out in surprise, pushing up the ecto-scopes to see better, eyes wide. "That looks really nasty, doesn't it, Egon?"

"It does indeed, Ray. Multitudinous entities, travelling in a pack. I wonder if that is what Mr. Howard reported in his journal. From the afterimage you've picked up, Peter, they were here long enough or often enough to have imprinted themselves on the area."

"They didn't kill Mr. Howard?" Ray asked uneasily, glancing skyward as if he'd failed to overlook a horde of malicious entities. The thought of a ghost or ghosts killing someone in his town always upset Ray.

"While I assume it would be possible for them to kill--those readings indicate great power--there was no evidence his death was anything but normal. Someone would have reported it if he had died in great fear; it would have shown on his face, or certainly in the tests."

"And maybe they didn't do an autopsy," Peter pointed out reasonably. "If he had a known heart condition and was seeing his doctor regularly, they wouldn't have had to, unless they thought it was suspicious. If he died with a look of stark terror on his face, they would have been suspicious all right, and they weren't."

Ray nodded as he pulled off the ecto-scopes, swinging them idly in his hand. "Yeah, that's right. When I went to see the lawyer he said Mr. Howard had a heart attack while he was asleep and just never woke up, or maybe just a little when he felt the pain. Apparently nobody saw anything strange about his death. He might have been more stressed if he knew there was something hanging around, but he didn't write much in his notebook, just that he'd seen something that one time, unless those torn-out pages had more information. And he didn't call us either, so maybe he wasn't too worried about it. He would have called me if he thought he was in trouble with ghosts or other weird things. I know he would. Even if he didn't have a of money, he would have known he could call me anyway and I'd help him."

"You bet he would, Ray," Peter reassured him, sensing that Ray was becoming upset. "He knew you, and he'd met the rest of us. If he'd had ghost trouble, he would have called us."

"Unless there were things he didn't want us to know," Egon offered.

Ray jerked his head up and stared at Egon in astonishment. "What do you mean, Egon?" he demanded. "What wouldn't he want me to know? He was my friend, after all."

"I mean the woman. We know she must be a physical entity of some kind. And from the PKE readings I just took, I suspect she was here for a considerable time before she came to the firehall." He displayed the meter's screen to Ray. "As you see, I'm picking up faint residuals of the same negative valence you detected last night. She was here. Perhaps the other entities were seeking her rather than trying to frighten Mr. Howard. Maybe he didn't call you because he wanted to protect her and was afraid we'd trap her because she's evidently something like a ghost."

"Or a banshee," Peter added, remembering Egon's earlier comments. "She did have a kind of accent that might have been Irish, after all."

"She was not a banshee, Peter," Egon corrected him. "I still remember Shanna's readings and they were different; only the power levels were similar. I might do a reading of other Irish entities when we return to the firehouse."

"So begorrah, and are these other Irish ghosts likely to be dangerous, Egon?" Peter asked, putting on a bit of an Irish accent.

"Possibly. Some more than others. We don't know what she intended. Maybe she's the one who tore the pages out of the journal, possibly because she was mentioned and she didn't want anyone to know."

"Those are pretty interesting guesses, Egon," Peter said, passing the magnetometer to Winston and leaning his elbow against Egon's shoulder. "But isn't it kind of a leap for you? Theorizing without any proof . . . This does not sound good."

"I am hardly theorizing without proof, Peter. I do have proof, right here, that the same entity visited this house and the firehall. Since Ray's readings were taken immediately after she vanished, I postulate the woman was the one who made the readings. Mr. Howard was a solitary man with no family in town and no one to visit him but Ray and several of his older cronies. If the woman visited him, he would have no doubt been grateful for her company--"

"I sure would," put in Peter irrepressibly. "And so would any sane man I ever met. If you wouldn't, Egon, then I have to say I'm very worried about you."

Egon frowned repressively, continuing as if Peter had not spoken. "--and would have protected her. He knows we are Ghostbusters. It would be logical for him to assume we would automatically bust her."

"I don't want to bust her, I want to talk to her," Ray insisted earnestly, looking a little embarrassed.

"That's not all Pete wants to do," Winston muttered sotto voce as he put the magnetometer into the back of Ecto. "And I'm not so sure about Ray either, this time. Sorry, m'man," he added when Ray looked at him reproachfully. "Though getting a good belt in the stomach might have dampened Pete's, er, ardor a bit. Lucky she didn't hit him any lower."

Peter grimaced at Winston, inwardly shuddering at the thought.

"It takes more than that to dampen Peter's ardor," Ray teased quickly as if he hoped to distract them from the fact that he'd been attracted too, but Peter knew. He took pity on Ray and didn't say so, though.

"I'll have you know that was the first time that ever happened," the psychologist defended himself self-righteously. "Usually I have to fight them off, not the other way around."

"Never mind Casanova here," Winston interrupted. "Do you think those nasty things are after her, big guy?"

Egon frowned. "It's possible. It's also possible they are in league with her. She would be an ideal, er, front man for any attempt at taking over our world. As evidenced by Peter, human males are not immune to her."

"As evidenced by Ray, too," Peter reminded them, giving Ray a sideways grin. "But we don't know that she's evil, Egon, only that she's powerful and she's here, or at least she's at the firehouse. What about those other things? Can you get a good enough reading to figure them out?"

"They appear to be physical entities as well, also with a negative valence, though quite different than hers," Egon replied, making minute adjustments on the PKE meter. "From my readings, we might be able to take them one at a time, but should they attack us en masse, we might well have problems. The traps would hold them, but only if we took them no more than one at a time into any given trap. It is very difficult to bust and confine physical entities, as you are well aware. It might be a wise idea to get out the atomic destabilizer, run a few tests on it, and perhaps put together a second one as backup. Its problem in dealing with a large number of entities is that its effects are not permanent when used against the spirit world. If we fail to capture all the entities, they will quickly revert to their normal state, and I postulate a cumulative decline in the effectiveness of the destabilizer if we keep using it against the same entities."

"You never mentioned anything about a decline before, Egon," Peter reminded him. "How many other little secrets have you been keeping from us about our equipment?"

"There has been no concern before," Egon said quickly. "We've never had to deal with more than one physical entity at a time while using the destabilizer, or blast one more than once."

"Gee, Egon, maybe it wouldn't destabilize you, either, now," Ray offered with interest as if he wanted to run tests right away. Ray was like that.

"Well, let's not try to find out, Ray," Peter said, remembering his horror at the sight of Egon vanishing before his eyes, his scream of pain still hanging in the air. "That was not fun for any of us. I never trusted the destabilizer anyway, not after that."

"I did modifications; it's perfectly safe unless one is struck directly, though I would theorize the opposite effect might happen on destabilized humans. A cumulative buildup," Egon replied. "The equipment is dangerous. Do you believe I would risk the same thing happening to any of you? In any event, I've taken all the readings I need from here. I suggest we return to the firehall so I can put them into the computer and see what patterns I can discern. I also want to take additional readings of Mab, though she appeared normal last night."

"Right, your average talking cat. Maybe she turns into a lady when nobody's looking."

"Yeah, right, Peter," scoffed Winston.

"It is not impossible, Winston," Egon returned, "though I should say it would be impossible without leaving residual readings to that effect. Still, I would like to monitor her reactions when Ray questions her. She might have seen the entities Mr. Howard saw and we might be able to gain more information. Or she might have heard Mr. Howard talking about them. It's entirely possible we could gain considerable knowledge from her."

"And just as possible we can't. Georgie wasn't exactly a scintillating speaker," Winston argued. "He was flat-out boring. I hate the thought of breaking it to my buddy."

"Don't worry about it, Winston. Your buddy doesn't do animal talk, so he'll never know," Peter reassured him as they climbed into Ecto for the journey back to the firehouse.

Janine was waiting when they came back. "Nothing happened while you were gone except for that dog barking like crazy the whole time. He probably suddenly remembered there was a cat in the bedroom," Janine informed them. "I'll be glad when he's gone, and so will Slimer. He teased Georgie the whole time, and drove him nuts."

"Good," said Peter. "I think we can get rid of Georgie any time now. Same for those birds."

"And Mab?" Egon asked, looking at Peter with interest.

Peter hesitated. "I kind of like cats," he admitted. "I used to have one almost that big when I was a kid, and--" he was interrupted by a fresh surge of barking and the sound of Slimer shrieking upstairs, and he began to grin happily at the thought of the chaos they were about to witness.

"Come on, guys," cried Ray and ran for the steps, the other three and Janine falling in behind him. As they reached the third floor, they saw Slimer come zipping out of the bedroom, diving past them down the spiral stairs. The bedroom door now stood ajar as if Slimer had unlocked it; maybe he'd wanted to pit Georgie and Mab against each other in hopes of getting rid of the competition or maybe he'd just forgotten. The dog burst from the lab and thundered toward the bedroom, leash trailing, and Peter realized there was sure to be a confrontation. He headed for the sleeping quarters, only to have Georgie surge ahead of him, frenzied barking proving he had not forgotten Mab. Ray lunged after Peter, Egon pulled out his PKE meter as he followed while Winston dove for the leash which slipped through his fingers. Mab, who had been relaxing on Ray's pillow until chaos had broken out, suddenly seemed to double her size as her fur stood on end. She arched her back, hissing wildly, and Georgie, great thinker that he was, screeched to a stop, intimidated by the cat's awe-inspiring appearance and not quite sure he wanted to take her on. Then, while everyone stood as if frozen, waiting for the next act, Georgie's tail dropped down between his legs and he sidled away, whimpering piteously. The minute he reached the doorway, he headed for the stairs and galloped down them in what was little better than a barely-controlled fall, his toenails clicking rapidly on the metal like Janine's fingernails on the computer keyboard.

Slowly Mab allowed her fur to return to normal. She looked up at the four Ghostbusters and Janine and smiled smugly as if to say, "Look what I just did. Aren't I clever?"

Ray's mouth hung open, since he, of all of them, had just had benefit of translation. "He said you were a nasty lady," he told Mab, looking a little intimidated himself, though he spoke quickly so the others would know what had really happened. "And you said, 'I'll break you, little man, and do not doubt I can, for I have the power of many centuries behind me.' You're not an ordinary cat, are you?" At his words Egon lifted his face from the meter's screen, eyes wide in shock. The antennae were settling down but they were still at attention, blinking rapidly in spite of the abrupt diminution of spiritual energy.

She mewed at him, hesitating as if making a decision then, abruptly, she blurred, enlarged, and shook out the thick black fur into knee-length black hair, tossing her head to make it give her a semblance of clothing as it swirled around her. "I would not mind yon Egon's blue garb again," she said, looking at Peter expectantly. "Come now, lads, don't dawdle."

"I tried to kiss a cat," moaned Peter, gaping at the transformed feline in sheer disbelief. He stood there, stunned, instead of going after garb for the altered creature.

"Oh, hardly a cat, my friend," she said, amusement filling her vivid green eyes as she smiled at him, and there was something faintly predatory in the grin that made Peter a little uneasy. "No, simply a creature who finds the shape amusing and useful in moving around a world that no longer believes in my kind."

"What is she?" questioned Janine, a vast suspicion in her eyes, not to mention a little healthy female jealousy. She looked from the naked woman to Egon and back again, prepared to jump in if she'd seen a look on Egon's face to match Peter's.

"You're a pooka, aren't you?" queried Egon as if it were the most natural question in the world.

At the question, Ray snapped his fingers and breathed, "Wow. I should have thought of that!"

"A pooka?" Peter exchanged a questioning look with Winston. "I thought that was a six foot invisible rabbit or something. Wasn't there a movie about it?"

"If you mean Harvey, that was Hollywood and Jimmy Stewart," snorted Mab as if she could not only change shape but knew her film history backwards and forwards, at least where it related to pookas. "In truth, my kind are somewhat different than that amusing, though inaccurate, film. We can, of course, change our shapes, and more often than not, in times past, we would choose the form of a horse, but in this day and age, horses are not so common or so practical for those of us who prefer city life. As you saw of yon Georgie, most dogs are idiots, and I would not prefer to live a life of slavish devotion. Cats, on the other hand, are agile and aloof and can go about virtually unnoticed, even when we do things to help the humans with whom we live."

"You cleaned my closet, didn't you?" Peter asked her in sudden delight, realizing no one else could have done it, certainly not in the time he'd been in the shower. He still couldn't quite get used to the fact that she was standing there wearing nothing but her abundant hair and that moments before she'd looked like a normal cat. The fact that she was beautiful with a knock-em-dead body didn't do much to aid his suddenly-rapid breathing.

"And why not? I am living here for a time, until I move on, and I could not abide such a muddle. But you--" her eyes moved slowly and lingeringly up and down his body, flashing with appreciation that made Peter feel a little smug and a little nervous at the same time-- "ah, you are a fine young figure of a man, and enough to tempt a woman, even one who has been around the world as long as I have. For you know, Dr. Venkman, we are nearly immortal, so close as makes no difference in the short run."

"Wow," breathed Ray again. "This is great. I've heard about pookas before; they're kind of like brownies, Peter, spirits that often live with humans and do things for them, but they can be mischievous, too. Did Mr. Howard know you were a pooka?" he asked her, intrigued.

"Aye. He was a lonely man, and even my kind needs companionship. Many an evening, I would shift form and we would read together. When he became ill, he worried about me, though I needed none such. Easily could I have slipped away and found another home, but I remembered you and suggested I might come here. Because there will be a time, and very soon now, when you will have need of me." She took the coverall Egon finally passed her, murmured a quick, "Thank you," and put it on with a complete lack of self-consciousness that robbed the gesture of anything erotic in spite of her loveliness. Peter wished old Spengs hadn't been so quick about fetching it because he'd been enjoying the view, probably more than he should, but he was smart enough not to protest aloud.

"About time, too," muttered Janine, eyeing Egon suspiciously.

"So what's a pooka, man?" Winston asked, leaning closer to Egon. He looked like the vision of Mab in her nakedness had taken its toll of him, too, but then only Egon seemed relatively unaffected by the sight of her, and that may have just been the physicist's excellent control.

"As Ray said, they are spirits who often live among humans," he responded pedantically, and Peter grinned because the very dryness of his tone revealed that the sight of Mab had not left him entirely unmoved. As if he sensed Peter's sudden amusement, he carefully avoided the psychologist's eye as he continued dryly, "There are several names for them, including the English 'puck'. They are shapeshifters as we have seen and often appear in the form of a black animal or sometimes a cross between animal and man."

"Or woman," Peter said in an instructive aside to Ray, whose cheeks turned slightly pink.

"Pookas," said Egon in a slightly louder tone, ignoring Peter's remark as beneath his dignity, "often do helpful things around the house, much as brownies do--witness your bed and closet, Peter. And it seems I recall reading in at least one source that they are capable of enabling humans to understand the speech of animals. As you evidently did to Ray," he observed to Mab, lifting a questioning eyebrow.

"I thought I might well have the need to pass a warning in my cat form, and I sensed that, of all of you, Ray was the one most likely to listen," she returned, the faintest hint of an accent lingering in her voice, giving it a particularly charming cast, but then that might be part of her stock in trade. "His is an open and trusting nature, while the rest of you for various reasons, would have been more inclined to doubt if I suddenly spoke to you in my feline form. You, my lad," she informed Peter with a knowing smile, "prefer to be a cynic and a skeptic and would also suspect Egon or Ray of playing a trick on you. You," she added, turning to Winston, "might listen, but not as quickly as Ray, and would be inclined to waste time in reacting with surprise. And you, my intellectual friend," she added knowingly to Egon, "would waste time trying to understand the phenomenon rather than acting upon the warning itself. So I chose Ray, for he would be the most ready to believe and to do what is necessary. Now, of course, you have reasoned it out, especially since I was unable to control my reaction to the unexpected arrival of the dog and your meter detected me. I doubt Mr. Howard would have considered the possibility of your equipment, training, and willingness to believe in the unbelievable, and neither did I until I listened to your theorizing. Thus when Georgie broke in and Ray heard me warn the beast away, I knew the time had come to reveal myself, especially since the meter had given me away. It was difficult enough last night to befuddle you into making you believe your fine and fancy devices gave only cat readings from me."

"Hmmm," said Egon, unoffended but intrigued, and took another reading of Mab. This time, the meter reacted as expected in such a situation, beeping and blinking while the needle stirred and gave off indications in the negative range, and Egon nodded. "Yes, considerable power. This is what the residual readings indicated last night." He nodded to Mab. "We would have discovered you eventually. If nothing else, while you were sleeping the readings would have told, if you could not maintain the illusion without concentration."

"Most likely. I realized that last night but today I was curious. I wanted to see how far you could take it. When I realized Ray had Mr. Howard's journal and that you were interested in the 'black shape' I knew I should have to reveal myself eventually."

"No doubt," agreed Egon, shutting off the meter, satisfied with its readings. "I have done little research about pookas until now though Ray, undoubtedly knows more."

Ray nodded excitedly. "Lots of things. They can be vindictive if crossed, but they also can protect humans from evil spirits."

"And that," agreed Egon knowingly, "may be the crux of the matter. Why did you and Mr. Howard feel we might have need of you?"

"Evil spirits, Ray?" Peter asked uneasily, sharing a concerned glance with Winston. He didn't like the sound of that at all.

"It is not entirely my doing," the pooka admitted. "The spirits did not begin by seeking me. I was not their primary target. In fact they had none when they came here, crossing into this world, perhaps to see if they could find interesting prey. Their kind rarely plans as far ahead. I believe it to be a collection of spirits, hobgoblins, perhaps, that migrate together as if in a herd, and the shape we have seen is most likely the sight of them, flying in a body. They are evil and enjoy harming people, and are actually capable of killing humans who interfere with them. No doubt they have already begun, for they first came here several months ago when Mr. Howard was still alive. They are not ghosts, Egon, and would not essentially alter your 'ambient energy levels' of ectoplasm, for they are physical manifestations which can become insubstantial rather than ectoplasmic beings such as ghosts. What you must do with your equipment is monitor the negative valences such as you read with me, as I, too, am a physical entity. Do you keep a regular reading of such?"

"Not in general," confessed Egon, a disgusted look upon his face.

"We really haven't needed to before," Ray replied, giving Egon a reassuring grin. "Most of what we see are ghosts or nether entities, beings from the Netherworld or other dimensions or ghosts of humans, occasionally demons, but they all have positive valences. Once in awhile we get negative readings. The Bogeyman was like that."

"Yes, I knew of his demise, or rather, his incarceration," she said unnecessarily. "There are many of my kind who were glad to see the last of him. But that is not the point. The hobgoblins will come for the four of you."

"I knew I wasn't going to like this," Peter muttered in an aside to Winston, leaning his elbow on the other man's shoulder and sharing a rueful look with him. "We're gonna have to run around saving the world again, aren't we?"

"Possibly," Mab told him. She smiled at him, a wonderfully intimate smile that held the promise of incredible things to come. Peter sighed inaudibly. "And of course I will help you, if I can. All of you. You see, in their visits to this plane they have discovered you have the ability to trap and contain their kind, and they do not like it. They mean to break into this building, destroy the containment unit and free the ghosts within. There are many of them, perhaps twenty, enough to divide up and lure you away while the rest of them come here. They are not yet ready though they are very close now. I will be able to sense it when they are, and I worried it the time would come before I was brought here. They last visited your world last night and they were nearly prepared to act. They do not know, yet, that I am here, but I suspect they sensed me at Mr. Howard's home. He saw them, not once but four times, in the form of a huge, black shadow against the sky. He wrote of it in his journal, but I removed those pages to give to the four of you. I did not want strangers to see them. I will fetch them presently. But he knew of the threat. No," she said quickly and reassuringly when Ray opened his mouth to question her, his concern spelled out on his face, "it did not kill him. I was with him at the end, and his death was natural. I did what I could for him and even resumed human form and called 911 for him, but it did no good. It was his time to go." She turned her face away for a moment. "Though he knew me mostly in my feline form, he was good to me. For the first time in years, decades, even centuries, I allowed myself to care for a human's wellbeing. It--my kind rarely do that, for your kind are too ephemeral, you die so quickly. But, I--miss him." Her voice quivered slightly, her eyes suddenly bright.

"Hey," said Peter gently, easing forward and resting his hand on her shoulder, sympathetic to her display of human unhappiness, realizing her kind seldom allowed themselves to know grief. "It's okay to feel that way. I know it hurts, but that's how we can tell we're alive. For a human he had a good, long life and he enjoyed it, and his death was natural. It's all right to mourn for him and to miss him."

"And he had a special friend to visit him at the end," she added, turning with a smile, the pain already fading, her eyes seeking out Ray. "Your visits meant a great deal to him, Ray."

"I should have come more often," Ray began automatically, sounding a little downcast.

She shook her head before Peter could jump in, touching the occultist's cheek briefly with her fingers, making Ray's face flame. "No. He knew how important your work was. It thrilled him you came at all."

"Told you, Ray," Peter said automatically.

"Well, I still wish I'd gone more," Ray insisted stubbornly, though that sounded like part of the normal grieving process rather than an incorrect acceptance of blame. "I sure miss him."

"So do I," Mab agreed, giving Ray a quick hug. She kissed his cheek and released him, and when he lifted his head his eyes were shining.

"Back to the hobgoblins," Egon said gravely; he probably thought Ray could use a distraction about then. "If they mean to threaten us, we don't have time to waste on talking birds or dogs. We must prepare for the danger in the most efficient way possible."

"Egon's right, guys," Janine put in, folding her arms across her chest in sudden determination. "And I'm going to have to help you. You'll need every proton pack you can get this time. I could even call Louis and have him come over."

"Louis Tully with a proton pack gives the other side better odds," Peter shuddered, shaking his head, though he knew it might come to that. The little accountant fancied himself a Ghostbuster and had donned a pack on more than one occasion, not always with stellar results. "He nearly blasted me the last time he tried to use one."