"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."

"Well, yeah, but the hobgoblins don't know that," Janine replied encouragingly. "They'd just see one more weapon against them. So what're we gonna do, Egon?"

"We will need to trap the entities," Egon replied, "and, based on our history of dealing with physical entities, that will be difficult. Mab, if you will fetch the missing pages from the journal, we'll get to work and see what we can accomplish. Now that I know to monitor the negative valence readings we can determine the strength of the entities and their presence. We'll have to use the destabilizer on them but that could be difficult."

"I hate it when he says, 'difficult'," Winston observed to Peter as he led Georgie toward the stairs.

The missing pages of Mr. Howard's journal indicated that he had seen the dark shape four more times, with progressively smaller intervals between visits. Egon and Ray pored over the crumpled sheets, one or the other of them reading bits aloud when they came to something that might prove useful. There was no mention of Mab at all, as if the man had determined to keep her secret and protect her from the rest of the world, even the Ghostbusters. What was evident as they read was that Mr. Howard was an intelligent man with a subtle sense of humor who was still given to leaps of logic--or so it would appear to anyone who did not realize he had inside knowledge from Mab. His guesses might have appeared no more than age-induced paranoia to anyone reading the book who did not have Ghostbusting equipment or someone like Mab to confirm his speculation. Egon realized Mab had detached the pages in hopes that his distant relatives or his attorney would not read them and assume the old man had been senile.

It was also fortunate the will had been probated as quickly as it had. The family he seldom saw had no objection to being rid of his 'musty old' magazines and didn't care about the cat as long as they got his money, and the will was completely straightforward. Kramer, the attorney, had done his best to hurry things, since Howard had expressed concern about his cat. He had expected Mab to tell the Ghostbusters what was going on, though of course he had not expected to die exactly when he did. Reading the journal, Ray looked quite sad as he found bits where Howard had expressed plans for the future, hopes of future visits from himself. Peter hung around, offering Ray the distraction of his presence and just the right words to ease the youngest Ghostbuster's inevitable guilt about not visiting more often. Peter might well present a frivolous facade to strangers but when the chips were down, his teammates knew how much they could rely upon him. Peter had been quietly there for Ray since the old man had died, though he made no production about it.

Eventually, Peter managed to steer Ray's thoughts to the challenge that awaited them and after that Ray was gung ho to stop the entities. He questioned Mab at length, so caught up in the crisis that he forgot to be embarrassed around her except when a casual or unwary movement on her part reminded the occultist of her first appearance.

Peter had gone through his clothes and opened up some packed-away boxes and produced for her a green sweater and a long full skirt that fit her better than Egon's jumpsuit had, along with several choices of underwear. They must have belonged to one of his former girlfriends. Mab had spared him a particularly knowing look as he passed them over causing Peter to look away briefly. Vanishing into the bathroom, Mab returned in the new outfit, looking more strikingly beautiful than before, if such were possible. Egon quickly repressed this thought. He didn't have time to indulge in fanciful fantasies about the pooka, and Janine, who had been hanging around all afternoon, gave him a suspicious look as if she'd guessed the direction his thoughts had taken. She didn't say anything, but then she didn't need to. Janine had a wider range of pointed glares and speaking expressions than any other woman Egon had ever met.

The end result of their research with the journal indicated the entities were coming with increasing regularity, always at night. They did damage, though most of the information about its nature must have come from Mab. In a city the size of New York, there were always unexplained crimes, even unexplained deaths. Egon frowned as he considered the possibility the entities had been doing anything as final as that.

"We should have been told sooner," he said sternly to Mab. "If anyone has died as a result of this entity, we've fallen down on the job."

"Hardly. You were unaware of the creatures until today," she said coolly before Peter could open his mouth to protest Egon's assumption of guilt or stop Ray from jumping on the same train. "Should they have taken to deaths I would have simply walked out of the animal storage facility and come here to tell you or, failing that, contrived to telephone. You forget, Egon, I am a powerful entity myself. I would have known; I would have felt spirit-induced deaths, especially when they originally felt an interest in my presence, though they could not quite sense me as a cat. They may well kill, but they have not yet done so. However, time is short, and if Ray had not brought me here today I might have needed to take action."

"Let me get this straight," Winston said seriously, a frown upon his face. "These hobgoblin things can actually kill people?"

"Most ghosts have the capacity in one way or another, and these more than most as they are physical beings," Mab said in an offhand voice as if the subject was frivolous and unrelated. "That does not mean they will do so automatically or every time they encounter a lone, unprotected human. Just as one of you could pick up a rock and bash in someone's head. You would not do it either. However, these hobgoblins may well consider it and enjoy it, because they would draw strength from the fear their victims would feel before they died. The hobgoblins' primary targets might first be innocent New Yorkers, as such would draw you away from here, leaving the Containment Unit unguarded. However, they might simply come here first and try to rid the world of you before they freed the others ghosts. Then they could feed at their leisure." Janine shivered at the idea and Winston's grimaced expressively. Mab nodded and continued, "They have been near here several times; you would call it 'casing the joint'," she concluded with a slow smile.

"We would have detected them," Egon began, then paused thoughtfully. He took readings with the magnetometer, trying for the same overlay of images Peter had gotten at the Howard house. The readings were fainter; there was less of an overlay here, but there was enough for Egon to realize the entities had been here at least half a dozen times. Unless meters had been active at the time or someone had happened to look out the window as they hovered over the firehall, there would have been no way to detect them. Egon frowned, realizing he needed to do more than monitor standard ectoplasmic frequencies on a regular basis.

"So let me get this straight," demanded Janine. "Those nasty things have been hanging around checking us out? And any time now they're going to burst in and attack?"

"Not before dark, Janine," Peter told her with a wicked grin. "You'll be safe at home when that happens."

"Oh, no, you don't, Dr. V. I said I'd put on a pack for this and I will. Do you think they'll come tonight?"

"If not tonight, soon," Mab replied. "Perhaps tomorrow night. They are not quite ready. I would have contacted you tonight if Ray had not fetched me when he did."

"The old anonymous phone call?" Peter asked, lifting an eyebrow. "Or talking to Ray as a cat? You think that would have been enough?"

"I do not know which I would have done but I would have been persistent, and you would not have overlooked the threat," she replied. "I considered telling Ray last night but feared he would awaken the rest of you. My kind does not reveal itself to humankind easily. The habit of too many centuries makes us wary. There have been humans who have feared and threatened us. True, we are a powerful lot, but we have our vulnerabilities." She tossed her head, the long hair flying then drifting down to her shoulders again as if she could control it, even against gravity. "It matters little now. You have found me out, and I confess I am enjoying the attention."

Peter grinned. "I can give you plenty of attention," he offered hopefully, crooking an eyebrow at her.

"Do not tempt me," she returned, eyes narrowing slightly, though not before Egon had noticed a gleam of enjoyment there at Peter's words. "You would find my kind dangerous to yours in the end. And I should hate to destroy you for presumption." She smiled regally.

Peter gulped. "It might be worth it, you know."

Her eyes lit up. "Ah, you are a one," she said, giving him a smile that seemed to warm and amuse him at the same time, and reaching out to tousle his hair. "But no, alas. We have too much to do. The entities have been here and they will come back. Worse, they have had time to study you thoroughly. They are implacable and remorseless but they are also intelligent. You Ghostbusters may be the first ones they destroy, but if they succeed with you, you will not be the last. That is why I did not believe they had done any killing yet. Word of mysterious deaths might have reached your ears, alerting you too soon. They did not find me for I wrapped my cat-ness around me, blocking them out. It is easy for a pooka to submerge herself into the animal form. I know some of my kind who did it so completely they were unable to find their way out again and lost themselves in animal shape, to live out the life span of the beast and die. It is easy, sometimes too easy. Long life is not always a blessing and some of us have chosen that means of death deliberately because we needed more than years."

"Yeah, it's hard, being alone," agreed Peter with sudden and complete understanding. He had a knack of doing that, switching from being annoying to utterly sympathetic in a short stretch of time and back again. Even when Egon was most irritated with Peter, that quality would emerge and remind Egon, not that he needed reminding, why Peter was such a valued friend.

Peter glanced around at the others. "I always thought immortality was overrated," he added, "at least if you couldn't take your buddies along for the ride."

"I think it'd be great," Ray said quickly, then caught what Peter had meant. "But not without you guys," he added, looking at the other Ghostbusters.

"Precisely," said Mab, nodding. "Yes, there are many of us, and yes there are bonds of caring between, but in some ways we are like those of faerie. We lose . . . you would call it humanity, I believe, after too long an existence. 'Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart'." Egon recognized the quote, it was from William Butler Yeats. "We sacrifice too much: feelings, caring, the awareness of passing time and our place in the time stream. Things matter less to us," Mab explained, "things that were once vital. Even love; after so long a time, that, too, is a burden." She made a hasty gesture, as if brushing away her words and any pain that might accompany them. "When the hobgoblins caught a whiff of me and came hunting new prey I became as a cat, clinging to my reality by a thread. They did not find me. They searched, too, for I could feel it. I think they knew how dangerous I had become to them. Last night, I lay waiting and felt them come, felt them drift around the windows, studying you as you slept. Had they attacked, I would have awakened you but I felt them leave and that is when I resumed human form and gifted Ray with his understanding of the animals."

"And Slimer, too," Ray reminded her, both excited by her words and a little sad as if he felt sorry for her solitary state and the hardness that must have formed around her heart. "I could always make out what Slimer wanted unless he was too excited or really scared, but now it's a lot clearer. Do you think he knows anything about the entities?"

"Beyond doubt. But it is his nature to fear it only when the threat is present. He would remember, of course, but would not think to tell you in the morning, unless you knew to ask. Do not think he wishes you ill, for he loves you all with his entire essence. It is simply not a part of him to reason as humans do."

"Yeah, the spud's not a great thinker," said Winston though there was a thread of fondness through his voice.

"But he's got a good heart," Janine defended Slimer. "I think you should talk to him, Ray, and ask him about the hobgoblins or whatever they are. He might know some useful things." She turned to Mab. "So could we have this gift of understanding, too, for a little while? It sounds like we're gonna be hip deep in nasty spooks soon, and they're a real threat to everything we care about. We wouldn't need to have the gift for always, but it would sure help us get through this particular crisis. You say you're here to help us. Well, that would be a good start."

Mab's eyes narrowed as if she felt it presumptuous of Janine to have asked and Egon felt his muscles bracing themselves to leap forward and intervene if Mab was offended enough to take action against the redheaded woman. Peter must have sensed it, too, because he stepped forward with his most engaging grin.

"I've gotta say, listening to Slimer has never been one of my main ambitions, but this whole mess sounds pretty bad. You've been trying to help Mr. Howard and now us and it sounds like the hobgoblins are after you as well as us. I know I'd be glad of any kind of edge you could give us; we could help each other, what do you say?"

She studied him a moment, her face thoughtful, then she nodded. "A part of me likes you too well, lad, and because of that, another part of me likes you not at all. But the side that likes you is stronger. Very well. You may all understand your little ghost, aye, and even the hobgoblins, until this is past, though they speak several languages and will be careful to deceive you if possible. So you will understand them intermittently, and sometimes not at all. The moment the last of them is destroyed or taken in one of your traps, the ability will go again. It will not be permanent."

Ray's face fell, and Mab softened, looking at him. "Would I allow it any of you, it would be you, Ray, but it is not for mortals on a longterm basis. It would change you, make you different; you would no longer be the same Ray your friends love so well. In the end, it would begin to eat at your humanity, much the way remaining too long in animal form would change me, and eventually it would trap you forever. I have not known you Ghostbusters long nor well, but one thing I do know is that you would all be lost each without the others, and I will do nothing to alter that."

Peter's eyes narrowed and he studied Ray as if to make sure the occultist hadn't already been changed beyond recognition. Ray gave him his usual quick smile in return and Peter relaxed, but not completely. Attracted as he was to Mab, he did not wholly trust her, and while he likely felt he could handle himself and fast talk his way out of any trouble he'd inadvertently talked himself into, he wouldn't take the same risks with any of the others.

Mab seemed to understand that. Perhaps that was why she went to him first, reaching out and cupping his face in her hands. Peter leaned into the touch, a gesture that was completely involuntary and most likely hormonal because his breathing quickened. Mab leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth, which made Peter try to put his arms around her and draw her against him. She ended the kiss and slipped away, a contented little smile turning up the corners of her lips. "You are done," she told him. "Animals will now speak lucidly to you." Peter heaved a sigh of sheer delight which was most likely over the kiss and not over the thought of holding long, involved debates with Slimer.

"It didn't take a kiss with me," objected Ray, looking disappointed.

"You were easier, Ray," Mab informed him. "You accept and trust much more easily than my fine boy-o here. He required direct contact, as will Egon." Facing Janine, she said, "I do not attempt to steal what is not mine. Do not try my patience with petty jealousy." Then she kissed Egon. Her lips were warm and soft and full of a magic he realized went with her powers though the knowledge did not stop the purely physical reaction that pulsed through his body like fire. When Mab lifted her mouth from his, he knew his face was blank and idiotic and he did his best to control his expression and his reaction.

Janine's eyes narrowed and her mouth traced a taut line. Without speaking she stalked over to Egon, put her arms around his neck and drew him down to her. She kissed him with a fierce intensity that completely swamped the memory of Mab's alien kiss and sent a more familiar fire zipping along his veins. Egon was not as a rule inclined to encourage Janine, but this time he suspected it would be more than his life was worth to draw away, so he hugged her, aware of how light she felt in his arms and gave the kiss everything he could. When Janine finally broke the kiss, his breathing was rapid, and so was hers. She stood there looking at him for a moment, then she gave a nod of satisfaction and backed off. Egon watched her move away with pure regret.

Peter opened his mouth, no doubt to say something irreverent, and Egon froze him in his tracks with a cool look. Amusement gleamed in the psychologist's green eyes, though he evidently thought better of saying anything.

Wearing a look of equal delight, Mab advanced on Winston, cupped his face in her hands and bestowed upon him his kiss. He let himself enjoy it, smiling at her when she backed away, though he seemed to feel no involvement with the woman.

"And now Janine," Mab said, turning on the secretary, who took a hasty step backward at the thought of being smooched by the pooka. Peter started to speak and was halted by Mab, who lifted her hand in his direction and said, "Now, Peter . . . " in a voice that left no doubt as to her meaning. Peter shut up.

"I'd pay money to be able to do that," muttered Winston with sheer enthusiasm. "Usually you can't get him to be quiet, no matter what's happening."

Peter made a face at him.

Mab grasped Janine's hand and stepped in close to the shorter woman. Bending her head, she dropped the kiss on the secretary's forehead, then backed away with a smile. Janine looked a little stunned but she collected herself immediately and said, "Okay, so where's Slimer anyway? I want to see how this works."

Mab gave one of her smiles and moved over to Ray, who was standing watching her. Before he could realize what she intended, she cupped his face in her hands as she had done with the others and kissed him too, taking her time over it. When she finished, Ray's face was beet red, but his smile stretched from ear to ear.

"I did not want it wearing off too soon," she said, and Egon realized she had done as she had because Ray had stood there looking as if he'd missed something that the others had all been allowed to share. Mab smiled and moved over to stand beside Peter, almost as if she had been drawn there. That made Egon narrow his eyes ever so slightly, though he decided there was nothing he could say. He'd simply keep his eye on Peter to make sure the psychologist didn't dig himself into a hole he couldn't escape on his own. "Now we are ready to work," she said.

"Hey, I'm always ready to work," insisted Peter with a big grin. "Just ask anyone, and they'll tell you--"

"Indeed we will, Peter," said Egon knowingly but didn't take it any further. With Peter, that was enough, and he could see it in his friend's eyes.

Peter opened his mouth hastily and yelled, "Yo, Spud! Front and center!" Since he was standing close to Egon at the time, the physicist winced, putting up his hand to his ear and favoring Peter with a dark look.

Peter grinned irrepressibly, then winced as Slimer zipped into the room, looked around, and flung himself on Peter with a big hug, smearing slime down the front of Peter's jumpsuit. Pushing away the ghost, Peter said, "Back off, Spud. I don't want to get slimed."

"But it's so much fun to tease you," Slimer replied, his mouth opening in a huge grin.

"I knew it," groaned Peter, trying to scrape away the proof of the little green ghost's affection, tossing lumps of ectoplasmic residue away, choosing his angle carefully so one lump of it managed to hit Egon on the neck and trickled unpleasantly down the inside of his collar. Moving prudently out of the way, Egon scrubbed at the slime while Peter continued in a heavily put-upon voice, "I knew I was put on this earth to be a target, but did anybody ever believe me? No."

Ray broke off laughing to gesture at the giggling ghost. "We can all understand you better now, Slimer, so you'd better watch what you say around Peter, or you'll give him too much ammunition. And we need your help."

"Sure, Ray. What can Slimer do?" was the ready response. He looked as agreeable as usual and Egon was suddenly sure they would not be treated to a dazzling display of erudition.

"Tell him, Mab," urged Ray, and Slimer eyed the beautiful pooka with interest. "Not a cat any more," he said with great regret as if he'd known all along that Mab was a shapeshifter but hadn't thought to mention that interesting fact, then he shook himself hard enough to send slime flying. "No more cat fur in Slimer's food," he exulted, bouncing in the air to demonstrate his delight.

"You know Mab was a cat?" asked Winston, intrigued.

Slimer nodded his head so hard his whole body bobbed up and down. "Sure. Slimer saw her like that. Saw cat and lady, both at the same time. But guys saw her as a cat." He scrunched up his face. "Why can't guys see cat and lady at once?"

"Because I didn't wish it, Slimer," Mab told him. She beckoned him closer and put her hand on top of his head. "Slimer, the Ghostbusters want to ask you some questions. Do you know what hobgoblins are?"

Slimer grimaced, instantly wrapping his arms around her neck and clinging for all he was worth. It was clear Peter envied the little ghost the position, though Peter would hardly be shaking with fear if he stood in Slimer's place. "Bad, bad ghosts," Slimer moaned. "Nasty ghosts. They eat other ghosts, like Slimer. Make them go away, Pretty Lady."

She detached him gently, looked down at herself, and shook her head as if the slime that stained her clothing was a new experience and one she would have preferred to avoid for the rest of her very long life. "Your friends will protect you, Slimer. That is what they do. But tell us, have you seen or sensed hobgoblins snooping around this structure?"

Slimer hesitated, then he nodded. "Lots of them, come at night, when guys are sleeping. Peek in windows, scare Slimer."

"How come you never told us about them, Spud?" Ray asked sympathetically.

"Slimer hide," the little ghost explained as if he couldn't understand why Ray had even bothered to ask. "Didn't want them to see me. Hide under Peter's bed, or under Peter's pillow."

From the look of utter disgust on Peter's face, he was clearly remembering that particular incident. "Well, don't do it again," he said shortly.

"Slimer will try to remember. Bad ghosts come in dark, and Slimer hides, but then they go away again."

"And once they were gone, he probably just forgot about them because they weren't a threat to him any more," Winston muttered in disgust. "Slimer, if they come again when we're asleep, wake us up and we'll protect you."

"You can't," said Slimer positively. "Only make bad ghosts mad. Too many for traps, hurt Ghostbusters, kill you guys. Slimer loves you. Better to hide." He edged over to Ray and hugged him, probably knowing Ray wouldn't reject him when he was so clearly miserable.

"So he hides to protect us and then doesn't even tell us about it," grumbled Peter, eyeing Slimer darkly. "With those kind of friends, who needs enemies?"

Mab's eyes flashed. "Do not be so quick to condemn," she instructed Peter. "Yes, he was afraid, but he also acted out of love for you. Are there so many folks in this great wide world who love you that you can afford to spurn even one of them?"

Peter hesitated. He didn't look as if he relished having that pointed out to him, but the fact it was Mab who had said it denied him the right to argue. Opening his mouth to speak, he caught himself then shut it again. "Yeah, okay," he conceded reluctantly, "but it put us in a lot of danger."

"True. But he is a gentle soul who does not mean you ill. Allow for his limitations and enjoy him as much as you can. Slimer?" she questioned softly.

He lifted his head from Ray's shirt front and looked at her expectantly.

"When did the hobgoblins come last?" she wanted to know.

Slimer considered it. Not particularly gifted at understanding linear time, he had to think back, using his fingers to count on. When that brought him up short, he protruded a third hand from the middle of his chest and counted on those fingers, too. Then he brightened into a big smile. "Last night before Mab was a lady," he said triumphantly.

Peter frowned, looking from Slimer's delighted face to the multitude of fingers, then he shook his head. "If they came last night they must have sensed Mab, or maybe they sensed her and stayed further away. Maybe that's why they didn't try anything then."

"Highly likely, Peter," Egon agreed. "Since both she and they possess negative valences, there might be a recognition factor. I have, however, set up an alarm system to detect the presence of entities with negative valences. The fact the hobgoblins travel in a pack will make it easier for us to detect them at a greater distance. What I would like to do now is modify a spare thrower to function as an atomic destabilizer. I'll need you for that, Ray."

"Sure, Egon. Winston can help, too."

"You got it," agreed the black man. "What about Peter?"

"I thought I'd keep Mab company," Peter said hopefully, casting an enquiring and hopeful eye at the pooka.

She looked amused, but she shook her head. "No, lad. I have tasks I must perform. I will go out into the city and see if I can detect any damage from the hobgoblins. No, you cannot come with me. I will go places where you could not pass unharmed. I will skirt the borders of the shadow realms. And I could, I would take you with me for you amuse me as no mortal has done for centuries, but I think to encourage you would be wrong."

"Wrong? Why would it be wrong?" Peter argued stubbornly.

She merely shook her head. "I will return before dark," she said and walked out of the lab, her head high. Slimer followed her to the stairs and returned again. "Pretty lady," he said with a sigh. "Slimer likes her a lot."

"Yeah," agreed Ray, nearly matching the ghost's tone, causing Peter to look at him sharply. Egon hadn't worried about Peter falling in love with Mab because Peter was simply being Peter, madly in lust and prepared to enjoy the game as far as he could take it, pushing to the limits. He was smart enough to recognize 'unattainable' when it came his way and quite happy to take what he could get, though he'd try as hard as he could to get as much as possible, as long as the threatened danger didn't need to be faced first. It was simply Peter's nature. But Ray had followed her with his eyes ever since she had shifted from cat form, and from the way he'd babbled last night about 'the most beautiful woman I ever saw' Egon suspected Ray was smitten badly.

Peter draped his arm around Ray's shoulders and steered him over to the lab table. "Hold that thought," he said. "She's a powerful entity, Ray. She's dangerous."

"You keep flirting with her," Ray said reproachfully. "And she could turn you into a toad if she wanted to."

"He already is one, remember," Winston put in with gleeful amusement. "Remember when that magician's assistant had to kiss a toad to come out of hypnosis and it took Peter kissing her to bring her out?"

Peter made a face at him then turned back to Ray. "Hear me out, Tex," he said. "I've been around a little and I'm the team's expert on the opposite sex. Besides, she's a little in lust with me. Nothing's gonna come of it--and believe me I'm sorry about that--but I know what she is. There are some things you just don't mess with. Believe me, I know when to stop. I'm not gonna offend her. We need her help."

"I know, Peter," Ray agreed, his face wistful. "But she's so beautiful."

"She's probably nine hundred years old. Believe me, kid, you don't want to get involved with older women. They always think they know better than you and it just doesn't work out. Just remember, you're the one she thought was worthy to see her first and you're the one she let talk to the animals before Janine convinced her to let the rest of us do it."

Ray nodded, clearly not entirely happy with the situation. He didn't fall in love easily, being somewhat diffident in affairs of the heart and more than a little shy around beautiful women. He'd even been shy of Janine at the very beginning, though he'd gotten over that long ago. He knew Mab wasn't human and therefore both dangerous and beyond his reach, but a part of him still wanted her. He heaved a sigh, managed a smile for Peter and turned to the table. "Where's that spare thrower, Egon?" he asked, his voice abruptly businesslike. "We've got a lot of work to do."

Egon caught Peter's eye over Ray's bent head. Stay around. Peter nodded, getting the message. "While you mad scientists play, I'm gonna hunt through all these weird reference books you keep around here and see if I can find out anything more about the hobgoblins," he decided. "Want to help me, Janine? You can turn the pages for me and mop my brow when the work gets too strenuous."

"Slap your face, you mean," she retorted, but when Peter handed her a book, she took it and opened it to the table of contents. Peter himself reached out and grabbed Tobin's Spirit Guide and began to flip through it expertly as if he had a pretty good idea where to hunt for creatures like the hobgoblins.

"Winston, you get on the computer," Egon suggested. "Go on line and see if you can pick up anything about weird sightings."

"Yeah, I'll skim the TobiNet," Winston agreed and headed for the computer, switching it on becoming busy immediately. Winston loved computers.

"Rather him than me," said Peter, who tended to have a rather adversarial relationship with computers. His solution to every crisis was a cold boot and Egon had long ago warned Peter not to mess with the computers when no one was there to bail him out. So Peter contented himself with using the computer only under his buddies' supervision or for playing games. Egon wondered if Peter were really as inept as he pretended. Long ago he'd used such tactics to keep people from learning how talented he really was in many areas, and he still did, even with the guys who knew better. Knowing Peter, he probably knew a little more about computers than he let on, too.

The four of them and Janine worked in comfortable silence for several hours, broken only by the occasional comment from Egon to Ray or vice versa as they passed tools back and forth, a wisecrack from Peter as he read choice bits aloud from the books and the odd computer noises from Winston's direction. Nothing Peter found in the books seemed to be very useful; when he'd find something, he'd call Ray over, who'd check it out and make note of it. But until they took actual readings of the hobgoblins, they probably would not know the exact nature of the threat they faced. Janine went periodically to check the answering machine, to see if any of the calls might tie in to the hobgoblin pack, but none of them seemed to. She called some of the people back and set up appointments for later in the week since none of them wanted to leave off their preparations to pursue class twos and threes. Slimer had been quickly bored by the whole process and had vanished through the closed window early in the afternoon for his daily raid of the neighborhood's garbage pails.

Egon managed to complete a second destabilizer by late afternoon and ran tests on it with a cardboard cutout designed to look like a typical class five while Peter appointed himself cheering section and Ray took readings as Egon fired.

"It works fine, Egon," announced the occultist, looking up from the PKE meter. "You've got the power routed right so it won't give us a backlash like it did the time your molecules were discorporated."

"Thank goodness for that," breathed Peter. "It was weird to see right through Egon like that."

"As I recall, you poked me in the chest," Egon responded, unfastening the straps of the modified proton pack and returning it to the table.

"I was just checking," said Peter lightly. "You gave us a scare. Hey, Egon, can I wear the destabilizer this time? I never got to before. I think it'd be a real kick."

Egon frowned. "I had planned to wear one and Ray the other."

Peter shook his head. "Not fair. I want to try it."

"Better let him," said Winston, turning away from the viewscreen. "I know that tone of voice. He'll whine all evening if you don't let him and if there's one thing I can't stand it's the sound of Peter whining. I might have to suffocate him and it would be real bad timing."

Egon knew that tone of voice too. Peter had decided he would take the risk of the new destabilizer, especially since it hadn't been field-tested. He'd taken it very hard, in spite of his frivolous poking, when Egon had been discorporated during the busting of the demon Arzun. When Egon had vanished, they'd all believed him killed until he reappeared abruptly at headquarters in a near-transparent state. Ray had proclaimed the accident was all his fault, but Peter had grown quiet, always a bad sign, not even falling into his automatic routine to talk Ray out of feeling guilty. He wasn't prepared to watch one of his friends disappear before his eyes a second time and Egon knew it.

"Very well, Peter," he conceded. "Though don't go blasting light fixtures and beds if we fight the hobgoblins tonight. While I've built safeguards into the equipment which would allow me to reverse the process, it is a procedure that will take a great deal of power."

Peter paused, arrested. "You mean they'd turn into ghosts?" he queried with fascination. "My bed would be walking around?"

"Not ghosts exactly, Peter, but they wouldn't be solid any more," explained Ray.

"Hey, do you suppose we could use it on our congressman?" Peter suggested hopefully, "or maybe the mayor's assistant?"

Winston rose from shutting down the computer and gave him a swat on the arm. "Not in this lifetime. Anybody but me hungry?"

Mab returned just after dark, appearing in the lab doorway in her cat form. "Hello," she said, her voice scratchy and higher pitched than the usual deep, throaty tones. "I have information for you. Stay there while I revert and dress."

"Aw," said Peter, who had been hopeful of another transformation before his eyes, but when Egon shot out a hand and curled it around Peter's wrist to keep him in place, he heaved a disappointed sigh and let her walk into the bedroom unfollowed.

"Dr. V!" Janine reproached him hotly. "Egon, it's not safe for a girl around this place. You don't let him sneak up on me when I'm in the shower, do you?"

"He knows better, Janine," Egon replied. "Though he did once--"

"Egon," Peter started anxiously recalling the time he'd sent Slimer up through the water pipes, telling the little ghost Janine had concealed a doughnut in her shower cap. The resultant chaos had been wonderful. To this day she didn't know Peter had egged the spud on and Peter didn't mean for her to find out. Their secretary was one lady who really knew how to hold a grudge. "Janine, I never peeked. I know better. You'd make my life miserable for months if you caught me, and I'm not a masochist." He grinned engagingly and added, "Besides, I've already seen you in a bikini, and well worth the experience, too."

Fortunately for Peter, Janine grinned, though she did give him a mild cuff on the side of the head. Mab appeared before she could change her mind and pummel Peter senseless. The pooka had once again dressed in the clothes Peter had given her, and she had taken time to tie back her hair into a fat braid that was thicker than her wrist, securing it with a leather thong as if it would take something that heavy to restrain it. She looked more beautiful than ever and Peter heaved an inaudible sigh of sheer regret.

Ray didn't bother. He just looked at her with a kind of hopeless adoration, then, as if he'd noticed Peter watching him, he shook himself out of it and asked quickly, "What did you find out?"

Watching him, her gaze had softened. She stretched out her arm and touched his hand. "I fear the hobgoblins are many and will be dangerous," she admitted. "I am glad I have such a brave crew to repel them."

"Do hobgoblins usually go around in a bunch like this?" asked Winston when Ray seemed momentarily speechless.

"Not such a large group. I believe there are more than twenty of them. I drifted about the city, trying to find them or evidence of them, by my senses alone, and I found places where they had sometimes hidden by daylight. They are not from your world; such beings seldom are. But they are from a world that lies alongside your own, always touching. They are so close that sometimes a mere gesture might make us visible to them, or a person from your world, turning his head, will see a sudden and unexpected vista of theirs. Yet for the most part, your people walk as if with blinders, always seeing what they expect to see, never knowing if they go forward with no restraints upon their thought processes they might see so much more. Have you never walked along a familiar road and seen a tree you never noticed before? Perhaps that tree is on the other side, momentarily visible. The next time you walk that way, you do not remember, because it was such an unimportant moment. But for those who have learned to see, the other world overlaps your own and they might encounter a troll walking down your Fifth Avenue or see a griffin nesting high on the side of a skyscraper."

"Wow," breathed Ray, so caught up in the magic of her words that he forgot his crush on her to think about it. "I wonder if there's any way we could take readings to detect it."

Mab shook her head, the braid bouncing. "No, laddie, because it is not here. It is only visible from here on occasion. 'Tis not the same thing. And it can be sealed off, for there are few places where actual crossings may take place. Yes, we can see the other side at certain heightened moments, but to cross? That needs a gate. I believe it to be high over the city, where the average New Yorker could not walk through by accident, though there are gates into different worlds where people do vanish, their disappearances never explained."

"Yeah, but if we can see across the barriers, that's gotta mean the world-walls are thin or something, and entities can bleed across anywhere," Ray insisted stubbornly.

"No. There are no world-walls as you understand them. There are merely simultaneous worlds and sometimes the veil parts slightly. It is not something one can train oneself to see, either, and certainly not to cross except through the gate. It is as you see a building with a glass facade. The interior is visible but you may not cross unless you walk to the door."

"Too bad," Janine said, though from the look on her face she'd probably be a lot more comfortable with what she could really see and touch on this side of the barrier. If something crossed over into the firehall from the other world, Janine would probably throw her stapler at it or bop it on the nose with her electric pencil sharpener.

"Let us backtrack," Egon cut in, guiding the discussion to what mattered at the moment. "The goblins, twenty or more of them, have crossed over repeatedly, and sometimes have stayed on this side?"

"Yes. They were here last night, in a warehouse near some docks in Brooklyn, at least for a time after they left here, but I think they returned to their world before dawn. The stench of them was strong to me in my cat form. I dared not stay long in case some of them were still there. I have my powers but I would be outnumbered against them."

"We got the other destabilizer finished," Ray explained to her eagerly. "With two of them and the traps and throwers, we'll be able to zap them."

She smiled at him warmly and rested her hand on his arm. "I know you will," she said, and Ray colored brightly.

As if she realized his reaction, she took her hand away, exchanging a brief, regretful look with Peter. She had played the game with Peter because he so obviously knew the rules and equally obviously was not involved. His heart was free, even if his body was tempted. But Ray hadn't even thought of rules, and Mab looked as if she regretted the gesture. Her eyes challenged Peter to say nothing, and he didn't.

"I am not so easy for them to find when I am in this form," Mab admitted. "And I can hide when I am a cat." Peter realized with a sudden frown that her natural state was neither cat nor beautiful woman and wondered if he would ever see her as she really was. "Though if they come into the room, up close, they will know me. It was the 'scent' of me that drew them here, but once here, they became fascinated by the sea of humanity, and then they sensed your containment unit. That drove them mad with rage. Some of the entities within are distant kin of theirs, and they know of the Bogeyman, of course, and would free him if they could."

"You mean they can tell what ghosts are inside?" Ray blurted, his eyes widening in astonishment.

She brushed aside his remark with a casual gesture. "Ghosts can do that. It does not mean they can cross the barrier, your protection grid, without becoming trapped inside. Have you never had ghosts try to shut it down before?"

"Well, when you put it like that . . . " Peter said, shrugging, repressing a shudder at the memory of the time he'd nearly shut it down himself when he was possessed by the powerful demon Watt. "But we never had a team of hobgoblins try to do it. Just what is a hobgoblin anyway. What do they look like? We've seen goblins before and they were little and ugly and mean looking with big mouths and some of them had wings, and all of 'em were resistant to throwers."

"That's because they're paranatural entities, like that thing at the Macabre house," Ray explained. "They don't really belong in our world. Hobgoblins are a kind of goblin or bogey or bugbear, only they're bigger and meaner. Some of 'em can fly; it sounds like this bunch can fly. They're kind of like what some people would call 'evil spirits' and they don't like humans at all."

"These kind are nearly as big as humans," explained Mab. "They are black--not like you," she told Winston quickly, "but a deep ebony so they can blend into the night. Even their eyes are black. They are without remorse and they make implacable enemies. Worst of all, they are intelligent. Not as intelligent as one such as the Bogeyman, who is kin of theirs by class. His powers have grown over the years, feeding on the fear of children, and he was able to grow very strong, to alter his appearance to create a frightening image, even to construct for himself an entire realm. He was more independent than such as these, who have a pack mentality and cannot imagine a solitary attack."

"I don't like the sound of that," Winston muttered.

"I do," Peter argued. "Means they aren't as independent or original as the Bogeyman. So they need the others from their pack to function at their best. They're tough and dangerous and they'll fight independently if they have to but if we can throw them off their stride, they'll be easier. Right, Egon?"

"Theoretically," the physicist replied.

"Egon, you know I don't like it when you say that," Peter chided him. "You just like shooting me down."

"No, Peter. I simply prefer you don't become overconfident. This is going to be dangerous, no matter what tactics we use."

"Well, I've been getting traps rigged," Ray said with a smile, gesturing to the pattern of traps positioned around the walls of the lab. "They're triggered to a remote." He pointed to a device on the corner of the work table and grinned proudly. "All we have to do is get the hobgoblins in place and make them resistant with the destabilizers and these traps will take care of a lot of them at once, or I can trigger them individually if I have to. If they break into the lab, we can zap a lot at one go. More than one of them can fit in a trap if they're destabilized."

"So remember where the button is, boys and girls," Peter caroled. "Good work, Ray."

Ray couldn't hold back a big smile as he finished making the connections. "Now all we have to do is hope they come to the lab and not head straight for the containment unit."

Peter grimaced. "You had to say that, didn't you?"

"Well, I can set up another bunch downstairs," Ray volunteered, "Just in case."

"I think that might be a good idea, Ray," Egon concurred. "We'll do that next, and I'll put up a force field around the control panel."

Though the containment unit looked peaceful and untouched Egon took thorough and careful readings all through the basement area and lab to make sure the hobgoblins hadn't made their way into the lab. There were the faintest of residuals which made Egon frown. "Something was here but it was days ago," he decided. "Perhaps only one of them, spying it out."

"If so, they know where the containment unit actually is," groaned Winston. "Better set up those traps."

Arms full of traps, Ray began to distribute them in a semi-circle around the containment unit, then reached out for the tools he'd made Peter carry for him. He started working while Egon switched to the magnetometer and took additional readings. All four of them and Janine were wearing proton packs, and Peter had complained that the modified thrower made the pack much heavier than usual. Egon had informed him the difference was a mere twelve ounces and Peter had thrown him a look of utter disbelief. Yet Egon bore the weight of his destabilizer pack without complaint or traces of effort, so Peter had abandoned the subject. If Spengs could do it, so could he.

"Can you tell when the hobgoblins come?" Peter asked Mab as Ray worked and Egon finished with his readings and began to lay the groundwork for a force field. She had knelt beside Ray to pass him the tools he asked for, to Ray's utter delight.

"I can sense them when they are close," she admitted, "but no more than a block away. That will give you some warning, and I can but hope it will be enough." She smiled up at Peter.

"I hope so too. Egon? Is there any way to set any of your gizmos to sense them in advance?"

"We have been working on a monitor that will detect dimensional gateways," Egon replied around the screwdriver he held temporarily in his mouth while he tightened a connection by hand. Freeing the screwdriver he continued, "We were working on it when the letter arrived from Mr. Howard's lawyer. I'm not entirely certain it will work in this instance, however since, as Mab explained, it is not a normal dimensional barrier. Yet periodic tests as we worked have indicated fluctuations I could not explain. Perhaps those were instances of the hobgoblins slipping sideways across from their parallel world."

"Great, Egon," said Peter, giving him a pat on the back. "I knew you could do it. What we need to do is set the device the way it was set when you picked that up and make sure it goes off like a ten alarm fire if the same thing happens again. I don't want any unpleasant surprises."

The hobgoblins did not come that evening, though the guys maintained a state of readiness even after they'd set up all their equipment and any possible monitoring device Egon or Ray could cobble together. Even as they gathered before the TV to unwind a little when their work was done, their packs lay close at hand, ready to be donned at the first sign of trouble, shrill of an alarm, or warning from Mab.

"You know, I bet they come when we're asleep," Winston groaned as they readied themselves for bed. Janine had decided she didn't want to go home when the guys might need her, and in the end they had decided it was too risky to leave her downstairs on the couch apart from them, so they set up a camp bed for her beyond Egon's bed, though not without a few snide remarks from Peter. Because the dormitory had just become coed, Janine had vanished into the bathroom to change into the nightshirt Egon loaned her, one he'd meant to throw away because it had shrunk in the wash one day when Peter had been doing the washing.

Janine called from the other room, "Is everybody decent?"

"Aside from Peter, who never is . . . " Egon began only to have Peter give him a poke in the ribs with his elbow.

"Come on in, Janine, we're fine," called Ray cheerfully.

The secretary appeared in Egon's nightshirt, which trailed on the ground even in its shrunken state. She had rolled up the sleeves to free her hands and looked rather like a little girl dressed in grown-up clothes. Mab trailed behind her, once more in cat form, and sprang up onto Peter's bed, where she proceeded to turn around three times and lie down, stretching in the boneless way of cats and making herself comfortable.

"I can sense them better in this form," she explained in her cat voice.

Maybe she knew better than to sleep on Ray's bed this time around, but Peter didn't mind. The thought that the cat who snuggled up against his feet was sometimes an incredibly beautiful woman appealed to him tremendously.

Peter awoke in the night, feeling more comfortable than ever, something warm pressed against the length of his body. For a moment he couldn't quite remember where he was, then his eyes popped open and widened as he realized he held the very human form of Mab in a close embrace, one hand curled around her breast. As he lay there looking at her, she shifted comfortably, leaned into the touch and rubbed her cheek against his with a purring sound much like she would have made were she still feline. Peter heaved a sigh at the realization the other guys and Janine were in the room with them. He would have loved to take advantage of the situation but he couldn't. Unwilling to let it pass entirely, he bent his head to kiss her, only to jerk back as she tensed, shifted form into a cat and seemed to flow out of the bed with a screech of sound that hurt Peter's ears.

"I didn't mean . . . " he began before he realized Mab's reaction had not been to the almost-kiss but to the nearness of the hobgoblins and he scrambled out of bed, grabbing for the proton pack he'd left lying beside his bed. "GUYS!" he yelled in unnecessary warning as no less than three of Egon's alarms went off. There wasn't time to regret what hadn't happened with Mab because in the next instant, the outside sky was full of black shapes, roughly man-shaped, winged and near-invisible in the darkness.

Ray jumped up and snatched his pack in one swift motion, diving for the light switch as he slid one arm and then the other into the straps. The light came up revealing Mab on the table by the big windows, her fur shooting up wildly the way it had when Georgie had tried to attack her. "They're coming," she cried, just as another alarm in the lab went off with a shriek of sound that hurt the ears.

"Come on," cried Egon, fitting his pack over his nightshirt. Winston, already wearing his pack, headed for the lab at a run while Ray grabbed the PKE meter from his bedside table and pounded after him. Struggling into her pack, Janine followed, and Peter and Egon brought up the rear. They had barely reached the lab when Mab appeared in human form wearing Peter's old blue bathrobe, her hands just sashing it tight around her waist.

"We should have slept in our clothes," said Winston regretfully, casting a quick glance down at his pajamas and bare feet.

There wasn't time for more. As Egon switched off the sound of the alarm, something crashed through one of the lab windows with an explosion of breaking glass that made hands fly up to protect eyes. Peter realized they should have worn their boots to bed as well, but there wasn't time for that as three more black shapes came smashing through other windows and hovered near the ceiling, wings beating fast enough to create a strong breeze, whipping the skirt of Egon's nightshirt and stirring Peter's sleep-tangled hair. The entities were humanoid in shape but their faces were harder and edged with unexpected planes and angles as if they were made of armor plating. The darkness of their skin would have made them invisible against the night sky unless one knew to look for them and the color seemed to absorb light making them hard to see even in the brightly lit room. One of them would have been rendered nearly invisible in strong shadows and only the way the glow from the overhead light reflected off the planes of their faces and the hard muscles of chests and arms made them stand out. Their chins were pointed, their faces broad across the foreheads and each of them had short, stubby horns just above their temples. They had long hair that flowed back, thick and coarse, to spin out behind them, stirring in the breeze of their wings. Hands with ominously-taloned fingers clenched and unclenched as they surveyed the six who confronted them. Slimer, who had followed the humans and Mab into the lab, cried out in sheer terror and tried to force himself into the pocket on Peter's pajama top. The psychologist shoved at him to push him away, trying to guide the spud behind him out of range of the hobgoblins.

"Fire!" cried Winston, drawing a bead on the nearest hobgoblin.

Glowing streams of protonic energy split the air, crackling and sizzling as the four Ghostbusters and Janine fired in unison. Ray and Winston had trouble, their beams sliding away from the entities as if they'd been polarized improperly, and Janine's first shot missed but Peter's modified proton stream caught his hobgoblin full in the chest and with a squawk of rage, the entity struggled wildly. Before he could pull himself free, a strange transformation overcame him and, with an anticlimactic pop, he became transparent. Ray let out a yell of triumph at the sight and triggered the trap below him. With a swish, the transformed hobgoblin slid into the trap and the doors closed over him. A second later, the entity Egon had struck with his destabilizer did the very same thing, and a second trap opened to take him in.

"It works!" exulted Peter, doing a dance of triumph that ended abruptly as he brought his foot down on one of the pieces of glass that lay strewn about the floor. With a yelp he hopped on his other foot and brought up the injured one to inspect the damage, relieved to discover it was only a tiny cut. The small sliver was protruding from the ball of his foot and he was able to detach it in a second, flinging it onto the table where no one else would step on it. "Egon, it works!" he continued as if there'd been no interruption. "You genius, you. Bring 'em on. We can take 'em. Only everybody watch where they step!" He grinned. "We've got 'em now."

As if in answer to his question, the sound of breaking glass echoed from the bedroom and the remaining lab windows surrendered to the force as hobgoblins burst in everywhere, hovering over the Ghostbusters, wings beating strongly enough to create a breeze.

"Uh, let me rephrase that," muttered Peter as he took aim at the nearest of the entities.

"There are twenty-three of them left," Mab said in an undertone, her voice reaching Peter's ears over the noise created by the entities, who were roaring and bellowing to each other. If it was a language, Mab's instant translation didn't work on them they way she had hoped it would. "I will do what I can, but we must reduce their numbers."

"They don't like the ordinary streams," called Ray as one of them yanked itself out of the confinement beam, yelping unhappily. "If we can use 'em to drive the hobgoblins to Egon and Peter, we can stop 'em."

"They understand your language," Mab warned him, though it would have rapidly become evident what Winston, Ray, and Janine were attempting as they worked in unison, attempting to force the entities into the path of the destabilizer's streams. Ray tried triggering a trap beneath one of the solid entities, but it pulled free of the suction and flew up to the ceiling, hovering there and snarling untranslatable words that were likely curses.

"We can't trap them while they're solid," Egon exclaimed unnecessarily in disappointment, firing at another one who popped into transparency and vanished in the trap. Realizing she had the worst aim simply because of lack of practice Janine had taken over the running of the trap remote, pausing every few seconds to send a burst of fire at one of the hobgoblins to try and drive it to Peter and Egon. The four men wove their way around the lab, their progress wary because of the broken glass that lay strewn about, blasting and attempting to hold the entities at bay. All of them quickly acquired cuts on the soles of their feet, fortunately none of them serious, but there was enough blood from many small cuts to make it dangerous for them to run, not to mention painful. Peter went pelting across the lab, yelling, "Ouch, ouch, ouch," every time his left heel made contact with the floor, heading for the lab door and out into the hall to get at the creatures in that direction, as more hobgoblins swarmed in from the bedroom, one of them crashing against the overhead light fixture there and putting it out in another explosion of glass, sparks flying. Peter blinked dazedly and hoped his vision would adjust quickly.

"They're coming from the bedroom too!" yelled Peter in alarm, bracing himself in the middle of the hall, raising his thrower to take aim at anything else that came out of the darkness. "I'll get 'em. You handle 'em in there, Egon," he called over his shoulder. "Teamwork, guys, that's what'll stop the uglies." He advanced toward the door, saw something moving toward him and let out a cry of triumph, firing at the motion.

"NO, PETER!" bellowed Egon behind him as Peter's thumb depressed the firing trigger and the stream of energy lanced out to strike--the mirror on the inside of Egon's wardrobe door, reflecting the light back, directly at Peter. "Duck!" the physicist shouted, a thread of desperation in his voice, and Peter tried, but he couldn't move faster than light. Even as Egon yelled, the reflected energy from the mirror struck him full in the chest. Agony wracked his body as if he was being twisted inside out, then with a horrified screech, he felt himself being torn apart as if every molecule in his body was dissolving.

He had time for one frantic, "NO!" the sound fading as the world disintegrated around him. Then everything went dark.

"NO!" echoed, Mab, mutating yet again into a huge, dark form that was twice as big as any of the hobgoblins with an even broader wingspan, her face still vaguely human, her shape much the same, but no longer beautiful except in an eerie, alien way. Her vast wings created a much stronger draft as they beat than any of the hobgoblins'. Raising her now-clawed hands, palms outward, she cast orange balefire in a giant, pulsating burst at the nearest collection of hobgoblins. It struck them full on, lighting the air around them and crackling loudly. Shrieking and moaning in acute agony, they dove for the windows behind them, tearing at each other in their desperation to escape, talons digging huge, gaping wounds into each other's armorlike flesh as they scrambled for the safety of the night.

"PETER!" gasped Ray in shock as the psychologist melted away before their horrified eyes just as Egon had done when he'd been struck during the battle with Arzun. Left behind, Venkman's thrower clattered toward the floor and Egon, who hadn't stopped moving from the moment he realized what was about to happen, reached out a hand and caught it by the strap, the weight of it nearly upsetting him. Something jabbed sharply and agonizingly into his foot and he yanked it up involuntarily, winding up flat on the floor, his arms wrapped around the pack.

"Peter," he whispered, his face as white as paper as he realized what Peter's beam had struck.

"Look out, Ray!" Winston's thrower sizzled to life and he fired past Stantz at the three hobgoblins that dove for the occultist, who stood there in utter shock, completely unaware of anything but Peter's disappearance. Ignoring the annoyance of Winston's normal proton stream they grabbed Ray by the arms and rose with him into the air, yanking the barefoot man after them toward the window. Jerked back to the here and now, Ray gave a strangled yelp and began to struggle.

"Guys, they've got me!" he wailed as they carried him through the nearest shattered window.

"No! I forbid it," Mab cried, raising her hands, only to stop when Janine dived wildly at her gigantic form and grabbed her by the wrists and forced her hands down with all her strength.

"Stop! You'll hurt Ray!"

"They'll hurt Ray," Mab cried, pulling free of Janine as if she'd been grasped by paper. The secretary's mouth opened a little in surprise. "I will follow and see where they take him," she cried and sprang into the air, her wings beating as she soared aloft out the window where Ray had vanished. Slimer emerged from whatever concealment he'd sought as protection during the battle and followed her, moaning in sheer fright and wringing his hands.

"They got Ray!" Winston hollered unnecessarily. Egon lifted his head, wincing at the pain of landing against the thrower and the unexpected agony in the sole of his foot. He propped himself up cautiously and looked around, noticing Ray and Mab were no longer in the lab. For a second he sat there, utterly dazed, then he held up Peter's abandoned destabilizer to Winston.

"Put that on," he said tightly. "We'll need it."

"Egon . . . " Winston's voice trailed off. He took a steadying breath and tried again. "Peter . . . You said you'd fixed the destabilizer," he concluded accusingly, meeting Egon's eyes.

"I did; there would have been no backlash. But Peter in essence blasted himself. There is no way to protect against that any more than there would had he or I accidentally blasted you or Raymond." He looked around, dazed and shaken. "They took Ray?"

Winston nodded solemnly as Janine knelt at Egon's side. "Oh, Egon, are you hurt?" she demanded in alarm, one hand on his shoulder. "Your foot is bleeding like crazy."

Startled he glanced at his foot, remembering the pain as he had stepped on the broken glass. A long splinter of it had torn a bloody path along the arch of his foot, imbedding itself deeply there. It was bleeding a lot, but if he withdrew it, it would only bleed harder. Yet it had to go. He could not walk with it protruding from his foot, and walking was going to be an urgent priority very shortly. "Get the first aid kit," he said tightly, forcing himself to ignore the pain so he could concentrate on ways to help Peter and Ray. When he shifted, his ribs twinged and he suspected at the very least he had bruised them by falling on Peter's pack. He didn't think they were broken.

Setting aside his normal pack, Winston had just finished shrugging his shoulders into the straps of the one Peter had worn. "You said there was a way to restabilize Peter?" he asked hopefully.

Egon looked around the room as if waiting for Peter to appear. "Yes, and we must do it quickly," he announced. "The process becomes increasingly painful the longer one is destabilized, and the destabilization doesn't stop on its own. And we must do it quickly because Ray is in great peril, worsening the longer they have him. We can only hope they mean to use him as a bargaining chip and not as a display of their strength."

"Oh, Egon, you don't mean they'd--" Janine broke off abruptly, her eyes on Egon's face. She bit her bottom lip as she saw him wince at the suggestion as if he knew exactly what she had meant to say.

"Here's the first aid kit," Winston said, dropping down on Egon's other side and opening the box. Because of the dangers inherent in their work, the Ghostbusters maintained an extensive first aid kit that they kept stocked and current at all times. Egon was glad to see it.

"Man, that looks ugly." Winston bent over Egon's foot. "I've gotta take this out, homeboy, and it's gonna hurt like crazy. Then I'm gonna have to flush out the wound to make sure we've got all the glass out. You hang onto something when I do it because I can imagine how it'd feel. Sorry, Egon, but it won't be fun."

"Hurry, Winston. We don't have the luxury of waiting," the physicist returned levelly. Peter's tortured scream still echoed in Egon's ears, and he knew from personal experience just how much pain Peter had felt at that point. It was not fatal, nor was the condition itself unless they didn't reverse it, but Egon's first memories had been a kind of limbo that had alarmed him because he wasn't sure at that point if he were alive or dead. Somehow he had found himself at the firehall, and even now he didn't know how that had happened. He had theorized that, in his non-physical state he had been able to move through time and space differently, a condition that would have been fascinating had it not been so frightening. There had been enough to distract him at first; his scientific curiosity, his discovery he could sense ghosts without a meter. Peter would not care about that. He'd simply feel alone and frightened, a condition with which Egon could sympathize. And when he realized what had happened to Ray . . .

Egon nodded at Winston to proceed, and Winston, who must have given his hands a hasty wash when he went after the kit, reached down and grasped the edge of the glass sliver carefully between thumb and forefinger, his eyes tracing the angle of penetration.

"Got it. Hang on, big guy," he urged, dropping his other hand on Egon's forearm and squeezing reassuringly.

"Now, Winston," Egon said, leaning into the circle of Janine's arm around his shoulders. She gripped one of his hands and he held on tightly.

"Okay, Egon, here goes," Winston said and pulled the glass out in one smooth motion. The pain was excruciating. Egon's fingers closed over Janine's so tightly she bit her lip against a blurted cry of pain, but she didn't pull free or loosen the grip around his shoulders for an instant. Egon made himself watch the glass emerge from his foot, over an inch and a half of it, a smooth-edged piece that was unlikely to have left fragments behind. For a moment he felt curiously lightheaded, cold and hot at the same time, his head swimming. His body went lax as spots danced before his eyes and the wound began to bleed more freely. Winston set aside the glass and picked up a spray bulb full of water and began to use it to flush out the wound as best he could.

"Egon, are you all right?" Janine demanded urgently in his ear. He made himself release her hand now that the worst of it was over, and she promptly lay her fingers on his forehead, stroking gently. "Oh, Egon, you feel cold."

"He could be going into shock," Winston replied. "Something like this can be a lot worse than it looks. Get him a blanket, Janine, while I finish cleaning this out."

She hurried away, moving carefully, eyes on the floor to watch for glass, and returned quickly to drape the blanket over the physicist's shoulders. He pulled it around him, grateful for the warmth, though he was already feeling a little better--if only physically. Peter was discorporated and Ray was a prisoner of the hobgoblins. Egon could only hope Mab could free Ray and bring him back. Her powers seemed enough to stop the entities, though not all of them at once. As for Peter, Egon could only hope his friend would return on his own so he could be re-stabilized. It had taken Egon time to find his way to the firehall. Peter would come back. He had to.

Janine vanished again and Egon heard water running in the bathroom. When she emerged, she had thrown on her clothes and stuck four or five band-aids on her feet and she was engaged in sliding on her shoes. "I'm going to clean up this glass," she announced. "Winston, your feet are a little bloody, too."

"Yeah, minor cuts," Winston replied with a dismissive gesture, his attention on Egon's injury. "Believe me, I feel 'em, but they're nothing like this." He gave a cry of triumph. "Got it!" and held up a tiny piece of glass. "I thought there was one more bit in there. This'll hurt, Egon, just hang on." His fingers pressed exploratively around the edges of the wound, very careful to be as gentle as possible. Egon's body went taut as he braced himself against the wave of pain that shot through his foot. "Sorry, m'man," said Winston, clapping Egon on the shoulder. "Had to be done. I think I've got it all now. I'm going to have to disinfect it. And it will--"

"Hurt, I know," Egon said ruefully, feeling his muscles grow taut in expectation. "Do it."

Winston did it carefully, but the feel of the disinfectant was a whole new agony, flashing through his foot like fire. Yet when Winston finished and began to attach a dressing the pain retreated a little. He wondered if he would be able to walk on it, dismissed the possibility he couldn't as something that didn't matter because he would have to, no matter how much it hurt.

"When this is over," Winston said firmly, "I'm taking you to the hospital, Egon, because I think you need a stitch or two, and I want them to make sure I didn't miss anything."

"No, Winston," Egon insisted, his whole body tensing in new lines of stubbornness. "Not until Peter is back. Not until we get Ray. I have to stay here until then." He shivered, tugging the blankets tight again.

"You're not Superman, Egon."

"My friends need me. I won't die of this and you know it. I won't be permanently disabled either. A fine friend I would be if I let a little pain prevent me from saving my friends." He looked Winston right in the eye. "I'm the only one who can reverse Peter's destabilization, and you know it."

Though he had seen the device work and could probably have operated it very well in a pinch Winston nodded, putting the last piece of tape in place. "It's still bleeding a little, Egon. That's not necessarily bad because if there's any tiny fragments still in there, the blood will flush them out. I'm gonna check it again in an hour to make sure it's not still bleeding, and change the dressing if I have to. But make no mistake, good buddy, you're going to the hospital when this is all over, and it's not open to debate."

"Your feet are bleeding too," Egon pointed out.

"Scratches, like Janine's. What worries me is it looked like Peter had a bad cut too. And I don't know if he can stop it when he's ectoplasmic. But I think he's still going to be bleeding."

Egon shuddered at the thought. It was all he could do to sit there while Winston checked his other foot and proclaimed it reasonably intact. He put a band aid around Egon's big toe then checked his own feet. By the time he had finished, Janine had broomed up the glass in the lab and the bedroom, and had brought Egon another blanket. With all the windows open, the night air was crisp and she said she didn't want him to get a chill.

Winston vanished into the bedroom and returned with Egon's jumpsuit, a pair of thick, comfortable socks and his boots. "Hate to have you up and running," he said, "but you're gonna need protection and those boots have the best support of any shoes we've got."

Egon pulled on the jumpsuit and had to stand to finish dressing. Balancing on his uninjured foot, he pulled the uniform up over his hips then sat down to finish. Winston dressed quickly then put on the destabilizer again. "Shouldn't Peter have shown up by now?" he asked, alarmed.

Egon had been thinking that himself. "Peter?" he said tentatively, looking around as if he could have overlooked the psychologist by accident. "Are you here?"

"Maybe he's downstairs," Janine suggested quickly as if she sensed Egon's alarm and shared it. "That's where you appeared, remember, Egon? I'll run down and see." She picked up her proton pack and settled it into place before she ventured down.

Egon limped heavily over to the lab table, feeling as if nails were being driven into his foot at each step, and sat down with relief. Carefully he reset the alarm devices to alert them to the return of the hobgoblins and checked with his eyes to see which traps needed to be emptied into the containment, doing a quick mental tally of how many unused ones were left.

"You said it would take a lot of power to restore Peter?" Winston said quietly, dragging up a chair and sitting beside him, offering him the quiet, unstinting companionship of his one remaining friend. He slid his arm around Egon's shoulders. "We'll get 'em back. You know we will. We got you back when we didn't even know what we were doing, and we know enough to keep Peter out of the Netherworld this time."

"I must set up the destabilizer rectifier unit," Egon said. He didn't let himself think beyond that. He and Winston alone could not help Ray; the odds were Ray was already in the paranatural dimension that ran parallel with their own, defended by a horde of hobgoblins. They had managed to trap only five of them during the attack on headquarters; which left around twenty of them, and the possibility of more in their home dimension. Egon knew he and Winston could not enter the other dimension without assistance; there wasn't time to set up the trans-dimensional portal with it. If Ray had been taken as a hostage for the goblins already captured, they would need to keep him alive, at least for the time being. If they had captured him for his knowledge of the containment unit, they also needed him alive, at least for a time, hopefully long enough for Mab to get to him. If, however, they had captured him out of sheer, malicious revenge, there was no guarantee he was still alive. There was nothing Egon could do about that; he had to leave it to Mab, which did not sit well with him at all.

Yet helping Peter was within his powers, so he took the equipment they had prepared already and began to make adjustments to it, knowing he could bring Peter back the moment he appeared. Until then, there was nothing he could do but wait.

His fingers made the connections to the appropriate power couplings automatically, grateful for something to do. "Where are you, Peter?" he said under his breath as he waited. "You should be here now. Where are you?"

Peter wasn't sure where he was, he only knew he didn't like it there. After the beam had struck him in a fierce explosion of pain he had felt as if his body was dissolving away and, looking down at himself, he could see the actual process as he vanished before his eyes. When the operation became too overwhelming there was only darkness and, fortunately for him, he passed out.

When next he had any awareness, it felt so unnatural he was certain he was dead. His whole body tingled as if he'd been electrocuted and, though he could feel his fingers and toes when he wiggled them, the sensation was far from normal. He lay there stunned and unmoving, suddenly tensing as a wave of acute pain pounded through his body then ebbed away with a series of little aftershocks that made him whimper helplessly. Bracing himself against it, he lay tense and unmoving for a long time after it had passed, afraid it would come back. "I hate this," he moaned.

There was a sense of light and stunning whiteness around him and he was afraid to open his eyes for fear he'd see pearly gates and harp-strumming angels or, worse, a horde of demons poking him with pitchforks. He wasn't ready to die and the longer he waited without finding out if the beam had killed him the happier he'd be. Egon had once said that being hit with full streams would cause a person's atoms to go on separate vacations, which was not the kind of holiday Peter enjoyed. "No," he moaned faintly. It wasn't death itself that was so terrifying it was being here without the guys. Egon, Ray, Winston . . . "Guys!" he yelled hopefully, straining for an answer. "EGON! WINSTON! RAY?" Nothing, not even a distance sense of their presence. He let his mind dwell on them, terrified at the thought that he might never see them again. Even heaven--it wouldn't be heaven if he were there alone. Heaven had to have the guys there, too.

That thought scared him and he tried frantically to erase it. No! That would mean the guys were dead, and he'd rather face it alone than have that happen. I didn't mean it, he thought desperately to whatever malign fate might be listening. Don't let them be dead. No one answered him, and he quivered slightly, afraid his words had been taken to heart. He half expected the other three to end up next to him, trapped in this limbo with him with no way back to the world he knew.

For a long time he lay huddled in a small heap, his knees drawn up against his chest, his arms wrapped around them, disoriented and confused, afraid he would always be here, alone. "Guys?' he ventured in a small voice. "Guys, are you there? Please be there for Peter. I really, really don't like this."

No one answered. His voice echoed as if in vast hollowness, a place that was empty of everything because it was empty of his friends. Shuddering, Peter finally opened his eyes, unable to wait any longer in case something was lurking, ready to pounce on him.

He was in a place of whiteness, and his mind made a lightning connection between his present location and the tunnel of light that appeared in near-death experiences. Was that where he was, waiting to cross over? Maybe he could still go back.

Erupting to his feet he revolved in a slow circle looking in all directions and saw nothing at all, nothing but the whiteness that dazzled him and made his head ache at its brightness. There was no division between land and sky, just the brilliance that enclosed him like distant fog, blocking out any possible landmarks.

His head? Aching? Dead people didn't have headaches, did they? Slimer didn't, anyway. So he wasn't dead. "Hey, I'm alive," he said as firmly as possible, as if speaking the words would make them true. He looked down at himself to check for wounds and saw himself in his pajamas, barefoot with his right foot leaking blood onto the whiteness beneath him.

"Gaaa!" he blurted, jerking up his foot, for the first time aware of the pain in it. Something had poked him and was still doing so. He sat down again and captured his foot with both hands to check it out. A sliver of glass had poked itself into his heel, and with a cry of disgust he pulled it free, grateful to see it hadn't penetrated very deeply. Yet it had gone in far enough to allow a rush of blood to follow its withdrawal. Peter heaved a queasy sigh at the sight, feeling himself grow lightheaded, as much at the idea as at the actual blood.

There was nothing to use as a bandage. He searched the featureless terrain with his eyes then gave up on it, stripping off his pajama top and ripping a strip off the bottom of it. Not exactly sterile, but at least it would keep dirt out of the cut, assuming dirt was permitted in a sterile atmosphere like this. He bound it tightly around his foot, pleased with his amateur first aid, then the momentary triumph faded and he slid his arms into the remnant of his pajama top again, suddenly cold. Egon didn't have to stay in a place like this when he'd been destabilized.

DESTABILIZED! Peter bounded up again as he realized his brain had held the answer all along, concealed by the fuzziness induced by the transition. That's what had happened to him. His molecules had been reversed when he'd accidentally blasted the mirror. He'd been protonically reversed the way Egon had when they'd been fighting Arzun. With overwhelming relief he realized he wasn't dead, after all. There was a cure for this, and Egon had it ready to use on him, back in the lab. He'd be all right. He'd be with his buddies again! "Yahoo!" bellowed Peter in sheer relief, then the cry trailed away into shaky silence. If he was destabilized where was he? Egon had arrived in the firehall after his destabilization even though he'd been blasted when he was away from home. Why was Peter here--wherever here was--when he'd been hit in the doorway of his own bedroom?

Egon hadn't arrived instantly, though. Maybe there was a transition period while the body adjusted. Maybe the energy expended sent the victim into a kind of limbo, a parallel dimension like the Netherworld. Egon had said for all practical purposes he was a ghost, even though he was still alive, and Ray had said human beings could not automatically pass between dimensions. But Peter wasn't a normal human being at the moment. He was a human being who had all the properties of a ghost! It was a nasty thought but it gave Peter an idea. His fertile brain developed his theory with little to back it but hope and appreciation of his own talent. He was like a ghost now. He could pass through dimensional barriers. All he had to do to go home was concentrate on the firehouse and he'd be there! That must be how Egon had done it without realizing what he'd done. He'd used the ghostly abilities he had temporarily been gifted with and shifted his position home. If he could do it, Peter could, too. It would just take concentration.

Home. Peter scrunched his eyes closed as tightly as he could and focused on Egon Spengler. He'd known Egon longer than the other two; they went back a year or two longer than he and Ray did. Egon probably knew him better than anyone, had gotten closer, could read Peter better. Instead of focusing on a building, Peter thought of Egon, remembering the years of friendship, the teasing they shared, the warmth of a long and rewarding acquaintance. When the chips were down and Peter couldn't handle the crap life dished out, he'd go to Egon. Sometimes he wouldn't even admit how he was feeling; he'd just put himself in Egon's line of sight and wait for the bond between them to kick into hyperdrive. It wouldn't be long before Egon would catch on to the way Peter felt and he would say just the right things. Sometimes he'd get Peter to talk; he could do that when no one else could, not even the sympathetic Ray or the understanding Winston. Egon knew just how to probe when Peter needed to lance an inner wound, how to offer sympathy when it was needed, how to prod Peter to see reality or to push him off his pedestal when Peter got above himself. What meant the most to Peter with Egon was that even when Peter was being his complete worst, Egon might be disgusted with the behavior but he could always be able to look past that and continue his liking for Peter. The friendship had taken any number of knocks and come out the stronger, and Peter used it as the touchstone on which he based his whole life. Without Egon behind him, Peter was sure he would never have become a Ghostbuster, happy and successful with his life. So he concentrated on Egon for all he was worth . . .

. . . and the hall at Ghostbuster Central came into being around him, a little fuzzy as if the sight of it through ghostly eyes was different than that of his normal vision, but it was real and intact, and he was undoubtedly back where he belonged. The floor felt strange beneath his bracing hands as if the wrong kind of touch would slide right through the floor and carry him down to the next story. Egon hadn't been able to manipulate objects in this state but neither had he sunk through the floor. Maybe it was more of the ghost ability he hadn't quite gotten the hang of yet. You're a ghost, Peter, he told himself, grinning. Levitate. Closing his eyes again to aid his concentration, he drifted into a standing position, remarkably pleased with himself. He'd done it! This was great! He didn't want to make it a permanent condition, of course, considering that bout of pain he'd felt earlier. Egon had felt them with increasing regularity as the destabilization continued and Peter was afraid that would happen to him, too. He'd never liked pain.

The sound of voices in the lab made him grin and he poked his head in and took a good look, savoring the sight that met his eyes. Egon was sitting at the table working at the destabilizer rectifier unit with complete concentration. That was Egon, all right. He was already anticipating Peter's problem and making preparations to fix things. He had one foot propped up in a chair--was he hurt?--and Winston sat across from him, handing him a tool when he asked for it. Janine was there too, and all of them were dressed. Winston wore Peter's pack with the modified destabilizer--he must have dropped it behind him when he vanished, and probably just as well. Portable nuclear accelerators probably wouldn't relate well to having their molecules reversed. Peter hoped Winston wouldn't make the same stupid mistake he'd made in the heat of the fight and blast any mirrors with it. There was no sign of Ray or Mab. Maybe they were out taking readings or possibly she'd taken pity on him and dragged him off for a little nookie, though it hardly seemed the time for it. More likely they were downstairs getting some food or checking for traces of the hobgoblins outside.

Peter felt himself begin to smile. Home. He was home and safe and Egon was nearly ready to turn him back to normal again. Unable to hold back the surge of joy that pulsed through him, Peter yelled, "Egon! Winston! Look, ma, no body!" and drifted over to them, showing off a little, floating above the floor like Slimer. There were bound to be a few fringe benefits to this. When he pointed out what Egon had missed . . .

Egon erupted to his feet, crying, "Peter," in a voice full of gladness, only to break off and stagger as he put weight on the foot that had been propped up, his face twisting with pain. Instantly Peter zipped in and grabbed him, flinging his arms around the physicist to steady his balance. Of course he wasn't solid and Egon fell right through Peter's body--talk about weird--and would have ended up on the floor if Winston and Janine hadn't each grabbed an arm and steadied him, yanking him back through Peter again in the process. Balancing on one foot, Egon edged backwards. "Sorry, Peter," he said. "Thank goodness you're here. Are you all right? We've been expecting you." From the edge to his voice Peter realized they'd been worried he might not return and Egon had been carefully bracing himself for the possibility. His eyes shone with relief.

Peter heaved a sigh and tried to hug Egon, a process he knew wouldn't work. He could feel the physical body and could stick his finger through it, the way he had when their conditions were reversed. But he couldn't see through Egon's solid form as his hand disappeared into Egon's chest. "Weird," he muttered, yanking his hand back quickly. "Egon, I'm like a ghost. I can fly and I can change dimensions, and maybe I could work up to sliming the spud to pay him back for all the times he got me. I bet there's all sorts of nifty things I can do, though I don't want to keep doing it a whole lot longer. Now what's wrong with your foot? A big chunk of glass? We had a real obstacle course here, last I remember."

Egon looked down at his foot and nodded. "I'll be all right, Peter. You look as if you had an encounter with the glass yourself."

Peter nodded. "Yeah, sticking right in my heel and I didn't have a first aid kit. But it's not that deep. I'm okay. Only I've gotta say being like this hasn't got much to recommend it."

"I discovered that," Egon said, complete understanding in his voice. "When this is all over, I want to compare notes with you and to understand how you managed to float."

"Come on, Egon, you said you were a ghost for all intents and purposes. Ghosts float. I figured I could, too. You used ghost powers to get back here, you know. Remember how Ray's rectifier thingie sent you into the Netherworld when he was changing you back? Well, I think the destabilizer did that, too. Maybe not the Netherworld, but some other weird realm. Ghosts can cross those borders after all. They're always zipping over here to cause us trouble. So I figured that's what you did to show up at the firehall instead of at the site where we fought Arzun. You used that ability without even knowing it and willed yourself home. That's how I got here." He grinned his am-I-great-or-what? grin. "But enough of playing in Slimer's league. I want to be solid again. I've got a sneaky feeling I can't eat like this or wear my new Armani jacket or use a thrower, or kiss a beautiful woman--or a beautiful pooka. So put me back the way I belong." He looked around. "Speaking of pookas, where's Mab? And Ray?"

He felt a sudden twist of alarm deep in his stomach as the joy of the reunion faded from Egon's face and the hollow in the depths of his eyes became more vivid. "We had a problem after you were hit, Peter," Egon explained in a quiet, carefully unemotional tone.

Venkman's alarm intensified with astonishing rapidity. "Where is he?" he demanded, reaching up to grab Egon by the arms only to drop his hands as they sank through Egon's sleeves.

"The rest of the hobgoblins took him," Egon stated flatly.

"Took him?! Let me get this straight," Peter said, a tightness in his throat. Funny, he'd have all these physical symptoms when he wasn't even physical. "Ray's been snatched by the hobgoblins and you guys are just sitting here?!" He couldn't keep the note of accusation from his voice.

"Mab went after them, Peter," Winston explained. "She said they'd cross over into their dimension immediately and we don't have any way to get there. We can go to the Netherworld in a pinch, but they're not in the Netherworld. She'd find out if he was okay and come back and tell us. She might even be able to get him free on her own."

"Yeah, but they might have gone to that warehouse they'd stayed in before," Peter reminded them, concern for Ray's peril overriding lesser matters. "Did you check it out?"

"Egon had two inches of glass rammed into his foot, Peter," Winston explained hastily. "He can barely walk. We didn't dare leave the containment unit unguarded either. Mab can control the hobgoblins up to a point and she can go back and forth between realms. If they're still in our universe she will tell us. Until then, we'll have to wait. They might have wanted to lure us out of here so they could lower the protection grid and free all the ghosts, and we can't let that happen. I could have gone to the warehouse, but Egon couldn't have held out against a hobgoblin attack with that foot."

"But they've got Ray!" Peter persisted as if he couldn't understand why they weren't chasing after them, even though he knew Winston was right. Egon was hurt, but Egon was right in front of him, safe if not well. Peter wanted to do something and do it right now.

"Peter!" Egon put his hands on Peter's shoulders. They sank down through the transparent pajama top for a couple of inches before Egon caught himself and raised them so they seemed to be resting on Peter's shoulders. He could feel them in a strange, misty kind of way. "There aren't enough of us to search and still protect this place." Peter realized how much it was hurting Egon to remain inactive while their youngest member was in trouble, but he'd forced himself to accept that there was nothing he could do at the moment, hard though such a choice must be. "You know we can't allow them to take down the grid and free the ghosts. It would be much worse now than it was when Peck caused it to go down before. We have far more deadly entities within and many more of them. Of course we'd rather be chasing after Ray, but we have no idea where Ray has been taken. True, we could use the meters to check his biorhythms but that's a limited range. We must rely on Mab. She means to help us."

"You hope," muttered Janine, who had never quite brought herself to trust the pooka.

"No, she'll help us," Peter realized, relieved that Ray had as good a chance of rescue as that. "I know you're right, Egon, but I hate it. I want to go after Ray right now. You'd better change me back quick so I can--"

He broke off as he heard the flapping of great wings. One hand went up automatically to reach for his thrower, and he tensed when he realized he was no longer wearing it, or even capable of wearing a thrower at all. A dark shape appeared at one of the broken windows, but by then both Egon and Winston were aiming the destabilizers in that direction, and Janine had edged in beside Egon, her arm around his waist to give him balance.

The shape that filled the window was much bigger than the hobgoblins, though not so dark and ominous. It blurred before Peter's stunned eyes and shifted to the human version of Mab, beautiful yet terrible, her eyes flashing with the passion of her anger or frustration. Her hair was still bound back in the thick braid, so there was nothing to cover her nudity but Peter scarcely paid attention to her magnificent body. He surged forward to confront her as she hopped lightly down and stood facing him, accepting the bathrobe Janine passed her quickly, and put it on. Slimer popped in after her, spotted Peter, and zipped over, circling around him and sniffing him.

"Peter's a ghost!" he piped in his squeaky voice, clearer than usual but not much better. "Peter's like me now. Slimer likes it!"

"Get away, Spud," Peter said, swatting at him. Slimer felt solid under his fingers, even less slimy than usual. Weird.

"You've been transformed, my handsome lad," Mab told him, stretching out a hand and stroking his cheek. He could feel it as clearly as a normal touch in his usual state. "But not to worry, for Egon can reverse the process."

"Where's Ray," said Peter flatly, grabbing her hand and detaching it. He could touch her without effort, proving that though she seemed physical, she had equal ties in both worlds. "Did you see him? Is he safe? Is he okay?"

"They have taken him to their own realm," she admitted, the annoyance in her tone all the stronger because she had failed to stop them. "They crossed the boundary high over the city, but not before Ray managed to shoot one down with his thrower."

"Shoot one down?" Winston exulted. "Way to go, Ray! How'd he do it? We couldn't blast them."

"I do not know," she replied. "He must have hit a vulnerable spot; I think between the shoulder blades or in the wings. When we retrieve him, he will tell us. But the transfer was made high in the air. You could never have followed them to rescue him." That made Egon relax slightly as if he'd been worried he'd taken the easy way out until now.

"Did you get him back?" Peter demanded hotly, though it was obvious she hadn't.

"Against dozens of them?" she asked, her mouth tightening. "They have kin on the other side."

"Yeah, yeah, nasty place, cold, scary, baaaad ghosts!" babbled Slimer. "Poor Ray, trapped. Slimer saw."

"He came with me," Mab admitted. "There were more than I could confront, even with Slimer's assistance. To be destroyed without a plan would never have saved Ray. He is unhurt save for a few scratches from their talons. No deep wounds. More, he is fascinated by his surroundings. He has one of his meters. I saw him using it. They did not attempt to stop him. They knew no matter what he did, he could not return home unaided. They were guarding him carefully, but they will not continue to do so. Where would he go? I could not get to him, so I came to reassure you."

"Reassure us?" Janine cried, standing toe to toe with the pooka. "You let them take him and didn't bring him back?"

Mab's eyes flashed green fire. "Do not anger me, little woman. I stayed to fight at your side and followed your friend into a dimension that hates my kind. I will go again to fetch him back to you. Do not think to fault me for my actions. You cannot understand my purposes, and your powers are nonexistent beside my own."

"Hey. Hey. She doesn't mean to piss you off," said Peter quickly, waving a hand to turn Mab's angry attention from the secretary. "The thing is, you've gotta understand we're a team, all of us. We love that kid. He's family. For years us four guys have been brothers. More than brothers, more than friends. Janine, too. She's one of us. We're just going nuts without him, is all. We're not trying to make you mad. We just want to get him back and be sure he's all right."

"Yeah," agreed Slimer quietly, his face melancholy. "Love Ray. Want him back!"

Her face softened and she put both hands on Peter's shoulders, holding on tightly. "Even when you most annoy me, I see that warm, caring heart of yours and can forgive you anything."

Peter felt color spring to his face but he ignored his embarrassment at her words and the fact she'd said them in front of the others and concentrated on what really mattered. "So are you saying you can get Ray back for us?"

"It will be difficult, but possible."

"Can you take us there to rescue him?" asked Winston, guiding Egon back to the chair. "Stay there," he muttered to the physicist in an undertone. "That foot's got to be hurting you bad."

It was plain from Egon's face that Winston had hit the nail on the head, because there was pain in the very lines of Egon's body. Part of that had to be concern for Ray, but the rest of it was physical. Peter eyed him with worry, hating the fact that there was nothing he could do to help Egon.

"Take you there?" Mab pondered it. "Aye, but I will not. It will not help you. Taking you there would drain my powers, because I would have to carry you to the portal, open the gate for you and then bring you through. I would have no strength to aid you on the other side and it might not be possible to bring you home. I can bring Ray back without unduly stressing myself, but to take all of you over would be harder. Bringing Ray back would not be too bad, for his natural affinity is for his own realm. But to take you over, no. Slimer may accompany me, but not humans."

"But then you'll be facing them without backup. I don't know if Slimer's gonna be much good, no matter how much he wants to save Ray, and you said they were out to get you," Peter protested, concerned for her as well as for Ray. Before he could say anything again, another surge of pain ran through his body, this one fiercer than the last, and of a longer duration. He cried out involuntarily, doubling over and clutching at his stomach with one hand and his head with the other. Winston and Janine jumped at him though he didn't know what they could do to help and Egon erupted to his feet again, his chair tipping sideways, ignoring his injured foot. Peter waved him back. The pain ebbed away as the others waited, seeming to hold their breaths, and he straightened up quickly and tried to pretend it hadn't happened, though his breathing had quickened. Winston's eyes were narrowed as he picked up Egon's chair and set it in place again.

"That settles it," Egon said sharply, his face full of concern for Peter as he lowered himself into the seat once more. "I know how you are feeling, Peter. The molecular destabilization is continuing and the pain will become worse each time it hits. There will be shorter intervals between each bout until it will become near constant and unbearable. You can't fool me about how you feel because I went through the same experience. Let me finish the last power coupling and I will reverse the process right now and turn you back to normal. Then we can plan how best to save Ray."

Peter held up his hand to stop the physicist, trying to quell the nervous sensation in the pit of his stomach over what he was about to say. "No, Egon. No way."

"Peter, are you crazy?" Winston demanded, trying to grab him by the shoulders but failing because of the psychologist's discorporated state. "Look at you! You're ectoplasmic. You're gonna keep on destabilizing, and by this time tomorrow, it could kill you or make you vanish in a puff of smoke. The sooner you're solid again, the better I'll like it."

Peter stood up as tall as he could. His eyes went to Egon first and he refused to look away. "Think, Spengs," he said quickly trying to project both urgency and determination into his entire demeanor. "I just told you how I got back here after the destabilizer hit me. I was pushed into another dimension by the beam. I bet you were, too. Weird place, really weird. I figured out I could cross over and find my way home because I'm like a ghost right now; that's what you said, that you were still alive but for all intents and purposes you were a ghost. I don't like it. It's weird and I can't touch you guys and sometimes it hurts like hell. But if I stay this way for a little while longer, I can go over with Mab and help her get Ray back. I can cross over like this without draining you, can't I?" he asked, spinning to stare at Mab expectantly.

"Peter, no!" Egon cried involuntarily, jumping to his feet, only to grab the table to catch his balance as his bad foot took his weight.

"No, Egon? I'm gonna help get Ray back. I can do it like this when you and Winston and Janine can't. Ray needs me right now, and he needs me like this, and you know it. When I get home with Ray, then you can change me back, and not one second sooner." He folded his arms across his chest and faced Egon with the most stubborn expression he could muster plastered on his face.

There was a moment of silence, then Mab stepped forward and put her arms around Peter. She kissed him, and it felt solid and real to him, but it was not a kiss of passion. She drew back and smiled at him. "Lad, lad, if you were one of my kind, I would never let you go," she told him. "So much beauty, so much loyalty, and so much love for your friends. Yes, you may come with me. I would go with you even into hell."

"So would we," Egon said without hesitation, his voice slightly husky with emotion, meeting Peter's gaze with a look that held respect and deep affection, along with his concern for both Peter and Ray. "I have done just that, many times, and I hope Peter knows how much I have always been grateful to have him at my side. Will Peter be safe with you? We value him too much to want to take unwarranted risks with his life."

Mab's green eyes locked with Egon's blue. "No. For I will not be safe, so how can I promise his safety. I can guarantee you nothing except the attempt. He will be safer than the rest of you would be in that world and I will do what I can to protect him because not for hundreds of years has a human appealed to me as he does. I would not become human for him, not that, but short of that, I am his to command. We will go together, Peter and I, with Slimer, and bring Ray back from the hobgoblins' dimension." She tossed her head, and even standing there barefoot in the ratty old bathrobe, she looked magnificent. But Peter scarcely noticed her. He was looking at Egon and Winston.

"I have to do it, guys," he said with determination. "I have to! You would if you could, but you can't right now and I can. I know how I'd feel if I were over there alone, and I'm not gonna let Ray put up with that one second longer than he has to. I was alone in the other dimension just now and it scared the hell out of me. This time I'll have Mab with me, and she's got power. So don't worry about me, just be ready to turn me back as soon as I get home because Peter Venkman needs to be solid."

Egon limped forward and stopped when he was about a foot away from Peter. "If you do not take proper care of yourself when you are over there, if you have the effrontery to die on me, I will follow you into the afterlife and yank you back by the hair."

"Not my hair, Egon," Peter complained, striving for a light note though Egon's words warmed that cold place inside of him. "Think of it. I can't use my comb like this. I bet I look terrible."

"Not from where we're sitting," said Winston at Egon's shoulder.

"We will leave in an hour," Mab said abruptly. "In the meantime, I would not say no to a hot drink."

"I'll fix it," Janine offered, "and you can help me." She caught the pooka's arm and guided her from the room. Slimer muttered something enthusiastic about food and followed them.

"At least sit down, Peter," Egon said reproachfully. "Your foot may be better than mine but that looks a makeshift bandage at best. Since we have no way to treat the injury until you return, don't put weight on it."

Peter bobbed up and down a couple of times. I'm not putting weight on it, Egon. I'm floating. Ghosts can do that, you know. Ray would love it. Too bad he wasn't the one destabilized and I was the one taken into the other dimension." He slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. "Damn it, Egon, we've got to get him back."

"If it's humanly possible, you'll do it, Dr. Venkman." Egon's voice had softened and he sounded both gentle and sympathetic. "It was hard for you over there when you were destabilized, wasn't it?" he asked.

Peter tensed. "How do you do that?" he demanded suspiciously. "I swear, you can always tell what I'm thinking."

"Years and years of practice," Egon responded. His hand had curled around Winston's forearm to help himself stay on his feet. "I know you, Peter. You don't want to go. You're afraid you'll be stuck there, but it matters more to you to bring Ray home."

"I've gotta," Peter agreed. "I know I can't wear a thrower, but there's gotta be some way I can use--this." He gestured at himself. "Even if it's just to distract the hobgoblins while Mab gets Ray out of there it's worth it, and you know it."

"Peter Venkman, listen to me. I don't want any suicide missions here. I want both of you back, and if you don't swear to me you mean to come home, I shall neutronize myself with my own destabilizer and come with you."

"No, Egon!" Peter cried. "You can't. I won't risk you too, or you either, Winston. The only good thing when I was over there was knowing I had the three of you to come back to. My dad wasn't much in the family department. I love the old con man and always will but I always knew I couldn't trust him. Loving somebody you can't trust hurts, and I never let anybody see that, not until you, Egon, and you just knew."

"Of course I knew, Peter," Egon said quietly. "My own father considered respect far more important than love, and he gave willingly of the former but rarely of the latter. I do understood."

Peter grinned. "Yeah, Egon, and I picked up on that pretty quick, too. And then there was Ray, who didn't have anybody at all. Between the three of us we made a pretty good family, and then Winston came along and joined in. Most people are born to families or marry into them. We made our own." He didn't usually let himself talk seriously like this, but all of them knew the trip after Ray wasn't going to be a piece of cake. Neither of them might come back and Peter couldn't go without saying what was inside him. "So I got lucky, Egon, and I've always known that. Love and respect and trust all together, with the three of you, and nobody can beat that."

"No, Peter," Egon agreed. "No one can, and no one ever will. Bring Ray back with you safely. If anyone can, it's you."

"I will, and if I can find a way to close off the hobgoblins' dimension in the process, I'll do that, too."

Egon lifted his hand to clasp Peter's shoulder, lowering it reluctantly when he realized he couldn't really touch his friend. "One more thing," he said with sudden urgency. "We have known Mab less than a day. True, the hobgoblins came as she said they would, but can we actually trust her? She may have helped them while giving the illusion of siding with us. She evidently comes from that dimension or one like it and in some ways is more like them than she is like us. What if she is part of a larger plan to destroy us? She had the power to shoot fire at them but she didn't do it until it was too late. For all we know, it might have been window dressing, to convince us she was on our side."

Peter frowned. He'd thought of those things too, right from the beginning, because it wasn't his nature to trust easily, especially mysterious entities with powers he didn't entirely understand. But there were other ways to know the truth, and Peter was an expert at reading people, even ghosts and various mysterious entities. "Yeah, I thought of that, too," he admitted. "I've been watching her all day. Part of that is because she's drop-dead gorgeous, of course, but the rest of it is because she's got the capability of hurting us big time. I might take risks for myself, but not for the rest of you guys. And I think she's on the level. In a way she looks on us as if we were amusing pets; humans are too ephemeral for her to get involved with as a general rule. Like we wouldn't expect a long term relationship with a goldfish or a hamster."

"Goldfish or hamsters are incapable of carrying on an intelligent conversation," Egon said a little stiffly as if he didn't think much of the comparison, though he understood it. He always got that way when he felt something impugned his intellect.

"Or at least they're boring like Georgie," Peter replied. "Yeah, Egon, my ego doesn't enjoy that kind of attitude either. But think. She's nearly immortal. She'll still be around when we've been dead for centuries. If it were me, I wouldn't dare let myself care about anybody but another immortal type. Maybe she could fall for somebody like that Duncan MacLeod character on Highlander but we'll be gone in a blink of her eye. So it's better for her to hold herself aloof. She's probably been closer to us than she has most humans. Means we're special. But that's not what I'm trying to say, Egon. I'm a damned good psychologist. Part of that's from Psych 101 and part I learned at my dad's knee when he was trying to make a con man of me. But when she makes us a promise, she'll keep it. She's that kind. I trust her to help me rescue Ray. I'd go anyway, but I think she's on our side."

"I saw her shooting fire like that a couple of other times before she did it there at the end," Winston volunteered. "She saved Peter once when a hobgoblin almost got him."

Peter hadn't noticed that, and evidently Mab didn't need praise or validation for her actions. "I didn't know that, but it proves my point. She's one of the good guys. She'll do what she can to help get Ray back; I know that much." He heaved a sigh. "I wish we didn't have to wait. I want to get over there and bring our buddy back right now."

"Maybe she wants to lull them," Winston remarked. "They aren't going to expect a rescue anyway, but they might expect her." He shook his head. "Maybe not. Maybe they think she really wouldn't get involved. Or maybe they think she'll come around and help them break open the containment unit."

"It won't help them to try," Egon replied matter of factly. "I put a force field around it before we went to bed."

"That's our Egon," Peter said with a grin, wishing he could reach out and give his friend a companionable poke in the ribs. There might be perks to his 'ghostly' state for awhile, but the novelty had already faded and Peter hated it. This wasn't something readily applied like the mood slime that had given him ghostly powers once before, though that experience was helpful now. This was something that couldn't be reversed without Egon, without the gadget Ray had designed to save Egon. Peter knew his time was limited in this state, but surely he had enough time to save Ray. It was just that it felt . . . lonely. He was right here in the same room with the other two, but it was as if he were somewhere far away. He couldn't even give them a farewell hug before he started out on his mission. His sense of isolation had been growing steadily and Peter would have liked nothing better than to tell Egon, "Change me back,"--except for rescuing Ray. He could picture their teammate stranded in a hobgoblin prison, maybe hurt, definitely scared, completely alone in an alternate world. Peter had always been blessed--or cursed--with a vivid imagination and it took little effort to picture himself in Ray's place, to guess how the occultist felt, because it would have been hell for Peter. Ray's curiosity and fascination with the new and strange would help him at first, but he was still a prisoner with no guarantee of rescue. He didn't know what Peter and Mab were planning. Peter had to get him back; that was the bottom line. He had to save Ray.

From the look on Egon's face as Winston helped him back to the chair, the physicist was going through a little hell of his own. He'd already lost one friend, and now Peter was leaving as well, voluntarily. Egon had to stay behind, unable to participate in the rescue, and he wouldn't allow Winston to be destabilized either, even if Winston insisted. Peter was pretty sure the process was a crap shoot. It might as easily have killed either one of them or stranded them permanently wherever the beam had forced them. He wouldn't let Egon or Winston go through it, not for anything.

Egon's eyes lingered on Peter, and it was up to Venkman to find a bright grin for his friend, to try to reassure him as best he could. He was seeking the right words when Janine and Mab returned with steaming cups of coffee. Peter couldn't smell it. He heaved a regretful sigh as the others took their cups and Janine picked up the one that was left on the tray and started to offer it to him only to realize he couldn't take it. She put it back quickly and set the tray on the table.

"Sorry, Dr. V."

"It's okay, Janine. I'm not gonna be gone that long and when I get back with Ray, you can make me another one."

Ordinarily Janine didn't get coffee for her bosses; she said it wasn't in her job description. When she actually did it, it was because she could tell they needed it badly or because she wanted to. Now she nodded. "You got it. When you bring back Ray, nothing's going to be too good for you."

Peter grinned with forced brightness. "I like the sound of that."

Mab had changed her clothes while she was gone into the outfit Peter had given her before. She came over and sat down next to Peter as if she knew he needed physical contact. Reaching up, she pulled him down on the couch beside her. "Imagine you're sitting here," she said. "You won't sink through. Your subconscious mind will prevent it. Imagine how comfortable you are."

Peter tried, but he felt like a man sitting on the edge of a chair with broken springs, knowing if he shifted he would sag down into the hole. His muscles braced involuntarily and he simply could not be comfortable. God, he hated this.

As if she sensed his problem, she smiled suddenly and put her arm around his shoulders, giving him something to lean against. Peter heaved a sigh and relaxed into the circle of her arm.

"We will go soon," she said. "The hobgoblins' dimension is not like this one. True, there are structures, but you will not feel comfortable with them. The beings are shorter than humans and need less headroom. Their buildings are rounded, stacked irregularly. No doubt Ray will be in an inside room. I saw them shifting him inside. Now, listen to me. In your present state, you will be able to think yourself invisible. Egon told me he could solidify up to a point, but he could also disappear. I want you to practice that a time or two. It will be your job to hunt for Ray and make sure they have taken him where I thought they did, or find him if he is elsewhere. They will be unable to see you."

Peter grinned. Here was something positive, a plan, something he could do. He concentrated on making himself invisible, holding up a hand before his face to watch the process. At first, nothing happened and he realized he was trying too hard so he backed off and thought of invisibility. Suddenly, without warning, the hand disappeared. Egon cried, "PETER!" in a shocked voice and Winston sprang to his feet in alarm. Egon had done this little number in the candy factory, so he should understand how it worked, but what he understood now was that he couldn't see Peter.

Wickedly Peter jumped up--or floated up--and circled around behind Egon. "Yo, Spengs," he said in the physicist's ear.

Egon jumped then turned and faced the now-visible psychologist, shaking his head. "Venkman!" he said sternly.

"Couldn't resist, and besides, I hafta practice. I wouldn't want to suddenly get visible in front of the hobgob--" Pain hit him then and he cried out, his body spasming. Egon grabbed for him involuntarily.

"Peter? Peter, can you hear me?"

There was nothing to do but ride it out. Peter observed clinically that it was two seconds longer than the last time before the pain ebbed away. He moved carefully, wincing, then smiled reassuringly at Egon and Winston, which made them relax slightly though he could see the concern lingering in their eyes. "This isn't fun. Hey, Mab, can't we go now. Last thing I need is something like this to hit when I'm sneaking through Goblintown. Next thing you know, I'd be visible and they'd have two prisoners instead of one."

"They cannot imprison you," she reminded him with a dimpling smile. "You can slide through walls."

"Walls? Oh yeah," he echoed doubtfully, looking at the nearest wall. It appeared awfully solid. He didn't slide through floors, but maybe that was his subconscious, keeping him in place. His mind didn't believe he could go through the floor when he walked, so he didn't. But probably his subconscious wouldn't let him walk through walls either. He'd try and bash in his forehead. Frowning, Peter headed for the wall between Egon's lab and the bathroom and took a step, holding up his hands, half expecting to brain himself. Instead with a strange, swooping sensation, he found himself standing in the middle of the sink.

"Yaa!" he jumped free of it, realizing he could do it, and with a broad grin he slid through the wall again and confronted the others, his smile a mile wide. Finally, a fringe benefit! "Isn't it great, guys?"

"Big deal," muttered Slimer with withering scorn. "Slimer's always been able to do that."

"Oh, great, now I've got the spud taking potshots at me," Peter groaned. "Am I ready yet, Mab? Any other little pointers?"

"I will have several when we get there. First we must see how well you can fly."

"Uh . . . fly?" Peter asked doubtfully, his toes curling nervously at the thought. "You mean way up in the air with the ground waaaay down below?"

"That is the usual method," she returned, amused.

"Well, uh," Peter began awkwardly, then admitted in a rush, "I'm kinda . . . afraid of heights."

To his astonishment and hurt, Mab's eyes twinkled and then she began to laugh, followed immediately by Egon and then Winston. Peter stood there, his hands curling into fists, and gazed at them reproachfully.

"Peter, listen to yourself," Egon said, climbing carefully to his feet and limping closer. "None of us intended to mock you. But you are in ghostly form. You've been drifting above the floor automatically ever since you returned. Even if you were to fall, you could stop yourself. You will not be hurt. But that was not what was so funny."

"Then what was?" Peter demanded, unwilling to let them off the hook so easily.

"You have been transformed into a 'ghost', a painful and frightening process, and you have chosen to retain that form long enough to go into a hostile dimension filled with beings who want to kill you so you can rescue Ray, and that doesn't daunt you. But you don't like the idea of flying? You've already done it with the mood slime and you did it when my experiment temporarily transformed you into a superhero. You will be able to do it as easily as walking through the walls."

Peter saw his point. "So, okay, I suppose you can just ignore all your phobias, Egon?"

"What phobias?" Egon demanded instantly as if Peter had accused him of a nasty perversion or two.

"Well, give me a minute and I'll think of a couple." Peter found himself grinning at the hauteur of Egon's tone. He could think of a few things that really bothered Egon, but he wasn't about to mention them in public, especially in front of Janine. There were rules to the game.

"Oh, no need," Egon said quickly. "I'm sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to laugh. It simply seemed a small thing after all the other risks you have been facing without hesitation."

"Yeah, I'm a great guy. But I still don't like heights. I'm always falling off high places." He turned to Mab. "I remember when we were in Hell, Egon pushed me off a balcony. Actually pushed. And he didn't even calculate the odds that time, either."

"You fly in Ecto-2 all the time," Winston pointed out.

"Yeah, but I've got it between me and that one big step," Peter defended his inconsistency. "I don't mind planes either or tall buildings as long as I'm inside or there's a high railing."

"You flew as Venk-Man," Janine reminded him.

"Superheroes don't smash through the pavement," Peter said quickly, wincing at the memory of his experience as a so-called superhero. "That was different."

Egon's smile was knowing but he didn't say anything. He merely said, "Walk through that wall, Peter, and try it. You can hover above the floor. Simply hover much higher."

Peter looked at the outer wall of the lab. "I could just jump out the window," he suggested, looking at the broken out panes of glass. "The guy who fixes our windows is gonna love us this time, guys." Obediently he went over to that wall, slid through its solidity like a pro, and hovered there level with the third floor, the pavement far beneath his feet. After a moment, when he was sure he wasn't going to fall, he risked a wary look down. The street seemed miles away.

"Yikes!" He ducked through the wall again, relieved to be back on solid ground, figuratively anyway. "Okay, so I can do it," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean I have to like it. Ready, Mab?"

"If you are." She began to peel off the clothes, and Egon said sternly, "Turn around, Peter."

He wanted to object. After all, he'd seen her naked before; she'd even been naked in his bed. But he needed her help, so he obeyed Egon's suggestion, gazing out into the night. When he turned back, she had shifted shape again, to the huge, winged being she had been when she returned from the parallel world. Peter wondered if it was her natural state. She sprang to the window ledge and posed there, positioning herself for flight.

"Into the fire, lad," she urged, something in her voice thrilling him, inspiring him to jump into the next window and strike a pose, Slimer right behind him.

"Let's do it!" he cried. Pausing for a second, he turned his head, sought Egon's eyes.

Egon said simply, "Bring him back, Peter. And bring yourself back safely as well." His eyes never left Peter for an instant.

"Good luck, Pete," said Winston, giving him a thumbs' up sign.

"Take care, Dr. V," agreed Janine.

Mab sprang into the sky, wings beating, and Peter braced himself and leaped after her, automatically assuming what he thought of as the 'Superman' position, arms outstretched. He tried to picture a cape floating out behind his shoulders, billowing in the breeze of his flight, then abandoned the image, focusing his eyes on Mab as she soared ahead of him. Don't look down, Venkman, he told himself. Whatever you do, don't look down.

"Gonna save Ray, Peter," Slimer cried behind him. "Gonna go save Ray."

"Yeah, right, Spud," agreed Peter. "We're gonna save Ray."

But it wasn't going to be easy.

Ray had been so astonished when the hobgoblins grabbed him he'd been yanked aloft before he could protest. After the first moment he hadn't dared to struggle very much, because their talons stabbed at him; he could feel them pricking his skin and knew if he tried to fight free they would gouge deeper. Still shocked by the unexpectedness of Peter's destabilization, Ray struggled a little, stopping when he felt one of the talons digging into his arm and blood running down his wrist to drip from his fingertips. Besides, from what he could see, he was high above the city. If they dropped him now he'd die and then he wouldn't be able to get away and help his friends.

"Can we talk about this?" he asked, hoping they could understand him. "Tell me what you want."

They didn't respond at all, and he remembered how remorseless they had seemed back home. Back when Peter had been blasted...

Are you okay, Peter? he thought wistfully, Peter's scream still ringing in his ears. He knew the destabilizer had probably done what it had to Egon that time with Arzun, but Egon had been hit by a backlash and Peter with the beam itself. The results might be different for each man. Peter could have been discorporated completely. He might even be already dead. Ray shuddered in the grip of his captors and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Don't be dead, Peter. Please don't be dead.

The angle of flight shifted then and Ray opened his eyes to see where he was going and find out if there was a way out of the bind he was trapped in. The hobgoblins had taken him very high; he could see the Empire State building in the distance to the north and they seemed to be flying at the level of the top platform. Below them, the lights of Brooklyn made a pattern that would have been beautiful at any other time. Right now, Ray didn't have time to spare for beauty. He had to figure out why he'd been taken and make sense out of what they meant to do with him now that they had him.

They could have killed him in the firehall but they hadn't. They might have dropped him from a height if they'd wanted him dead, but they hadn't done that either, thank goodness. It was pretty certain they wanted a captive and had snatched him because he wasn't paying attention to them when Peter was hit. He didn't know why they had grabbed him, but there were a couple of possibilities. A hostage, someone to trade for the hobgoblins incarcerated in the traps. Someone to open the containment unit. Maybe they meant to brainwash him and program him to lower the protection grid and free the ghosts, the way Peter nearly had when the demon Watt had possessed him. Or maybe they simply wanted a human for their dinner. Baked Ghostbuster, with an apple in his mouth. The last image made him shiver, but he knew he had to do something. His thrower was still in his hand, even if his arm was pinned at his side. Carefully he checked his grip to see how much movement he had and to determine whether he could reach the trigger button to switch it on. His thumb settled on the button, pushed, and a confinement stream blasted across the sky, striking one of the hobgoblins flying ahead directly between his shoulder blades where the wings branched from his body. He let out a screech and plunged from the sky, falling, tumbling wildly as he dropped for the city below. Ray waited for him to catch himself and break his fall, but he never did. His wings drooped brokenly as he vanished into the night.

None of the others attempted to go after him; instead they turned on Ray, stripping him of his proton pack and tearing the thrower from his hand. They let it fall after their downed comrade and Ray closed his eyes, hoping it wouldn't hurt anybody or explode on impact. He heard it crash against a rooftop, but there was no explosion so he had to hope explosive overload had not been triggered. The hobgoblins ignored it, but they tightened their grip on Ray and flew onward as if they were in a great hurry. They didn't attempt to hurt him, other than by digging in their claws to hold him more firmly. "Hey. That hurts," he protested, knowing it wouldn't do any good. It didn't.

Something was happening. He hadn't been sure where they were taking him, to the warehouse, possibly, but it didn't seem to be their destination. Instead they hovered in the air, motionless. One of them, the biggest, flew a little in front of them and made several passes in the air with his left hand. He said a few words that Ray didn't understand and suddenly a glittering barrier sprang into being, a ribbon of shifting light that reminded Ray of the Aurora Borealis. One of the hobgoblins chattered something, and Ray realized he couldn't understand their language. Mab had made it possible for him to understand animals, and even to understand Slimer better. But of course the hobgoblins were not ghosts, and maybe they knew of Mab's skill and were able to block it. She had warned them they might not be able to understand the hobgoblins. He was sorry to find it was true because it would make his chances of escape smaller.

One of the hobgoblins flew at the ribbon of light, put out both hands and parted it as if it were a curtain. Beyond it, the light was brighter, full of a harsh, glaring sunlight. While the one hobgoblin held the 'curtain' back, the others swooped through the opening one after another, pulling Ray with them. As he crossed the dividing line, it felt as if he'd received a mild electric shock and he stiffened against the pain, his muscles spasming, but a moment later it faded as if it had never happened. He sagged in their grip, loosening his aching muscles. Several talons pierced lightly, one in his shoulder, one in his side and another in his thigh, and he could feel bleeding begin, but he didn't think they were deep.

Below him, a harsh and desolate landscape lay spread out, jagged and rocky but with a range of colors that seemed unnatural for the ground. Rocks held a purple cast, some faintly lavender, some a deep plum color, some as dark as purple grapes. The sky was blue, but it was a thin, yellowish blue with the sun high and harsh overhead, bigger than Earth's sun, a flat disk in the sky. The shadows were stark as if the air were thinner, and Ray realized that was true. He could breathe, but it felt as if he were on a mountaintop. As long as he did not exert himself, he could breathe normally, but he suspected if he tried to run, he would tire much more quickly. Working his PKE meter free he tried to adjust it to take readings of the area. The hobgoblins must not have considered it a threat for they let him use it and stick it away again when he was finished, not much the wiser. The readings here were mostly hobgoblins though he was able to detect residuals from normal ghosts, some as powerful as class sevens. Maybe there were demons in this realm. The gate they'd just come through was closed and didn't give off any readings at all. Ray wished he'd thought to check the meter at the moment of transition.

The hobgoblins carried him over a series of small, irregular hills, boulder-strewn and barren of growth except for some stiff, violet grass. Beyond the last hill was something that looked like a cluster of golf-balls piled atop each other, sinking into each other as if heat had seared and melted them. They were irregularly dimpled, sometimes with windows, sometimes with decorated platter-shaped attachments. The 'doors' were on the top of some of the 'golf balls', round circles in the middle of many of them, and Ray realized that made a lot of sense. Beings with wings would fly to and from their homes, and they probably wouldn't want to take the time to land and walk into a conventional door.

Ray was carried down through the biggest opening and then set down in the middle of a large area. Immediately he was surrounded by hobgoblins, some of them the ones who had come into the firehall to capture him and some who lived here including, to his surprise, a few hobgoblin children, just as ugly as the adults but much smaller, wide-eyed with curiosity, their wings not yet fully developed.

"Uh, hello," said Ray, still trying. "I'm Ray Stantz. Won't somebody tell me what you want with me?"

At his voice the children drew back, then, as if they had realized he couldn't hope to hurt them all of them, children and adults, bunched around him, some of them reaching out taloned hands to touch him, adding scratches to the deeper wounds he already had, then the biggest of them made a sharp command that caused them all to draw back. He grabbed Ray around the waist and rose with him into the air. Ray let out a startled yelp at the unexpected movement. "Where are we going now?" he asked.

The goblin remained silent, swooping down the high-ceilinged passageway until he came to a huge, rounded room. Light came in from a glassed over dome above Ray's head, and in the center of the floor was another hole. The hobgoblin held Ray out over the hole and then let go of him.

"Yaaaa!" yelled the occultist as he plunged down into darkness, but the fall was a short one and he tried to roll as he landed. His ankle twinged painfully but he didn't think it was sprained, merely one more pain to add to the collection he'd acquired since he was snatched. He lay on the floor wiggling his foot carefully, and when he looked up he saw the hobgoblin peer down at him a moment, said in harshly accented English, or at least something Mab had enabled him to understand, "Stay there. If you try to escape you will die, but there is no way out." Then he turned and flew away.

"At least come back and tell me why you want me," Ray called after him, but the creature was gone. The hole overhead was free of hobgoblins, and the silence of the place indicated he'd been left completely alone. "Well, gee, you could at least talk to me," muttered Ray. "At least they could explain why I'm here."

At first Ray didn't move except to test his foot. The pain quickly ebbed and he realized he wasn't much hurt; he would be able to walk on it with no difficulty. "Just twisted," he muttered in relief as he wiggled his toes. Watching the hole overhead to make sure no one came back he drew deep breaths, trying to adjust to the thinner atmosphere. After a few minutes when no one appeared, he realized he had been left alone here and he sat up cautiously to study his prison.

It was a round room, shaped like a dome, the only entrance the one he'd fallen through, proving it had not been intended as a hobgoblin prison. For a human, though, it did a very good job of confinement. "This isn't very fair," he muttered to himself as he studied his new surroundings. The room's walls were smooth, curving inward to meet the opening, impossible to climb without special equipment. Ray always carried a lot of interesting things on his belt, but he hadn't been wearing his belt, only his proton pack over his pajamas, and they had thrown away his pack. He still had the PKE meter he'd tucked into the waistband of his pajamas but it wouldn't help him get out of here. He took a couple of readings; yes, negative valences all around him. "I'm in their realm," he muttered. "It's not the Netherworld, it's a whole different world. Wow, I wish I could see more of it! Only I don't see how." He ran his fingers over the smooth, sloping wall. It was as hard as metal. He couldn't dig toeholds in it, even if he'd had something to dig with. Getting out of here would be really hard, but first he'd have to be ready.

Barefoot, bleeding both from small glass cuts on the soles of his feet and from the deeper wounds inflicted by the hobgoblins' talons, he abandoned the thought of escape for the moment, turning his attention to caring for his hurts instead. "Gosh, I'd better stop this bleeding! I'm a mess."

The worst of them proved to be the puncture in his left shoulder; it was deep and bleeding sluggishly and he had no water to clean it with. He could only hope their talons contained no poison because if they had, there was no way to treat it. Aside from the thinness of the air and a slight weakness that must be the result of bloodloss, he didn't feel too bad but he didn't want the bleeding to continue if he could help it.

Taking off his pajama top, he proceeded to tear it into strips, a harder process than he'd expected, biting the fabric with his teeth to start the tears. When he had it in pieces, he used one of the sleeves to mop at the blood at his shoulder, a smaller wound in his side and some in his arms and legs that were little more than scrapes. The soles of his feet yielded one fairly nasty cut and a few glass fragments that he worked out carefully. He bandaged his feet thoroughly, knowing those wounds were the most likely to be infected if he tried to walk.

Suddenly the wall said, "Ray? Ray hurt?"

Jerking up his head he watched Slimer's face emerge from the clear white wall. The little ghost cried out in distress at the sight of Ray's injuries and swooped in to hug him. "Slimer can't stay," he said quickly. "Promised Mab to hurry back, first make sure Ray's all right. Mab and Slimer come back and get Ray out of here once nasty goblin ghosts go away. Promise." His skinny little arms tightened around Ray's neck, and the occultist was so glad to see someone from home he hugged Slimer back, reluctant to let go.

"What about Peter?" he demanded worriedly, grateful for the ability to understand Slimer better since the question was sure to upset him and make him less articulate than usual.

"Slimer doesn't know," the ghost admitted miserably. "Egon says de-destabilized."

"Was he back when you came after me?" Ray asked anxiously. He hadn't expected Peter to vanish and he couldn't help worrying that the effect was different this time because one or more of the elements of the destabilization process was different. Peter might have been neutronized, not destabilized and he could be dead right now. Ray heaved a sigh. There was nothing he could do about that, but the idea hurt so badly he could hardly bear to think of it. Life without Peter . . .

Slimer planted a big kiss on his cheek. "Peter not there yet. Maybe there now. Mab and Slimer come back, bring Ray home. Too many goblins now, and can't take Ray through the wall like Mab and Slimer. Ray fix hurts and wait, and Mab and Slimer come and bring him home." He gave Ray three or four more kisses, tightened his stranglehold around the occultist's neck, and then he let go and vanished into the wall again. Ray looked at the green smear that remained and a small smile traced its way across his face. "Hurry back, Slimer," he said as he began to bandage his shoulder. "I want to go home."

Egon limped over to the main lab table once Mab and Peter had gone, and sat down there, reaching out to test the destabilizer rectifier briefly, prepared to use it on Peter the moment he came home with Ray. After the incident that had forced Egon into the Netherworld, Ray had spent a lot of time redesigning the tool in hopes of preventing the same thing should they need it a second time. Altering the molecular structure of the human body made it possible for the body in question to slip through the barriers that defined its own universe; in fact made it likely that, unless protection was structured into the device, whoever was destabilized or restabilized would be sure to change dimensions. Ray had built in a kind of force field that surrounded the person at the moment of restabilization, forcing him to remain in his present universe or dimension when his body was transformed. They had tested it on furniture and garbage and other things that wouldn't be missed but since everything they destabilized vanished and had never returned to the firehall to be restabilized, the question had been moot. When Ray tried it after his tests, the objects in question didn't shift dimensions. Yet Egon had been all the more afraid Peter was gone for good until he suddenly appeared. They could not use the force field around the goblins or it would have proven impossible to trap them so it had not been in place when Peter was hit.

"Pete will get Ray back," Winston said as if he'd been reading Egon's mind, dragging up a chair and dropping into it beside Egon. Opposite them, Janine perched on the edge of the table, her worried eyes on Egon's face.

"If anyone can, it'll be Dr. V," she agreed. "He never gives up when the chips are down. You should've seen him when you guys were trapped inside Nexa. He was trying so hard to keep my spirits up and determined to score against that bitchy reporter but I could see in his eyes how scared he really was. His mind was working about a zillion miles a minute to figure out how to bring you guys back and he was all torn up with being scared he was all alone without you and that it was already too late. Of course I was too worried to realize all this then, but he was going to bring you back or die trying. I'm just glad he's on our side."

Egon could appreciate what she and Winston were saying, but inside him was a cold hard fear he couldn't see past, no matter how hard he struggled to be rational and in control. "I've known Peter for almost twenty years," he said in a tight voice. "And for all but the first few months he's been closer to me than a brother. I've only known Ray a year or two less. While I trust Peter to do everything possible to rescue Ray and Mab and Slimer to do what they can, and Ray to help himself as much as possible, I can't help thinking what will happen if they never come back. I can't imagine life without them. They have been such an important part of my entire adult life; it would be like--like the world ending."

"Egon, man, this isn't like you," Winston said quickly. "You're anticipating something that might never happen. Those hobgoblins aren't going to be a match for Peter and Mab together. I don't think anything could come between Peter and Ray. Peter won't let it."

"Peter is one man and he's not even solid at the moment. I trust Peter with my life. More, I trust him with all your lives, including Ray's," Egon said earnestly. "But it's only rational to assume going into enemy territory like that is dangerous."

"Then to hell with being rational," Janine cried. "Egon, don't give up on Peter. You know he would never for one instant give up on you."

That was completely true and Egon knew it. What he was doing was struggling to avoid hope because he was afraid he would be mistaken. But how could it hurt any worse to lose them whether he believed in their rescue or not? Janine was right, and so was Winston. What he couldn't do was avoid worry. What he could do was stop trying to imagine the emptiness of life without his two oldest friends at his side.

"Nothing in the world could make me give up on Peter, or Raymond either," he said, squaring his shoulders and sitting up straighter. "It's simply that waiting . . . "

"Don't I know it," agreed Winston. "This sucks, and that's that. I think waiting is the hardest thing, but don't forget, those goblins could come back, and we should make sure we're ready for them. We didn't find anything short of the destabilizers to stop them. How about I run those traps down and empty them so we'll be ready if they come back? In the meantime, good buddy, you check those readings and see if you can figure out anything that'll hit 'em like a brick wall if they come back. Design one of those force fields of yours or something. And remember, Mab said Ray shot one down so they're not invulnerable. See if you can figure out how to do the same thing."

"Peter, Ray and I were very lucky when you joined us, Winston," Egon said, smiling up at the black man as he gathered up the full traps in his arms.

"You weren't the only ones," Winston agreed with a grin. "I didn't know I needed three more brothers, but now I've got 'em, I don't plan to let go of 'em, either." He headed for the stairs, pausing long enough to say, "Stand guard over him while he does his thing, Janine. This boy doesn't notice anything when he's caught up in his work."

"Yeah, tell me," she called to Winston before turning back to Egon. Leaning across the table, she put her hand on his cheek. "They'll be back," she said. "I saw that look on Dr. Venkman's face before he left, and I don't think anything could stop him."

Egon turned his head automatically and pressed a kiss into the palm of her hand. Her face lit up but she didn't say anything, only holding her hand in position for a moment before she pulled away.

"So what do you want me to do while you work?" she asked. "Stand guard at the window?"

"Do you know how to monitor for the hobgoblins' valence with a PKE meter?" he asked.

"You bet I do. I'll do that now." She grabbed the nearest meter, adjusted it deftly, and went over to the window from which Ray had vanished, PKE meter in one hand and thrower in the other, her concentration fixed on the night sky. Egon smiled at her fondly, now she wasn't watching him to see it, then he pulled equipment together and set to his task, determined to ignore the throbbing in his foot. He had a lot of work to do.

Peter was starting to get used to flying, even though Mab and Slimer had led him higher than he felt comfortable with, as if the power would suddenly desert him and let him crash to the street. Slimer had chosen to zip along at Peter's side, describing to the uneasy psychologist the layout of Ray's cell. "Big and round, and hole in the ceiling, no doors," he'd explained, complete with gestures. "Ray can't climb out."

"Did you actually see him in there?" Peter asked, anxious for any word of Ray, and grateful to the spud for distracting him from the ground so far below.

"Yeah, Slimer went in and talked to him," the ghost admitted. "Lots of nasty cuts. Ray was making bandages out of his pajama top."

"Bandages? How bad was he hurt, Spud?" Peter asked, his voice rising, his stomach lurching. He well remembered the sight of the hobgoblins' talons; they could do a real number on human flesh.

"Deep cut here," Slimer said, touching Peter's left shoulder. "Another here. Here. Here." His fingers probed Peter's side, his right arm and his left thigh. "Didn't try to hurt him, just carrying him. Glass on feet but not very bad. Ray talked to Slimer. He was sitting up. Didn't have any way to climb out and Slimer couldn't carry him out the hole; nasty ghosts up there, bad hobgoblins. Didn't see Slimer." Peter was glad Mab had enabled them to understand Slimer better because he was nervous and talking fast, and ordinarily his words would be a jumbled blur, needing Ray to translate.

To his horror, pain struck again with sudden intensity, just as they soared as high as the Empire State Building. Peter cried out involuntarily and tried to curl around himself, losing momentum and beginning to drop like a stone. For the first few seconds, as the pain pulsed through his system, he didn't even realize he was falling. He could only sag limply and let it flow through him until it passed, unable to fight the mind-numbing agony. Then, with a horrified gasp, he realized New York was flinging itself at him with the speed of an express train and he concentrated on breaking the fall, desperately trying to block out the pain.

Every trace of reason deserted him and he couldn't think. Instead he lay openmouthed in the air as the city rushed toward him, quivering with shocked reaction, his arms and legs pedaling wildly. "HELP!" he shrieked. "Somebody HELP!"

Something hit him hard, grabbed him around the waist and left arm and broke his fall, and he heard the beating of great wings overhead. "Easy, Peter, easy, I've got you now," soothed Mab, her voice warm and breathy in his ear as she eased out of the dive and began to climb again. "Another bout of pain?" she asked gently.

Trembling violently with reaction and drenched with cold sweat, Peter nodded once, gulping as he tried to find his voice. He couldn't do this! He couldn't go on! What if he'd fallen? Frantically he wrapped his arms around Mab's larger form and clung like a child.

"Do you want me to take you home and go after Ray alone?" she asked, her voice completely non-judgmental.

"NO!" There was nothing else she could have said that would have cut through Peter's panic reaction. He tried to collect himself, realizing he was cold as ice and shaking like a leaf, while his stomach felt hollow and twisted with the force of reaction to that fall. But Ray needed him and that was what mattered, so he gulped and forced the fear behind him. "I'm going after Ray," he insisted hotly. "You can't leave me behind. I'm gonna bring him home and nobody better stop me. Besides, I probably won't have another pain reaction until after we cross over, will I?"

"I think not," she said reassuringly. "But I will fly at your side. Remember I will not let you fall, and that is a promise."

"Slimer not let you fall either," the little ghost insisted in Peter's ear, and he realized Slimer had grabbed his left arm and had broken the fall until Mab could catch him, and was still hanging on with all his strength. The green gooper looked as frightened as Peter felt.

"Thanks, Spud." Still shaky, Peter struggled after equilibrium. "Think I can do it now," he said, rubbing a hand across his brow. Tentatively he sought after the ability to levitate. When something wasn't a normal part of a person's life, it was all too easy to forget. After a few minutes, he risked letting himself hover, then rise again beside the other two. Who'd have thought when he suggested becoming a Ghostbuster that he'd one day fly alongside a ghost and a pooka to rescue a buddy from another dimension?

"We are nearly there," said Mab in his ear, waving her hands in a strange gesture in front of her. "Look. What do you see?"

Peter dared to look away from her and discovered a shining ribbon of light hanging before them in the sky, the colors shifting and dancing as if plucked and strummed by the wind. "What the heck is that?" he blurted. It was beautiful, a little like the northern lights he'd seen when the guys had gone to Alaska the time his dad had found Hob Anagarok.

"The gateway," Mab replied simply. "I just made it visible to your eyes. We will cross through that and find ourselves in the realm of the hobgoblins. Slimer will help me."

"Sure, Slimer knows the way," the little ghost agreed complacently. He flew at the light ribbon and reached out to grab a chunk of it in his hand as if it were a curtain made of cloth. Pulling it back, he was suddenly bathed in sunlight that stabbed through the opening. Mab grasped the other side of the curtain and drew it back. Peter squinted against the sun.

"When we cross over, Peter, do not try to do more than hover and drift," she said. "This world's oxygen is much like you would find atop a mountain peak. The air is thinner, there is less oxygen, and you will tire more easily if you exert yourself. It is true you need less oxygen in your non-corporeal state, but you will still feel the difference."

Peter nodded, gulping, then he made himself shoot through the opening, hovering just beyond the barrier. Slimer squirted through beside him and bobbed at his side and in a moment Mab came through, her wings tucked tight at her sides. As soon as she was through, the gateway vanished, revealing only a sky that was a strange, lemony blue. Her wings spread and she flung her hand out to point. "Low over the hills, Peter. We do not want them to see us. I will shield us as much as I can, but it will not be easy."

"Bad goblins come," squealed Slimer, diving for the ground and the dubious shelter of purple-tinted scrub trees and brush. A strangely-colored land, it should have been beautiful in a stark way but to Peter it was Ray's prison and he eyed it darkly.

"Quickly, Peter." Grasping his arm, Mab yanked him downward and they sheltered behind a clump of plum-leaved bushes while overhead a dozen hobgoblins soared up into the sky, activating the barrier once more and zipping through. For a second, Peter saw the blackness of the New York night then the rift sealed itself as if with a self-activating zipper and all trace of it vanished.

Peter erupted skyward before Mab could grab him. "They're going after Egon and Winston!" he blurted out, adrenaline pumping through his body as he realized the danger to the friends he'd left behind. "I've gotta go back and warn them."

"And how will you help them, like that?" Mab asked him sharply. "We knew this might happen; they knew and are preparing even as we speak. It will be easier for us to free Ray while they are gone. Let us be quick. We can hurry back afterwards to help them."

Peter knew she was right; it was just that he hated the thought of Egon, Winston and Janine having to take on the hobgoblins without backup. Without him there to help them, he admitted to himself, even though there was nothing he could do for them in this state. Hang in there, guys, he thought to himself. I'll bring Ray back as soon as I can. The thought of rescuing Ray and returning to find his other buddies had been destroyed twisted something inside him. They had to hurry.

"Ray found a way to knock one of them out of the sky," Mab reminded him as they lifted off again and started moving, clinging to the outline of the hills as they traveled, ready to duck into shelter at the first indication of more hobgoblins. "Egon knows this. Trust him to understand how it happened and to use that to defeat them."

"Egon's hurt," Peter reminded her. "He can hardly stand up."

"Egon is brilliant," Mab responded to the challenge. "Don't you think he could stop them, even from a wheelchair, if he had to."

"Yeah, but if he gets hurt worse or--or anything, and I wasn't there to watch his back . . . "

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "I believe this altered state is getting to you, my lad. Let us hurry. There will still be a fight ahead of us unless we can sneak into the fortress without detection. They will not expect us here, but that does not mean Ray will be totally unguarded either."

"Slimer got in to see him," Peter pointed out, forcing himself to concentrate on one problem at a time. They were here to save Ray; they'd have to save him fast and bring him home quickly, and that was all there was to it.

"Slimer can go through walls. You will go to him that way, too, Peter. But unfortunately you will be unable to help Slimer lift him out of there. Your job will be to ready him for escape, to tell him we are here and prepared to free him, to make sure he is ready when I come for him and, of course, to watch his back."

"You're going to swoop in there all alone?" Peter asked, turning a concerned look upon her. "There's bound to be some of them hanging around. Do you think you can take them on, all alone?"

Her eyes fastened upon his for a second. "I have the responsibility. It has been my job to protect you and your friends. I will bring Ray out of there. Do not think you have seen all my abilities."

Peter was sure of that, but he was also worried. She was only one woman, after all, even if she could alter her shape and throw fire from her fingertips. "Tell me what I can do to help," he said.

"Just trust me. I know that is not easy for you."

Peter grinned. "Before we left Egon asked me if I could trust you," he admitted. "We have no proof of any of this being more than a trap. And I told him you were one of the good guys, 'cause I know it's true. Yeah, I can trust you."

She smiled. In this new, larger form, the beauty that had attracted him was not so evident. She was more reptilian in this state, though her facial features were virtually unchanged. Peter still thought her beautiful, but felt no lust. She was beautiful the way a thunderstorm was beautiful, powerful and magnificent yet distant, and he felt no desire for her. He wondered if Ray had seen her like this and hoped he would soon because he was pretty sure it would put an end to Ray's helpless crush on the pooka.

"It is good," she said. "For we have arrived."

Peter looked down at the series of domes below and thought of an article he had once read about ecological homes that were mostly underground. They also had a faint mushroom-y look that Egon would have found fascinating. Round, dark circles were centered in some of the domes, and Peter wondered if those were doors or skylights. He asked.

"Doors, lad. For flying beings, doors are best when placed in the ceiling. They can be sealed against the weather, but there is little rain here. The hobgoblins' water comes from underground wells. But we are not here for a geography lesson. Better we plan our strategy. Do you see the dome off to your left, the one next to that tall, purple bush with the huge flowers on it? Ray is imprisoned in the dome directly below that one. The door there is sealed with permanent glass, but I can shatter that when the time is right. Here is what we will do . . . " She drew Peter and Slimer close and began to detail her plan to her makeshift army.

Ray heaved a miserable sigh and drew his knees tight up against his chest, encircling them with his arms in hopes of warming himself that way. He had taken care of his injuries as best he could, though it had been hard to bandage his shoulder without someone to help him. He thought it was still bleeding a little, but there was nothing he could do about it. He hadn't lost enough blood to be really lightheaded, but he was cold, shivering against the chill of the cell. The hobgoblins probably didn't notice the cold but Ray did, clad only in his pajama bottoms and a few rough bandages. If help didn't come soon, he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold out. Give Ray a battle to fight and he'd rise to the occasion beautifully, enjoying himself as he plunged into the fray. But he'd never thought he'd be trapped like this, alone, away from his friends. He remembered how he'd felt when he'd faced the ghosts in front of the Pillar of Manhattan, never believing he'd go out on his own. He knew he might die on the job but he'd always thought that would be the four of them in a blaze of glory to save the world, and he had always accepted that possibility, even thrilled to it a little, though of course he would rather live. This time he was alone, facing his crisis without his buddies, but there was nothing to fight, nothing to inspire his spirit. The hobgoblins had left him strictly alone since they'd put him down here. He hadn't even heard their chittering voices overhead to let him think they were still here, and that worried Ray. If they weren't here maybe they were in Manhattan attacking his friends.

As the minutes dragged past, Ray became convinced the hobgoblins had headed back to New York to try once again to take out the rest of his team. It would explain the absence of taunts from overhead and the lack of noise to indicate other presences, and this was probably the best time for them to go; the Ghostbusters were not at full strength. Ray hoped Peter would be back by now, transformed to his normal self by Egon, and not thrust into the Netherworld. Of course if he was, the guys could go after him instantly, and Ray had designed a recall switch into the bracelets they'd worn when they'd gone after Egon in case they needed to enter the Netherworld and come back at their own discretion. They should be able to go immediately and bring him straight back. But that was only if Peter were really alive and safe. Slimer had said he wasn't back yet, but he could have returned while the ghost and Mab followed Ray. He hoped so. The thought of Peter being gone forever hurt far more than his aching wounds did. Life without Peter . . . Trapped here, Ray knew he was more vulnerable than normal, but it really hurt to think he might never see Peter again.

"Hi, Ray," said Peter in his ear.

Ray jumped straight up with a startled, "Yaaaa!" and jerked around to find Peter Venkman standing in the cell with a huge grin on his face. It faded as he took in the full extent of Ray's injuries and he lunged at the younger man, reaching out to touch Stantz's shoulder.

"Ohmigosh, Ray, you're hurt." His finger sank right into Ray's skin, causing him to yank it back apologetically. "Sorry, I forgot."

That made Ray's eyes open wide as he stared at Peter, who was still wearing his pajamas, a makeshift bandage around one foot explaining the tattered look of his pajama top. He was also slightly fuzzy around the edges, transparent.

"Peter!" gasped Ray, his mouth hanging open in horror. "You-you're a ghost!"

"Bzzzz! Wrong answer," Peter informed him, grinning reassuringly. "I'm like a ghost, I'll give you that, but you know what getting zapped with a destabilizer does for a guy. I'm not dead, just destabilized. You know. Ghosts 'R Us."

"But-but Peter, you need to be changed back quick," Ray insisted anxiously. "When Egon experienced proto-ectoplasmic conversion, he could feel the destabilization continuing and it hurt him, a lot. If you don't change back, you could really die." He stared at Peter in horrified concern. "How did you get here, anyway?"

"With Mab and the spud. We're your rescue team. I thought I'd better come in and let you know to be ready before she made her appearance. I didn't know you were gonna throw in big words like Egon. Proto-ectoplasmic conversion, Ray? Give me a break."

Ignoring the frivolous question Ray stared at Peter. "You mean you--came here instead of getting switched back?" he asked, shocked and humbled at the realization that Peter must have chosen to do so for his sake.

"Sure. I couldn't get here solid, and somebody had to come over and bring you back, you nutcase. I can fly and go through walls and all that good stuff, so Mab sent me in here to warn you. In about five minutes she's gonna come crashing in through that skylight up there." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the light source, high overhead. "So tell, me, Ray, how badly are you hurt?" His eyes lingered on the bandaged shoulder, his concern evident in the very lines of his body.

"They stuck me a few times when they were carrying me," Ray admitted with a dismissive gesture. "The shoulder's the worst, but it's not serious. I can move my arm and everything. It's just . . . cold in here, Peter. Or . . . can't you feel that?"

"You bet I can," Peter said promptly, and Ray wasn't sure whether that was true or whether he was just saying it to be reassuring. "Don't worry, we're not gonna be here much longer. Mab's out there and so's Slimer, though I'm not sure what help the spud's gonna be."

"Slimer can do a lot," Ray insisted. He started to add how much easier it was to understand him now when Peter's face suddenly went white and he gasped, his teeth digging into his bottom lip as pain ran across his face. "PETER!" gasped Ray in alarm, grabbing for his friend. His hands could feel Peter's arms beneath their grip but they were wispy and insubstantial; he wasn't even as solid as Slimer. He sagged up against the wall and even fell a little into it, moaning, before he caught himself and pushed himself out. Gasping to catch his breath he stood bent over, his body quivering, collapsed to his knees and huddled there, the picture of abject misery. Then whatever was wrong ended and Peter went slack, his muscles sagging as the pain passed. Ray knew his own face was as white as Peter's as he cast himself back and remembered how the destabilization process had hurt Egon. It seemed to be a lot worse with Peter but maybe that was because he'd been hit by a direct beam instead of just a backlash, as Egon had.

"Are you all right?" Ray asked anxiously, his hand on Peter's back. He had to concentrate to keep it from passing right through Peter, but if he paid attention, he could feel the muscles under his hand, only very insubstantially. "What's wrong? Is it the destabilization?"

Peter nodded reluctantly as if he'd liked to have passed it away as something minor but knew he'd never get away with such a lie. "It's happening faster than I thought," he breathed, lifting his head to allow Ray to see his worried face. "I didn't think it would hit again this fast. Egon never told me it felt like this," he concluded with mild reproach, straightening up carefully. "I'm okay," he said, though it was obviously an exaggeration. "It's gone now. Come on, we've gotta get out of here. Mab's going to crash through that glass up there." He gestured at the ceiling of the dome above Ray's prison. "She'll swoop right down here and grab you, and you have to go with it. Slimer and I will fly rear guard. You'd love that part, Ray. I can fly. Just call me Peter Pan."

"The boy who never grew up," Ray said with a quick smile, masking his worry because it wouldn't help either of them right now. He could tell Peter was determined to put up with any amount of distress to get through the rescue, but the bouts of pain must be getting closer together. Could Peter do his flying routine if one hit when they were high over New York? Mab certainly couldn't carry both of them, and she'd have to carry Ray because he didn't have a knack for flying. That would be great, but right now he couldn't let himself think about it, not when Peter might need him. "I'm not sure you ever did grow up, Peter," he retorted, trying to lighten the mood.

"Look who's talking," Peter replied with his sudden grin. "Ray Stantz, perpetual boy scout."

Ray jerked up his hand to cut him off. "I hear somebody coming, Peter, and it doesn't sound like Mab. Hide, quick."

Instinctively Peter looked around the smooth-walled cell for shelter then he caught himself and slid through the wall as easily as Slimer had done, leaving no ectoplasmic residue behind. Ray sat down again and wrapped his arms around his knees, trying to look like the picture of dejection, though he lifted his head to see who was coming. They'd certainly expect him to look.

It wasn't Mab. Instead, two hobgoblins peered down into the pit at Ray, conversing to each other in their harsh language, pointing at him. Ray hoped they didn't plan to move him. But maybe they were just sightseers or someone passing through, because they moved on again after a few minutes. He could hear their voices retreating as they got further and further away.

"Peter?" he whispered anxiously.

Venkman slid out of the wall and stood looking down at Ray. "Not quite feeding time at the zoo," he observed. "I don't know if those were guards or whether they just wanted to see what a human looked like. Too bad we ever had to find out what they look like. On a scale of one to ten in the Ugly book, they rate a fifteen."

"They sure do," said Ray. "Peter, where's Mab? Shouldn't she have been here by now? You don't think they caught her, do you?"

"No way," Peter said, straightening up quickly and grinning as reassuringly as he could. "She'll be here right on schedule, you'll see. Just hang in there and we'll be home before you know it."

"Are Egon and Winston okay?" Ray wanted to know. "I suppose they couldn't come because they weren't transparent."

"They wanted to come but I wouldn't let them turn the destabilizers on themselves. Nearly had to fight Egon over that. You know how he gets. He hated the thought of both of us over here. I think the rule should be no more than one transparent Ghostbuster at a time. But Mab better hurry because we saw some of the hobgoblins heading for New York."

"You mean they're after Egon and Winston, and we're not there?" cried Ray in horror.

Peter nodded. He looked like he wished he hadn't shared that information, but Ray was convinced he had the right to know. He had to be ready when they got back. "They dropped my thrower on the roof of a building," he said. "I've only got my PKE meter. They didn't mind if I took readings but after I blasted one of them--Peter! I shot one of them down! I hit him right where his wings started. I think the hobgoblins are vulnerable there. Remember in the firehouse, they never turned their backs on us; they kept shifting around so they were always facing us. I thought they just didn't want us to get the drop on them, but what if it's more? What if their wings are their Achilles heel? Well, you know what I mean. I don't think they walk a lot, not with those stubby little legs. When they do they're slow and have a kind of a rolling gait like a drunken sailor. Their legs don't look very strong. That's why their corridors are so big, so they can use their wings to get along. Those two who were just up there had their wings fluttering the whole time. I think that's it. I think we can stop them if we can blast them in the wings. Because we'd ground them. Maybe the throwers can't stop them otherwise, but they're physical creatures. Maybe a gun would hurt them."

"The throwers hurt them, Ray; they just don't stop them. I don't think a gun would do more than make 'em mad, and anyway, we don't have any guns. The last thing I want is to turn the lab into a battle zone. Besides, we might hit each other or one of our packs and blow it up. I think we'll just make sure we can sneak up behind 'em, and take 'em out that way." He glanced up at the skylight. "Where the hell is Mab?"

As if she had timed her entrance to his question, the pooka crashed through the skylight and swooped straight down at them in a dive Ray would have given a perfect 10 at the paranormal Olympics. Stantz gaped at her in total surprise because she looked so different that for a moment he wasn't sure she was Mab. He'd known she was a shapeshifter when she'd changed from her cat form, but now she was bigger, maybe a third again her normal size, and instead of normal skin, she had transformed into a leathery black being, not unlike the hobgoblins in color, but with a very human--and recognizable--face. She was naked, and her form was similar to the one he had first seen in the bedroom doorway, but there was nothing arousing about her now. She looked powerful, threatening, and only when she alit facing him and gave him her normal smile and a quick wink did he allow his tensed muscles to relax.

"All right, Ray, we're leaving," she said quickly. "I want you to climb onto my back between my wings and hold on. Wrap your arms around my neck and your legs around my waist and put your face down against my neck. That way you won't be in my way when I fly. No matter what happens, don't let go, unless I am killed and am falling from the sky. I want you to promise. I can fight them but it will be much easier if you do as I instruct. Too much movement might endanger my balance."

Ray nodded. "Okay. But remember, Peter might be able to fly, but he doesn't have a thrower. And he's having some pain."

"I'm okay, Ray," said Peter quickly as Ray scrambled onto the pooka's back, one foot against her knee as she instructed. The psychologist reached out automatically to help, then yanked back his hand, a momentary look of bitterness spreading across his face. "I'm not much help to you, but I can watch out for more of them if they come."

Slimer swooped in. "Hurry, hurry," he moaned. "Scary out there, and Slimer hates it. Funny sky, funny ground, funny colors. This is a nasty place." Ray could still understand him without effort.

"I know it's a nasty place, Spud," Peter told him. "The people who live here aren't too great, either. It's not going to win the tourist award of the year. Ready? Let's go home?"

He shot upward through the broken skylight, careful not to brush against any of the shattered edges though Ray didn't think it would hurt him in his present state. Mab sprang aloft with little effort, as if a full-grown human upon her back didn't limit her one iota. Still, she could never have done it and brought the others with her to help in his rescue.

Slimer flew anxious circles around them as they cut across the compound and away, low over the hills. As yet, there was no sign of pursuit, but Ray couldn't look for it. He had to obey Mab, so his view was a narrow one, past the edge of her beating right wing. Occasionally Peter would zip past, or Slimer would hover nearby, but hanging on took up most of Ray's concentration. Mab's skin was smooth and pliant beneath his gripping fingers, rather like that of a snake, and it was a little slippery. He was afraid to hang on too tightly for fear he'd choke her, so he had to shift his grip every few minutes. Occasionally he'd turn his head slightly to look for Peter, until she grew impatient.

"Stop moving, my laddie."

"But--but Peter might fall," Ray explained in quick explanation.

"Do you not trust me to prevent that?" she asked, a note of irritation creeping into his voice. "I did it on the way here, when a spasm of pain hit him. I will do it again, should it happen again, and Slimer has been warned to watch him. He might not be able to carry Peter for a great distance, but if necessary he can break his fall. That is not your concern. We were followed, but only by one hobgoblin and he has gone back to get help. I do not believe there are that many of them here. When we cross the barrier again, I mean to seal it permanently. Such things are within my powers."

"No, wait, there's more of them," Peter warned with a sudden gesture. "They haven't seen us yet. We've got to get to cover."

Mab took him at his word, diving down for the low scrub plants that covered the ground here in the foothills, and settled them carefully in the middle of a thicket. Three goblins swooped past overhead not one minute later, and it was evident that while they were searching they hadn't seen their escaping prisoner and his rescuers. Ray held his breath, aware of Slimer pressed tight against his back. Peter closed his eyes and concentrated, and abruptly disappeared entirely. "They can't see me," he said, his voice coming out of midair. "I'll go up and scout our way."

"Very carefully," Mab told him. "We don't want them to catch even a faint glimpse of you."

"I'll be fine," Peter remarked, his voice fading as he soared skyward.

Peter found being invisible made no difference in his ability to fly, and he grinned at the thought of diverting these three nasties. As he approached them, he put on a burst of speed, glad to find that the thin air hadn't begun to hamper him, and cut across their field of view in a swoop that would have made Ray's cartoon buddy, Captain Steel, green with envy. The hobgoblins didn't even blink. They couldn't see him! This was great!

Peter knew he had to lure them away from the gateway so Mab could get Ray out of here, but he wasn't sure how to do it. If he went visible they'd realize he was just a human with temporary powers and they might not even bother with him. He needed a better plan than that. Swooping in as close to them as he could, he cut right in front of the leader, hoping the entity would feel the breeze of his passage and be disoriented by its unexpectedness. 'Surprise the enemy,' Winston had said once in the early phases of their training. 'But don't take it for granted he'll read the same thing into the surprise that you expected.' Peter knew he had to move instantly, change his trajectory or they could zoom in after him and grab him, and they were bound to be more maneuverable in the air than he was.

So he let himself sink about thirty feet, pulling out of his dive a little distance above the ground. It was easier for him to maneuver at these lower altitudes than it had been high over New York.

He saw them jerk to alertness and glance around, then one of them peeled off and angled away down in the direction Peter would have gone if he hadn't followed Winston's advice. They called back and forth to each other and he hoped they didn't have a kind of radar like bats or he'd be in trouble.

Maybe he could imitate Mab's voice and make them think it was a pooka trick. He opened his mouth, then shut it quickly. They already had it in for Mab, but he didn't want to make them any madder at her than they already were. Long after the Ghostbusters were out of the picture, they might track her down and try to exact their revenge. Better to make the hobgoblins think she had allies.

Grinning, Peter sprang aloft again, the grin fading as he realized he was beginning to tire out. Part of that was due to the proto-ectoplasmic conversion and part to the thinner atmosphere, but it was a factor. He let his body angle into a smooth line, arms outstretched to stab through the air like a spear. Maybe that was why Superman chose to fly that way. Peter could have used a little of that super power. The way he felt right now, somebody had been sneaking Kryptonite into his pockets. He had to make this quick because he wasn't sure how long he could hold out.

At the hobgoblins' level again, Peter drew deep, shaky breaths, then opened his mouth and called out in an accent like Mab's only exaggerated slightly like a stage Irishman, "Look out, men, we'll lead them off." The minute he finished speaking he shot skyward and off at an angle.

The hobgoblins roared in rage and fury and dove for the spot he'd just vacated. While they were casting about for him there, he zoomed off to their left and dived under them, further away, and called out again in a voice that was half-Irish, half-John Wayne, to give the impression there were more than one of Mab's allies here.

"Over here, pilgrims!" Up and sideways, then down, always keeping far enough away so that they couldn't hear his quickened breathing. His whole body ached with exertion and his lungs were pumping like a bellows, but he kept circling and calling as if from one team member to another, and finally the hobgoblins spread out and began to zip back and forth through the air, looking for him. Peter dropped to the ground and alit, lying flat on his back, watching them move to and fro above him while he caught his breath.

He had to go back. He had to lead them away from Ray and Mab, but he was so tired he wasn't sure he could do it. Yet even if he got caught, he knew it would let Ray get away, and they couldn't confine him if he wasn't solid.

"Into the valley of death rode the six hundred," he muttered to himself and pushed himself upright once more. "Come on, Petey, levitate," he urged himself and lifted into the air. "When you get home you can write a book about this, and do the whole talk show circuit," he said, psyching himself up for the task ahead. Then he sprang into the sky, between the searching hobgoblins and their home. "COME ON, BOYS," he yelled. "We can trash their place while they're on the other side." Darting sideways he used the John Wayne voice to call, "Right with you!" and then, zipping in the other direction, to call, "Yo!" He would have added more but he was too tired to keep on shouting. As they came at him in a concerted rush, he went very high, watching them rush past beneath him, yelling and screaming in a frenzy of hatred, back for their compound, and he grinned broadly.

"Way to go, Venkman," he told himself and drifted lightly down again, trying to control the angle of descent, though he was spent and fatigued and once again had broken out in a cold sweat.

He was nearly down when another pain-wave pounded him and he dropped the rest of the way like a stone, vaguely glad it hadn't been more than two feet. Sprawling on the dusty purple earth he twisted and moaned helplessly, too strung out to attempt to fight the pain that stabbed him, only vaguely grateful the attack hadn't taken him when he'd been teasing and luring the hobgoblins. Misery pounded his body and he let it, unable to brace himself against it. It was hard to catch his breath and he writhed in the dust, desperate for it to end. It had never been this bad for Egon, and while he wouldn't have wished this kind of agony on his friend, he wished he could have stayed at the easier level right up until the end.

"Not long now, Peter," he told himself as the pain finally began to ebb. "Give it a minute, then go find Ray." He knew he didn't have much time. It wouldn't take the hobgoblins long to realize they weren't following a team of angry pookas back to their headquarters. Sucking in a shaky breath, Peter struggled to sit up and then lift into the air. "Here I come, Ray," he muttered breathlessly and heaved himself aloft again to return to the others.

"They won't be able to see him, will they?" Ray asked anxiously when Peter was gone.

"Not when I cannot," she reassured him. "I would not send him into certain danger unless there were no other way."

Ray wasn't sure there was another way or not, but there was nothing he could say. They crouched in the bushes waiting while the hobgoblins darted here and there in the sky. Occasionally Peter's voice came to them, faint and distant, though they could not make out individual words. Gradually the trio of beasts moved further and further away and even the sound of Peter's voice was gone as he teased and lured them in the opposite direction.

"He's pulling them away from us," Mab said, her voice full of appreciation. "We should go now."

"No!" cried Ray, clapping his hand to his mouth as he realized too much noise could undo all Peter's efforts. "I'm not leaving without Peter and that's final." He slid down off her back and faced her, hands on his hips. "He's doing that for us. We can't leave him."

"I thought to return you and come back for him," she explained. "To let yourself be captured would make his efforts meaningless."

"Yeah, but I'm not running out on him." Ray knew Mab liked Peter, probably more than any of the rest of them, but she wasn't human and didn't think the way humans did. Maybe she wanted to turn Peter's delaying tactics into a sacrifice so she could save Ray. He just knew he couldn't let her do that.

She smiled suddenly. "I would never abandon him gladly, just if it were the only way to save you," she admitted, turning her eyes skyward again. Ray gave her a narrow-eyed look before he tracked the hobgoblins once more.

They were distant specks against the sky now and, from their movements, they still hadn't found Peter. He saw them jerk to attention abruptly, then, suddenly, the creatures soared back toward the hobgoblin compound, growing fainter and fainter against the sky until they had disappeared entirely.

"But where's Peter?" Ray asked anxiously.

"Poor Peter," moaned Slimer, shivering.

"We will give him two more minutes," Mab announced. "Those three could have been seeking reinforcements. Any longer and we will undo the good Peter did."

Ray stiffened. He couldn't leave Peter behind. He just couldn't! "Peter?" he called, though he didn't dare risk raising his voice very loudly. "Peter? Where are you?"

Silence. Only the wind answered him. Ray sucked in his breath. Maybe Peter had been hit with pain again, and fallen. He suspected Peter would lose invisibility if that happened, but the hobgoblins hadn't given any sign they'd spotted him. Maybe it just took him time to fly back here.

"Come on, Peter, where are you?"

"Right here, Ray," came a familiar voice. Another moment and Peter popped into sight beside them, his face paler than it had been before, his breathing deep and ragged. "I made 'em think . . . we were gonna attack their . . . compound," he panted, exhaustion spelled out in the very lines of his body. "They couldn't find me and it drove 'em nuts. When they find out there isn't an . . . army of pookas attacking their compound they're gonna be back, probably with reinforcements, so we'd better move."

"Aye, that we will," agreed Mab. "Climb on again, Ray, and hold on tight now."

"Are you okay, Peter?" asked Ray anxiously as he scrambled into position, alarmed by Peter's rapid breathing and his unnatural pallor.

"Think how you'd feel if you had to fly," Peter returned instantly. "I'm using muscles I don't usually have. This is not fun, though I bet you'd love it. Come on, let's get out of here. I don't like this place."

Though Ray was not completely reassured, the sight of Peter rising up after Mab did help. Peter drifted in more closely and matched his speed with hers. Ray had to grin when he noticed Peter had adopted the flying style of Captain Steel. Since Peter had never warmed to the superhero when he had leaped out of the comic book and visited Manhattan Ray hid a smile, putting aside the thought for a suitable moment later. This would be one thing he wouldn't let Peter live down.

At least, not if everything went well. There were hobgoblins in New York right now, probably attacking his friends. Ray didn't want to think about that, because he couldn't help them, but he was afraid they'd come back to find the containment unit blown, the firehouse a shambles--and Egon and Winston dead. "And it would be all my fault for getting caught," he mumbled into Mab's neck.

"You did not volunteer for capture, as I recall," responded the pooka, as if she could easily follow his train of thought.

"Ray," said Peter earnestly, just beside them, "It's okay. It's not your fault. It's the hobgoblins' fault and if you go on saying any of this is your fault, I'm going to feed your Dopey Dog to a cuisinart."

"Well, if I'd gone to see Mr. Howard more, he would have told me about the hobgoblins weeks ago."

"Ray. Listen," Peter continued stubbornly. He sounded like he was breathing a little better as if normal flight was easier than chasing hobgoblins around the sky. "Mr. Howard was a nice guy and he loved having you visit him. But he wasn't your kin or your long lost buddy. You visited him enough. I know you did. It's not as if you put it off because you wanted to go and party. Come on, if he was still alive, tell me this honestly. Would you go over any more than you did?"

Ray thought about that because it was a fair question. "I always wished I'd had more time to spend with him," he admitted. "I liked going over, and I went whenever I could."

"Exactly. Whenever you could. You probably made extra time to go and see him because you enjoyed yourself when you were talking all that pulp fiction stuff. I'm sure of it. So you didn't let him down. He had a telephone. If it bugged him, he could have called you and told you he'd seen something weird. He was trying to protect Mab, remember? He was half afraid we'd trap her, and he couldn't find out we wouldn't without giving away the secret. So you did everything you were supposed to, and that's the bottom line. You didn't do anything wrong. The hobgoblins are the ones who snatched you. You didn't stand there and let them."

"Well, maybe I did, Peter. You'd just vanished and I was, well, kind of in shock."

"Sure you were. Anyone would be," returned Peter outrageously, a grin on his face. "The great Venkman, vanished in a burst of light. Nothing you could have done about that or about the goblins. They waited until you were distracted, remember? They're good at that. But not good enough to stop us, cause we've got you back. Now I mean it, Ray. It's not your fault. None of this is."

Ran nodded, feeling relief flow through him. He knew Peter was right, but there was still the threat to Egon and Winston to deal with. "How far is it to the barrier?" he asked anxiously, trying to see over Mab's shoulder.

"We are nearly there. See?" Mab flung out a hand to point and Ray inched up a little on her back and peered over her shoulder at the ribbon of light that slashed the sky. "We will pass through it and then I will seal it behind me. It is the only way." Ray thought he felt a shiver pass through her and wondered if by doing so she would trap herself in their world forever. Something in the tension of her body kept him from saying so, though, and he glanced sideways at Peter to see if he had noticed. But Peter was concentrating on flying, a fatigued expression on his face, and Ray wasn't sure he was aware of much more than paying attention to what he was doing, keeping himself aloft with all his remaining strength. Slimer hovered just behind Peter, darting forward when Mab gestured at him to reach the curtain.

The darkness of the New York night looked strange against the glowing ribbon and the buttery blue of the hobgoblins' sky, as if there was a black rift in the universe. Mab grasped the other edge of the curtain and pulled it wider, gesturing Peter through. The psychologist shot through with a look of utter relief upon his face, and Slimer followed, still holding the curtain. Mab ducked her head and Ray copied the gesture as they slid through, then Slimer lowered the curtain and the hovered high above the glowing lights of the city. Peter's breathing eased in the more oxygen-rich atmosphere of home, though he carefully avoided looking down. Involuntarily, Ray tightened his arms and legs around the pooka.

"Yes, cling tight, little one," she said in an undertone. I must now close the opening for all time. This will trap the hobgoblins we saw earlier in your realm, but you will destroy them, or I shall." She withdrew from the curtain, waving her hands in curious passes that dimmed but did not entirely black out the ribbon.

"What will you do?" asked Peter, bobbing at her side.

"Naught that you would understand, my fine friend," she replied, bestowing upon Peter one of those looks she'd been giving him all along, as if he tempted her, if any human could, though she did not mean to follow up on the temptation. Ray felt a brief flicker of jealousy, though he'd never expected Mab to return his feelings for her. Neither did he blame Peter for appealing to Mab. Instead he concentrated on the motion of her hands, astonished when they glowed as if limned with blue fire. She had cast fire at the hobgoblins before, but it had been red and yellow, glowing like normal fire. This was an eerie kind of balefire, something fraught with power and mystery. It fascinated Ray, who watched her smallest movement, wondering if he could look it up later in one of the grimoires he'd managed to acquire over the years and find out what she had done.

She spoke then, words Ray could not understand, not even with his temporary ability to understand ghosts and animals. They were ominous words, dark and portentous, and the air quivered with her speaking them, as if it had sprung to life. With a sudden crackle, the ribbon writhed and twisted like a living being in fierce pain, trying to shrivel into a tiny atom of itself. Though Ray couldn't see Mab's face, he could sense the smile that curled her lips, a terrible smile, one that was full of a power she could use as casually as Ray could use a comb, but one she knew the price of using and willingly paid. Peter had closed his eyes as if he couldn't look upon her, and suddenly that felt right, the way Indiana Jones hadn't looked at the contents of the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Ray pressed his face against the back of her neck and waited, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

The words rose in volume, causing the fillings in Ray's teeth to ache. Something brushed his arm and he risked opening his eyes to see that Peter had edged even closer and was trying to grab hold of him as if for a combination of support and reassurance. For a moment, they exchanged a look, then both of them closed their eyes again.

Mab's final words were so loud Ray wondered the entire city didn't hear them. When she spoke the final one, thunder cracked, resonant enough to nearly deafen Ray, and it took all his willpower to keep his grip around the pooka's neck instead of clapping his hands over his ears. Peter did cover his, curling himself into a ball, and Slimer edged up behind Ray and pressed himself into the occultist's back, trembling violently and making little whimpering sounds. The fierce clap of sound ran around the sky, as one brilliant burst of lightning rent the night, brighter than sunshine. Ray squeezed his eyes shut again, still seeing the jagged bolt against his retinas while the sound faded, its aftershocks echoing across the sky.

A moment later, there was only the sharp tang of ozone in the air to indicate anything had happened.

Ray opened his eyes and looked at Peter, who was hanging near him, his hands still pressed against his ears. When he realized the sound had abated, he lifted his hands cautiously, then raised them to rub his eyes. "That was not fun," he muttered in an undertone. "Next time you're gonna make the loudest noise in the world, warn a guy, willya?"

On the last word pain hit him like a board across the stomach and his face crumpled. A moment later he was plummeting down toward the city that lay spread out below them.

"PETER, NO!" screamed Ray as Mab muttered something under her breath and dove after him so quickly that Stantz nearly lost his grip and pitched forward over her head. Only the fierce grip Slimer had on his shoulders kept him from falling, too. He scrambled frantically to hold his place and tightened his grip on Mab instinctively as she spread her wings to their full extent and banked down after Peter.

As soon as Ray was stable, Slimer let go of him and zipped downward. He and Mab seemed to race each other to get to Peter first, but in the end it was the pooka who reached him, catching him in her arms the way she might carry a child, gathering him in, unhindered by his less than solid state. As if he were solid and normal again, she cradled him warmly against her chest. To Ray's horror, his eyes were closed and he lay unmoving. Ray couldn't be sure he was still breathing.

"Oh, no," moaned Slimer, darting in to touch Peter's cheek with a gentle touch. "Peter . . . asleep?"

"Peter?" called Ray, alarm twisting his stomach when there was no response. "Is he all right, Mab?"

She did not answer immediately, pointing them in the direction of the firehall and heading in that direction as fast as she could, then she said quietly, "I feared this. Egon endured this state for most of a day before he faded, and you saved him. But Egon did not exert himself as Peter has. Though the transformation gave him ghostly powers, it did not give him the energy to sustain them for such a time. He has exerted himself beyond his limits. I-I fear it may be too much for him."

"NO!" cried Ray fiercely, his heart thumping in his chest. "We've got to get him back. I can reverse it. I've modified the destabilizer rectifier unit, and I know it'll save Peter. But we have to hurry."

"We are hurrying," she pointed out, but her words were sharp out of concern for Peter.

"Did he--know this might happen?" asked Ray uneasily.

"I'm sure he would not have stayed away, even if he had," she replied. "I warned him of the danger, but he would not let Egon change him back, not while you were at risk. I told Egon I would follow Peter into hell, and so I would. But now I will do what I can for him. I can give him energy; I will bleed away some of my own for him. It may allow him to last until he can be reversed again." She passed a hand over Peter's body, supporting him carefully with her other arm, resting the hand flat, her palm on Peter's chest. Again blue fire outlined her fingers, but this time she pressed them tight against Peter's heart. "Stay with us, my lad," she told Peter in a voice that held great affection. "For I will never dare face Egon again if I bring you home too late."

"Too late?" echoed Slimer and began to wail in misery, great tears pouring from his eyes. "Slimer loves Peter. Don't let him go away." Though Slimer didn't understand the concept of death and didn't regard it as a tragedy the way humans did, he did understand the possibility of loss. Peter transparent didn't faze the little ghost, but Peter gone forever did. Slimer looked utterly disconsolate.

Ray couldn't find the words to comfort Slimer. He was too miserable himself. Maybe the power Mab had expended to control the barrier had been the last straw for Peter or maybe he'd been trying for a long time to conceal the pain he'd felt. He was suffering worse than Egon had, but Mab might have been right, that it was the result of exertion. "Come on, Peter," Ray breathed, crossing his fingers. "You can do it. I know you can. Hang in there. We can't get along without you."

Peter stirred faintly under Mab's glowing hand and groaned, but his eyes didn't open. Still, the evidence of life made Slimer perk up and Ray draw a breath in deep relief.

"We must take him quickly to Egon," Mab breathed, "for the spark of life in him is nearly spent." She suddenly dove down out of the sky toward Ghostbuster Central.

To Ray's horror, he could see the stab of proton streams blasting wildly from the windows on the third floor and hear the sizzle of energy that didn't smother the fierce raging of the hobgoblins that surrounded the building. There was no way in until the entities were defeated--if it was possible to defeat them. Worse, Ray didn't think Peter had that long to wait.

Mab landed at the front door, diving in under the rampaging hobgoblins, and deposited Peter on the sidewalk. Ray scrambled down beside him, flung open the door and tried to pull Peter inside, stopping with a curse when he realized he couldn't get a grip on Peter. "Mab--" he began but she had already leaped up into the sky to plunge into the fray.

"Slimer help you," the little ghost promised, hovering at Ray's shoulder. Reaching down, he wrapped his arms around Peter's waist and dragged his limp body into the garage, laying him in an untidy heap on Janine's desk. Peter didn't pass through it completely but he did sink into it an inch or two, his face turned toward Ray, eyes closed, mouth a little open. He was breathing irregularly, and it seemed to Ray that he was flickering a little as if he were about to vanish altogether. Ray could remember as if it were yesterday Egon's claim that Ray was too late, that the destabilizer rectifier unit wouldn't be ready in time, the way he'd faded and disappeared just as Ray fired it at him. He'd almost lost Egon then. Now, it seemed, he was going to lose Peter. He couldn't even send Slimer upstairs for the device because it needed to be connected to the power system up there.

"Come on, Slimer," Ray said wearily, trying to ignore the dull, nagging pain from his injuries and the great, hollow ache in his heart. "We've got to get him upstairs before it's too late. Can you carry him?"

"Slimer can try," the little ghost said doubtfully and reached out for Peter again. He got the unconscious man into a precarious fireman's carry and started up the stairs with Ray right beside him, pausing to lower Peter across the steps about halfway up to get a better grip on him. Above them they could hear the sizzle of throwers and even a few yells. It didn't sound good.

Then, just as they reached the second floor and Slimer let the sliding Peter down as gently as he could on the floor, brilliant light flooded down through the firepole openings and the hole around the top of the spiral stairs, followed by a louder sizzling and a combination of human yells and hobgoblin roars. "Watch Peter and bring him as fast as you can," Ray instructed the little ghost and set off for the staircase at a dead run.

Winston had not been surprised when the hobgoblins had returned. He'd been watching out the window in the direction Ray had been taken while Janine guarded the other side of the building and Egon worked over the various readings he'd managed to take of the entities when they had attacked before. Every now and then he would throw a question at one of the other two, though his concentration was so intense he'd barely take the time to listen before he let his mind run on. Winston had seen him like this before, caught up in a problem to the exclusion of all else, and he knew that when Egon concentrated this hard on something there could only be two reasons. The first was typical scientific enthusiasm, but the second was worry for his friends. When one of them was in danger, Egon could shift into scientific mode as if it were his hope of salvation, and concentrate on it far harder than usual. Winston was pretty sure he'd psyched himself into believing he had to stop the hobgoblins in order for Ray and Peter to come back, and there might be some truth in that. Keeping any of the nasty creatures here would prevent them from returning to the place where Ray was confined and Peter and Mab were trying to effect a rescue.

There was nothing for Winston to do but stand guard, a task that wasn't very fulfilling but one he'd learned to endure on night patrol in 'Nam. He didn't let himself think of those days any more than he must, remembering the good times and letting the bad slide back into the shadowy realms of unwelcome memories, but there were times when his experience stood him in good stead. It had helped turn this team from a collection of hit-or-miss idiots running around blasting everything in sight to a topnotch 'commando unit' when it came to facing down ghosts. Winston might not like standing guard when he wanted to be out there rescuing Ray, or helping Egon think of a way to defeat the hobgoblins, but it was a job that had to be done, as worthy a job as any other, and he accepted it not with resignation but with determination to give Egon as much warning as possible.

"Mab said Ray hit the hobgoblin from behind," Egon said as if talking the problem through. "Perhaps their wings are particularly vulnerable. It's certainly worth a try, though it seems an awkward chance at best. If they know that, they will not turn their backs on us--and, as you will remember, they were careful not to do so in their first attack. No, that's not the answer unless we get a lucky shot."

"You said they had negative valences and the destabilizer makes them, well, unstable," Janine remarked thoughtfully. "Isn't there any way to set the destabilizer for a wide-angle beam and take a bunch of 'em out at once?"

Egon had considered that already and now he explained to Winston and Janine what could go wrong with it. The destabilizer beam had one focus; they had never needed it to take out more than one entity at a time. The problem with that was obvious; while it might render the hobgoblins trapable, it might also hit another of the humans by accident and the problem of Peter would be repeated. "It would be risky," Egon said thoughtfully. "Far too easy for one of us to be struck, and if we should be sucked into a trap in that condition, especially a trap that already contained a hobgoblin, there would be no chance of rescue because our molecules would combine with those of the hobgoblin. If that happened, the victim would be confined to the containment unit forever."

"But if we fired when we saw them coming . . . " Winston said thoughtfully, glancing up from his PKE meter. "Maybe we could take them then, before they ever got close to us."

"If they were too far away, they would revert before they came into range of the traps," Egon clarified. "Remember, they aren't like Peter. They are paranatural entities with powers beyond those of humans. They would be able to switch back on their own after a given period of time." He frowned, considering it. "Hmm, it is a good possibility, but I will be the one to wear the destabilizer with the wide-angle beam. I think I can maintain the proper level of concentration in the heat of the battle to avoid blasting either of you." He unshipped the destabilizer thrower and picked up a screwdriver, bending over the control panel as he set to work.

Winston caught Janine's eye across the room and nodded encouragingly before he turned back to his guardpost. For a long time there was silence as Egon worked, then the meter in Winston's hand stirred faintly to life. He lifted it, aiming it out the window and it began to beep softly, the noise level increasing rapidly.

"Yo, Egon, we got bogeys at twelve o'clock," Winston called out, though he and Janine had already noticed the meter's reaction. "How close are you to being done with that thing?"

"Two minutes," Egon insisted, controlled enough that he didn't try to finish it in a rush which might have led to problems. He continued to work at his steady pace as the hobgoblins came flapping out of the night. One minute Winston could see nothing against the blackness of the sky, the next they were only a block away, hovering as they worked out their strategy. Winston abandoned the meter, taking out his thrower and checking to make sure there was a trap on his pack. He cast a quick glance at Ray's remote control device. When he'd come back upstairs he'd reconnected the traps he'd downloaded into the containment, and now the room had a complete complement of them again in preparation for the upcoming battle.

"They're just waiting out there," Janine said over Winston's shoulder, her thrower in hand. "Do you think they have to go back at dawn? They never appear in the daytime, Mab says."

"Yeah, but she said it was daylight in their own realm when she went over there the first time," Winston remembered. "Maybe our sun is different and it hurts their eyes or something. Maybe they have better UV protection on their side. Anyway, it's probably a couple of hours till dawn." Reminded of that fact, he realized how tired he was, a grinding fatigue created by a combination of stress, hard work, worry for his two missing companions and simply the lateness of the hour. He was pretty sure a two-hour battle was beyond any of their present capabilities.

"How long did the last encounter take?" asked Janine practically.

"Maybe twenty minutes," Egon replied as he replaced the casing of his particle thrower and stood up. "There, ready. It would help if the two of you would attempt to concentrate and avoid my fire when we start. I will, of course, be careful but there is always movement during a bust, and while we've all learned to pull our shots quickly, this time the angle will be much wider, and the danger greater."

"We know, Egon," Winston replied. "We need to let 'em get as close as we can before you try to take 'em out. Janine and I will fire as usual the second they get in range so they won't suspect we've got something up our sleeves and maybe I can take out a couple of them right away."

"A good plan, Winston." Egon rose carefully, avoiding putting full weight on his injured foot. Even the light balance must have hurt, but he didn't sit down again or even let himself stagger, and Winston understood that. The hobgoblins were nasty; Winston would have wanted to greet them on his feet, too, no matter how much it hurt. He hoped adrenaline would keep Egon going through the upcoming fight.

"They're coming," cried Janine, powering up her thrower and aiming it at the entities. "Oh no, they're splitting up!"

Winston should have expected that; the creatures would have been fools to come in one solid lump while they had a chance of dividing up and getting the drop on the Ghostbusters. From the way they were stretching out in a long line, they meant to encircle the building and attack from every direction at once. Or they might offer to make a deal for Ray, but Winston doubted that was their first priority.

As it happened, he was wrong.

The biggest of the hobgoblins swooped closer and as he did, it was possible to see he held a white flag in his hand. Either they were conversant with the human custom or they had learned it from Ray. The creature swept in closer and Egon put up his hand to stop Winston from firing as it landed in one of the broken windows.

In harsh, accented, yet fluent English, it said directly, "We have something you want."

"Which presupposes that we have something you want," Egon replied, going forward to meet him and doing his best to disguise his limp as he did so. Winston saw the pain in his eyes but he didn't think the hobgoblin would. "Is Ray alive?"

"Yes," responded the hobgoblin. "We have him in a place where he cannot escape. We will keep him or kill him if you do not do as we ask."

"I understand that," Egon replied, balancing himself carefully so he wouldn't put too much weight on his bad foot. "What is it you want of us?"

"We want you to free the ghosts you imprison below," the huge creature insisted. "Some of our kind are there, trapped, and we would free them."

"I don't remember zapping any hobgoblins," Winston muttered to Egon in an undertone.

"I think I remember something that might have been," Egon replied thoughtfully under his breath. "That bust at Coney Island last year, the creature we nearly couldn't get into the trap . . . Hmmm." He pondered furiously. "We might have one of your kind. We would exchange him for Ray."

"No," snapped the hobgoblin chief. "It is not enough. We will not put ourselves at risk in future. We will kill your friend and return him to you a piece at a time unless you cease your foul work."

"They'll probably do that anyway," Winston said in a quick aside, pulling the physicist away from the entity for a conference. "What do we do, Egon?"

"We can't shut down the containment unit," Egon replied, his face hard, his eyes hollow. "The danger to humanity is too great, and Ray--Ray would never permit it." He lifted his thrower, an expression of hopelessness spreading across his features. "We can't give in to them, no matter what the consequences."

"We have to see Ray first," Winston said quickly. "Tell 'em we have to see Ray first."

"No, wait," Janine whispered, leaning in closer. "For all we know, Mab and Peter already have Ray. I say we blast 'em so they can't get back and hurt Ray. Give Peter and Mab a chance to get him free."

"It is, of course, the only solution," Egon said, lifting his head and bracing himself against a pain that was too heavy to lift, one that had nothing to do with his foot. Winston could see in his face that he was resolutely allowing the weight of and responsibility for Ray's death to settle upon his shoulders.

"Oh, man," he muttered and pulled up the destabilizer, edging closer to Egon. "We've gotta make sure they can deliver. Don't give up on him, Egon." He let his hand fall on Egon's shoulder and gave him a comradely squeeze before letting go and backing away again to be out of the destabilizer's range.

"I'm not," Egon replied unconvincingly. "I know what our chances are. But I can't shut down the containment unit either."

The goblin leader heard that and roared in rage, making a circling gesture with his hand as if to beckon in his men. The other hobgoblins swarmed closer and Egon raised his thrower without hesitation and fired the conic projection he hoped to use to take them out. He hit no less than four of them, including the leader, and they made weird sizzling and popping sounds and suddenly became transparent. Unlike Peter, they weren't forced into another dimension but Egon had already suggested that, as paranatural entities, they had different resistance from humans and, thus, were able to resist such a crossover.

The force of their dives drove the destabilized entities into the lab, two of them splatting right through the wall, and as if they'd rehearsed it, Janine triggered traps and sucked them in. The leader went first, bellowing and screeching on a progressively higher note that hurt Winston's ears. Two of the others went into the same trap, but it seemed like it was holding them okay. The fourth slid into yet another trap and they both snapped shut.

Janine gave a triumphant yell. "Take that, you bozos!" she exulted.

Winston blinked to clear his eyes of the afterimage of the traps' brightness and looked out into the night for the other hobgoblins. He figured there might be another dozen of them out there, maybe less, but they had retreated a little distance as if they could understand what Egon's thrower could do to them and needed to plan how best to avoid it. Unfortunately they were not stupid. They hovered in midair then began to circle the building, holding back at a wary distance. Janine fired at them with her ordinary proton rifle and the beam struck one of them but, aside from yelling in outrage and darting a little further away, it seemed unaffected. The stream probably felt like the kind of mild electric shock one got from wearing the wrong kind of shoes and shuffling one's feet on carpet.

"If we blast 'em way out there, we won't be able to trap them," Winston muttered as he drew a bead on one of the nearer entities, firing the destabilizer at it. When hit, it sizzled and popped, and suddenly Winston could see the outline of one of the nearby buildings through it. There were people in some of the windows, watching the show, but they didn't seem terribly worried. Maybe they didn't understand how dangerous the hobgoblins were. As he hit the entity, they cheered and waved their arms, enjoying the display.

Wings still flapping the destabilized goblin retreated, though without the power and lift of before, and sagged toward the street. Leaning out beside Winston, Janine aimed for the spot Mab had suggested might be vulnerable, just between its wings, and fired, striking it dead on target. The hobgoblin jerked as if he'd been hit with an axe and plunged down toward the street. His body seemed to be gaining resolution as he fell, as if the destabilization was already wearing off, but it didn't last long enough to prevent the horrible, shattering-watermelon sound he made as he splatted against the pavement. Her grimace extremely expressive, Janine pulled back quickly.

"Egon, they're physical. I think it killed him."

"I doubt we'll get such a good shot again," replied Egon, firing out the opposite window. He must have hit another three of them, but they merely zipped further away, out of range of the altered destabilizer, which didn't have the long-distance power of the original, and well out of range of the traps. The hobgoblins must have realized being destabilized in itself didn't hurt them, as long as they weren't trapped in the process. The only advantage of that was to keep them from entering headquarters, but it was a stalemate and something would have to be done, and soon, to break it.

"There has to be an easier way to do this," muttered Janine as she tried to get a shot at a hobgoblin's back and missed by a few inches.

Egon's face was a study of concentration. He was rapidly processing all the information he had and, whether or not he could make anything of it, at least the destabilizers were holding the entities at arms' length for the moment. The three of them continued firing, darting from window to window to cover the building as thoroughly as they could, heading back and forth between the bedroom and the lab, though Egon's foot limited his mobility and the other two decided he should stay in the lab to guard it instead of running back and forth. Their greatest concern was that the hobgoblins would try to gain entrance at one of the lower levels. The three of them could not protect the whole building, but since the goblins were more at home on the wing, Winston hoped the top of the building would be the easiest place to defend against them.

"Wait!" cried Egon suddenly, a strange look crossing his face. "I have an idea. Janine! I'll need your pack. Cover us, Winston, as best you can."

The secretary raced to Egon's side, shucking her pack as she came, and deposited it trustingly in front of him on the table. Egon attacked it with a screwdriver, making quick and careful adjustments, though Winston couldn't take the time to watch him and try to figure out what he was doing. "I can't guarantee this will work, but we did speculate about the qualities of sunlight and why the sun on the other side might have different properties than our own. I'm adjusting this to give a burst of UV power directly at the goblins. If you will remember we used the properties of sunlight to destroy the slime-sucking vampire in Germany. It might be our only chance."

"Yeah, if they only come at night because our sun's harmful to them, that might work," Winston concurred, a surge of hope running through him. Egon always came up with answers when the chips were down. "Go for it, homeboy."

Egon worked rapidly while Winston darted from window to window sending off destabilizing potshots at any hobgoblin that came too near. Janine grabbed a spare pack and put it on so she could help him. Then another dark shape appeared, further away and bigger than the other hobgoblins, great wings slashing the night, and Winston sighed and tried to crank the power on his destabilizer even higher. They must have been waiting to bring in the big guns when they thought the Ghostbusters were too tired to deal with a new crisis.

"I'm ready," cried Egon and limped heavily to the window, Janine's pack looped loosely over one shoulder, the thrower gripped tightly in his hands.

"There's a bigger one out here on this side," Winston called. "I'll try to hold it off."

"I see five of them," Egon responded. "I'm going to fire now. This will be exceptionally bright. Try not to look directly at the energy stream."

"You got that," agreed Winston, turning his head away as the physicist pressed the control switch. Light, pure vivid light, lanced across the night, making the black man's eyes close involuntarily. Behind him, Janine let out a yelp of sheer surprise and flung up her hands to shield her face against the brilliance.

Hobgoblins shrieked in pure agony, and Winston dared risking opening his eyes a mere slit. He saw three of them burst into flames, one minute solid, the next nothing but fire, then only ashes crumpling and scattering to sprinkle down to the ground. Four of the entities, further away, tried to fly, their wings in tatters, and the bigger one dove for them, held out a hand and unexpectedly cast balefire at them, glowing and bright, striking them in a rush. They fell like stones.

"MAB!" shrieked Winston in wild relief as he recognized the shapeshifted pooka. "Mab's back!" He couldn't see Peter or Slimer and she wasn't carrying Ray, but there wasn't time to react to that. The pooka dove after several fleeing hobgoblins, catching up with them easily as they flew jerkily on damaged wings. They seemed to dissolve even before she could catch them, melting as if the light had eaten them away from the outside in.

Egon powered down, staggering as he tried to catch his balance. Winston's aching eyes saw Janine slide in under his shoulder and wrap an arm around his waist to hold him steady. "Oh, Egon," she breathed in a worshipful voice. "You did it. You beat them. You were wonderful."

Egon leaned against her, the thrower's tip sagging toward the ground. Winston leaped at him, slid Janine's pack from his shoulder and set it aside, grabbing up a PKE meter and passing it to the physicist in the pack's place. "Are they gone?" he asked, helping the secretary hold the flagging man upright long enough to run the necessary tests.

Egon pulled himself straight with a considerable effort and took a reading, adjusting the meter several times. "No hobgoblins. The area is clean," he announced as Mab landed in the window, worked her way in past the broken glass and alit on the floor, metamorphosizing back to the human form she had worn most of the time, the wings melting away. "Only one pooka," he concluded, his voice quivering with exhaustion.

Ray burst into the room at a dead run, screeched to a halt at the sight of Mab and the exhausted Egon and looked around wildly. "What happened?" he demanded anxiously, checking each of them for signs of injury with quick, anxious glances.

"Ray? RAY!" Egon's voice caught at the sight of his friend, and he let go of Janine and took three limping steps to meet him, holding out his arms. Ray all but fell against him and they embraced each other tightly. "We thought they would kill you," Egon said quietly against Ray's hair, his voice quivering with relief.

"They only locked me up," Ray replied quickly and reassuringly as if the strength of Egon's grip had been necessary to tell him how much he had been missed. "They didn't even hurt me, except by accident. I'm fine, Egon." For a moment he clung, smiling briefly when Winston leaned in to pound him on the shoulders and ruffle his hair.

Then, as Janine put her arm around his shoulders and dropped a relieved kiss on his cheek, Ray collected himself, shook his head and cried, "We've got to help Peter! Egon, I think he's dying! He's down there," he explained, waving his hand toward the spiral staircase. "Slimer's bringing him."

Egon jerked and stiffened as if he'd been shot. "He can't be dying," he insisted fiercely as if to refute Ray's frantic claim. "It hasn't been that long since his proto-ectoplasmic conversion. It didn't affect me this quickly when I was hit."

"No, but he's been doing more with what he had than you ever did, overexerting and draining his life energy," said Mab quickly, not as if in accusation but in explanation. "In that state, he can't replenish himself the way he normally could." She slipped away, heading for the stairs at a run since she and Slimer were tghe only ones who could carry Peter. Everyone made a concerted dash for the stairs after her, even Egon, who managed to get all the way to the lab door before the pain in his foot caught up with him and he nearly fell, biting his bottom lip to hold back the moan of distress and frustration. He grasped for the doorknob long enough to catch his balance then limped determinedly on, flashing a brief look of gratitude at Winston when he caught the physicist's arm to steady him.

Mab fled down the stairs as if she were still flying and returned in moments with the unconscious psychologist cradled against her chest. His face was turned against her breast, his eyes closed, his body lax and boneless, one arm swinging loosely, his fingers half curled. He looked smaller than usual, helpless and pathetic, as if all the cocky energy that drove him had been leached away, leaving only a shell. At the sight of him, Egon sucked in his breath in horror and breathed, "Peter," under his breath as if another sliver of glass had stabbed him right through to the heart.

Mab pushed past them all and carried Peter into the lab, Ray hot on her heels and Slimer hovering over her head, whimpering miserably. Face white, Janine pressed her hands against her mouth and shot one worried and sympathetic look at Egon before she slid in on the blond man's other side and helped Winston guide him back to the lab. Both of them were surprised at how fast Egon hobbled even though his foot would barely support his weight.

"I think everything he did to help Ray accelerated the process," Mab explained as she lowered Peter to the lab table next to the destabilizer rectifier unit. "It made the transformation progress at a much more rapid rate than it did with you, Egon." She settled him in place, straightening arms and legs, because Peter was lax like a puppet with cut strings as she positioned him. He seemed far more transparent than before, and he sank slightly into the table as Mab let him go. Even transparent, his face held a stark pallor and his breathing was faint and irregular as if he had pushed himself to the limits and beyond, expending far more energy than he had to spare. As they watched, a spasm of pain wracked his body and he quivered limply, feeling it even in his unconscious state, a faint moan trickling from his mouth. Egon and Ray crowded close, the physicist taking a hasty reading of Peter with his PKE meter as Ray snatched for the destabilizer controls. Egon's face was so utterly devoid of any expression he looked as if he had been sculpted, but Ray's eyes were enormous and dark with frantic worry.

"He's alive," Egon breathed, his voice shaken, lifting his eyes from the screen and turning them upon Peter instead as if he could never look away. "But he's nearly gone. We have to hurry."

"Will it send him into the Netherworld?" Janine asked anxiously as Ray powered up the device and aimed it at Peter, adjusting the settings rapidly but with great care, unwilling to take the slightest chance of making a mistake.

"No," said Egon with fierce determination. "We made allowances for that. It should simply reverse the destabilization without a transference." If strength of will could save Peter, then Egon would pull him back, even from beyond the grave. The hand that wasn't holding the meter reached out in a purely involuntary gesture as if to touch Peter, then he drew it back as if he'd realized it was impossible. "Go, Ray," he urged. "It's powered and ready. I made sure of that while he was gone."

Ray nodded and fired the device at the unconscious psychologist, biting his lip to keep it from quivering. A stream of energy shot out in waves and enveloped Peter, who twitched slightly when the beam struck him, then jerked more sharply, groaning as if it hurt him. Ray flinched but didn't stop firing. For a long moment, the device appeared to pin him in its beam and even to draw him upward into it, but Winston realized that was because he was solidifying and no longer sinking into the table. It was working! Egon watched the meter and Peter with equal attention; he gnawed his bottom lip, concentrating fiercely. Time strung itself out and everyone held their breaths waiting for a reaction.

"He never hesitated," Mab said in a quiet voice, as if speaking to herself. "Even when he could tell it was draining him, he didn't give up. The only thing that might have stopped him was the sight of the hobgoblins heading back here before we got to their compound, and after that he was torn in two directions, that Ray needed him and that you three were here without his backup. He never once thought about himself and the danger he faced just being there. It was his concern for the rest of you that drove him the whole time." Egon nodded as if this fact did not surprise him in the slightest.

"He came in and warned me Mab was there," Ray said as he manipulated the device. "Some hobgoblins came and looked at me, and I know if they'd tried to hurt me Peter would have gone for them in a minute. He watched our backs all the way back to the barrier and even made himself invisible and eavesdropped on them, and lured them away from us." Heaving a sigh, he switched off the device and bent over Peter as he lay upon the table. He was no longer transparent, no longer sinking into the table, but his face was still like parchment and his breathing, though slightly stronger, wasn't normal yet. He looked as if a mere breath of wind would turn him to dust and whisk him away.

Egon put his hand on Peter's forehead, a quick flash of relief running across his face as the touch proved Peter was solid again. "Peter?" he asked, his voice aching with concern. "Can you hear me?"

No response. Slimer began to cry noisily, moaning, "Oh, no, poor Peter," and Winston was momentarily distracted when he realized Slimer didn't sound as clear as he had since the spell had taken effect that morning--no, yesterday morning. He sounded like his old self again. jumbled and garbled as if he had a handful of marbles in his mouth. From the way Ray's head jerked up to stare at the little ghost in wide-eyed surprise before he turned back to Peter, he'd noticed it too. Egon didn't seem aware of the transformation but then it was doubtful he'd even heard the spud. His undivided attention was fixed upon Peter.

"He's feverish," he said, tracing his fingers down Peter's cheek to test for that condition.

"He's made himself sick with exhaustion," offered Janine. "And worse, the whole process hurt him. I remember how it was with you, Egon. Think about it." It was plain Egon was doing exactly that and finding unpleasant images in the reflection. Janine continued hastily, "I think he needs rest and food. We can make him some healthy broth and feed it to him. Mab said he couldn't replenish any energy he exerted when he was in that state. He couldn't eat, after all. And he wasn't solid, and getting less so. No wonder he got weaker when he got tired."

"Maybe we should take him right to the hospital," suggested Winston practically, his eyes lingering on Peter as if to check for the slightest improvement, or decline. "Your foot needs looking at, Egon, and I think you could stand to be checked out, too, Ray. You're a mess." He gestured at the makeshift bandages that adorned Ray's arm and torso, frowning.

"I'm okay," said Ray without a moment's hesitation. "This isn't anything, just a few minor cuts. Peter's the one I'm worried about. He looks terrible. What's wrong with your foot, Egon?"

"There was a piece of glass in it," Egon responded automatically as if to disregard it entirely. "Peter, if you can hear me, give me a sign. Move, or speak, or squeeze my fingers." He caught up Peter's hand in both of his own and waited expectantly, but the psychologist's fingers didn't move at all. Instead he made a faint querying sound that caused everyone to lean in closer, hope on their faces.

"Peter?" demanded Ray. "Can you hear us?"

The unconscious man didn't respond but he caught his breath, sucked in air greedily as if he hadn't had enough of it for a very long time, and began to breathe more normally, slow, deep breaths as if he were sleeping. He stretched slowly, cautiously, and the fingers of his free hand brushed against the table. For a second, he stiffened and tensed, then he moved them questingly, exploring the tabletop as if he'd just realized he could feel it for the first time since he'd been hit with the reflected power from the mirror.

"That's a good sign," Winston muttered, reaching out to check Peter's pulse, and nodding when he found it right away though it wasn't as strong as he would have liked it to be. "He's starting to wake up. Yo, Pete, hang in there. We're here, you're safe, and it's over. We're going to take you straight to the hospital."

"No hospital," Peter muttered weakly without opening his eyes. His enclosed fingers moved then, pressing feebly against Egon's. "'m fine," he insisted, his voice a faint thread of sound as if he lacked the energy to speak any louder. The fact that he didn't feel well enough yet to start complaining worried them all, because it came naturally to Peter to complain when minor things were wrong. Only when he was really down did he grow quiet and refuse to admit how sick he felt.

"Peter?" Egon faltered and tears that were mostly prompted by relief at finally getting a response sprang to his eyes, though they didn't spill over. He tightened his grip.

"Hope I c'n . . . use that hand . . . again one day," Peter muttered faintly, but when Egon started to free him, he secured his own grip and held on with all his strength, which wasn't much at the moment. Though Egon could have broken free with no effort at all, he didn't let go as Peter shivered and blinked, then finally forced his eyes open a slit as if holding them at half mast was about all he could manage. "Wha . . . happened?" he asked. "E-egon? I c'n . . . feel your hand and something hard under me. Does that . . . mean I'm back?"

"You're back," Egon replied with sudden sternness. "And not a minute too soon."

Peter shivered a little and heaved a sigh of comfort when Janine draped a blanket over him. "Glad I'm solid again," he muttered weakly, his eyes sliding shut as his free hand clasped the edge of the blanket to pull it tight around him. A moment later he opened his eyes. "Everybody . . . okay?" he asked, looking around the room, satisfaction filling his face as he registered everyone's presence, on their feet and gathered around him. Looking up at Egon, he must have seen the strain on the physicist's face and the unnatural brightness in his eyes, because he struggled for alertness. "Hey, Egon?" he said softly.

"Yes, Peter?"

"I'm--really back," Peter said reassuringly. He could always tell when one of his friends needed the services of Dr. Venkman, even when he was flat on his back. "Told you I'd . . . do it. I said not to . . . worry about me."

"And you may as well have told the sun not to rise," Egon returned a little tightly. He bent unexpectedly and gathered Peter up against him in a desperate hug, clinging to the weary man as if he would never let go. "I don't expect you to pull a stunt like that again," he said sternly, hiding his face against Peter's tangled hair for a few seconds. "I'm too old for shocks like this."

At once Peter grabbed onto Egon and held on tight. "It's okay, Spengs," he said quietly. "I can feel myself . . . getting stronger. I'm gonna be great . . . well, maybe by this time next week. And don't tell me not to do it again because if Ray was in danger, or you or Winston or Janine, I'd do . . . exactly the same thing, and you know it because you'd have done the same thing yourself for one of us, and have done before."

"Don't reproach him for his courage," Mab said gently in the background. "Don't fault him for being a hero, for he did it out of love."

"It's because we were afraid he was going to die," confessed Ray in a small voice. "He just fell out of the sky, and if it wasn't for you and that mumbo jumbo you did on him with that blue light on his chest . . . " He broke off, unable to continue, and Winston realized it had been even closer than he'd thought, and that Ray was still shocked by Peter's nearness to death.

Peter's head came up at that, surprise and curiosity on his face. "Mumbo jumbo?" he asked warily, one arm still around Egon's shoulder, probably in a combination of balance and to reassure the blond. "What mumbo jumbo? What's this about a blue light? I don't remember any blue lights."

"I gave you life energy," Mab explained. She was still naked and once she had deposited Peter on the table she had resumed her human appearance, but as all of them turned to look at her, she reached for the clothing she had shed earlier and casually put it on again. Winston was getting so used to her periodic nudity he didn't think anything of it this time. "I had to keep you alive until you could get to the device and be reversed," she explained to Peter. "I had accepted the responsibility of you when you accepted it for Ray. I could do no less than you did."

Peter bobbed his head, as if he were a little embarrassed by the looks the guys were giving him. Pulling back from Egon's grip, he stared down at his chest, his jaw dropping when he saw a small singed spot on his tattered pajama top right over his heart. He fingered it warily, hastily undid the buttons as if to look for a matching scorched place on his skin. There wasn't one but where her hand had lain, his skin was slightly reddened. Peter gave it a quick poke and grinned when it obviously didn't hurt.

"Paranormal CPR?" offered Winston, reaching out automatically to check Peter's pulse, his fingers curling around the psychologist's wrist and nodding when he felt how much stronger it had been than when he had first solidified.

"Evidently." Egon fumbled for his PKE meter again and took a reading of Peter. "Hmm."

"Don't say 'hmm', Egon," Peter chided him, his eyes alight with a combination of amusement and alarm. "You're making me nervous. So what's it tell you? Am I gonna glow in the dark from now on?" There was much more strength in his voice, as if being solid again was automatically replenishing his energy with every passing moment. Egon had been on the verge of collapse when the destabilizer rectifier forced him into the Netherworld, yet when the guys had found him a little over an hour later, he had been his normal self with no evidence of weakness, and the pain had never returned. True, he hadn't been as drained by his experience as Peter had, but it had been a near thing; simply a more gradual decline. Peter looked like he was coming back, and the humor in his voice made Winston's taut muscles begin to relax.

"No, simply that your stamina is returning quite quickly," the physicist replied. "You'll be fine, Peter, probably within a day." He gave Peter a stubborn glare. "If I can't tell you not to take risks for us, at least I can tell you that if you scare me like that again, I will find a way to permanently mess up your hair, and don't think I couldn't do it." His grip tightened on Peter's shoulder as if he were reveling in the solidity under his fingers.

"That wouldn't be my first choice," Peter said, reaching up suspiciously to try to settle his brown thatch, though he made no effort to shift away from Egon in his attempt to protect his hair. "Anyway, we've got to make sure those hobgoblins are gone for good. What does your meter tell you? Are they sneaking up on us for one final attack?"

"They're dead," said Winston, gesturing at the broken windows that revealed nothing more dangerous than a faint lightening of the sky in preparation for the dawn to come. "Egon adjusted Janine's thrower to give them an ultraviolet bath and they went up like torches, and then Mab put the finishing touches on the ones Egon missed. What was left of them splatted on the street like roadkill."

"And Mab closed the crossrip, too, soon as we came through it," cried Ray, full of delight. "It was great; she did all these esoteric gestures and passes, and had light coming off her hands like fire. Real magic. The gate sort of collapsed in on itself. Even if there were more of them over here, they couldn't get home and sunrise would finish them off. Isn't it great?"

"There were another couple dozen coming," Peter put in around a weary yawn. "When I was sneaking around them invisible I heard them talking. They were gonna come back to the gate and guard it to make sure we couldn't get through and a bunch of them were coming over here to bring down the containment unit. I kinda buzzed around them and bugged them, and they thought it was Mab and maybe some other pookas, 'cause they didn't know a human could fly and be invisible. I took off back toward their compound, making noises and trying to imitate her accent so they'd think she had a big team of allies, and they went crazy and streaked back right past me, trying to catch them and protect their city. Soon as I was sure they were gone, I zipped back to the others, and we got out of there. Mab must have closed the gate just in time."

"Wow, Peter, it was great," exclaimed Ray, gazing at Peter with an admiring look. "We could see them freaking but we didn't know what you were doing because not even Mab could see you. You took a big risk. They could've caught you."

"They couldn't even see me. I knew that. Anyway, they're gone and can't get through again." Peter sagged a little against Egon's chest, his strength easily expended and the physicist tightened his arm around his shoulders.

"I think we ought to go to the hospital now," put in Janine, a stubborn look on her face. "You need to have your foot treated, Egon, and look at Ray. He's got bandages all over him. And Peter's got one on his foot, besides looking like something the cat dragged in."

"He always looks like that," put in Ray with a wicked grin that made Peter bounce up and stick out his tongue at him reproachfully, though he promptly leaned back against Egon again, a contented expression upon his face.

"Do not," Peter retorted. "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. I'll go to the hospital if Egon will. You look like you might fall over at any minute, big guy. How bad is your foot anyway? Nobody tells me anything around here. I'm gone a little while and everybody gets out of hand."

"It's fine now," Egon said mendaciously.

"Yeah, as fine as any foot that had a couple of inches of glass rammed into it and then yanked out without benefit of anesthetic," Janine remarked. She favored the physicist with a dark look. "Last time she was here, Egon, your mom gave me the recipe for her magic cure-all, and even bought a special blender, so I'd be ready to step into the breach when she wasn't around. If you promise to go to the hospital, I might--that's might--forget I know how to make it."

"When you put it like that, I see no other choice," Egon admitted, yielding to the inevitable, and everybody laughed.

By the time the four of them and Janine reached the hospital, Peter was feeling so much better that he could walk in under his own steam, though a little slower than usual because he was still pretty tired. Since none of them seemed to be at death's door to the woman at the desk who signed them in, they were made to wait in the way of emergency rooms everywhere in order to be seen. Mab had elected to stay at the firehall, reverting to her cat form and curling up on Ray's bed before they'd left--it might be hard to explain a pooka at the hospital. The sun was just starting to rise as they finished up the paperwork and sat down to wait their turns.

A doctor saw Egon first because everyone insisted his injury was the worst, especially since Peter had bounced back so well, and only the lines of fatigue on his face remained to mark his ordeal. After Egon had been wheeled in--his foot still hurt when he walked on it, so Peter insisted on the wheelchair--Peter was called. The psychologist walked into his examining room without assistance, limping slightly because of the injury to his heel, and moving as if he'd aged fifteen years overnight. He was yawning when he went, pausing in the doorway to give Ray a reassuring grin. Ten minutes after that, someone came for Ray, who'd been dozing wearily against Winston's shoulder on the ugly Naugahyde sofa while he waited.

Once he had vanished into the innards of the ER, Winston and Janine sat waiting for what seemed like hours, not talking very much. She let her head rest against Winston, too, leaning into the protective circle of his arm. He was solid and comfortable, always reliable. Janine was glad he was there, not only for her now, but for the other three at any time.

Eventually Peter came back, still limping. He'd found a comb somewhere and tried to settle his hair, but he still looked a little frayed around the edges. Winston rose to meet him, pulling him over to the sofa. Venkman sat down next to Janine, his mouth opened in a huge yawn. "I want to sleep for a year," he mumbled, sliding down in the seat and letting his chin rest against his chest as if it took too much energy to hold his head up properly. "The doctor gave me some really gucky stuff to drink because he said my electrolytes weren't balanced," he complained reproachfully. "It was terrible. I'd rather drink pond scum."

"Or kiss the spud?" asked Winston in amusement, his eyes twinkling because Peter's complaint sounded so normal.

"I wouldn't go that far," Peter disagreed hastily. "Egon and Ray aren't back yet? Maybe I better go look for them." He started to push himself upright again but Winston clamped a hand on his shoulder to hold him in place.

"Oh, no you don't, good buddy. You're glued to this couch until we go home, and I mean it."

"Winston's right. You sit right there, Dr. Venkman," Janine instructed, standing up and frowning down at him. "You were still limping just now. I'll go."

"They said my foot was okay but probably not to go running around in a pack for a day or two because whatever hit me drained me like crazy. The doc said he couldn't figure it out because I was bouncing back on my own, even after I told him I'd been destabilized. I'm not sure he believed me. Can you imagine that? He didn't believe I'd been invisible and could fly. What are doctors coming to?" He yawned again. "Then the nurse told him I was a Ghostbuster and he kind of shrugged as if he'd believe anything after that. My foot's not bad at all. It would have healed just fine even if I hadn't come in here and is probably only sore 'cause I couldn't do much about it until now." Another capacious yawn. "Go on, Janine, go check it out," he urged. Though his eyelids drooped, she suspected he wouldn't allow himself to sleep until he saw his friends again and reassured himself they were all right.

Janine started toward the door but before she could take three steps Egon was wheeled back by an orderly who left him just inside the room and vanished again. There were lines around the physicist's eyes brought about by fatigue and pain and he had a prescription clutched in one hand. Like Peter, his chin was on his chest and he looked half asleep as if he'd been passed around from doctor to doctor like a package without making any effort to guide his way and had dozed on the way back to the waiting room.

"Oh, Egon," cried Janine, flying to him and grabbing his hand, "you look terrible."

He roused himself, looked around until he saw Peter, and relaxed slightly, gripping the armrests and straightening up in the chair. "Are you all right, Peter?"

"Great for a guy with unbalanced electrolytes, whatever that is," Peter replied quickly. "The gunk they gave me was worse than your mom's blender recipe." He grimaced in sheer outrage, which made Egon relax and find a smile for him, knowing, as they all did, that Peter only complained when he was well on the road to recovery.

"You're not admitted?" Egon asked him suspiciously.

"No, they said to go home and take it easy, and that means I'm gonna crash and sleep all day. I'm fine. What about you, big guy? You look as if you've been pummeled by mad doctors for a week. What did they say about your foot?"

"They put two stitches into it," Egon replied, "but mostly because it would be hard to stay off it entirely and they said it would help it to heal. I'm supposed to walk as little as possible for the next two days and be cautious for a few after that. Winston did get all the glass out of the wound, but it will take time to heal because it was very deep, and because I didn't stay off it tonight, er, last night." He glanced past them at the sun shining in the window as if he'd just realized it was morning.

"We'll see you stay off it, won't we, Winston?" Peter asked. "We'll fetch and carry for you--within reason--soon as we finally get up, cause we're gonna all hit the sack when we get home, right Winston?"

"And we'll let Janine help," agreed the black man with a wicked grin.

"Of course I'll help," Janine replied. "Egon, you have to be careful with that foot. Just stay in the chair for now, and we'll wheel you out to the car as soon as Ray is finished."

"Where is Ray?" Peter asked, looking anxiously down the corridor. "I don't suppose they get many people in here who were clawed by hobgoblins. Egon, you don't think their claws are poisonous?" Alarmed by the speculation, he sat up straight, eyes wide.

"They're not," cried Ray, hurrying to meet them. Like the others, he looked exhausted, but he was grinning. "I'm okay," he said quickly. "They didn't know what to make of me. Those doctors are thorough. They even found the claw marks Mab made when she scratched me a couple of days ago. They asked me if I was an animal handler at the zoo."

"So they didn't find any poison or anything?" Peter asked carefully, looking Ray up and down as if he expected to find signs of a dreaded wasting disease written in the lines of his body.

"No, but they said it was probably a good thing my tetanus shot was current. I told 'em how dangerous our work could be and said we kept everything current. The doctor was fascinated when he found out I was a Ghostbuster, and asked me all kinds of questions. I think he's a fan. He asked for my autograph for his kids."

"I didn't get a fan," Peter said regretfully. "Just somebody who made me drink something really awful, and told me to sleep the rest of the day."

"That, Dr. Venkman, is a prescription we can all follow," Egon said in agreement. "And speaking of prescriptions, I must fill this one, and then we can go home."

"Yeah, I've got one, too," said Ray, patting his shirt pocket. "They gave me an antibiotic just to be on the safe side. What's yours for, Egon?"

"Pain," admitted the physicist.

"When we get home," said Peter, eyeing Egon carefully, "we're gonna have to carry you up the stairs, good buddy."

"Oh, excellent," said Egon in the tones of one who was promised a treat he neither wanted nor looked forward to.

After stopping to pick up the prescriptions, they drove Janine home to Brooklyn and told her to take the whole day off and not to come in until the next morning. She decided she'd sleep until she woke up and then head back to make sure none of the guys were overdoing it and to arrange to fix all those broken windows so the guys wouldn't catch a chill. A good secretary had to be vigilant every moment. Bosses could be such children. But she wouldn't have it any other way.

Peter yawned, stretched, and opened his eyes carefully, half expecting a face full of bright sunlight but instead finding only the dim glow of twilight--or possibly dawn--through the windows. To his utter surprise there was new glass in them. How had they gotten fixed without Peter hearing anything? He must have been more tired than he thought. Frowning, he stared at the nearest window. It was twilight, judging by the angle of the fading light. He'd slept the whole day through. Stretching carefully in sheer contentment, he sat up and looked around the bedroom, vaguely conscious of a couple of wake-up times during the day when he'd ventured into the bathroom or got a glass of water only to return to bed and crash again. There hadn't been any guys fixing windows either of those times at least not that he could remember. Now he was wide awake and ready for answers.

The others were gone, their beds neatly made. Curious, Peter turned his head and saw a sliver of light coming through the nearly-closed bedroom doors, indicating someone was busy in the lab, probably Egon and Ray. They were being quiet, which made Peter grin. Treating him with the respect he felt he deserved. This was great. He loved it.

He would have rolled over and gone back to sleep but hunger prodded him and he decided to get up and find himself a big Dagwood sandwich to satisfy his hollow stomach. That way he could check out Egon and Ray and see if they were all right, no nasty side effects creeping up on them. So he pushed himself up to a sitting position, stopping when he saw Mab, as the big black cat, curled up contentedly on the foot of his bed.

"Hey, Mab," he said softly, reaching down to scratch behind the ears, half-hoping she'd wake up and do her transformation number. They didn't get many private moments and Peter would have enjoyed a few, especially post-transformation when he could enjoy her beautiful body and maybe get in a little cuddling. But the cat only yawned and looked at him with knowing green eyes as if she could read every wicked thought he had about her.

"Well, heck, you can't blame a guy for hoping," Peter muttered a little nervously. Mab smiled a cat smile at him and closed her eyes again, and Peter eased out of bed, grabbed clean underwear and his sweats and headed for the shower.

When he emerged, dressed, shaved and reasonably tidy, not to mention wonderfully refreshed by the beating force of the hot water, he wandered into the lab, where the other three members of his team were sitting, Egon at the computer, Ray and Winston at the lab table. Peter flung himself into the nearest chair because he still found himself tiring easily. The doctor had said that would pass in a day or so as his body built itself up again.

"Hi, guys." The windows had been fixed here, too. Janine must have organized it and told the repairmen to work quietly so as not to disturb the four of them. Peter remembered coming home this morning, looking at the broken windows and muttering, "Okay, I'm too tired to care," before he fell into bed and let the world go away.

"My gosh, it walks, it talks, it even moves," said Ray in mock astonishment, staring at Venkman, eyes wide. "I thought you were going to sleep until the millennium, Peter."

"So how long did you sleep, Stantz?" Peter demanded.

"It was half an hour less than you, Peter," Egon replied, smiling, "Though he did wake up when they were fixing the windows this afternoon. You, however, seem able to sleep through anything." Both of them looked much better than they had when they went to bed. Ray's perpetual energy seemed restored, and his grin was the usual million watt one rather than the thousand watt one of the aftermath of the crisis. There were still a few lines in Egon's face, but his foot was probably still bothering him. Peter wished they had a wheelchair to push him around in for the rest of the day.

"How'd you get in here, Egon?" he asked suspiciously. "They said no walking, remember?"

"Winston helped me," Egon replied at once. "Besides, I have that." He gestured to a crutch that had mysteriously appeared from nowhere and was now leaning against his computer stand. It hadn't been there when they'd all gone to bed. "Janine brought me a set of crutches when she stopped by an hour ago," he explained. "She said I couldn't use them on the stairs, but I can get down the spiral ones fine, holding the railing. I tried it right away."

"Good way to break your neck," Peter responded, shaking his head. "You still look a little rocky, big guy. Just remember, those pain pills aren't any good in the bottle."

"This from the man who doesn't like to take so much as an aspirin," muttered Winston, shaking his head.

"Well, hey, I drank that nasty stuff at the hospital," Peter defended himself. He looked at Egon's computer screen. As usual, it didn't make any sense to him. "So what are we working on?"

"We, Peter?" asked Egon pointedly. "While you were snoring, I've been monitoring for evidence of cross-rips, negative valences or anything which might lead me to believe the hobgoblins could return. Mab says the gateway is sealed and it will take hundreds of years for her handiwork to disperse naturally. She does not believe the hobgoblins can reverse the process on their own."

"I sure hope not," Peter said. "This has not been fun. Well, except for seeing Mab transform, and I wouldn't mind seeing that ten times a day."

"Does he never stop?" asked the pooka from the doorway, once more in her human form. She was wearing the long skirt Peter had found for her and one of Ray's sweaters, filling it out in interesting ways that Ray never did, which was just as well.

"I--uh--didn't know you were there," Peter said, casting a quick, slightly uneasy glance in her direction.

"Don't worry, I did know that." Her eyes flashed. "Be more careful next time. Fond of you as I am, I have my principles. I can't let mortals get away with much, though with you, I have been severely tempted."

"Well, hey, you've gotta give in to temptation every now and then," Peter said quickly, favoring her with his most engaging grin. "Keeps you in practice."

"Some of us don't feel the need to practice," she pointed out, her eyes alight.

Peter grinned and nodded, licking one finger and making a mark with it in the air. "A point for you." He didn't really feel a threat from her, or a promise either. To his regret, nothing was going to happen between them beyond that which already had. Now that he'd seen her as the huge, winged creature who had gone with him into the hobgoblins' realm after Ray, he wasn't sure he felt the same desire for her as before either, though she was still incredibly beautiful and he wouldn't say no if she changed her mind. Ray, of course, was looking at her with near-worshipful eyes. Peter had a hunch his buddy was going to take it rough when she left, even though he'd seen her winged shape, too. And suddenly Peter was sure she was going to leave.

As if to prove him right, Mab came into the lab. "Knowing all of you has been a very great privilege," she began with a smile.

"Gosh, Mab, that sounds as if you're going away?" Ray questioned, the wattage fading abruptly from his smile and his shoulders drooping a little. "Can't you, well, stay here with us? We know about you and would love to have you here. You could be one of the team. You'd make a really great Ghostbuster."

"It cannot be done, Ray," she said gently as if she didn't want to hurt him, but knew that to allow him any hope would only hurt more in the long run. "My kind does not normally live closely with humans, not when we are known. I stayed with Mr. Howard because he was lonely and needed me, even before he found out what I was, and then I stayed because of the hobgoblins, watching them as much as providing him companionship and protection."

"I should have gone over there more often," Ray muttered, avoiding her eyes.

"No, you went as you should, and that is an end to that, my laddie. No guilt for Mr. Howard, because he loved you as a son and cherished the time you gave him, knowing how busy you were. He always said he didn't know how you could find the time to visit him so much and he was glad of whatever you could give him."

"Well, Peter visits Mrs. Faversham that often," Ray said, a little embarrassed at the pooka's praise.

"So I know, and it is good for her, for both of them," said Mab. Peter couldn't remember anyone mentioning Mrs. Faversham in front of Mab before, but she probably had ways of knowing things. He squirmed a little at the looks everyone gave him.

"She reminds me of my mom," he reminded the guys. "Besides, she makes a really great pot roast when I go over there for a Sunday dinner." Never mind he brought the pot roast for her to fix because her limited income wouldn't run to that. Peter had made it a deal with her, claiming the guys couldn't prepare a really well-cooked old-fashioned meal like his mom had made so he could bring her extra food to supplement her limited income without offending her pride. It always left her days of leftovers she could fix into special treats for herself.

Egon's expression indicated he had figured out the psychologist's motives the way he usually did, so Peter continued quickly, "When are you leaving, Mab?"

"Tonight."

"Aw, so soon," wailed Ray. "I wish you could stay longer. Gosh, we're going to miss you."

"And I you. All of you." She looked around the room, then she went over to Winston first and embraced him. He hugged her tightly.

"You take care of yourself, lady. We owe you big time."

She shook her head. "I have done little. Most of what you have done, you have done on your own."

"We couldn't have brought Ray back without you," Peter reminded her. "I couldn't have found my way over and I don't know if Slimer could've carried him all the way back without dropping him into the East River."

"Slimer could," the little ghost insisted in his typical speech. The power Mab had endowed them with temporarily had gone as she had said it would. Peter wasn't disappointed. He still had a little trouble with the sudden clarity of Slimer's speech. If Slimer could talk that well, Peter would have to treat him differently, and he was comfortable with the status quo between himself and the spud and didn't want it to change.

"Not entirely, Slimer, so it's well we had Mab," said Egon, rising carefully to his feet as Mab turned to him. He hugged her tightly while Peter watched with a wicked grin, already planning ways to tease old Spengs about it and about the way the physicist planted a kiss on her cheek when he thought no one could see. "So we are very grateful for Ray and for the way you gave strength to Peter to enable him to make it back here so we could use the conversion process on him."

"You solved the hobgoblin problem on your own," Mab reminded him. She kissed him, this time on the mouth, and Peter suspected it was probably just as well Janine wasn't here to watch because Egon definitely liked it. "Your work with the thrower and the light was brilliant," Mab remarked as she lifted her lips from his.

Egon preened himself a little. He always enjoyed being told he was brilliant and he'd definitely liked that kiss. Peter shot him a knowing look.

"Ray." Mab turned to the occultist. Her voice was very gentle as if she had guessed from the first how much Ray had been attracted to her. She probably also knew that, unlike Peter, Ray would have been well content to worship from afar. She took a quick step that brought herself face to face with him, and then she kissed him with the intensity of an old lover, a kiss that probably would have blown fuses and rated an eleven on a scale of one to ten. When she finished it, she drew back and then kissed him a second time, this time with every evidence of a deep affection that was not going to end because they would probably never see each other again. Ray's arms crept around her and he held her closely until she lifted her mouth from his and backed away.

Ray was utterly speechless, a dazed, delighted smile upon his face. He gazed at her, his breathing hard and fast, then he said, "If you ever come through here again and don't stop to visit us . . . "

"If I am here again, I will make a beeline for all of you," she promised. Then she turned to Peter.

"Ah, lad, lad, how I love you," she breathed, making Peter tingle all the way down to his toes. "I will always remember how we went into the fire together."

He held out his arms to her. "C'mere," he urged and pulled her against him, kissing her the way she had first kissed Ray. Talk about blowing fuses! He could really get used to this.

When they separated, he gazed into her eyes and saw there a deep regret for what could never be. He also realized something that made him bite his lip over the wiseass crack he'd been about to make. He'd been madly in lust with Mab from the first moment he saw her, he'd desired her, and he'd admired her, and come to respect and like her. But she was shaking slightly because she had actually felt toward him the way Ray had felt about her, and because she was a pooka, a near-immortal being who dared not become attached to a human who would grow old and then be gone in a blink of her eye she had held him off. He saw her realize he knew and he hoped she could tell from his expression that he would never gloat to the guys about it. Peter had never been loved by anyone like Mab before and he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do about it, if anything.

Fortunately Slimer saved the day. "Slimer want kissy-kissy too," the little ghost cried and flung herself at Mab. She shook her head, her face suddenly alight with humor as she allowed Slimer to buss her sloppily, even hugging the little ghost to her for a moment.

"Guys don't understand me good any more," he complained in his normal squeaky tones.

"No, Slimer," she explained gently, "that was a gift, to meet a need. That need is gone now, as I will be. But I have something for you, Slimer, something I can give only to you."

"Me? Me?" Slimer bounced up and down in the air excitedly. "What is it? Present? Slimer likes presents."

"A kind of present, yes." She rested her hand atop his head. "If ever the guys need you really badly, to carry one of them as you tried to carry Peter, or to hear you clearly to save a life, you will find the strength within yourself to do it, for you have a kind and loving heart." She dimpled suddenly in a wicked, mischievous smile. "And when you go downstairs, you will find five pizzas waiting for you, and for you alone, because you tried with all your heart to help your friends."

Piiiizzzzaaaaa!" squealed Slimer, but he hung back before he went zipping after them to give her five or six excited kisses. "Slimer miss Mab," he said ruefully, then the lure of the treat became too much and he went right through the floor, diving for the pizza as if it were the gold at the end of the rainbow.

Ray smiled at her. "That was really nice, Mab."

"He is more than the nuisance Peter claims him," said Mab.

Peter hesitated then admitted with great reluctance, "Hey, I know that. It's just, why am I always the guy who gets slimed?"

Mab patted him on the head much as she had done Slimer. Then she calmly stripped off her clothing and shifted shape into the larger, winged version of herself. Opening one of the windows, she climbed onto the ledge, turning in the small space. "I will always remember you," she said, the words meant for all of them, though Peter realized a special part of them was meant for him alone, and sprang into the sky, as if she knew goodbyes would only be painful if they were dragged out. It was nearly dark, but even if anyone in the neighborhood saw her, they would shrug their shoulders, used to strangeness around the old firehouse. No one had even bothered to call the police over all the trouble the previous night, but then that was simply life in New York. And when the guys had gone out to head for the hospital, they had found no trace of hobgoblin bodies splatted messily on the pavement. Just as well.

"Gosh, I'm going to miss her," said Ray sadly, hanging his head.

Peter at once moved to Ray's side and draped his arm around his friend's shoulders. "I know, kiddo, but she couldn't stay here. She was getting to like us too much, and when you live for thousands of years, you don't let yourself get too fond of people who only live for eighty or ninety at best. It would hurt too much."

Ray nodded. "I know, Peter, but she was really special. You liked her, too."

"Well, yeah, I liked her. Anybody would. But with me it was different."

"Yeah, we all know what you wanted, Pete," said Winston with a knowing grin.

"It's not difficult to understand that," Egon replied, folding his arms across his chest and shaking his head at Peter.

Ray heaved a sigh and slid away from Peter's comforting arm. "Well, I just know I'm gonna miss her. She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw."

"Not to mention the biggest cat," put in Peter quickly, hoping to break the mood.

"And when she spouted wings, she was really different," agreed Winston as if he understood what Peter meant and wanted to help. "Betcha anything that's her normal appearance, what do you say?"

Ray grinned. "I know. I think so too. But she was special."

"We're all special, Ray," Peter told him, "and right now, this particular special guy is starving to death. I haven't had anything to eat all day. You guys didn't eat before I got up, did you?" he queried suspiciously.

"Well, Winston and I had lunch," Egon confirmed, "though I returned to bed afterwards for a few more hours."

"I've got dinner in the oven," Winston added. "It was my turn to cook, and I figured the smell would wake you up eventually. I'm making a turkey, with stuffing and everything. I figured we'd need a nice, big meal. Should be ready in another half an hour."

"Winston, my man," Peter praised him, giving him a high five. "You're my main man. I think that's just what the doctor ordered."

Winston headed downstairs to put the final touches on the big dinner, and Ray said he'd go to help, so the two of them vanished downstairs. Slimer was still down there; having finished up his pizza he must have decided to investigate the refrigerator or to see if he could wheedle a hand-out from Winston or Ray, both of whom were notorious for sneaking him scraps. Egon began shutting down his computer, then turned to the molecular phase amplifier and began to strip it down. He worked in silence, and Peter, who didn't yet have the energy to venture downstairs to be conscripted into kitchen duty, sat back in his chair and watched the physicist, a slight frown wrinkling his brow. After a few minutes, he said softly, "Egon? You okay?"

"Hmm? Yes, of course, I'm fine, Peter. My foot aches slightly, but that's all."

Peter's eyes narrowed. "And I'm ready to enter a dance marathon. Come on, Egon, this is Peter, remember. You never could pull the wool over my eyes. What's up?"

Egon packed away the last piece of equipment and slid the drawer shut over it before he looked up at Peter, then away again. He must have seen the stubbornness in Peter's face, because he heaved a small sigh. "I can't help thinking I made a major miscalculation, Peter," he admitted in a reluctant voice.

"Okay, you figured out the destabilizers would zap the goblins and they did. Then you decided they couldn't handle UV light and managed to trash the rest of them. That doesn't sound like a miscalculation, Egon. It sounds like we ought to put you up for the Nobel Prize, 'cause you probably saved the whole city."

Egon shook his head abruptly. "You don't understand," he said much more sharply than he must have intended, because he closed his mouth abruptly and then persisted, "That isn't the point."

"Okay, so what is the point? Remember, I'm just a humble psychologist. This physics stuff leaves me way behind."

"Psychologist, but hardly humble," Egon said involuntarily, a faint smile darting across his face and vanishing again. He hesitated then said flatly, "I was destabilized, too, Peter. I felt the continuing destabilization and I realized eventually that the more exertion, the quicker the process worked. Do you recall the first bust at the chocolate factory when I detected the ghost and used invisibility?"

Peter nodded. "I remember getting a face full of chocolate and you guys laughing your heads off," he said darkly, then he added, "I also remember you nearly lost it at the end there."

Egon nodded, confirming his point. "I didn't put together the dangers. I assumed the time before fatal destabilization would be consistent with both of us, that you would have as long as I did. I should have realized all that strenuous activity on your part would gravely endanger you. In short, I took an unconscionable risk with your life and it nearly killed you." He didn't meet Peter's eyes.

Peter heard him out in silence, a frown puckering between his eyes, then he reached out with both hands and clasped the physicist's bony shoulders and squeezed them hard. "Egon? Come on, Egon. Listen to me. You didn't force me to do what I did. If you think about it, you just might remember I insisted on going after Ray even when you wanted to turn me back right away. Ray was in danger and I couldn't stay behind. I had to help him, even if it meant I faded away to nothing, 'cause I was the only one who could. You would have done the same thing if you'd been in my shoes."

"But I should have put the clues together and warned you of the danger you faced, Peter. I'm a scientist. I should have understood the risk more thoroughly."

"You can't postulate a complete hypothesis on the function of a phenomenon you've only experienced once," Peter said, laying on the big words as heavily as he could. "You couldn't assume what happened with you would happen exactly the same with me. You were hit by a backlash from the demon which could have been ten times more powerful than a straight destabilization for all you knew. You warned me I was taking a risk, and I accepted that. It's not that I have a death wish or a desire to be a big hero or anything. I just wanted Ray back. And that's all there is to it. Even if you'd told me I had less time than you or that overusing my temporary powers would have zapped me, I'd still have done it. Come on, Egon, I was the only one of us who could have helped Ray, and I couldn't have done it without being able to go invisible to lure those hobgoblins away when we were escaping. Mab might have got him out of there without me, but I couldn't sit back here and wait when I could help." He shook Egon lightly. "I could help, and you and Winston couldn't. For all we know the effects are cumulative or something nasty like that and we couldn't risk zapping you. Besides, if you'd been over there with me, you couldn't have stopped the goopers."

"True," admitted Egon. "But I could have given you complete information."

"Egon, you didn't have complete information," Peter reminded him. "Not until I was back, and that's final. Just because I nearly croaked on you, you're aiming for 20/20 hindsight."

Egon flinched. Peter could feel it run through his entire body. That made him see the light, and he said in a much more serious voice than usual, "I'm sorry I scared you like that, Egon, but I'm okay. Really. I'm fine. I'm back in one piece and if you didn't have that foot, I'd have you bringing me breakfast in bed and taking my calls and all that good stuff just for the fun of it."

Egon chuckled faintly, then he stood up, took a step closer, and gave Peter a quick and somewhat awkward hug, thrown off balance by his limp. "I don't want you to scare me like that again, Peter," he said, his voice quivering a little against Peter's ear. "I couldn't stand to lose you. We didn't know about Ray, but he came back in one piece. When Mab carried you into the room . . . " He faltered, unable to go on, trembling with delayed reaction. Peter pulled him as close as he could and tightened one hand on the back of the blond's neck.

"It's okay. It's okay. Don't, Egon. Don't tell me how terrible I looked. Tell me how good I look now," Peter said quickly, determined to stop Egon from dwelling upon this.

"You do," Egon agreed. He tightened his grip for a moment, then he eased his hold, smiling, "but don't expect me to tell you that on a regular basis."

Peter gave a sputter of laughter and urged Egon down to his chair again. "Sit there and take your weight off your foot. I'm fine, Egon. Close only counts with major demons, remember?"

Egon looked up at him, a sudden knowing look on his face that proved his reaction was fading into relief, allowing him to think clearly again. "And are you all right, Dr. Venkman?"

Peter considered it, knowing Egon deserved an honest answer. "It's kind of weird to know I nearly bought the big one, but by the time I really knew what was going it was all over but the shouting. I had an easier part than you guys did."

"You did indeed, Peter," Egon replied.

"But I feel bad about Mab," Peter heard himself say, surprised to hear the words come out when he'd been determined not to say them. "She was in love with me, I mean, really in love with me. And it's not fair."

"You weren't in love with her?" Egon lifted an eyebrow. "From the way you were acting, I was half afraid you were as broken up about her going as Ray is. You fall in love at the drop of a hat."

"Not deep, real love," Peter said. "I liked her a lot, and I respected her for what she could do and for all the help she gave us, but the bottom line is, I wanted to sleep with her. That's a different thing. Seeing her naked on a regular basis was a real turn on and I wanted to sneak off with her and make passionate love to her. But in love . . . " He shook his head. "And she knew that. The thing is, she saw me in a crisis. She liked my looks--not that any reasonable woman wouldn't--okay, Egon, cool it, I'll stop," he added when the blond made a threatening move. "The point is, she seemed to think I was some kind of noble hero," Peter added, avoiding Egon's eyes. "And I was just an ordinary guy with one of my best buddies in deep shit. What else could I do? She kept talking about going into the fire with me, and it was because it was Ray, and I'd've done the same thing for you or Winston. It doesn't mean I'm some kind of superhero or anything. Just that I want to keep my family intact. And here's Mab, and she's great, even if she isn't human, and she'd have been great to have around, but she left because of how she felt about me. I feel a little like pond scum, you know?"

"Because you didn't love her? Be reasonable, Peter. You were hardly the only one of us attracted to her. It's inevitable when she was so constantly naked before us. Even I felt it, though if you say anything to Janine . . . " He shook his head. "You couldn't make yourself return her feelings."

"But what if she thought I felt the same because I had the hots for her," Peter began. "The women I fall for usually know the rules, Egon. They know how things work and they can tell how serious I am or when it's just a game. I'm not sure she could. And anyway, I encouraged her like mad."

"To get her into bed, Peter?" Egon asked sternly.

Peter hesitated. "At first, maybe, but then I got to know her, and it would have had to be her decision after that. She didn't make that decision. I can't say I'm not disappointed, but I didn't lead her on, except right at first."

"I don't think you actually did lead her on, Peter. You encouraged her to flirt with you, and that's a different thing. I doubt she would have stayed in any case, and in the end it's better she didn't. Ray would only have fallen for her harder and, this way, she can be a special memory for him."

Peter nodded. "You called that right, Egon." He felt a lot better after talking it out. When the chips were down, he could always go to Egon, and he always knew when to encourage Egon to come to him with his problems. Ray or Winston were a lot easier to get to open up than Egon was. He grinned at the physicist and Egon returned the smile, just as Ray came clattering up the stairs to tell them dinner was ready.

The meal proved just what the doctor ordered. With Peter ahead of him and Ray behind him, Egon managed to hobble down the spiral stairs to the second floor. Winston met him with the crutch and led the way to the dining table where the four of them fell upon the meal as if they had never seen food before. Slimer, having disposed of the five pizzas in a matter of minutes, was hungry again by the time the turkey was ready, and sat happily munching a drumstick and scarfing down stuffing and mashed potatoes while Ray snatched the other drumstick. Peter, on one of his periodic health kicks, wanted white meat, no skin, and Egon took what Winston dished up for him. As they sat there eating and talking in a desultory manner about the events of the last few days, Peter stretched comfortably in his chair and looked around at each of his friends, thinking with sheer contentment that this was one of the happiest moments he could ever remember. They'd all come close this time; they'd nearly lost Ray to the hobgoblins, Peter had almost bought the big one, and it was due to luck, timing and Egon's genius that the other three had managed to fend off the goblins' attack. Yet here they were, alive and well, or reasonably, and life felt all the more precious for nearly being trashed beyond repair. Their usual banter seemed more brilliant, their humor more sparkling than it had for a long time. As Peter ate his last bite and sat back comfortably in his chair, completely sated, he felt the sense of family that had always existed between them as if it had become more special than ever.

"What, Peter?" Ray said as if he'd picked up on Peter's mood.

Peter opened his mouth to explain and the words wouldn't quite come. He hesitated, then he burst out, "Are we great, or what?"

As if he understood exactly what Peter was saying, Egon lifted his glass to make a toast to all of them, the look on his face one of shared appreciation for the moment. Before he could find the right words, Ray's eyes lit up and recited an old Scottish toast he'd once told Peter about, one he'd learned from his uncle, Andrew MacMillan, who had left Ray his castle. The occultist grinned sympathetically at his teammates, laying on the accent to enhance the mood, "Here's tae us. Wha's like us? Da' few, and they're a' deid." It suited the mood perfectly. They were here, they were together, and they were going to be just fine.

As the rest of them raised their glasses and clinked them against Egon's Peter felt his grin of sheer contentment spreading from ear to ear.

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