She was always there, had been there all autumn just out of the corner of his eye, silent and placid but determined, her feet planted flatly as if defying anyone from roadie to cop to bodyguard to shift her from her position as near her idol as possible. Eddie had noticed her the third city into the tour; her rather square face uplifted as he sang, a rapt expression turning plainness into a form of beauty as she drank in the music. It was that constant, near-unblinking stare that had caught Eddie's attention, for whom singing was as much a sacrament as a celebration of a gift he couldn't shut up inside. The fact that all the other people came and paid money to hear him was secondary to the necessity of lifting his perfect voice in song which made him all the more appealing to his fans, and even made their parents pause to listen as if they'd realized this time they were hearing more than music. Eddie would have sung his heart out for an audience of blue-haired old ladies in a dinner theater if he couldn't have the concert stage and thousands of screaming fans. His aloofness from them was never perceived as distance or superiority. It was simply Eddie Plummer, part of his appeal. If he smiled inadvertently at one of his coterie of followers who came from show to show, she would be in heaven for months, but Eddie never led anyone on. He cared about his fans, but in a surprised, impersonal way as if each time he came on stage and felt their love for him and heard the roar of approval burst from fifteen-thousand throats, he was startled into realizing his music was, in fact, a dialog.

He made the effort, of course, was polite to his fans, sanctioned fan clubs and merchandise for them, posed for pictures after concerts, signed autographs, all the usual, but he'd learned early on it was safer not to get too close to the fans, not because there wasn't something warm and vital that bound them together but because even amid the outpouring of love there were dangers. Last fall a male groupie had followed Whitney, his wife and singing partner, meaning no harm but so constantly there, so excessive in his showering of gifts upon the blonde soprano that all three of them had begun to be uneasy. Jackson MacKensie, the third member of the group, had realized the man was trouble and he'd been unobtrusively edged out. Fortunately he had been simply persistent, no great threat.

Eddie wasn't so certain about the girl who hovered at the edge of the stage through each performance on the rest of the tour. She never approached Eddie or the others. She never caused trouble. But she was always there, and always alone, with the other fans but never of them, as rapt as Eddie, as if the screaming fans were not even there as if she and Eddie were alone even in the heart of the crowd. Her single-mindedness was as totally intense as his own, and perhaps that was what had made him notice her in the first place, as if the two of them were filled in a strange cone of silence. For two concerts in a row, he found himself singing directly to her.

When she was there again in Fargo, Rapid City, Omaha, and Kansas City, still alone, still intent, he began to worry. She looked about fifteen, and most fifteen-year-olds shouldn't wander the country following their favorite bands, certainly not without the presence of some adult. It was autumn; school had begun a month earlier, and while it was not unnatural to have audiences filled with teenagers every night of the tour, some of them even coming to more than one show, it didn't feel right to have this one there alone, all over the country. He thought he'd first noticed her as far back as Portland, the third city on the tour. He'd assumed she was local and failed to think about it, but now he found himself looking for her, uneasy about her continued presence.

"She's out there again," he had told Whitney once; they were in Chicago that night. "That teenager. The same one."

"Where?" Whitney asked, peering through the curtain gap, the backstage lights gleaming against her fair hair. "You've mentioned her but I've never seen her, at least I never noticed her particularly."

"You have to have seen her, love. She's always there, always so caught up in the music it would take a bomb to move her. That's why I noticed her as if her stare could turn me to stone or something."

Whitney shook her head as she let the curtain drop into place and picked up her microphone while Eddie did a final tuning of his guitar. When the curtains had swept open, she was there, not screaming and clapping like all the others, just standing, watching, eyes fixed inexorably on Eddie as if she could memorize him and recreate him in her soul.

Her eyes never left him that whole last concert. When it was over, he asked Jackson and Whitney, and both of them looked at him blankly. They had simply failed to notice her.

Eddie wasn't sure what he thought about that. Chicago was the last city in the tour and they were heading home in the morning, back to New York, then up the Hudson to Segue, their newly de-haunted mansion, and to Cy, their baby son, who was nine months old. The hardest part of the tour for Whitney had been leaving Cy behind, but they'd decided they didn't want him part of the chaos of backstage confusion, the disrupted hours, the disturbances and dangers of strange people around him. He'd be safe at Segue with his nanny and with Eddie's devoted secretary, Nina Corey, to watch him. Nina adored Cy, was likely to spoil him rotten, but was sensible enough to guard her most motherly instincts well. At the thought of Cy, Eddie and Whitney put the triumph of the tour behind them and began planning for the reunion with their son....

Until that night at the hotel when Eddie had happened to glance out the window for no good reason he could recall and saw the girl from the tour standing on the street below, half-hidden in a swirl of mist, her eyes lifted to the very room where Eddie stood. The neon glow from the entrance of a bar across the street touched the mist around her with reds and blues, casting an azure glow against the countenance that could stir to unexpected beauty with the music Eddie offered. Now she seemed almost lit from within as she stood there, patient, waiting.

"Shit," muttered Eddie. "She's there. Come here, love, and see her."

"What? Your groupie?" Whitney edged in beside him and looked down at the street in alarm. "I don't see anyone who looks like the girl you've described," she said after a moment of staring. "Just those people going into the bar."

Startled, Eddie turned from his contemplation of his wife's flawless beauty as she stood at his side and looked down at the street once more. The teenager stood in the heart of the mist, her eyes uplifted, then fog swirled around her like a cloak and she was gone as if someone had flipped a switch and shut her off. Whitney frowned, her brow wrinkling in perplexity. "There's no one there. Your imagination is running away with you, Eddie."

"You didn't see her?" He stared at her in disbelief.

She shook her head. "There was no one out there. Are you sure you haven't gotten so obsessed with this particular girl you're seeing her where she never was? Or maybe you're just tired. It's been a long six weeks and we're both frantic to get home to Cy."

"I saw her," Eddie insisted, knowing in his bones he'd seen the girl. But if Whitney hadn't seen her... What did it mean? Confused, he looked down at the street again, but the pavement where she had stood was empty, the fog swept away by a sudden rush of traffic. Had he imagined it? He couldn't be sure. He only knew he couldn't let it go.

"I hate it," insisted Ray Stantz hotly, glowering at the TV screen as if it had offended him. "I think it's terrible! I'd never do that, not in a million years. You'd think I was some kind of coward or something." The occultist's brow wrinkled with the strength of his frown.

"Come on, Ray, you knew about this already," Peter Venkman reminded him, digging his hand into the bowl of popcorn that sat on the table in front of them and taking a big mouthful. His next words were a little blurred as he munched, which made Egon Spengler wince. "If we hadn't been so busy this summer you would have seen it before," Peter pointed out. "Even then it would've been too late to do anything about it, so go with the flow, Tex."

"I wish I had see it this summer. Maybe I could have had them print a retraction or something. I never thought it would be like that." Ray made a stabbing gesture at the TV screen. "It's--it's defamation of character, that's what it is."

"Nonsense, Ray," Egon put in, looking up from the weighty tome that had absorbed his attention all evening. The blond physicist had not been watching the movie, only glancing up at the pertinent moment, and Peter was sure he'd seen Egon smile. Winston Zeddemore, the fourth Ghostbuster, had surely chuckled. Only Ray sat here looking betrayed and upset, but then Ray was the 'victim' of the piece. "It's intended to be humorous," the physicist explained. It's not meant to mock us."

"Humorous at my expense," wailed Ray. "I thought it'd be great, a chance to sort of, kind of, almost be in the Casper movie. I always loved the Casper cartoons when I was a kid."

"Yeah, if you were a kid last weekend," Winston pointed out. "I saw you watching one of them then."

"Well, yeah, but those are good cartoons," Ray defended himself automatically, looking slightly embarrassed but not enough to yield his point. "I thought it'd be so great that there'd be a live-action Casper movie, and when I heard Danny was gonna do the cameo and play me, I thought it was really swell. I didn't know they were gonna make me panic and run away from three ghosts I could take out with one thrower and a trap," he objected hotly. "It'll make the Ghostbusters look bad. How could Dan Aykroyd have done that to us?"

"I don't think he did," Peter said, realizing Ray was genuinely upset and needed to be calmed down. It was a tempest in a teapot as far as he was concerned but Ray had taken it the wrong way. "It was supposed to be funny, Ray, and we did sign for permission for him to play you again. Nobody's going to believe we couldn't have busted those three ghosts, not when we took out Gozer, Samhaine, the Bogeyman. We're the best. But if they'd let you do your thing--or let Aykroyd do our thing in the movie, well, there wouldn't have been any movie. Besides, the studio paid us, even if it wasn't very much. It's too late to take it back now the movie's out on video, isn't it?"

"I guess so," Ray admitted reluctantly, putting up a hand to scratch his head as he thought about it. "But I still don't like it. It isn't fair. Why did they have to make me be the one who ran away? I wouldn't. You guys know I wouldn't."

"No. Show you a new demon and you'll run toward it, homeboy," Winston retorted, reaching over to disarray the occultist's hair affectionately. "Come on, Ray, nobody's gonna see that and think the Ghostbusters can't do the job. Besides, like Peter said, they paid us."

The four men were gathered before the TV on the second floor of Ghostbuster Central, with no scheduled busting jobs awaiting them for the evening, none of them planning to go out on a date. It was one of those peaceful times when they could hang out and relax together, and they'd started the evening by watching the movie Casper, which had just come out on video tape, because Dan Aykroyd had an unbilled cameo in which he'd played Ray Stantz. Ray had not had a chance to see the movie when it was in the theaters and had really looked forward to the film; until he'd realized the Ray in the movie had chosen not to face the ghosts in Whipstaff Manor. It would have taken far more than the three obnoxious ghosts to keep the real Ray Stantz from any job, and he had taken it badly, even though the other three had been amused. Peter wondered how he'd felt if it had been Bill Murray charging out of the house insisting they call someone else for the job. He didn't think he'd mind as much as Ray did; Murray would have made it funny and Peter would have enjoyed it. But that reminded him of another situation.

"Yeah, and I think we should get Taco John's to pay us, too," Peter said darkly, brooding at the screen. "Have you heard that 'Buck-busters' commercial?"

"Very likely they paid Ray Parker Jr. for the use of his song," Egon pointed out. "We're not mentioned in the ad, but I believe people who hear it and see it will be reminded of us."

"More jobs that way," Peter conceded, pleased with the thought. He stretched comfortably. "Man, I hope we don't have to go out again this evening. It's too cold out there, it's nice and warm in here, and the spud's off pestering some other poor schmucks and not trailing slime through the popcorn. Except for Ray's planned revenge on Casper, I'd say things are going really great, wouldn't you?"

Winston leaned over suddenly and clapped his hand over Peter's mouth. "Hey, Pete, don't. Talking like that is a reminder to fate that it's let us alone long enough."

"You believe that?" Peter asked skeptically, though he cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder before he straightened up and pretended nonchalance.

"Theoretically it is possible, Peter," Egon said, jamming a bookmark in his book and looking up at the others. "Fate as a personified entity may well exist. How often have you made a remark about how well things were going only to have the circumstances change abruptly immediately afterward as if you'd reminded a powerful force a situation had gone on peacefully for too long?"

"Hey, yeah," agreed Ray, intrigued enough to forget the 'indignity' that Casper had perpetrated upon him. "You comment it's been a great winter without any ice storms and the next morning you wake up to find it's been sleeting for hours. Or you're gloating because your favorite team has had a great winning streak and they lose the very next day. Gosh, do you think it's some kind of phenomenon that's been undocumented up till now?"

"I don't think I like the sound of it," Peter said, discovering he was more than a little uneasy at having called attention to something that might be powerful and capricious--possibly malicious. "In other words, if this is real, I shouldn't have said it was nice in here and the spud wasn't dive bombing the popcorn?"

"Well, actually, Peter--" Egon began, his eyes full of the same kind of amusement he'd displayed when Dan Aykroyd had fled Whipstaff Manor.

The front doorbell rang downstairs.

All four Ghostbusters eyed each other uneasily, Egon's amusement slipping away in an instant. "Uh-huh," said Winston, uncomfortable with the timing. "You blew it, Pete. You said it was nice here. Now we're gonna pay."

"Hey, come on, it could be something good," Ray insisted, bouncing up and starting for the stairs. "It could mean we won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes or Peter's dad decided to stop in for a visit."

"I don't know how good that would be," said Peter quickly, before someone else had a chance to say it in his place. He knew he couldn't quite trust his con man father but it sometimes hurt a little to have the guys admit they didn't trust him either. As a result, Peter liked to get comments like that in first and save himself the pain of hearing them from his friends, even though they hurt in a different way when he had to admit it. "If he showed up, it would probably mean he was in trouble and we'd have to bail him out." He started to get up to go after Ray, then he realized that to do so would be to give credence to the mysterious and malign fate Egon had been attempting to personify, and he wasn't about to do that. It could be a simple job, after all, and even a tough job wasn't the result of malicious fate. It was what they got paid for, after all, and all four men loved busting, even when it was a tough job.

Ray returned a few minutes later trailed by none other than Eddie Plummer, Egon's rock star cousin, a tall, blond man who closely resembled the physicist. Since Peter had been a major fan of Eddie's even before he'd known of the relationship both Egon and Eddie had kept quiet about, he was delighted to see their guest and bounded to his feet, grinning. Fate hadn't proven so malicious this time. Maybe Eddie had stopped by to give them concert tickets, front row center, for his next New York concert. He'd done that once or twice before and all the Ghostbusters enjoyed his singing enough to look forward to such treats.

"Eddie," Egon exclaimed in delight and hurried to greet his cousin, offering his hand. They shook hands and Eddie gave Egon a slap on the back. "Is the tour over then?" Egon asked.

"We got into town this morning. Whitney went right up to Segue to be with Cy."

Peter grinned. "And how is the youngest member of the Spengler clan?" he asked, remembering how delighted he'd been when baby Cyrus was born and he'd actually looked just like Baby Egon, from the time Egon had been reversed in age down to babyhood himself by a time ghost. Egon had long tried to pretend that episode had never happened, but when Peter had produced from a secret hiding place one of the photos the guys had taken of him as a baby and displayed it to carefully to Eddie and Whitney so Egon couldn't snatch it from him, they'd been stunned at the resemblance--and fascinated to realize the picture was none other than Egon and taken only a few years earlier.

"He looks more like me every day," Eddie replied, grinning.

"Spike hair and sunglasses too?" teased Peter, gesturing at the shades Eddie wore perched in his hair. He'd once said they were his good luck sunglasses and always wore them, especially when he was performing, though never to shield his vivid blue eyes.

"Well, what hair he's got is kind of spiky, or it was when we took off on the tour," Eddie confirmed with a grin. "I've told Whitney whatever we do, we make sure he doesn't wear it like his godfather here." He gestured at Egon's unusual flip of hair with a grin.

"I'll have you know my hair--" Egon began with some heat.

"Is unique in the annals of the human race," Peter told him, giving Egon a nudge in the side with his elbow. "Come on in and sit down, Eddie, and have some popcorn. It's great. I should know. I made it myself and Slimer hasn't been around to ruin it. You don't have any more haunted statues or ghosts for us to bust, do you?" He meant the words as a joke, believing the singer had simply dropped by while in town to say hello to his cousin. When Eddie's face grew grave, Peter found himself tensing. Who said fate didn't know when to strike? Peter had the wary idea it was about to pounce on them with clawed feet.

"Well, there is something I wanted to talk to you four about," Eddie admitted almost reluctantly. He let Egon usher him over to the couch, and sat there, long legs stretched before him under the coffee table, reaching up to dislodge his sunglasses long enough to rake slender fingers through his fair hair. "Whitney thinks it's my imagination and Jackson thinks I've been working too hard, but I noticed it at the beginning of the tour before I had time to get tired, so I don't think that's it. I think it's--well, I think it might be a ghost," he admitted in a rush, replacing the sunglasses and looking around at the four men expectantly.

"Hey, Egon," Peter said thoughtfully, remembering a brainstorming session he'd had with the physicist a couple of days earlier. "Remember when you were talking about some people being a magnet for trouble where ghosts are concerned?"

"You mean the fact that we do have a great deal of repeat business, and some of it is repeat to the person, not to the location?" Egon asked. "I'd begun to track that; Ray mentioned that we'd gone to one man's place three separate times, and he'd moved after each visit, yet he still had ghosts, no matter where he went. We've begun to wonder if some people simply--"

"Have a magnetic personality," Peter put in. "There's documented evidence of a link between ghosts and magnetism, after all. I'm not a parapsychologist for nothing."

"That's a different kind of magnetism, Peter," Egon said in a tone guaranteed to reproach Peter for the frivolity. "But there could well be a factor we haven't as yet come to comprehend that makes certain people targets for the spirit world while others go their whole lives without ever seeing a ghost. There are New Yorkers who didn't see Gozer, even on TV, yet some people are always calling in to report ghosts. Eddie would appear to be one of the latter group, what with the entity he accidentally freed from the statue and the two ghosts up at Segue last year."

"Yeah, or it could be just bad luck," Winston pointed out. "Being in the wrong place at the wrong time or saying how nice it was not to have seen any ghosts lately, and then one showing up. We were talking about luck, sort of, tonight. Calling attention to fate and then having it rebound on you. You better tell us what's going on this time, Eddie, and we'll see if we can help you."

"I hope you can. I suspect Whitney thinks I'm just stressed out from the tour, but singing never stresses me. I love the tours, even if this one wasn't quite as exciting as usual, but I think that's because this is the first time I've ever had a son at home that I was anxious to return to, so I couldn't concentrate as much as usual. Still, once each show started, I was caught up in it, just like always. I wasn't thinking about ghosts either. It never occurred to me until last night that the groupie might be something more than an ordinary teenaged girl." He looked up at his cousin, who was in the process of drawing up a chair so he could sit down. Peter had already flung himself down on the other end of the couch from Eddie, and Ray had eased in between. Winston didn't hesitate to shift the popcorn and sit down on the coffee table facing them all. He held out the bowl to Eddie, who took a handful absently and munched with no real awareness of what he was eating.

"So what have you seen?" Peter prompted expectantly. "I sure hope it isn't a banshee. We ran into one, once, and she was a rock star too. She wanted to use her powers on the whole country during a live performance on TV. We stopped her just in time."

"As I remember, she nearly stopped you, Pete," Winston reminded him, an amused look on his face.

"That's beside the point," said Peter hastily, anxious to change the subject. It wasn't his fault the banshee had used her powers on him, after all and turned him into an obsessed groupie himself. "Come on, Eddie, give. What have you got?"

He swallowed the popcorn. "That's just it, I don't know. I kept seeing her all through the tour, always in the front row, always watching me with total obsession. I thought she was just another fan, a die-hard groupie, but she looks around fifteen, and that's really too young to be wandering around the country on her own, unless, of course, her parents are groupies too, but she was never with adults."

"Kids do that," Peter reminded him. "Avoid hanging out in public with their folks. My dad hauled me to Woodstock when I was about that age, and you can bet I didn't hang out with my dad there. Spent the whole time trying to convince girls I was older than I looked." He grinned reminiscently. "If this kid is with her folks, she probably wouldn't want to seem to be with them and, for all you know, she might be a runaway. There are a lot more young kids on the street than you'd think."

"I thought of that, and I finally decided that was what was going on--until last night."

"What happened last night?" asked Ray eagerly. He always loved it when they got a new case, and their previous ghostly experiences with Eddie had interested him both times.

Eddie described the girl he'd seen out the hotel window, and how Whitney had failed to see her, even while Eddie still could. "Last night in the fog she looked--strange," he said, his eyes shadowed with the memory of the incident, "as if she wasn't--well, wasn't quite human, somehow. Like maybe she was a part of the fog. And I wondered if she was a ghost, you know, a girl who'd been a fan of mine and died and now she follows me around and goes to all my concerts."

"Gosh, that's sad," breathed Ray, a distressed look upon his usually good-natured face. "I sure hate to bust that kind of ghost. Maybe we can talk to her and help her disperse peacefully. I bet if you sang to her, Eddie, you could get to her."

"Maybe," admitted the singer doubtfully. "But somehow that feels, well, too easy. In a way, I don't feel sad when I see her. I almost feel...threatened." He ducked his head as if embarrassed at the admission, then looked up again, waiting for reaction.

Egon rose and went over to the desk, returning with a P.K.E. meter. Activating the detection device, he aimed it at Eddie and frowned when nothing happened. "No residuals. Did this girl ever touch you? Shake your hand, get an autograph?"

"That's funny. No, she never did," Eddie mused. "Usually fans that obsessive are first in line for any opportunities to have face to face contact; they get autographs, drag along friends with cameras so they can pose for pictures with me, try to find out my hotel room number or slip me their phone numbers or just out and out try a proposition, even in front of Whitney. But this one never tried."

"She probably wouldn't, if she's a ghost," Ray pointed out. "Have you seen her in New York since you got back?"

"No. There were things to wind down, a meeting about our concert next weekend, Malcolm had Whitney and me lined up for some publicity photos, and that took most of the afternoon. I sent her up to Segue to be with Cy, and told her I wanted to stop in and see you first, Egon. She wondered about it, but I'm not sure she put two and two together about the ghost groupie. I didn't want to worry her in case it was just overreaction."

"So what do you want us to do, Eddie?" Peter asked, adding hopefully, "Come to your next concert with our packs and throwers? We'd have to sit in the front row, of course, if that's where she usually is."

"Peter!" Egon chided.

"You guys are always welcome at any of our concerts," Eddie reminded them. "You only have to say the word and I'd get you tickets. But that's not it. If she's haunting me, I didn't want to lead her back to Segue. I can't endanger my son. Whitney and I are used to this kind of thing, not as much as you guys, but more than a lot of people. I had planned to go up later tonight if you four thought it would be safe; I'd have my P.K.E. meter there and could take readings and make sure I hadn't been followed."

"Let's make sure you haven't been followed here," Egon said practically and rose, heading for the nearest window. He pulled back the curtain and looked down at the street that ran beside Ghostbuster Central. "Hmmm," he said, his body tensing like a pointer on the scent of a game bird.

That drew the other Ghostbusters and Eddie to that window and the next one. Peter, leaning over Ray's shoulder, looked down at the street below, stiffening as he saw the figure standing there, surrounded in mist. From here he couldn't see her features clearly but the slight figure did look like a teenaged girl.

"Wow," breathed Ray, eyes rounding. "Was she misty like that at your concerts, Eddie?"

"I never really noticed that kind of dry ice effect until last night, when I saw her outside my hotel room," the singer admitted. "I wonder if she's been lurking outside all our hotels on the tour."

Peter glanced at Egon, who had raised his ubiquitous meter and was calmly taking a reading. "We can all see her," he said. "Funny Whitney couldn't. She can see ghosts; she did at Segue and she saw Jaren'h when he broke out of the statue."

"Not all ghosts are visible, Peter," Ray reminded him. "We've been exposed to so many ghosts and had so much ectoplasm on us that I think we can see ghosts the average person can't see. Even if she's only visible to Eddie, we'd probably see her too, just as a by-product of the job. Egon and I ran some tests on it once and proved that we could usually see ghosts, even when they didn't appear to other--"

"This is interesting, Ray," Egon cut into Ray's hasty explanation. "I'd have expected a class three reading from the ghost, but what I'm getting is much more powerful. It's at least a class seven, and it--"

He broke off as the ghost suddenly swirled the mist around her the way Zorro might have swirled his cloak, and disappeared into it, vanishing without a trace.

"There it goes, it's getting away, Egon," cried Peter urgently, casting a nervous glance at the room behind him in case it had teleported there when it disappeared.

"Yes, it's gone," Egon confirmed as the meter's antennae lowered slowly and the shrill beeping began to fade and lower in tone. "I suspect it became aware of us watching it and taking readings and chose to depart."

"It?" echoed Eddie. "It was a girl."

"It was more powerful than I expected," the physicist explained. "Ghosts who were once living people are class three or four, but this was a class seven."

"And that's bad?" Eddie asked uneasily. He hadn't liked it when he thought it was the ghost of a teenaged fan, but from the look on his face as he turned away from the window, at least that would have been within his comprehension. "What does it mean? What's a class seven?"

"Often they're demons," Egon informed him, checking the meter a final time before turning it off, "and other powerful entities."

"You mean Eddie's got a demon groupie?" Peter asked, shaking his head. "Isn't that kind of weird?"

"I never heard of a demon who responded to music," Egon replied.

"Jaren'h did, remember, when we were trying to bust him in the subway," Winston recalled. "He stopped and listened to Eddie sing until Eddie could play the right chord on his guitar and imprison him in the statue again. He thought the music was beautiful. Why shouldn't this one?"

"But she looks like a little girl," Eddie objected. "She's no more than a child."

"A lot of demons can shapeshift," Ray replied. "They're pretty powerful. If she liked your singing and wanted to hear more, she could hardly show up at your concerts looking like a demon. It would put a stop to the performance immediately and all the fans would run screaming. She might not care about the other fans but she wouldn't want the concert to stop."

"She? You mean there are female demons?" Eddie asked, stunned by the concept.

"Sure, why not? One of them even tried to chase Peter once," Ray replied with a mischievous grin. "You should have seen him run."

"Women, sure," Peter said. "They can chase me as much as their little hearts desire, but I don't want lady demons coming after me, thank you. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in the Netherworld as some scaly lady's love slave." The other Ghostbusters laughed.

"I hope that's not one of my options," Eddie replied without a shred of enthusiasm. "Do you think she's gone for now?"

"Yes, and she hasn't harmed you to date," Egon reminded him, making a couple of minute adjustments on the meter. "I believe we might take that as a good sign."

"Then you think it would be safe to go up to Segue?" Eddie asked hopefully. "I really want to see Cy. I bet he's grown like a weed in the last six weeks."

"She's never approached you or endangered you until now," Ray said thoughtfully. "She likes your singing. I bet she wouldn't hurt you--after all if she did she couldn't listen to you any more."

"That's not what worries me," Eddie said quickly with a nervous glance out the window as if he expected her to return at any minute. "Now that you tell me what she really is, what if she likes my singing so much she wants to take me back to the Netherworld and be her pet canary? I don't think being a bird in a gilded cage is right up there in the list of my favorite career options. Peter didn't like the idea, and neither do I. That road up to Segue sounds awfully lonely to me right now, and the last thing I want to do is lead a demon to Whitney and Cy. Can I bunk here tonight, guys? Maybe it will make more sense in the morning. After all, I never saw her in the daytime, only at night."

"Demons can come out in the daytime," Winston pointed out. "We captured Arzun in daylight, after all, and a few of the other ones. You only saw her at your concerts. You weren't looking for her the rest of the time."

"Thanks, Winston. That really helps," Eddie murmured and headed off to the phone to call Whitney and explain what was going on.

"I wish we could find out what demon it is," Ray said while Eddie was busy. "We only saw her in human form from a distance. Do you think we could make anything out of the readings you took, Egon?"

"I doubt it. Although I've tried to make updates and work out correlations with the Tobin computer program, identifying a demon in Tobin's without seeing it isn't that easy. There were no P.K.E. meters when it was first compiled and pinning down the exact frequency of an entity and comparing it with other factors in the Guide has never been totally successful. Our input on the computer version has enabled us to list readings for known demons, such as Tolay in the Netherworld, but to identify a totally unknown demon that way without visual identification would be difficult. We might come up with five or six possibilities or it might be an entity that isn't listed in Tobin at all."

"We better check, though," said Ray, heading for the spiral stairs that led to the third floor. In a few minutes they were in the lab, Ray at the computer and the other three looking through various books such as Who's Who and What's That, and the Spates Catalogue. "I'll cross-reference for any entities with an interest in music," Ray volunteered.

"A good idea, Ray." Egon didn't glance up from the book he was studying.

Peter took down the Roylance Guide and began to flip pages, uncertain of what he was seeking, because they didn't even know for sure the girl spirit was an actual demon. There were other class seven entities that weren't demons, technically speaking. The domoviet at Ray's aunt's house had been class sevens, and they weren't demons, simply household spirits. This ghost could be completely harmless, no more than a pest the way any being with an obsessive crush on another could be. Peter remembered the time a fourteen year old girl had developed a crush on him after she'd seen him on TV on one of their most spectacular busts. She'd taken to sending him cards and candy and hanging around outside the firehouse in hopes of seeing him when the guys were called out on a bust. She was intense and persistent but she was completely harmless, and eventually she fell hard for the teenaged character on seaQuest and departed with a note of apology. Peter had been both relieved and a little resentful at being upstaged by a kid.

The problem was, they couldn't assume the ghost was harmless. If she liked Eddie's singing so much, she might decide she wanted him to sing for her alone. Powerful entities could indulge themselves like that, especially if the Ghostbusters weren't around to stop them. Talk about your fatal attraction with a difference. Peter edged over to the window and tried to peer down at the street without moving the curtains. If she was down there she'd turned invisible.

"Do you see anything, Peter?" Egon asked without looking up from his book.

"Nada, zip, zilch," he reported. "Want me to take a reading?"

"Good idea." Egon passed him a meter and Peter turned it on. He got a faint stirring of the antennae although the readings were too indistinct to indicate a current presence.

"Just fading residuals," Peter called. He let the curtain slide into place as he handed back the meter. "I don't like this, Egon. If Eddie was still on tour, I wouldn't feel so bad about it, but now that the tour's over and she's still hanging around, it doesn't sound good."

"What doesn't sound good?" Eddie asked as he walked into the lab, having finished his phone call.

Winston explained quickly. "We think you'd better stick close to us while we check this out," he concluded.

"Yeah, I think so too. Whitney wanted to come to New York, but I think she'll be safe at Segue, with Graves and Nina to look after her. "It doesn't want her, anyway. It wants me. I won't risk my wife and son on this. I told her to stay there."

"I think that was a wise choice," Egon replied. "I've been considering our options, and I've come to the conclusion that the best alternative might be to lure it here, now, while we're ready, so we can bust it."

Eddie frowned as if he were recalling the intensity on the entity's face as she watched him sing. "Can't we try telling her to go away, first?" he asked. He'd always been decent to his fans, but Peter considered this response to be taking decency to unwarranted extremes.

"Assuming she'd listen what's to stop her coming back when you least want her?" he asked.

"Peter's right," said Ray. "We can try to find out what she wants, but I have a sneaky feeling what she wants is to take you home with her and make you sing for her. Think about it, Eddie. You were never alone on the tour, except probably in the bathroom. You had bodyguards and the people at the stops, police escorts, roadies, the staff at the various concert halls, the hotel people, Whitney at night. The entity might be powerful enough to take you away right in the middle of that, but it would be a whole lot easier to wait until she could get you alone. You're lucky she didn't grab you while you were ringing our doorbell."

"The cab driver waited and saw me in. I don't think he was so much making sure I was safe as he was watching me so he could tell his wife all about it," Eddie admitted, frowning slightly as he recalled the incident. "He had me give him an autograph and got on the radio to his dispatcher and did the, 'You'll never guess who I got in my cab,' routine. I wasn't alone out there either--and the doorman at Malcolm's office building got me the cab."

"Then we'll have to be sure you aren't alone until this is resolved," Egon said simply. "I refuse to contemplate explaining to Uncle Cyrus that I let a demon make off with his only son."

"I think we should try to talk to her," Ray said suddenly, looking up from the computer screen. "You know, find out what she wants. Maybe she'd be happy with a CD player and a bunch of Eddie's albums."

"When she could have the original?" Peter asked skeptically, although he knew a confrontation with the demon--or whatever--wasn't out of line.

"How do we get her attention?" Eddie asked.

"You could sing," was Winston's suggestion. "I bet she'd come if Eddie sang, right, guys?"

"She might, but let's make sure we're ready for her, then," Peter said quickly. "Let's get our packs and throwers, okay?"

The others concurred, so they spent a few moments suiting up and donning their packs. Eddie didn't wear one, although he had done it once before and knew how to use the equipment. Instead he positioned himself in the center of the lab, and at a nod from Egon, began to sing.

Peter was instantly caught up in the song Eddie had chosen, not one of his current hits but an old ballad, one that let his melodious barbitone voice soar and fill the high-ceilinged room with pure music. Unaccompanied by so much as a guitar, he didn't need backup. Peter found himself holding his breath, in the presence of sheer talent. Eddie could pound out the typical loud, screaming lyrics if he chose, but when he did the quieter numbers, the ones that allowed him to push his range to the limits and let the warmth of his voice fill a room, he was at his best. Peter had to shake himself to remember to grip his thrower in preparation for the ghost's appearance.

She didn't come, at least not to the lab. As the song ended, the five of them looked at each other speculatively as if they'd expected a show, complete with the requisite fireworks, and were disappointed to find themselves in the midst of normalcy. For a moment no one spoke, then Egon made an impatient gesture and strode to the window. "She's out there," he announced, glancing at his cousin. "She's back."

"But not coming in?" Eddie frowned as he considered the possibilities of that fact, after he'd all but invited her to make herself at home. "Maybe she really doesn't mean to harm me."

"Or maybe she's afraid of the throwers," Peter said knowingly, glancing past Egon at the figure that stood beneath the streetlight, its light casting a glow through the mist that surrounded her. "She's got to know what this place is. She'd be crazy to come in here. We'd only blast her."

"We'd talk to her first and find out what she wants," Ray objected.

"She doesn't know that," Winston told him. "She only knows this is Ghostbuster headquarters. Ghosts don't usually drop in for tea, not if they want to leave when they're through."

"Then we should go down to her," Egon decided, winning startled looks from his teammates and his cousin.

"Whoa, where does it say we have to do that?" Winston objected, catching Egon's arm as he started for the door.

"Egon's right, we should negotiate, find out what she wants," Ray said enthusiastically. "I'll go. I'll carry a white flag."

"The white flag is a good idea, but I should be the one to go," Egon remarked. "I'm Eddie's cousin and the spirit may well see the resemblance and negotiate with me while she might not speak to the rest of you."

"Yeah, and she might decide to use your head for a bowling ball," Peter said, grabbing Egon's other arm to restrain him. "Come on, think. I know it's a challenge and exciting and all that, but one of these days Winston and I are gonna teach you and Ray that you can't go running off half cocked just because there's a new ghost out there."

"Yeah, and what we need right now is a plan," Winston confirmed, his fingers still curled around Egon's wrist.

"Give the man a cigar," Peter lauded. "He's right, Egon. You're supposed to be the great brain here. I know Ray wants to make friends with half the ghosts we meet, but we don't know Miss Groupie out there is up to anything good. We've gotta think it through before we line up like tenpins for her to mow down."

"I am thinking, Peter, and what I'm thinking is that Eddie can't go through the rest of his life with a demon trailing him. Eddie's my cousin. If it were your father in danger, you'd be the one to go. I don't see the difference. I'll go, I'll try to find out what she wants, and the rest of you can stand in the windows with your particle throwers aimed at the demon. If she tries anything or gets violent, you can blast her. If she's willing to listen to reason, at least I'll find out what she wants."

"Okay, but we're not gonna hang out the windows, big fella," Peter told him in fierce determination. "That's too far for a clean shot. If you're gonna go out there and face her, we're going out there with you. "We'll stand back a little but we'll spread out so we'll have a clear shot. We'll be there to back you, and that's final. Only way we'll let you do it."

"Peter's quite right," Eddie agreed, casting a quick, nervous glance out the window and then turning to study his cousin's resolute face. "We can't hope to trade on the business of being kin the way we did when Jaren'h believed you were one of my followers because he sensed the relationship. This one seems to care about music, not blood kindred. She won't listen to you just because we're cousins. You're taking a major chance and I don't like people taking my risks for me."

"So listen up, Egon," Winston told him, favoring Eddie with an approving look. "No crazy chances. If she won't deal, we blast her, and that's that. Eddie's safe and so are Whitney and the baby, and that's the end of the problem."

Ray looked a little upset about the blasting part, probably because she looked so young--were there teenaged demons? Peter wondered--but if she made a move to hurt Egon, Ray would be in there blasting with the rest of them. He nodded reluctantly, but Peter knew his reluctance wasn't because he wouldn't back Egon. He'd once complained that he could have formed a 'meaningful relationship' with a ghost he'd tried to befriend. Never mind it had turned out to be the ghost of Harry Houdini. Only Ray would try to make friends with a ghost. Look at Slimer, after all. It had been Ray who had first insisted Slimer live with them at the firehouse. Not that Peter cared overmuch for that idea a lot of the time.

"Okay, Egon," Peter said reluctantly. "But if you get trashed because you wouldn't listen to your buddies, I'm gonna be real upset."

Egon favored him with a reassuring smile before he turned away from the window and headed for the lab door. "Don't worry, Peter. I don't mean to take foolish chances, only to find out what she wants from Eddie--and with luck who she is so we can research her."

"What do you want me to do, guys?" Eddie asked, falling into step as they hurried down the stairs.

"Sing, Trilby, sing," said Peter with a broad grin. He was always up for a private Eddie Plummer concert.

"Peter's right," Egon agreed, sounding amused, although there was a thread running through his voice that suggested he'd guessed Peter's more selfish motive, even if it was the logical next step. "It's evidently the singing that draws her. Sing, now. Don't stop while we're talking unless one of us signals for you to stop. And if we tell you to run--"

"Go like a bat out of hell," Peter encouraged.

"Got it," Eddie said and plunged into song as if it were as natural for him as breathing.

When they left the firehouse and went around the corner, the demon was standing right where they'd seen her before, under the streetlight, waist deep in a drifting patch of mist that seemed even more abnormal at that range. Up close she looked more than ever like a teenager, clad in the standard uniform of jeans, topped with a tee shirt and leather bomber jacket. The shirt had a picture of Eddie emblazoned across it, with the other two band members in the background. Only her eyes didn't match the general image she'd obviously intended to convey. Peter had seen hard eyes on younger girls than this one seemed to be, eyes that were empty of hope, devoid of innocence. It was inevitable in a city the size of this one. He'd even worked with some of them at the free clinic where he did volunteer counseling one Sunday afternoon a month. But there was more than cold emptiness in these eyes. There was a knowledge far greater than anything Peter had ever seen in a human expression before. It was mostly concealed by a newer, more normal aspect that somehow lightened the other one every time she looked at the singer, but it peered through the façade in spite of her interest in her idol. She gazed at Eddie, enraptured, her squarish chin lifted as she watched him. She wasn't pretty, precisely, but something had illuminated her face as she listened to Eddie's singing, and it gave her a kind of quasi-beauty, as if her inner joy had made her come alive. She looked alive, too, except for the swirling fog that appeared to drift right through her slender frame. Her eyes were for Eddie alone as he sang, never mind that across the street behind her windows had opened and people had appeared as they realized what they were hearing wasn't a radio but a live performance. Peter heard someone cry out that it was Eddie Plummer, someone else scorn the idea, then a third voice insist the first one was right, but he doubted Eddie had heard the sounds of his public stirring as he sang, nor noticed the taxi that cut around their gathering, the driver yelling something profane at them for standing in the street.

The Ghostbusters positioned themselves in a long line, two of them on either side of Eddie, and her eyes shifted slightly and knowledgeably as if she was aware of them but didn't care, because at once her attention locked itself on the singer again. Egon glanced sideways at Peter and said in an undertone, "I'll try to speak to her, Peter. If she shows any sign of breaking for Eddie, blast her."

"Or if she goes for you," Peter added, positive this wasn't the best plan they'd ever had. Blasting her now while she wasn't guarding against them made more sense than letting his oldest friend paint a target on his chest. "Listen, Spengs, you won't do Eddie any good if you get toasted to a cinder here, and I can tell you right out, I won't like it much either."

Egon's smile flashed out in an attempt to be reassuring, although Peter wasn't reassured. "I hardly intend to be blasted, Peter. I'm only going to talk to her, after all, to try to find out what she wants." He added in an undertone, "I'm not certain the throwers will be completely effective in any case."

"Now you tell us," groaned Peter. This whole mess was getting worse by the minute.

"Surely talking won't hurt. I've got the atomic destabilizer, after all," Egon pointed out, gesturing at his modified thrower.

"Yeah, I remember that thing. You were only going to blast Arzun with it when your molecules got scrambled and you turned into a ghost," Peter reminded him. "Watch yourself, okay?"

"The destabilizer works well now," Egon reminded him. But the physicist must have heard the ferocity in Peter's voice because he nodded, pausing a moment to allow Venkman to see the reassurance in his eyes, then he took a step closer to the entity and announced, "I want to talk to you."

At first, she paid no attention to him at all, the way humans might regard a persistent fly that hovered just outside of range. Her eyes were locked on Eddie, who was singing for all he was worth in spite of the people who had begun to assemble on the other side of the street and a few cars that had slowed and then stopped when the drivers recognized him. The look on her face was full of rapture, and when Peter glanced at Eddie he saw the singer was doing what he sometimes did at concerts, not as a ploy to manipulate his audience but because it focused his attention. He was singing directly to her as if she were the only one here. On the stage, Eddie could manage to convey that impression to the entire audience, but now all that concentrated charisma was focused directly at the spirit in a blast as powerful and intense as a proton stream. Egon could have jumped in front of her and waved a hand before her eyes and she would never have noticed.

Instead, he waved a hand at Eddie, once, quickly, behind his back, and Eddie stopped singing, letting the last word fade away slowly. The ghost shivered with rapture as if coming out of a trance, and suddenly she was looking directly at Egon, who stood not five feet in front of her, all the concentrated emotion turning from delight to anger as if she perceived him as a threat. Peter leveled his thrower at her, his thumb hovering expectantly over the power switch, ready to fire in an instant, aware without looking sideways that Ray and Winston were equally prepared. "Be careful, Egon," he muttered under his breath. "Mikey doesn't like you."

The ghost or demon, still holding the human form, focused on Egon from close up, and her eyes widened in astonishment. They flicked back to Eddie, then focused on Egon again. "Who?" she demanded, and Peter realized if Eddie had ever heard her speak before he would have known she was no teen groupie. There was an odd reverberation in her voice as if she were speaking with echoes, as if there was a chorus in her head. The tone ranged from soprano to bass, as if the demon's voice was breaking with a vengeance. Maybe in the spirit world, even female demons' voices broke at whatever passed for puberty among them.

"What do you want with Eddie?" Egon asked her levelly. He didn't give any ground at the unexpected voice. Maybe he had expected it.

"Beauty," the demon murmured, her voice like a sigh, if sighs could boom and thunder. Eddie's fans across the street shrank back against the building, vanishing into the shadows as if darkness alone could protect them, but they didn't go away entirely. Peter could see a flash of movement there and knew they were watching, each person holding his breath as they realized they were up against something more than human, something potentially dangerous.

"Sing again," murmured the voice, looking past Egon to his cousin, her eyes drifting from one tall, blond man to the other and back again. "Sing always."

"Eddie can't sing always," Egon explained in gentle tones. "He's human. He must rest. If he sings constantly he will burn out his voice, and I don't think you want that. Right now, his tour has finished. He's resting between concerts."

"Sing again," the demon said, a little more impatiently. Her eyes shifted from Eddie to Egon. "You sing." It was not a request but an order. Peter stiffened, expecting trouble. "You are not Eddie, but you are so much like him. He belongs to the woman, the woman with the white blonde hair."

"Yes, she is his wife," Egon replied. "He loves her." He didn't mention Cy, and Peter thought that was just as well; he wasn't even sure bringing Whitney into this was a good idea.

"Do you have a wife?" the demon asked Egon abruptly, as if she were considering her options, trying to decide if she were willing to settle for second best.

Peter opened his mouth to answer for Spengler, to make up a story and claim Egon did, because his instincts urged that kind of an answer, but before he could speak, Egon shook his head automatically, denying it. "No," he said.

What happened next occurred so rapidly there wouldn't have been time to fire the throwers even if it had been safe to do so. With an abrupt gesture, the demon's arm came up and swirled the mist to her as if closing a door around her. It billowed wide, encased Egon, and yanked him toward her off his feet, making him stumble and nearly fall, dropping his P.K.E. meter as he fought to regain his balance, windmilling his arms. The mist came up behind him even as Peter blurted a screeched, "Egon!" Then it thickened around him and the demon just as Winston let off a quick burst of proton power at the entity. The mist repelled it, as if it was really a force field, bouncing it back at Winston and forcing him to fling himself flat on the pavement with a cry of alarm. Then, as Ray yelled at Winston to cease firing for fear of hitting Egon, and the black man sprang to his feet, the mist thinned, stretched out, dwindled down to spotty patches, leaving nothing behind but the street. Of Egon and the entity there was not a trace.

Peter and Eddie screamed the physicist's name in perfect unison, and all four of them thundered to the place where he had last stood. "I knew it, I knew it, I knew it," Peter groaned, feeling his stomach tighten with rage and worry. "I knew he was gonna get into major trouble, but would he listen to me? No! Egon, you answer me right now or I'm gonna take your copy of Tobin's Spirit Guide and feed it to a shredder!" Nothing happened, nothing moved but the people across the street, emerging uneasily from their concealment, buzzing with excitement, a few scattered words reaching the Ghostbusters.

"Where is he?" Eddie asked, his face stricken, as Ray took hasty P.K.E. readings. The singer poked his hands around in midair as if Egon were still present, simply invisible, and ran his foot over the place where the female entity had stood, prodding the concrete with his toe.

"I don't know," Ray replied fretfully. "The mist cloaked some kind of dimensional gateway. I'm getting readings from it. I think she just hid in it before, but this time she opened it up--and took Egon through. It was pretty powerful. See." He held up the meter to reveal it still reacting more loudly than it would if the demon had simply gone away.

Peter stood rigid as a stone, staring at the place where Egon had vanished, then he jumped ahead, pounced, and came up holding the P.K.E. meter Egon had dropped. The hand grip was still warm from Egon's clasp. Peter shivered and shut the device down, stowing it in his pocket to leave his hands free. "Damn it, Egon," he muttered under his breath. "Don't do this to us."

"Bottom line, Ray," said Winston urgently. "How do we get him back?"

Peter turned to Ray expectantly, still shocked by the suddenness of Egon's disappearance. Before Ray could answer, Eddie positioned himself in the center of the ghost's space, opened his mouth, and began to sing. Peter gulped and bit back a hasty comment, realizing if anything could lure the spirit back it would be Eddie's music. The crowd edged closer, caught up in the melody in spite of the shock of Egon's abrupt disappearance, although they didn't quite have the nerve to cross the street.

Nothing else happened.

Peter looked around in the futile hope the demon and Egon had merely shifted down the block. Nothing. He said with forced brightness, "I bet she brings him right back when she finds out he can't sing."

"Egon can sing," Ray objected without looking up from his busy meter as if Peter had somehow insulted their friend.

"Yeah, in the shower," Winston pointed out. "He's no Eddie. Most people aren't. Come on, Ray. The reason she didn't snatch Eddie was because he was already taken--he's married to Whitney. She was prepared to listen from afar. But then she saw Egon, and you know how much they look alike."

"Looking alike doesn't mean Egon can sing like Eddie," Peter said. "She's gonna be disappointed. She'll dump him back here any minute now." He looked around, not believing it for a minute. When she found out Egon could sing no better than any ordinary mortal, she might be angry and believe she had been tricked. An angry demon was nothing to mess with. She might not hurt Egon, but there was no guarantee she'd return him either. The psychologist turned to Ray, who was staring in concern at the place where Egon had vanished. "Okay, Ray. You're the expert on crossing into other dimensions. You whipped up a gadget that took us right over after Egon when he was shifted into the Netherworld. You even knew right away it was the Netherworld. What have you got this time, you boy genius you?"

Ray came alert immediately and bent his auburn head over the P.K.E. meter once more. By this time the people across the street had decided the weird events were over, at least for the moment, and had ventured close enough to the singer to confirm what their ears had told them, that he was, in fact Eddie Plummer. The more bold of them encircled him and started asking for autographs.

"Hey, hey, folks, break it up," Winston said, wading into the group like a bouncer at an exclusive club. "Eddie would like nothing more than to sign autographs, but we're in the middle of a crisis here. Egon's missing, and if you look close at Eddie, you'll realize he and Egon are related. Give the guy a break, will you?" As if to prove his point, he shifted his thrower in his hand. He would never use it on innocent people, but they took the point and withdrew across the street again.

Peter joined Ray and braced his elbow against the shorter man's shoulder, staring down at the meter with him while Ray twisted dials, then passed the device to Peter while he whipped out a pocket calculator and entered figures into it. His mouth was drawn tight in concentration as he worked. When he looked up, he was concerned but there was a slightly more positive look to his face than there had been before.

"You know something, don't you?" Peter encouraged him, causing Eddie and Winston to crowd closer expectantly.

"Well, yeah," Ray admitted. "It looks like she took him to the Netherworld. I think she really is a demon and now that I've got all these new readings and the gateway readings and all, I might even be able to identify her."

"And we can go over there after Egon?" Peter persisted, wanting to have it clear in his mind. When Egon had been shifted before, they'd known he was all right, just...somewhere else. This time there was a lot more urgency to the rescue. "Because once she gets him singing, she's not gonna be very happy." He didn't look very happy himself.

"Maybe she'll like his singing," Ray ventured doubtfully, his shoulders slumping.

"Maybe she wants more than that," Peter said in an attempt to raise Ray's spirits. "Maybe she figures Egon can't sing but it's in the genes or something and she wants him to help her make a baby Egon to grow up to be like Eddie."

"Egon would never--" Ray began hotly.

"Not if he had a choice," Peter said, a wicked gleam in his eye. He doubted the demon had any such intentions but if it distracted Ray from the really nasty things she might choose to do to him when she heard him sing, that was what mattered. Peter could deal with the things his imagination suggested might happen to Egon, but it was Ray who would make it possible for them to go after the blond and for that he needed to think clearly. "But who knows. She'll give him some mystic Netherworld love potion and turn him into her love slave. We'd better hurry and get him back before he has to face a fate worse than death."

"And I'm coming with you," Eddie insisted. "Egon's my cousin and he's missing because of me. I know how to use a thrower and a P.K.E. meter. Besides," he added more lightly, "You wouldn't leave me alone with them." His arm swept out, encompassing the groupies across the street. "You could call Janine and have her come in to operate the equipment."

"He does have a point," Peter concurred. He wouldn't take a total amateur into the Netherworld, but Eddie knew how to use a P.K.E. meter and had worn a thrower before. He even possessed a degree in physics although he'd given up science for music some years back. Peter's rule of thumb in situations like this was: would it help Egon to have him along? He decided it would. Enough said. Besides, Janine had a right to know what had happened. It was only fair their secretary be told right away.

So as soon as they entered the building Peter dialed Janine's number. He hated the thought of the news he had to give her, but Janine would insist on being told; she loved Egon too. But telling her wasn't an option this time. The phone rang and rang, and Janine didn't answer.

"We can try again later," Peter decided as he replaced the receiver in its cradle. "Until then we'll have to work out another way to get there."

They retreated to the lab where Ray at once hauled out the molecular phase amplifier while Winston went to the computer and set to work with Ray's new readings, checking out the Tobin program again. Winston was pretty good with computers. He entered the new information and asked the program to check the determined parameters against existing demons, something Egon would have gotten around to as new readings had been taken. He explained to Eddie and Peter what he was doing as he sat back to see what the computer would dig up for them. "Anything that fits what we already know should come up in a minute or two," he said. "It might be a long list."

"I hope you put in that the demon's female and likes music," Peter said.

"Goes without saying m'man," Winston replied. He was tense with anticipation, but his worry for Egon didn't interfere with what needed to be done. At times like this, Winston's Vietnam experience stood him in good stead. When a situation was going really bad, you still had to carry on and do what needed to be done, or matters only got worse.

The computer didn't let them down. It produced a list of three names right away. Winston crowed with triumph and gestured Peter and Eddie over. "We've got three possibilities," he said. "Not so bad as you'd think."

"We might have more," Peter said. "Because not every entity's in Tobin's after all. But this is good. It gives us more of an idea what we're up against. Let's see that list."

Winston printed out three copies of the list. He didn't disturb Ray, who had ventured outside again to take more readings and returned immediately to bend over the molecular phase amplifier. Peter took his copy of the list and read it with interest, trying not to think of what might be happening to Egon at this very minute. If he didn't conceptualize it, it wouldn't happen. It was like that fate thing they'd been thinking about--was it only an hour or so ago? Better to think of the demons on the list. He read the first name aloud.

"Astarine."

"Sounds like a kid's pony," muttered Eddie without looking up from his own sheet.

Peter, whose childhood had included nothing so affluent as his own pony, had to take Eddie's word for that. "Abagar," he said, reading the second name. "Sounds like some kind of medicine. Athaliaroth. Even worse. I can barely pronounce it. So these are the Netherworld's music lovers?"

"They're female demons," Winston put in. He'd hauled over Tobin's Spirit Guide and was paging through it. "They all live in the Netherworld and they all are into music."

"And do we get the 'B' list next?" Peter persisted.

"A lot of demons' names start with A," said Ray without looking up. "There was Arzun, after all, and there's Astaroth and Agaliarept, and a bunch of others. I've heard of Athaliaroth. I don't think that's who we've got. She's pretty powerful and pretty egotistical and I can't see her caught up in Eddie's music like that. She wouldn't have hesitated because Eddie was married, either."

"So we've got someone who's cruising the singles scene?" Peter asked. "What about our other contenders. Abagar and, what was the other one's name?"

"Astarine," Eddie reminded him.

"I'd put money on that one," Winston said, turning a page. "Because it says she presents herself as a young girl sometimes to deceive mortals. Oh man," he added in considerable dismay.

"I don't like the sound of that, Winston," Peter chided him. "What did you find?"

"It says she assumes the appearance of a human to lure mortals away and they are never seen again."

"Well, Egon's gonna be seen again if we have to go into the Netherworld and drag him out by the hair," Peter insisted, bracing his feet as he stood there, full of determination.

"It's my fault," said the singer, his face reflecting his unhappiness. "I'll offer to go in Egon's place."

"No you won't," said Ray without looking up. "Not when you've got a wife and baby. We can't ask that of you." He looked like he wanted to ask it, and Peter wanted to ask it, too, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it, even for Egon. Eddie hadn't chosen to have a demon fall for his music. He was as much an innocent victim as Egon, maybe even more so because Egon had known what he was letting himself in for, and Eddie hadn't even guessed the entity was other than a human teen until last night. Under normal circumstances Peter would have happily considered trading anyone for Egon, even an icon like Eddie, but what held him back had nothing to do with his desire to rescue his oldest friend. It had to do with the way Egon himself would react to the thought of sacrificing his cousin to a demon in order to guarantee Egon's return.

"Yeah," Peter said, hoping his reluctance to decline Eddie's offer didn't show up in his voice as much as he thought it did. "We're Ghostbusters. This is the kind of thing we signed up for. We don't turn the general public over to ghosts and demons even when--"

"Even when it's Egon's life on the line," Eddie said sadly. "Believe me, Peter, I know how close you guys are to Egon, and I appreciate what you're saying. I'm kicking myself for coming here and I still think I should make the offer. If nothing else it would lure her back here, because by now she's probably found out Egon can't sing."

Peter heaved a near-inaudible sigh, remembering only that morning how he'd passed the bathroom and heard Egon singing in the shower, his bass voice raised in joyful if not entirely melodious song. The four of them sometimes sang together, but even though Peter pretended he had a great voice, he knew he didn't. Egon's was a little better than his, but it was an amateur voice and, of the four of them, only Winston could really be considered a decent singer, even though he couldn't come close to Eddie's abilities.

"No, we can't switch you for Egon," Ray said, as if he, too, were regretful about it although he couldn't put someone at risk who wasn't up to it either. "Besides, don't forget Egon's wearing his pack and he probably knows more about the Netherworld than any human except maybe that old guy Hieronymous we met over there last time. Egon might be able to get himself home without trouble."

As if to prove it, the lab began to fill with mist. But when it cleared away, only the entity stood there, looking small and determined in her teenaged persona. Of Egon Spengler there was no trace.

Egon had expected a confrontation when he went face to face with the entity, but he hadn't expected what did happen. The mist came around him suddenly, thickening so fast that he couldn't even see her as he struggled against the grip of a powerful arm. No longer did it feel he'd been grabbed by a teenaged girl. There were huge, hard scales under his digging fingers as he tried to undo her grip. He couldn't manage to pry one gigantic finger away before the mist cleared and he found himself in a strange room that looked as if it had been carved from solid rock, a high, arched ceiling like that of a gothic cathedral vanishing into shadows high above his head. Passageways led off the main chamber in several different directions, gaping openings lit with flaming torches mounted in sconces along the walls. He didn't recognize this particular location but the whole feel of the place, the cold, thin air with the smell he couldn't define but would never forget, told him he was once again in the Netherworld.

The being who held him now more closely resembled a traditional demon, at least a demon of the female persuasion. She was faintly blue, close to seven feet tall, with a bush of thick black hair springing from her head and cascading in waves down nearly to her waist between the great wings that had sprung into being between her shoulder blades. Her face was very human, and not unlike that of the groupie Eddie had seen except to age until it might, were it not for the blue cast to her flesh and the horns that curved up from her temples, have resembled that of a woman in her mid-thirties. He could tell from her eyes that she had been around a lot longer than that. Those beings who lived extended livespans that made them nearly immortal all took on a look that Egon would have recognized even if its wearer appeared a normal human being. It was an expression of someone who has seen vast vistas, known silences longer than the human lifespan, someone whose perspective has shifted and whose purposes might not easily be grasped by ordinary, ephemeral human beings. Egon had seen that selfsame look in the eyes of Tolay when the great demon had imprisoned him in his keep, behind the malicious rage in the demon's face. He saw it now in the face of the demon who grasped his wrist so tightly with gigantic fingers he knew there would be bruises where each finger dug in.

As if she realized the grip hurt him, she let him go, and Egon automatically took a step backward, looking around. He didn't reach for his thrower; the longer he ignored it, the longer she might do the same, and he might well need it later. Carefully he tried not to conceptualize the thought of a weapon on his back, bursting into speech immediately in hopes of distracting her from it.

"Why have you brought me here?"

She smiled, looking down at him in the way one studies a box of chocolates before making a selection, trying to decide which one had a caramel center and which a cream. Then she reached down and fluffed his hair. Her hand was as big as a platter and the gesture, although not intended as a blow, rocked Egon back on his heels and made his neck ache.

"I could not have the other one," she said regretfully. "Not and have him whole, body and soul."

Egon didn't like the sound of that. "Why not? Because he's married? Though marriage may be a legal institution, one I have not attained, it does not mean I am free."

She considered that, and suddenly he felt an odd tickle inside his head as if she were taking his thoughts to examine. At once he tried to block her off, to insert a mental barricade, structuring his thoughts and concentrating with all his strength on the periodic table, going through the list of elements and reciting everything he knew about them. It was something he could do without much in the way of conscious effort, but when he dwelt on it, it blocked out other thoughts. Whether it would stand up to the probings of a demon was another matter.

She muttered something under her breath and grasped Egon's wrist, dragging him across the vast, echoing room and leading him into a smaller antechamber, where banked candles burned before a giant poster of Eddie that had been sealed in a transparent substance rather like plastic and mounted on the wall. Near it, incongruous in this place, was a tape player of the variety generally called 'ghetto blasters'. Pushing a button on it, she smiled when Eddie's recorded voice began to sing his most famous hit, Leftover Souls. A demon with a crush on a singer was a bizarre phenomenon, but Egon was very careful to say nothing to mock her obsession. He knew if his hair was changed and his glasses removed he and Eddie might well be taken for brothers, almost twins. Eddie's spiky hair, his more casual body language and his whole persona came across as very different from Egon's aspect, the flip of his hair and the round, red glasses, so that people who didn't know there was a connection rarely saw it. Even Peter hadn't picked up on it, and he knew Egon better than anyone. Yet the demon had seen it at a glance. Of course she had also seen Eddie and Egon standing virtually side by side.

"You are his kin," she said now as if she would brook no denial.

"Yes, we're first cousins," Egon replied levelly.

"Then you shall stay here with me, sing for me, and be him for me," she said. "If I cannot have him, I will have you instead. And don't think your foolish attempt to block my probe was successful. I saw there is no one permanent in your life. There is the woman with the red hair and you care for her deeply but not quite in the way that Eddie cares for Whitney, not yet. There are your friends, of course, and you also care for them very deeply, as if they were kin, even more than you care for your blood kin, for Eddie, but that is different, for they cannot give you what I can."

Egon elected not to ask what she meant; he was positive he would not like the answer. He said instead, "You've chosen to overlook one very important factor."

"And that is?" Scorn touched her face as if she doubted he could say anything that would make her alter her decision.

"I can't sing."

"You can sing. I saw it in your mind, you and your friends performing at a school."

"That was something Peter dreamed up. He thinks he can sing. He's wrong but we only tell him so when he tries it. I can sing to a degree, but not like Eddie, only as an amateur." He gestured at the poster on the stone wall. "I'm sure you believe no one sings like Eddie."

"Sing now. I will hear you and I will judge. His blood is in you; there will be something in common. And if you cannot sing well enough to soothe me, I will mate with you and your son will sing for me; perhaps the power passes through the generations."

Egon was careful not to let his utter distaste for the idea show on his face. Offending the lady would most likely only get him killed and leave no one for her to imprison but Eddie himself. Egon didn't want to risk his cousin's life, but he could never mate with this huge creature; the thought was repellant and she was repugnant to him.

"Sing!" she insisted. "Sing Leftover Souls."

"Eddie's part is a baritone part, and I sing bass," Egon explained, but he saw no alternative. He began to sing.

After only a few bars, she put up her hand. "Stop. Stop. It is not unpleasant, but it is not Eddie. His whole soul is musical. Your soul is given to science, and it is not the same. It is hardly worth stealing you, because I could sing as well myself. I must have Eddie."

"No. He belongs to Whitney, and to all his fans, not just to you." He knew that argument was specious, for obsessive collectors didn't care about such things, only about owning what they cherished, even if they could not display what they had obtained illegally. With the demon it was a little different, because she could show off her captive to her fellow demons, who would certainly understand the possession of a human slave.

"I care nothing for that," she spat. "You cannot replace him. Your voice is average. It is, as I said, not unpleasant, but neither is it remarkable. It does not move me."

"A child of mine would most likely inherit a voice like mine, rather than Eddie's. He may get his singing talent from his mother's side of the family, because no other Spengler can sing as well as he does."

"An interesting point. Of course it is more than music that draws me to him, and you have the look of him." She eyed him intently and Egon was alarmed to see an element of lust in her eyes. "Take off your glasses."

Egon did. There was no point in arguing about it. He folded them carefully and put them into his jumpsuit's breast pocket then stood squinting up at her. He couldn't read her expression as well without his glasses, and that was a disadvantage but he was reluctant to move closer to her.

Very gently she rearranged his hair, stirring it, muttering to herself when it tended to spring back into place, finally forcing it to a new style, running her fingers through it, and twirling a lock around the talon on one thick finger. "Remove that," she said, pointing to his jumpsuit.

Egon didn't like this at all. If he took off the jumpsuit he'd have to remove his pack first, and she'd be sure to notice it, remark upon it, and take it. "Why?" he demanded.

"Because Eddie does not wear such things." She smiled suddenly; even without his glasses Egon could see the smile and the pointed fangs that filled her mouth. With her teeth and claws, she could shred the jumpsuit and leave him without it. Better to cooperate, up to a point. Or was this the time to attack. He stepped a little away from her, trying to look as if he had done it for privacy. She let him go--what harm was there in it?--she was between him and the entry to the alcove, and there was nowhere for him to run.

Egon put his hand to the strap that fastened his proton pack across his stomach, watching her out of the corner of his eye to see if she was paying close attention to him. Instead she was listening to the music, her eyes on Eddie's poster, but she was also in the middle of the doorway arch, completely blocking his escape route.

There was nothing for it. Egon grabbed the thrower and fired, knowing he had a better chance, since he was wearing the atomic destabilizer, than he would have with a standard thrower. It would be easier with at least one other proton pack to back him and help him force her destabilized form into the trap, but he was here alone and couldn't risk waiting.

The beam struck her full in the chest at maximum power, destabilizing her physical form and turning her, at least for the moment, into an ectoplasmic state that would be easier to contain. He whipped out the ghost trap on his pack and flung it toward her one handed, a difficult process since she fought the stream, bucking and pitching against the power of the destabilizer. Light flickered and danced around them and the air rang with the sound of her angry bellows. If she had allies, they would come quickly.

The destabilizer beam alone wasn't enough to hold her. Still in her altered form, she broke free of the energy stream and zipped high, toward the ceiling of the main room. Egon followed her out of Eddie's shrine, reeling in the trap behind him automatically and returning it to his pack while he looked around for an escape tunnel, somewhere she wouldn't follow him. He knew the guys would figure out where he was eventually; Ray's readings would identify the Netherworld and it would not be difficult for the other three to come in after him and bring him out, as they had done when Tolay had snatched him.

Noticing a narrow gap in the stone, one that wasn't lit with flaming torches, he ducked into it quickly, hurrying down the cramped tunnel that was too small to admit her in her present shape. Snatching a small flashlight from his belt, he turned it on and shone it before him. Retreating into a dead end would only buy him time until the guys showed up, but Ray wouldn't need as much time as he had before; he knew how to manage the equipment. It wouldn't be long before rescue came; he had only to stall.

"You think they will find you here?" The words echoed around him and he knew she had managed to read his mind without giving herself away this time. "They will not find you here because you will not be here." Suddenly he felt himself yanked to a stop as if he had been gripped with invisible hands. He shot backward from the tunnel like a cork from a bottle and landed hard on his backside in the middle of the huge central chamber. Already resuming her physical solidity, the demon stood above him, denuding him of his pack in one swift movement. "I should have done this immediately," she said aloud. "But I thought it would amuse you to plot against me, to believe you still had hope." The pack and modified thrower drifted away to float into Eddie's shrine, and the demon bent over Egon, doing what he'd imagined before as if she had taken that idea from his mind as well, shredding his jumpsuit into long, tattered strips and yanking them away. Free of it, Egon wore his streetclothes, a shirt and pants held up by suspenders, and his boots.

He made a quick grab for the falling pieces of his blue jumpsuit, trying to retrieve his glasses, but she did something that made them pop out of the falling fabric and drift over to her. "You are far prettier without them," she told him.

"Being 'pretty' has never been a particular goal of mine, but I prefer to see clearly," Egon replied, stretching out an expectant hand toward her. "Give them to me."

"And if I don't? What will you do then? Blast me without your weapon? I know of you Ghostbusters. All of us here know of you and your three allies. Should I squash you like a bug none of my fellow demons would care. But I will not do that," she added quickly as Egon composed his features and faced her without a display of the fear he couldn't help feeling. "You are pretty, to my way of thinking, and you are of Eddie's blood. I do not wish to kill you. No, I have a better plan."

"What is it about Eddie that interests you?" Egon asked, more to keep her talking than anything.

"The beauty of him," she said at once, her voice softening. "The beauty of the music, the pure, esthetic joy on his face when he sings. To see that selfsame look on your face I would dare much, since you are now mine. But time is passing and your friends may be more clever than I believe them. I do not want them to find you." She reached down with a taloned hand and gathered up the shreds of his jumpsuit, wadding them up into a ball and tucking them into a pouch she wore on a strap over one arm, the 'purse' she had carried when in her human groupie form. "Come, pretty one," she said, drawing him to her with the same power that had levitated his proton pack away from him, and fit him into the curve of her arm. Bending over him, she trailed her fingers down his cheek, claws withdrawn just enough to keep from wounding him seriously, but one talon drew blood on his forehead just below his scalp line. Amused, she raised a scrap of fabric and pressed it against the slight wound. "Hold that in place," she said and guided his hand to keep it there. Then, before he realized what she meant, she called fog to her, swirled it around her like a villain in a bad melodrama and suddenly they were somewhere else.

Without his glasses, Egon could not make much of his new prison, but it looked like a dusty, abandoned room in a building, a basement, an inner room in a warehouse, without windows. Light came in from a partially open door on the opposite wall, but it was filtered and diffused as if it came from a low-watt bulb around a corner.

The demon gestured, produced a length of chain and wrapped it around Egon's ankle, securing it to a pipe that protruded from the wall. She tugged the chain a few times to make certain it was secure, then she drew back to the opposite side of the room. "I find a certain amusement in the location of this prison," she said. Snatching the cloth from the cut on his forehead, she vanished into her cloud of mist, leaving him trapped and alone, unable to see his prison clearly.

Egon raised his voice and called for help.

His voice echoed through the room in a hollow way that suggested he was underground. No one came.

"Where is he?" Peter cried, launching himself at the demon only to jerk to a stop when Winston and Ray each grabbed an arm to keep him from doing something he'd regret. "Where's Egon?"

The girl looked at him scornfully with her old eyes. "You think it would be that easy? Harm me and you will never know. He told me you could come after him into the Netherworld. So I didn't leave him there but somewhere else, a place only I know. I have come to offer you a choice."

"What kind of choice?" Winston demanded suspiciously. He cast an alarmed look at Ray, who was busy taking readings. "Ray? Can you find Egon?"

"Not if he's not in the Netherworld," Ray replied. "There's not enough of a reading to determine where he is instead; I can't read a gateway from simple residuals. There are all kinds of alternate worlds like the Netherworld, and demons can cross into a lot of them. She's definitely a demon."

"I am the demon Astarine," the 'groupie' informed them. "And I am not such a fool as the ones you usually bust. I have made a plan. First, take this." She held out something to Peter, who recognized Egon's glasses and snatched them from her hand.

"What have you done to him?" he demanded hotly, his fingers curling protectively around the spectacles. "If you've hurt him--"

"You will do precisely what?" she asked with great scorn. "You cannot harm me for I alone know where to find him. If you kill me, he will never come home." She reached into her purse. It was incongruous to picture a demon with a purse, but in her human form it seemed to belong. This time she took out a scrap of cloth the color of Egon's jumpsuit and flung it at Ray, who nearly dropped the P.K.E. meter in his attempt to catch it. When his fingers clutched it, he gasped, eyes widening in horror.

"It's part of Egon's jumpsuit," he said, his eyes seeking Peter's. "It's got blood on it."

Peter lunged, snatched it from Ray's hand, and frowned. "Not very much blood," he said, casting an accusing glance at the demon as if to challenge her, to prove she was simply manipulating them with evidence of a slight wound. "What did you do to him?"

In answer, she displayed one hand, letting it shift to a more demon-like appearance, revealing strong, curving fingers, each tipped with two-inch claws. She curled her hand, the light catching the talons, then she let them melt away into a teenager's hand again.

Peter would have gone for her, but Winston caught his arm and held him although Peter struggled fiercely against the grip. "Don't, man," Winston cautioned. "It's what she wants, to make us crazy, to push us. She'll only trash you and that won't help Egon." Reluctantly Peter subsided, even though it would take very little to make him go for her.

Eddie surged closer. "What do you want?" he asked simply.

"You," she said. "I will give you twenty-four hours to make the decision. In that time I will not kill Egon. I will not necessarily leave him alone, but I will make certain he lives. In that time you must decide if you will come to stay with me, to sing for me, to bring beauty into my life. If you agree, your cousin will go free. If you refuse, I will take him in your place. He cannot sing like you but he has your blood and your spirit and I could come to enjoy him. I would prefer not to take second best, but I will do so, and you will go back to Whitney and the child you have all been so careful not to mention, knowing your cousin will be my slave for the rest of his life. He is a proud and stubborn man; he may fight me, he may even die. That will be on your head, and when he is gone, I can always come after the babe. He is more likely to have your gift, your son and Whitney's. I can take him while he is still young enough to mold. This is what may happen if you say no. Egon will stay with me, and when he dies, I will have your boy. But if you come with me, I will revere you and honor you and all who hear you will find beauty in your voice."

Eddie stared at her, stricken. "That's not much of a choice. My son and my cousin for me. If I let you take me with you right now, could you could give me your word, a word I can trust, that you'll return Egon and that you will never attempt to harm Cy?"

"Wait a minute, Eddie." Peter pulled free of Winston's grip and grabbed for Eddie before the demon could reply. "Don't make any promises yet. First of all, you can't trust her to keep her word. People who make this kind of deal aren't exactly full of honor. Second, she gave you twenty-four hours. Use it. Let us use it. She's stacked the deck pretty good, but that doesn't mean we have to let her win. Take the time. Consider every angle. She respects you enough for that."

Eddie looked doubtful, as if to delay was to endanger his small son immediately. His face, so like Egon's, wore the agony of the choice he would be forced to make, a bargain he would yield to because he had no option he could live with, but one that would end by destroying his soul. Peter hoped he never had to see that look on Egon's face, or on any other person's. He stretched out his hand and clapped Eddie on the shoulder. "I know she's got you in a double bind," he said, "But don't write us off so easily. And you." He spun around and faced the demon Astarine, his face full of fire and ice. "Think what you're bargaining for. You want Eddie, but you'd be caging a bird, and caged birds don't sing as clearly as when they're free. Eddie sings because the music has to come out, but do you think it will come out as pure and strong if you trick him, manipulate him, strip him of his freedom, and take him away from everything he loves?" He felt rather than saw Eddie flinch beside him and was conscious of Ray coming up beside the singer and patting his arm. It wasn't real consolation, but at least it was a human touch, something Astarine meant to steal from Eddie for all time.

"I will shower him with gifts," Astarine insisted coldly, glaring at Peter. "I will make him a prince of the Netherworld, granting his every wish."

"Yeah, his every wish except the most important ones," Peter claimed with scorn. "His wife. His son. His freedom."

"I will bring them to him."

"Threaten that and I won't go," Eddie said fiercely. He turned to face the Ghostbusters, his eyes full of sorrow and regret. "Guys, I'm sorry, but I can't buy Egon's freedom with Whitney and Cy's. I just can't."

"I know, Eddie," Ray said sadly. "Don't worry. We'll stop her."

"You think you can?" huffed the demon, her lip curling contemptuously.

"We can blast her right now," Ray said, yanking his thrower free and aiming it at the demon, adjusting it quickly. His whole body radiated pain, knowing that to blast Astarine might condemn Egon to a lifetime imprisonment in a far dimension where they could never find him. If they did it, they'd save Eddie, Whitney and their child, but Egon might be lost forever.

Might, Peter thought. Egon might be lost. But if they didn't blast her, three people would be lost, and the world would lose the talent, the gift of song that was Eddie. It was an impossible choice, especially when Egon was so valuable to Peter and the others that the thought of choosing to lose him in another dimension hurt all the way to the soul, but it was the choice Egon himself would make. Peter knew he couldn't free Egon at the cost of his honor, his friends' honor, and the lives of other people who mattered to the physicist. He grabbed for his thrower and leveled it at Astarine, his heart breaking as he pushed the trigger and the proton stream lanced out at the smirking demon.

Mist surrounded her, bouncing the streams back at the Ghostbusters, forcing them to power down. She vanished into the mist, her words echoing through it as it dispersed. "Twenty-four hours," she said, the threat resounding through the lab. "Make your choice." One of the windows shattered as the energy beam caught it, glass exploding outward, another stream ran across the ceiling leaving a charred streak behind it, and then there was only silence, a heavy, leaden quiet, as they stood looking at each other. Peter heaved a sigh that shook him down to his boots and murmured a heartfelt oath.

Shaking with reaction, Eddie collapsed into the nearest chair, his hands raking through his hair. "I'll have to go with her," he said, his face bleak and full of despair. "I can't risk Whitney and Cy and allow Egon to be imprisoned in my place."

"You can't go," Ray said in a small, despairing voice. "She won't keep her word. She isn't capable of it."

"Maybe Pete can get to her," Winston offered, his expression revealing how little faith he had in the idea. "Pete can fast talk with the best of 'em. She might not be honorable, but she's got emotions, and Peter isn't a psychologist for nothing. What do you think, Peter? Can you get to her? Because I think there's a part of her that can be reached."

"Yeah, whichever part is least resistant to a thrower," Peter said glumly. "You want me to psychoanalyse her, Zed? It'd be like trying to reason with a tsunami right before it hits the beach. Sure, we can blast her, if we're quick and do it when she's not expecting it, but if she's got one second's warning she can put up her forcefield and bounce the streams right back at us. And if we trap her, we lose Egon forever."

Ray drew a shaky breath. "It's what Egon would tell us to do, Peter. And I think we're all, well, underestimating him."

"He's hurt, he's nearly blind without his glasses and he's stuck in another dimension where we can't follow him because we don't know where it is," Peter said, depressed at the little list he'd just compiled. "No matter what happens, I don't think she's gonna give him back."

"She will," Eddie persisted, his face very white. "I'll insist on it. I'll insist on having Egon home before I go with her." His heart was breaking as he said the words, but he wasn't capable of buying his freedom at the cost of his cousin's life or his son's any more than Egon would have bought his own life at that price.

"She's got one advantage," Winston said, slamming his fists down on the table top in frustration. "The rest of us have our limits, our ethics. When you don't have any ethics, you've got an edge over people who do."

"I won't believe that," cried Ray stubbornly. "I won't look at ethics as a disadvantage, no matter what you say. We've got twenty-four hours. If we can't figure out how to blast Astarine in that time or how to make her change her mind on this deal, then we don't deserve to be called Ghostbusters. We need to find out more about Astarine, and we need to check out the Netherworld because we've only got her word Egon isn't there. We can't all go, though, since we can't reach Janine to come in and operate the device, and even if we could, taking Eddie there is probably a stupid idea. Two of us will go and the other will stay with Eddie, because we have to keep guard on him." His mouth traced a tight line across his usually-goodnatured face. "This is war. She can't manipulate us like this."

"I'm with Ray," Winston agreed. "But I don't think she's beyond manipulation either. Because there's a part of her that loves beauty. She might be utterly self-centered but something in her drew her to Eddie, and we still might be able to reach that part of her."

"Yeah, but she's crazy, Winston," Peter argued. "Crazy and powerful and used to getting her way where humans are concerned. The only reason we're getting even this much of a deal is because she likes Eddie."

"She's got a funny way of showing it," Eddie muttered unhappily, his shoulders drooping. "There's no way I can win in her deal."

"No, but she always believed she'd possess you so she thinks this is being fair. She can manipulate everything about you but your feelings, so she sets up a deal to make it look like you've got a choice. Okay, so it's not a good choice any way you slice it, but she can convince herself she was generous to you and feel good about herself. Even demons need to do that, I bet. I tried to get her to see that it wouldn't be the same if you were here prisoner--because she can't make you sing. Well, there are ways she can convince you pretty good, but we won't go into those right now because they're nasty ways. But she can't make you sing with your heart in it. I didn't want to push too hard because I was afraid she'd decide she could take Cy, raise him so he didn't know anything different and let him sing for her. She's a demon. She's gonna be around a hundred years from now; she can afford to wait. So I toned down that kind of argument."

What little color that was left in Eddie's face fled it in fright. "Cy! I've gotta call Whitney and make sure he's all right."

"Easy, easy," Peter said, his hand descending on the singer's shoulder. "Call her and you'll only scare her. We've got twenty-four hours. Astarine has to stick to that or the deal's null and void, right, Ray?"

"Right," agreed the occultist, his nose buried in Tobin. "Demons have to stick to the letter of the contract they offer or it's nullified. They try to be tricky, use words that conceal the true purpose, but in this case, the one thing that's clear is that she gave you a day. She can't grab you until that day's up, she can't hurt Egon, wherever he is, or your family either."

"She already did," Peter reminded him, glancing over at the bloodstained scrap of cloth that lay on the table not far from Winston's hand.

At the reminder, Zeddemore picked it up and squinted at it thoughtfully. He was taut and angry, ready to battle anyone who stood in the way of rescuing Egon, so Peter was willing to accept his judgment when he said, "I think this is just from a scratch or cut. Look at it; it's like Egon used this to wipe the blood away. The cloth's not saturated. And it's only in the middle. Egon might have a few scrapes but I bet he's in one piece and thinking."

"Planning for how to get away or what to do when we come after him," Ray said sturdily. "I just know he is. She said he wasn't dead; I think I'd know if he was dead. The world would be different if Egon were never coming back. I'm sure he's okay. She said she wouldn't kill him for twenty-four hours. She was direct about that. You know, I bet part of what she likes about Eddie is his looks. And Egon looks just like him."

Eddie's mouth fell open in horror. "You mean she's lusting after me?" he blurted out, appalled and disgusted.

"Hey," said Peter quickly, "a lot of your fans do, and don't tell me you don't know it. A lot of my fans lust after me after all. There's perks in being famous."

"Peter!" chided Winston, but Peter smiled faintly because he'd made Eddie's tensed shoulders ease slightly with the comment. Just that way did Egon's tensions eased with teasing from Peter. The psychologist wondered momentarily if they could convince Astarine she had the wrong cousin, but there wasn't much hope in that if she'd already heard Egon sing, even if they could explain away the hair.

"Okay, bottom line time," Peter said. "We've gotta work this out. If Ray's right and she'll hold off for twenty-four hours, then we've got time to check out the Netherworld. If we go in down there in the street, we should come out not too far from where she took Egon, right, Ray?"

"Right," agreed Ray, his enthusiasm returning the way it always did when he had a plan. "We would have found Egon a lot quicker the other time if Tolay hadn't moved him. Because the Netherworld's the size of the known universe and we found him and got him out of Tolay's keep in under an hour. If a demon opens a gate, the resonances of that linger and when we use the amplifier we ride the same currents. We'd go straight to where she took him. That's what we've got to do. I'll boost a P.K.E. meter set to Egon's biorhythms and we'll be able to tell if he's in the immediate vicinity."

"Will it tell if he's in the Netherworld at all?" Eddie asked doubtfully.

"No," Ray replied. "It wouldn't have that strong a range even if Egon were a class eleven mega-specter. But it'll tell us if he's anywhere in the immediate area, and we can take an hour to hunt around and extend the range. I'll have to go because I know the way the meter works best and I'll need somebody with me because going over there might alert her if she's still there. But I don't want all three of us to go because that would leave Eddie unprotected and the last thing we can do is risk him over there."

"I'm ready to go. Just give me a pack and thrower," Eddie insisted, looking as determined as ever Egon did. "Let's try calling Janine again. If she was out on a date she might be back by now."

"You can't, pal," Peter told him, clapping his hand on Eddie's shoulder. "You go and you're making it easy for Astarine, and the last thing I want to do for that bitch is make anything easy for her. She took Egon, and she's threatening your baby. She doesn't get any help from us."

"Peter, you stay with Eddie," Ray decided.

Peter didn't want to. Egon was over there somewhere, trapped and possibly injured, certainly limited by his myopia without his glasses. He'd hated being prisoner over there before and Peter remembered the bad dreams he'd had for weeks after his return. The thought of Egon in danger made Peter ready to charge in and take out anyone in his path. And the thought of Ray and Winston risking the same danger without him to back them bothered him too. He knew if anything happened to them and he wasn't there to help them, he'd feel it for the rest of his life, even if that was an illogical response. One of them had to stay with Eddie, and Peter suspected Ray thought his temper was too precarious to risk him over there. But he hated it. Egon was his oldest friend, the first real friend he'd ever had in his life, and never mind the logic but he needed to help find him.

"Come on, Pete," Winston urged as if he knew the inner struggle Peter was waging. "You'd go off half cocked over there and you know it. Besides we can't risk leaving Eddie alone. Even if she made a bargain we might be tempting her too much if we did that."

"I still think I should come," Eddie said stubbornly. "I can use a thrower. Egon's my cousin. I want to help. If we can't find Janine, you can use Slimer to trigger the device and send us over, can't you?"

Peter wasn't about to argue that the Ghostbusters were closer to Egon than his family was, even if he knew it for a fact. Egon did have a strong sense of family, strong enough to have included Peter, Ray and Winston in that definition, but he'd expect the other three Ghostbusters to look after his cousin. Peter heaved a sigh. He'd have to play this Egon's way, even if he hated it.

"Looks like we're the rear guard," he said to Eddie. "You bet you'll be wearing a pack the whole time. Get accustomed to aching shoulders because the things are heavy and you're not used to them."

Eddie was already wearing the pack and the brief twinkle in his eyes made it clear to all of them that he'd discovered this interesting fact on his own.

Ray set up the device. "You can send us over, Peter. I've set the bracelets for a one-hour recall, but this time I'll arrange it that we can come back without Egon if we don't find him because she said he wasn't in the Netherworld. Not that I believe her automatically, but if it's true, we'd be stranded over there and that wouldn't help anybody." He picked up a tiny screwdriver and began to make minute adjustments in the first bracelet.

They set up the transfer device on the street, and Ray and Winston stood before it, each of them with an extra bracelet in his pocket. Peter took his position at the amplifier, grinned at Ray and Winston even though it took an effort, and said with forced brightness, "One of you guys ought to say, 'Beam us up, Scotty'."

"Go for it, Peter," urged Ray, drawing his thrower and gripping it in one hand, the already-activated P.K.E. meter in the other, and Winston, proton rifle aimed and ready, nodded in confirmation.

Peter pushed the button and a burst of energy in a conic projection engulfed his two remaining friends, made them transparent, then took them away. Eddie's fans from before, who had spilled out of the buildings again at the first sight of them, edged closer, but Eddie held up a hand to stop them.

"Not tonight," he told the people. "We're in the middle of a crisis. I'm sorry." Such was the force of his personality that they withdrew immediately, although they didn't completely go away.

Peter stood in place a moment longer, staring at the spot where Ray and Winston had vanished, the same place where, only a short time earlier, Egon had disappeared. In spite of the presence of Eddie and the determined fans across the street, he felt incredibly alone.

Ray gulped as he looked at his surroundings. The chamber where he and Winston stood back to back was huge, vast, and echoing, as if someone had blasted out the interior of a mountain. Ray had seen a place like this in Spain once, a cathedral carved from the living rock. The room in which the two Ghostbusters had arrived when projected into the Netherworld was even bigger than that place, and the ominous shadows that filled each corner seemed loaded, as if strange and malevolent creatures lurked there. Although the P.K.E. meter only gave off residuals, Ray had the feeling they were being watched.

Lit by flaring torches, the cavern was evidently empty. The residuals that were the strongest matched those of Astarine. Ray checked them quickly then filtered them out, rapidly twisting the dials to bring up Egon's readings. If he had been here at all there should be a faint echo of his biorhythms; there hadn't been enough time for them to fade entirely. Sure enough, the meter reacted.

"Egon was here," cried Ray eagerly, then his face fell. "Only he's not here now. These readings don't indicate an actual presence; they're too faint."

"Well, she did say she moved him. She could have yanked him five miles down the road."

"Or ten thousand," Ray reminded the