The young woman picking her way daintily across the garage area of Ghostbuster Central amid the buckets of water Ray and Winston were using to wash Ecto-1 seemed as out of place as a lily in a rubbish heap. She was neatly made with a small, elfin face and heaps of corn-yellow hair. Spotting Peter who was pretending to mind Janine's desk while the Ghostbusters' secretary took her lunch break, the newcomer smiled diffidently, revealing dimples hiding in her rosy cheeks. She was stylishly dressed in a heather-colored business suit and elegant spike heels that added to the uncertainty of her steps, and her white silk blouse had a Peter Pan collar. She couldn't be a day over twenty-five, but in spite of the reserve, which might be a result of entering a haunt of ghosts and spirits, she didn't hesitate for a second. When Winston started to toss his sponge into the bucket and then pulled his shot to keep from splashing her, she favored him with a gamine grin and quickened her pace. Reaching the desk, she came to an expectant halt in front of Peter, who jumped to his feet.

"Welcome to Ghostbuster Central. How can the Ghostbusters help you?" He beamed at her. Egon had once told him his smile around an attractive woman made him appear fatuous, but he disagreed. When Egon noticed the female of the species he wasn't much better. Most guys weren't.

"I do hope you can." She sounded like she feared no solution was possible. Her eyes darted around the high-ceilinged room with fascination and a certain wariness, expecting ghosts to circle around in plain sight. "It's a strange problem. I know you bust ghosts, but I don't know if you do other...other things."

"We do a lot of things, as long as it's connected with the paranormal," Peter explained. "Come and sit down and tell me all about it." He dragged up Janine's chair and offered it to her, parking himself on the desk beside the computer. "I'm Dr. Peter Venkman, the character with the lethal sponge is Winston Zeddemore, and, over there, soaking wet, is Dr. Ray Stantz. Ray lets his enthusiasm get the better of him sometimes and, just between you and me, I think they were having a water fight. Boys will be boys, you know."

Winston would have lobbed the dripping sponge enthusiastically in Peter's direction but he could hardly do it in front of a client; his expression proved he'd find a way to retaliate later. Ray just looked sheepish, and waved at their new client.

She lifted a hand in return. "I'm Jackie McFarland. The reason I've come is because -- I think my boyfriend is possessed."

"Wow!" Ray dripped his way over to join them. Pulling the sweatshirt he'd donned for the car washing away from his stomach, he wrung out as much of it has he could grab. "I'd better go change. But -- what makes you think he's possessed?" Abandoning the sweatshirt as hopeless, he pulled it off and tossed it in the general direction of his locker where it landed with a little splat. The tee shirt he wore under it was only damp in spots. "That's better," he said, ignoring his saturated jeans. He could hardly remove them in front of their client. It would be bad for business.

"Is your boyfriend suddenly acting different?" Peter prompted as Winston shed his own sopping sweatshirt and joined them.

"Well, it's hard to explain." Her mouth pursed in thought. "I've known him for nearly nine months. We didn't start dating right away, though I'd see him at the office once in awhile, and I could tell he liked me, but he was really shy. Almost excruciatingly shy. I can't remember the last time I met a guy who was as shy as that -- I think it was in middle school. I finally asked him out, and I could see he wanted to go, but he was hesitant about it. Then his boss encouraged him, and we started seeing each other."

The possessed boyfriend was obviously not from the Venkman School of Dating. Maybe Peter could offer lessons on the side, make a little extra money. "So when did you notice anything odd about him?"

"Right away, but that was good," Jackie replied. "I mean, I think he came from some little Podunk place because he was so naive I couldn't believe it. I even wondered if he wasn't mildly retarded, simply because he was so culturally -- different. But he's smart, you can tell. Then I actually started to wonder if maybe he had been raised by wolves. I know it's not what you usually think when you meet someone on a date, but I couldn't think of anything else to explain it. He didn't know things that everybody knew, that everybody takes for granted. You know, pop culture things. He had never heard of the Beatles, and he says he never watched TV when he was a kid. He doesn't know songs everybody knows, not even simple things like Pop Goes the Weasel. He'd never heard of the Grand Canyon or the Olympics. He didn't even know how to read at first, if you can believe it. So even though he wasn't talking about it, I finally decided he must have been raised in one of those weird religious cults you read about, that have a remote commune and limited contact with the outside world. He can read now, of course, and I've seen him with the most esoteric books, and we talk about them, and he's not retarded at all. He's very bright. But he doesn't know things everybody else takes for granted. I said somebody looked like a hippie once, and he didn't have a clue what that meant."

She frowned. "I just want you to get the picture. Here's this wonderfully kind man, and he's developing a sense of humor and learning all the time, but he's so innocent, such a stranger in a strange land. He -- " Her face crimsoned and she dropped her eyes. "He hasn't even tried to sleep with me, and the first time I kissed him, he was really embarrassed. That's what made me think of the weird religious cult. They might have vows of celibacy. He's not gay -- I asked him. I had to explain what it meant, if you can buy that." She hesitated, raising her eyes to find Peter, Ray, and Winston listening sympathetically, surprised at her outpouring. "I -- well, I wouldn't tell people this ordinarily, but you've got to understand how strange it is. We were..." Her voice trailed off to a dead halt and she looked decidedly embarrassed as though it would take only one wrong word for her to change her mind and flee the building. Peter had an idea what was coming, and understood why she paused. She had probably steeled herself to seek out the Ghostbusters and planned what she was going to say when she got here but, when confronted by three unknown males who were hanging on her every word, she just couldn't go on. She'd probably decided it would be like telling things to her doctor but discovered it didn't feel like that at all. Whatever she meant to say apparently involved her sex life and her relations with the boyfriend. Maybe she could do it better without the whole audience.

So Peter held up his hand. "Jackie? Can you wait a minute? These two guys are staring to turn blue from hanging out in their wet clothes. Why don't I send them up to change. You can tell me your story and I'll pass it on when they're dry. Is that okay with you?"

Ray opened his mouth to protest; he'd been too fascinated by the story to realize how embarrassed Jackie had grown. Winston elbowed him surreptitiously.

"I don't know about you, Ray, but I don't want to wind up with pneumonia. I squish when I move. Come on, homeboy, let's get dry. Pete can fill us in later."

Corralling Ray, he hauled the younger Ghostbuster up the stairs. He had been right. He did squish when he moved, and so did Ray. They left wet footprints and a trail of water all the way up to the second floor.

"That's what you get for playing when you're supposed to be working," Peter said avuncularly, aware of the fact that Ray and Winston, if they heard him, would be hot for revenge and would probably come back later and empty the buckets over his head. His words made Jackie smile, as he'd hoped they would. The smile might even make the dousing worth it.

He smiled back. "I got the feeling you didn't need a big audience. Just think of me as your friendly neighborhood psychologist." When she looked doubtful, he added, "It's true. I've got a degree and everything. Doctor Venkman. Maybe I don't have a practice, but I do know my stuff." When she still hesitated, he prodded very gently, "I get the feeling what you're about to tell me is what made you decide to come here in the first place. If your guy is acting weird enough that you think he's possessed, we have to know about it or we can't help him. I can discuss it professionally with the guys. We're not going to snicker behind your back. My word on it."

Her face was vivid red and she'd lowered her eyes. "I thought I could just come in here and tell you all, but when all three of you were waiting, watching me, I just lost my nerve."

"Perfectly understandable. So did your guy do something nasty when you were together?" Peter hoped the guy wasn't just another jerk who got so carried away he didn't care if his bed partner got hurt. Somebody like that wasn't usually possessed, but it might feel good to take a thrower to him anyway.

"Not what you're thinking," she said hastily. "He didn't hurt me, if that's what you mean, or even come close to hurting me. But, well, we were, um, kissing the other day, about a week and a half ago." The guys' row of lockers must have developed an uncanny fascination, the way she stared at them. "We were at my apartment. And I thought if he was so shy maybe I'd have to take the initiative, and I started...coming on to him, you know what I mean." She risked one quick glance, then decided to inspect Janine's computer, her hands squeezing each other tightly.

Peter nodded quickly, taking pity on her embarrassment before she felt a need to elaborate. "It's okay, I know."

She hesitated for a long time, swallowed hard, then took the plunge. "Well, I could tell he liked what I was doing," she said, avoiding his eyes. Her hands twisted in her lap. "Because he -- reacted. And for a few minutes, he let me.... Well, anyway, all of a sudden, he grabbed my hands and said we'd better not. And then he said something really strange. He said he didn't think it would be safe to mate." She crinkled her brow in patent disbelief, on slightly safer ground. The embarrassment receded but didn't entirely go away. "That's what he said, 'to mate'. I never heard anybody say that about making love before. He wanted to be with me, but...safe? He said he might lose control and hurt me." She lifted her eyes and gazed at Peter imploringly. "That made me nervous, so I asked him if he had ever done that with a woman before -- lost control and maybe been too violent. He said he hadn't. He said he'd never been with a woman before. He's a virgin. So I asked him why he thought he would hurt me if he'd never done anything violent before, and he said he thought the spirit in him would be too strong to hold back."

"Are you sure this guy isn't so naive and different because he's been in a mental institution for years?" Peter suggested gently. This story was weird. He couldn't imagine a guy like that -- yet there was a sense of familiarity about her words as if he'd heard of someone like this before. Could he have come upon a case study like this in a psychology classes back at Columbia?

She saw that he looked as sympathetic as he sounded, and relaxed slightly. "I thought about that, believe me." She hesitated. "I mean, I really like him and I'm comfortable with him, and it's been fun to see how quickly he learns things. We've spent whole evenings watching Nick at Nite so he could catch up on old sitcoms and things like that. He'd never even seen Star Wars. But anyway, when he started talking about the spirit in him and mating and stuff, I got scared, and I thought like you did. So I asked him if he had ever been diagnosed as mentally ill. He said no. He wouldn't lie to me. I don't think he realizes there's such a thing as lying, even though he has to know the concept exists. I thought maybe he wouldn't understand what I was saying, so I pushed and asked about his background -- and he started to cry. He said he should have known it wouldn't work and that he was sorry if he'd hurt me, and that he'd go away because he loved me and he didn't want me to suffer or to risk my life. He said that. 'Risk my life.' And he broke up with me and I haven't seen him since."

Peter had already figured out this was one weird dude she was talking about. He just couldn't figure out why he sounded so familiar. Even the name Jackie was familiar, but he couldn't quite make the connection. Some guy who acted like he had no concept of the latter half of the 20th Century. He wasn't a foreigner or Jackie would have mentioned it. Maybe he was a different kind of foreigner -- like Mork from Ork, or My Favorite Martian.

That was when an idea hit him, one that explained everything. "Jackie," he asked quietly, "is your boyfriend named Mel?"

She whipped around to stare at him, mouth dropping open. "You know him?" she breathed, tensing in her chair as if she meant to jump up and flee. "Is he a ghost?"

"No, he's not a ghost," Peter replied, hesitating to say more. "You mean Eddie's buddy, right?" he prodded, to confirm his suspicion.

Jackie's eyebrows lifted. "You know Mel and Eddie both?"

Peter grinned. "You didn't do your homework, Jackie. Eddie is Egon's cousin -- I'd better call him in on this. Egon!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs in the direction of the stairs causing Jackie to wince. "Well, it works," he explained to her more quietly before raising his voice once more. "Egon, get down here right away."

Mel was definitely not possessed -- but neither was he human. In his natural form, Melchazat was a huge, blue demon from the Netherworld who stood eight feet tall. Encountering Egon's rock star cousin, Eddie Plummer there during one of the guys' weirder cases, Mel had decided he owed his allegiance to Eddie and had returned with him to the human realm, where he had chosen to stay. ⁽¹⁾ Capable of shape-shifting and maintaining human form indefinitely, Mel had taken a job as a roadie for Eddie's band. Eddie had acquired an identity for him with papers and everything -- Peter had never wanted to enquire too closely about that -- and ever since then, Mel 'Smith' had been learning about humanity, trying to fit in. Peter vaguely Mel mentioning a 'Jackie' a few months ago, when the demon had spent Christmas with the Ghostbusters. ⁽²⁾ Eddie's father, Egon's Uncle Cyrus, hadn't been quite prepared to have a demon come to Ohio for the holidays. Knowing Uncle Cyrus, Peter doubted he ever would.

Jackie had come to realize there was something very different about her boyfriend and had hunted around for a solution. That she'd settled on the Ghostbusters wasn't coincidence at all. There was no one else for her to call except for the characters in the white coats who came around with strait jackets. The Ghostbusters didn't have the right to tell her the truth about Mel's real identity. That was his choice, if he wanted to make it. But something would have to be done. Egon would know where to find Eddie, and Eddie would put them in touch with Mel.

And any minute now, Jackie, who seemed to be a quick thinker, would realize they'd guessed Mel's identity on the strength of her possession story and would demand more information. Her brow had furrowed as she thought about it. She was stubborn and determined enough to decide to come here, and she wasn't likely to back off.

When Egon hurried down the stairs with a hastily changed and dried Ray and Winston hard on his heels, Jackie's mouth rounded into an 'O' of surprise at the sight of the physicist. "You do look like Eddie," she burst out. "I've seen you on TV before, but I never made the connection until now."

"How do you know Eddie?" On several occasions, Egon had encountered one of his cousin's groupies who had figured out they were related, and he had learned to be wary. Once, six teenagers screaming, "Eddie! Eddie!" had chased him for three blocks on Fifth Avenue, suspecting he was Plummer in disguise before the frantic physicist had managed to flag down a cab and escape. Now he took a wary step backward until she answered and relieved his mind.

"I work for Malcolm Wyatt, his manager. I'm his executive assistant," she explained. "That's how I met Mel. He came in with Eddie, and we started talking."

"She's Mel's girlfriend, Jackie McFarland," Peter introduced them. "Remember, Mel mentioned her when he was here for Christmas."

"I remember the name Jackie." Egon relaxed. "How do you do, Ms. McFarland? What brings you to Ghostbuster Central?"

"Mel!" cried Ray, eyes widening in astonished realization. "Jackie, you were talking about Mel, uh, Smith?" He fumbled for Mel's official last name. "We all know him. Gosh...."

Winston's brow crinkled as he put together the facts and probably guessed what Jackie had said to Peter when they were alone. He nodded once.

"Oh." Egon pondered that. "Hmm. I see." He stared down at Jackie, his glasses sliding obligingly down to offer him the best angle of vision. Pushing at them absently, Egon offered another, "Hmm."

Janine arrived back from lunch then, pausing when she saw everybody gathered around her desk. "Hey, guys. Peter, if you've messed with my computer, I'm going to sacrifice all your Playboys to the fire god."

"Word of honor, Janine, I never touched it. Besides, we've got a client." He nodded at Jackie, who managed a doubtful smile. "Jackie, this is Janine Melnitz, our secretary -- sorry, Janine, I meant 'executive assistant'. Janine honey, can you get Jackie a cup of coffee? We have to discuss an element of her case."

As a general rule, Janine didn't fetch coffee for the guys, but she could usually be persuaded to do it for her clients, especially if Peter asked her nicely. She paused long enough to stow her purse in a desk drawer and switch her Nikes for a pair of flats, then she grinned reassuringly at the young woman. "These clowns are a little rough around the edges, but they're decent guys, even Dr. Venkman, though it pains me to say it. I'll get you some coffee. You'd think they'd have the decency to offer it even when I'm not here. Men!" She flounced off.

"Conference, Egon," Peter said, bouncing up off the desk and taking him by the shoulder. "Jackie, would you mind waiting here with Janine for a few minutes? We need to talk."

"I knew there was something weird about Mel," she said, but she allowed Peter to seat her in his office, her mouth puckering with worry.

When Janine appeared with two steaming cups of coffee, she passed one to Jackie and plopped down beside her, prepared to stretch out her lunch break with a little girl talk. Waving the guys off with one hand, she turned to their client. "So what brings you down here? Got a ghost? At least they didn't introduce you to Slimer."

As Jackie echoed, "Slimer?" doubtfully, the guys withdrew hastily up to the second floor dining room for a conference. Peter plopped down opposite Egon. Ray and Winston took their usual chairs.

"The thing is, guys, we really don't have the right to tell her the truth about Mel," Peter said. "I think Mel needs to work it out for himself. She came because she thinks he's possessed. He told her he was afraid the spirit inside would make him hurt her if they made love." He gave Egon the gist of her conversation in a few quick words.

Winston frowned, pondering the situation. "She wouldn't have a clue he was a demon. Not the first thing I'd think if a date started acting weird."

"That isn't our secret to tell," Egon confirmed. "But she came to us in good faith. We should do something."

"Demon matchmakers, that's us," Peter replied with a grin. "She's a nice girl. I think most girls would have just given up on him by now."

"You like Mel, don't you, Peter?" Ray asked.

Peter hesitated before answering. "Mel's okay. Different as all get out, but fine if you like big, blue guys." He did like Mel, though they were too different to be real buddies. "Hey, I betcha he was afraid he'd lose control of his shapeshifting if he and Jackie made love. Talk about tough love."

"Really, Peter, that's hardly your concern." Egon sounded stern but the momentary glaze in his eyes told him he'd been unable to avoid picturing the scenario. Ray's cheeks reddened slightly at the thought.

"She told me he'd backed off. I bet that's why."

"Eddie did say that Mel nearly lost control of his shapeshifting once when he became very angry," Egon recollected. "It's possible strong emotion can weaken the ability. Fascinating."

"Not so fascinating for Jackie if she's having a little nookie and her boyfriend starts bursting out of his clothes like the Incredible Hulk."

Ray's eyes nearly popped from his head at that suggestion. "Gosh, yeah."

Peter chuckled. "So what do we do? I mean we can't tell her about Mel. Like Egon said, it's not our secret."

"We need to talk to Mel himself," Egon suggested.

Peter grinned. "Maybe we should take readings of him while he's with Jackie."

"Come on, Pete, we can't do that -- " Winston protested, frowning, although Egon looked predictably fascinated about a new subject for research.

"No, that'd be tacky," Peter defended his suggestion, but he feared it might be the only real solution. If Mel was afraid he'd revert in the height of passion, they needed to talk to him about it. Peter considered himself an expert in affairs of the heart, but this was waaaaay outside his area of expertise. The thought of discussing the birds and the bees with a demon didn't rank right up there on his list of fun things to do, though he'd bet good money the guys would delegate the task to him.

"Pete's right, we probably better talk to him," Winston said. "That girl down there cares about him. We can't give her a nice, neat solution like she hoped for. But we can try."

"Is Eddie up at Segue, Egon?" Peter asked, referring to the rock star's mid-Victorian mansion up the Hudson.

"Yes, I believe he's between tours. The band was doing some recording; I had lunch with him one day last week when he was in town. But I think he's at Segue now, and I believe Mel is probably there, too."

"So, can you wangle us an invitation up there?" Peter prodded hopefully. He'd always thought it was a kick to mingle with the famous, and anyway, he liked Eddie and his wife, singer Whitney Stone. Staying at a mansion that boasted servants, even a butler, was always a kick.

"I believe I can," Egon replied. "I'll telephone Eddie now."

"Mel isn't possessed," Peter told Jackie when the four of them trooped downstairs. "At least if he is, we don't know about it. So we're going to go and see him and take our equipment. Egon's calling to make arrangements now."

She eyed him narrowly. "There's more about him, I can tell. But you're not willing to let me know about it. If it's bad, I wish you'd tell me."

"Listen to them," Janine put in. "They know what they're talking about. I've met Mel and he's a decent guy, but the Ghostbusters better check with him first."

Ray edged up beside Peter. "Mel's really nice, Ms. McFarland. Honestly. But he is different. I think he should be the one to explain to you why that is, not us. It's not our story to tell. But we'll go up to Segue and see if there's anything we can do to help."

She hesitated, clutching her handbag too tightly. "I admit, I'd rather hear it from him. But if it's really bad, I want somebody to tell me. I...really do care about him. And it's not just because he's so different. It's because, well, because I feel so comfortable with him. And when we're talking, he just seems like the only one. But when he started talking about being afraid he'd hurt me, I got really scared. If he's been in a cult, there are ways to deprogram him. I don't think that's what you guys do, but maybe I could find someone who could. Just promise me someone will tell me."

"We'll talk to Mel about it and see what we can do," Winston promised. "One way or another, someone will tell you what's going on. I hope it will be Mel himself."

Peter knew Mel had been afraid to tell Jackie the truth -- he'd admitted as much at Christmas -- and he had considered it a reasonable fear. Most women wouldn't welcome the knowledge that they had been dating a shape-shifting demon. Jackie said she'd half believed Mel had been raised by wolves. She'd been speaking facetiously but, in a way, a wolf pack might have been better than growing up in the Netherworld. Come to think of it, did demons grow up, or did they spring into being fully formed? Mel had been in the service of a female demon who had probably been the Eddie's one and only Netherworld groupie before he had met Eddie and transferred his allegiance. If there were male and female demons, maybe there were baby demons, too. Peter decided he didn't want to think about it.

"I hope so, too," she said. "I just wish he would trust me."

"I think he trusts you, Jackie," Peter soothed. "It might be himself he doesn't trust. You'll understand better next time you see him."

*****

Visiting Segue in April was a treat. It had been a nasty, cold winter, and spring had come rather late. But it was here now and the thought of fresh air away from the bustle of the city appealed to all of them, especially Peter, who loved New York even when it was at its worst. The Ghostbusters had stayed at the estate once before, summoned to bust a troublesome ghost in the old mansion's attic and had instead helped it to reunite with an old love and both of them to disperse peacefully. Peter, who was a sucker for being waited on by servants, was full of anticipation until Egon reminded him that Eddie's 'servants' didn't hesitate to speak for themselves and wouldn't necessarily wait on Peter without putting him in his place. Remembering Eddie's butler and secretary, Peter's face fell. Egon was right. He usually was.

Ray couldn't help smiling as the others started to tease Peter. With Winston at the wheel and Ray in the 'shotgun' position beside him, he let Egon squash Venkman's pretensions. Egon did it better than anybody. Ray was just looking forward to the trip. He really liked Whitney, Eddie's wife; they were both into old science fiction and horror movies and had enjoyed some wonderful discussions in the past. And he loved Segue. Old houses appealed to him. Sure, they'd dealt with the ghost problem at Segue, but who was to say there weren't other ghosts, possible in a house that was 125 years old?

Winston pulled the antique hearse to a stop in front of the mid-Victorian mansion and the four men piled out. The weather had stopped cooperating with them as Ecto turned into the driveway, and banked clouds suggested rain in the not too distant future. Even as they stood stretching from the drive, distant thunder gave a sullen mutter of disapproval, like a catcall from the audience.

Peter cocked his head and pondered the hovering clouds. "Was that a value judgment?"

"If not, it was certainly a suggestion to hurry." Egon strode to the back of Ecto and opened the door, taking out his overnight bag. The others quickly followed his example and hurried up to the doorway that opened out of the four-story-high tower at the front of the red-brick house. Segue sat in a small park overlooking the Hudson. It had been built, Peter remembered, in 1865, right at the end of the Civil War.

The door opened at their ring, and the butler, Tommy Graves appeared. He had foregone livery and was wearing blue jeans and a purple tee shirt from Eddie's last tour with a line drawing of the three members of the band being pulled up into a spaceship by a mysterious beam of light. 'The Planetary Tour', it read in futuristic letters. "Ah. You're here." Two ghostly experiences had removed his need to put on a butler act for them. He peered past them at the darkening sky as if he recognized it from long experience. "I think you've brought another storm. Better come on in." He eyed them with mild disapproval, eyebrows arching. "No proton packs?"

"They're in the car," Ray explained. "We didn't think we'd need them, but we brought them just in case. If a ghost shows up, we can always get them. Only Eddie hasn't mentioned any ghosts."

"Egon brought his meter, though," Peter volunteered. "He never goes anywhere without it, not even to the bathroom."

Ray chuckled at the idea of Egon using the meter in the bathroom, to make sure it was safe from water elementals and other aquatic spirits before he ventured inside. Consciously playing to his audience, Egon took a reading of Tommy, who tried to seem spooky and succeeded in appearing amused. He'd come a long way since the guys had first known him.

"Well? Am I...haunted?" He put a hint of Peter Lorre into his voice, a habit when playing the formal butler. Tommy's sense of humor was wicked.

"Not unless you're possessed by Mr. Moto," Winston teased.

Tommy made a wry face and grabbed for their overnight bags just as thunder rumbled nearer at hand. "In," he said. "Eddie won't want you drenched -- bad for the carpet."

They crowded into the house just as the first drops of rain began to fall. Eddie arrived in a rush, the punctilious host, his blond hair spiky as usual. Seeing him was like viewing at a punk-rock Egon, except that here, in his sanctuary, Eddie had on blue jeans and a tee shirt that was devoid of logos or designs. He never merchandised himself. "Guys. Hi. Good to see you." With a nod at Tommy to shut the door, he clapped Egon companionably on the shoulder. The two of them side by side were always surprising, especially to those who had not made the connection before. The resemblance was far stronger when they were together, even if Eddie didn't wear glasses. "Maybe you can check out this weird weather we've been having," suggested the singer, gesturing at the door, where raindrops fat enough to explode against the glass clumped down like hail. "It's the most spooky thing going around here."

"Gee." Ray hung back to peer out the glass panels that framed the door just as a tremendous flash of lightning stabbed through the clouds. The thunder that echoed it two seconds later made the house shake as it creaked and slammed into a massive explosion of sound, complete with a whole battalion of rumbling aftershocks. The rain thinned to sheets of water, whipped by the wind.

Egon raised the meter immediately. It reacted, if faintly, the antennae stirring slightly, but not enough to indicate a ghost in the room.

"Ghost storms?" Peter asked uneasily, eyeing the meter with disfavor. "This is not good, is it, Egon?"

"Not good at all," Egon replied, ignoring the teasing note in Peter's voice. "The storm is simply a storm, of course, but it does possess a paranormal fingerprint, a faint shading of psi. It's as if it were coaxed here on purpose, to this very location."

"Paranormal fingerprints, Egon?" Peter objected. "Come on, that's too weird for me."

Eddie's jaw dropped. The singer had only been joking about the bad weather. "You mean we really do have haunted weather?"

"It's too soon to tell," Egon admitted dryly, although he wasn't worried. Ray didn't remember many haunted storms, but they didn't run for meters every time it thundered. Who was to say there weren't readings to be taken every time there was a storm?Maybe it went with that ozone feeling in the air. Wouldn't it be great! "It's already fading," Egon concluded reluctantly, lowering the meter, without putting it away. "We'll take readings while we're here and see if we can understand what's causing it. Have the storms done any damage?"

"No, none at all. It just seemed like there have been more of them in the past few weeks." Eddie shrugged it off, no longer interested, although Ray meant to theorize with Egon about it later. "Come on in and get settled in your rooms. You're in time for lunch. Whitney's looking forward to seeing you, and Mel's so excited I'm surprised he hasn't been camped at the foot of the driveway."

As if summoned by the words, Mel thundered down the stairs, screeching to a halt directly in front of Peter. He, too, wore jeans and a tee shirt, but his bore the Ghostbuster logo, probably donned in honor of the guests. Tall and muscular, Mel resembled a bouncer instead of a demon. Blond and fair, he was vaguely reminiscent of both Eddie and Egon in appearance, with a long, thin, bony face, but bigger. The large economy size, Ray thought fleetingly. Grabbing up the brown haired Ghostbuster, Mel smothered him in a massive embrace that left Peter wheezing for breath when he was deposited on the floor. Drawing surreptitious breaths, he settled his shirt and his hair.

Mel repeated the process for the other three Ghostbusters, nearly knocking the meter from Egon's hand. When he set Egon down, the physicist had to straighten his glasses.

"Good to see you," Mel exulted, beaming at them. "No ghosts here, though."

At those words, Peter turned a curious eye upon him but Eddie spoke easily. "There doesn't need to be, Mel. The guys are just here on a visit."

"No proton packs?" The demon sounded even more disappointed than Tommy Graves.

"They're in the car," explained Winston. "We don't like to leave home without 'em."

"I'll fetch them in once the rain stops," volunteered Tommy. "Course I could let Peter bring his own in -- "

Peter howled in protest.

"Raising a fuss, dear?" Nina Corey, Eddie's secretary appeared in the doorway to the main salon. "I should have expected that." She cocked her greying head at Peter and grinned. He grinned back. All

of them liked Nina, she was a neat lady. Ray said hi to her with delight.

Whitney followed her, favoring them all with smiles. Marriage and motherhood agreed with the blonde soprano. She was even more luminously beautiful than she had when Ray had first met her and nearly fallen in love with her. "Let's get you all settled in." She paused to greet each of them and squeeze their hands. Here in her own place, she was casual and domestic in a sweater patterned in emerald and royal blue over a full length denim skirt. The glamor that never left her was muted, but her eyes shone with contentment. Joining Eddie, she slid into the welcoming circle of his arm and beamed at her guests. "You're just in time for lunch."

She gestured them toward the stairs, leading the way up like a good hostess. Mel started to follow then caught himself. Instead he went over to the main front door, opened it, and peered out at the last drops of rain, a frown on his face.

They were given the same rooms they'd had the last time, classy-high ceilinged chambers that spoke of elegance from a past age. Peter loved the place. After he opened his suitcase and rooted around in it for a clean shirt, he wandered across the hall to Egon's room and plopped himself down on the physicist's bed while Spengler neatly disposed of his weekend clothes in drawers and closet. "You get the gold star for tidiness," he remarked. "We're only going to be here overnight. Why worry?"

"Really, Peter, I see no point in allowing my clothes to wrinkle in the suitcase. I assume you let yours lie?" He shook his head. "I don't have to assume. I know."

Peter grinned, making an imaginary chalk mark in the air to score a point for Egon. The physicist was always after him to tidy up at home. Why should here be any different? "So is this storm thing a big deal, Spengs?" he asked. Misdirection was always good, especially if it was a direction his friend would want to go.

Egon paused a moment, considering, then closed a drawer. "I haven't made a habit of testing weather, Peter. Perhaps there is a ghostly element in many storms. For it to focus here, on Segue, however, concerns me."

"But Eddie said it hasn't done any damage." The last thing Peter wanted was to run around in a thunderstorm, getting drenched while he competed with the lightning. There were other things that were much more fun, like sitting with his feet up while servants brought him cold drinks and munchies, and made his bed in the morning.

"No, but its presence here, in the same place as Mel, concerns me."

Peter stared. He hadn't really considered that, although Mel's tone had rung up a small flag. "You think it has to do with Mel being a demon?" he blurted. "Mel said there weren't any ghosts here, remember?"

"And that bothered you." Egon always noticed things like Peter's reaction. He was one of the most observant men Peter had ever met -- except when busy in the lab, and then he wouldn't have noticed a marching band practicing in the bedroom across the hall.

"Yeah, kinda." He shrugged. "I spent a lot of time with Mel at Christmas," he explained, struggling to put into words a concept that was still too vague to fully grasp. "It felt like a...distraction, you know, leading us away from the subject. First he said there weren't any ghosts, even though nobody had asked, and then he asked about our packs."

"You can't expect his conversation to be entirely 'normal'." Egon removed his shaving kit from his case and vanished momentarily into the attached bathroom to put it on the counter. When he reappeared, his expression was thoughtful. "Mel is still learning about the human race, Peter. He tries very hard, but he doesn't always track, as evidenced by Jackie's story. The two things you mentioned are...well, they appear simply casual conversation to me. At least as casual as Mel knows how to make it."

"Yeah, but he avoided our eyes when he asked about the packs," Peter said. "I got a kind of uneasy feeling. Trust me on this, Egon. I think he knows more about the storms than he's saying."

"You don't believe he is causing them?" Egon reached for the P.K.E. meter he had left on the bedside table and turned it on. It didn't react at all. Making an adjustment, he evoked a faint beeping.

"Ghost?" Peter asked.

"No, just Mel's presence. He isn't on this floor but he is in the house. I'll attempt to take his readings if another storm strikes."

"You think it could be like poltergeist energy?" Peter queried, intrigued. "You know, demon angst."

Egon's eyes focused on Peter with surprise and delight. "Taking his frustrations out on the weather, do you mean? What an intriguing theory. I've not encountered such a possibility before."

Peter beamed. He loved impressing Egon. "Yeah, I'm a brilliant guy." He leaned his elbow against the footboard of the bed. "We don't know everything there is to know about demons, though. Maybe it's an involuntary thing. It's not like he's been getting anywhere with Jackie, after all."

Egon stared at him. "Don't tell me. You're speaking of sexual frustration?"

"Maybe. I don't know. I'm just tossing out theories. I got the feeling Mel wasn't being up front with us. He was glad to see us, but maybe he was keeping secrets. The only other thing weird that we know about was that spooky storm of yours." He gestured at the window, where sunlight sparkled amid the budding trees and left a pattern on the grass. "Vanished without a trace. The weather's temperamental -- or somebody else is."

Egon turned off the meter but he didn't put it down. "I don't detect a correlation, but Mel didn't appear until the storm had nearly faded away. I still had the meter on and could pick up nothing unusual about him, no changed readings. I've taken many readings of Mel and there was nothing to suggest he was producing the storm."

"It was just a thought." Peter let the idea slide away, mildly disappointed. It might have been fun to study the possibilities.

"It's well to be warned of possible threat," Egon replied. "If there are other storms, I'll have to take more readings, including some of Mel directly. Shall we go down now?"

"Yeah. I'm gonna get Mel alone in awhile," Peter decided. "Maybe he needs to hear my patented 'birds and the bees' lecture."

"I shall avoid that like the plague," Egon retorted, his eyes twinkling. "Although why you should need to have patented such a lecture is beyond me."

"Come on, Spengs, I give it to the kids at that free clinic where I put in volunteer time."

"Thank goodness. I was afraid you gave it to your dates."

Peter exploded into laughter. "Egon, if she has to be told, she's too young for me." They went out side by side and ran into Ray in the hallway and Winston just emerging from his room. "Guess you guys don't want to miss a Segue special lunch," he said.

"It's not like you're avoiding it either, Pete," Winston kidded him as they started down the stairs.

Lunch was a strange meal. It wasn't that the food wasn't excellent or the company wasn't interesting. Peter enjoyed both Eddie and Whitney, and he got a real kick out of Nina Corey, Eddie's secretary and a woman who could hold her own against Peter with one hand tied behind her back. He liked his women feisty. Not that Nina was 'his' woman, or ever likely to be, but she was still great.

Tommy served the meal; he brought in the food, anyway, but when he'd distributed it, he took his place at the table. Proof he was one of the 'family' at Segue. He'd been a lot stiffer last time Peter was up here. Of course he'd strapped on a proton pack since then and helped against the demon Astarine. Mostly, it was Eddie, who had made him his friend, rather than just the butler.

Mel was the one who made the meal seem strange and it wasn't simply that one of the assembled company was a demon from the Netherworld. Mel had thrown himself into life on Earth with a childlike sense of wonder, so awed and excited that he sometimes almost made Ray seem grave and staid by comparison. But not today. He ate quietly, offering only a few words here and there to the conversation. Since he had no reason to know that the guys had talked to Jackie, he couldn't be afraid they were going to read him the riot act about his girlfriend or make any embarrassing comments. He'd been genuinely glad to see the Ghostbusters, too. That rib-crushing hug had proved it. But he'd instantly become secretive, and the mood had carried over.

Peter noticed Nina Corey watching the demon as he struggled to display proper human table manners. It wasn't a fancy meal, but there were salad forks, and Mel picked up the right one, casting a quick, sidelong glance at the grey-haired woman, who nodded approvingly. Beaming in delight at his right move, Mel seemed normal, but then he grew serious. All his attention returned to his food.

"...our next tour," Whitney was saying to Ray. "There are some great comic book stores there. I thought if I got a chance I could hunt for that Captain Steel issue Slimer ate last month for you."

"Wow, that would be great, Whitney. Are you sure it's not too much trouble?" Peter remembered Ray's reaction to the comic book eating. It was the first time Peter had needed to restrain Ray from blasting Slimer and not the other way around. He'd been heartbroken over the loss of the rare issue, and Slimer had hid for days, ducking out of sight whenever he saw Ray coming. Ray had forgiven him, of course. He always forgave Slimer. "He can't help it," was one of his favorite defenses. Peter wasn't nearly as inclined to be so forgiving, not when the spud had destroyed his favorite sweater.

"Uncle Cyrus phoned last week," Egon was telling his cousin. "He must have babbled for ten minutes about the last pictures Whitney sent him of Cy. Mom says he's mellowed out remarkably."

Peter was glad of that. He still didn't trust Egon's uncle and had never quite rid himself of the worry that Cyrus Spengler would show up one fine day and remind Egon of another promise he'd forgotten and try to drag him back to Spengler Labs. Peter and the older scientist simply didn't get along. It would be good news if the old bird was really chilling out.

"I wouldn't have thought it of him," Eddie replied, grinning widely. "But being a grandfather really did the trick. When we were in Cleveland on our last tour, he actually came to the concert. He still hates rock and roll, but he came anyway." Eddie beamed. "He hadn't warned us but he got a seat in the front row for himself and your mother. Aunt Katherine was having the time of her life. Dad was stiff, but I saw him nudging the girl sitting beside him and telling her that I was his son."

Peter couldn't help grinning. He knew Egon had phoned his mother and urged him to prod Cyrus Spengler into attending the concert. Until now, he hadn't known it had worked. The idea of stuffy old Cyrus sitting front row center at a rock concert boggled Peter's mind. He loved it.

Nina Corey was telling Winston about a quilt she had made for baby Cy. "And I know your mother would like to try the pattern for your brother's new baby. I'll give it to you to take with you."

"Hey, thanks, Nina. My mom loves quilting. She keeps hoping I'll take one of her quilts but the last thing I want to do is let Slimer near one. He mostly curls up on Peter's pillow, but the first time you have something you want him to keep away from, he goes right for it."

You called that one right, Peter thought wryly. He had a quilt his mom had made, but it was in storage and he only took it out once in awhile to air it out, with containment unit threats against the spud if he even looked at it.

"Would you like me to discuss it with him?" the middle-aged woman offered. "Slimer would listen to me. He and I had quite a nice little conversation the last time I came by. No, Mel, smaller bites, please. Remember you're eating in human form."

"Sorry, Nina." Mel hung his head, quickly swallowing. "It just tastes so good."

"I know it does, dear, but remember what happened when you ate all those pizzas, and how sick you felt. You can't go switching back and forth just to avoid heartburn. It's upsetting to the other diners."

"I bet," Peter threw in, grinning. He pictured Mel and Jackie in the Russian Tea Room, and the reaction of everyone to a sudden hulk-out. That might be fun.

It was such a conventional meal. Peter shook his head, thinking how much his own mom would have enjoyed Nina. He didn't join in the conversation very much. Instead, he watched Mel without seeming to watch him, switching over into psychologist mode. The demon was excited to have company, and he chatted and babbled in his usual style -- for a few minutes each time. Then he'd catch himself. It couldn't be that he was working on his table manners because Nina only had to remind him once. No, there was a darker gleam in his eyes. Usually his face was open and friendly, readable to anyone with a shred of sense. Like Ray, he wasn't given to secrets. But that brooding mien came and went, often in a flash. It never went very far, either, not even when he was excited.

He was talking to Ray about Captain Steel. "Got a good collection, too," he said. He'd read some of Ray's comics at the firehall at Christmas and become hooked. "Not as many as you but getting bigger. I like Captain Steel."

"Do you have the British Christmas Special?" Ray asked excitedly. "That's really hard to get."

"Saw it listed on the Internet," Mel replied. "Ordered it right away."

"Yes, we have discovered the World Wide Web," Eddie put in with a grin.

"Wow, you have a computer, Mel?" cried Ray.

Mel grinned, revealing a great deal of white teeth. "Eddie's computer. Lets me use it. Send lots of e-mail." Abruptly, his enthusiasm faded and, for a moment, he seemed very sad. Peter watched him while pretending to drink his lemonade. Maybe Mel had e-mailed Jackie and had now stopped. But Peter doubted the wary glance the demon cast over his shoulder had anything to do with his lost girlfriend down in the city. Peter knew what it felt like to break up with someone he cared about -- it had happened more than he wanted it to and it was never fun. That wasn't a wistful gleam in Mel's eyes. It was a decidedly uneasy one, as if he expected trouble.

Mel gulped down the rest of his lemonade.

"Drink slowly, dear," put in Nina in a conditioned response.

For a second, Mel's fingers tightened around the glass, and Peter, who was watching carefully, noticed for a second a flash of blue around his knuckles, although he didn't mutate. Was it as simple as that? Was Mel afraid he'd lose control of his shapeshifting in the grip of strong emotion? He'd claimed he could hold the human form indefinitely. Egon had even theorized that if he held it long enough it would take a conscious effort to revert to his natural form. With Mel's happy cooperation, he had run a lot of his tests at Christmas, electrodes and that colander headpiece gizmo he and Ray had dreamed up. Egon was happiest when he had someone to run tests on, and Peter had watched the physicist with a fond grin as he had played mad scientist. He'd concluded that the human form was a stable transformation. He'd even theorized that, given enough time, it might become permanent.

Maybe Mel didn't want it to become permanent. No matter how much he liked the human world, he really was a big, blue demon. It was his essential nature. From all his attempts to make his dad go straight, Peter was pretty sure a person's essential nature couldn't be changed. You could change the surface part, but you couldn't change what made you what you were. You could change behavior but all the pretty behavior in the world couldn't make a man any less a jerk if that's what he was inside. There were times when Peter wondered about himself. He'd have turned out much more like his surface persona if he hadn't met Egon and Ray in college. He'd have been just like his dad.

Egon, of course, had sternly put that worry to rest when Peter had worked up the courage to voice it. "Nonsense, Peter. The man we know was always there inside. You grew up with your father's example and, in the nature of sons, you wanted to emulate your father. So you took it up on the surface. But you couldn't take it up inside because that's not what you are. I may not trust your father, Peter, but I trust you with my life, my safety, and my very soul. Your father has a very flexible conscience, but yours has considerable ethics."

That particular conversation had taken place shortly after his father had unleashed the Hob on New York, and Peter had been warmly grateful for it. "Yeah, Egon, my conscience is six foot three with weird blond hair and glasses."

Egon had given him a stern frown belied by a twinkle in his blue eyes and wandered off to work on one of his endless scientific gadgets, leaving Peter to grin after him in happy relief. Okay, so he'd never really been comfortable with his father's lifestyle, but he'd believed in a lot of the surface parts. He had a pretty good handle on all that now, even if he'd never gotten over his love of adulation from the public.

So what was Mel's essential nature? Peter would have said it was warmhearted and kind, and overflowing with loyalty. His devotion to Eddie had never once wavered. He adored the people he considered his friends. Peter had known at Christmas that he'd fallen for Jackie in a big way. He'd been afraid to tell her what he was -- but she'd known who he was and loved that person. Could Mel revert in the heat of anger or passion? Was that what all this was about? Or was there more?

After dinner, Peter edged Mel out from the herd and guided him toward the terrace at the back of the house. "Come on, Mel, I haven't had a good look at the grounds. Why not give me the ten dollar tour?"

"Other guys come too?" Mel asked uneasily, hanging back as if he didn't want to encourage a tete-a-tete.

"Egon wants to take readings in the attic and make sure that ghost Eddie had before you came to live here is really gone," Peter explained. "He really gets off on playing with his meter. I keep trying to tell him it's not decent in public...."

Mel grinned doubtfully as if he knew Peter had tried to be funny but he didn't quite understand how. "Ray -- Ray come too?"

"I think Whitney has a new horror movie she taped to show him," Peter put in. "You'd think the kid had seen them all. He's dragged the rest of us down to watch them with him. Other night, it was one called The Raven, with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre -- and Jack Nicholson as a mere kid." That one had actually been fun. "Tommy would have loved it."

"Winston?" Aha. Mel was trying to avoid being alone with Peter. Something was going down here. Was he just embarrassed about Jackie?

"He's getting that quilt pattern. Come on, I just want to see the grounds. I don't get much of a chance to hang out on a rich person's estate. Indulge me."

"Well, okay." Mel turned into a tour guide, reciting history of vases and urns as they passed them and naming the artists who had painted the pictures on the walls as they headed for the back of the house. "...and that one's a Turner, and that's a Constable. Not a police guy, the artist's name."

"Ease up. I'm not into the museum gig," Peter restrained him. "Egon and Winston dig that stuff, not me. Egon says I'm a philistine."

"I thought that was a bunch of people in the Bible," Mel said doubtfully. "Nina had me read the Bible. She has a big, big reading list. Things she says I really need to know if I'm gonna stay here all my life. There's so much to learn." The wistful note rang through his words but he heard it and reined it in.

All his life? Hmm. Peter hadn't thought of that before. How long did demons live? Was Mel afraid of doing a Duncan MacLeod from that Highlander TV series and remaining young and ageless while Jackie went through normal human aging? If he could alter his shape, why couldn't he fake getting older along with her? Were demons immortal? Did they live for hundreds and millions of years? Peter had never considered that before. Some of the demons listed in Tobin's Spirit Guide had been around for millennia, or so the book claimed.

"So how long would that be?" Peter asked carefully. "Billions and billions of years?"

Mel shook his head so vehemently his blond mane flopped about, failing, of course, to recognize Peter's Carl Sagan impression. "Human form, human lifespan. They said -- " His voice broke off abruptly. "Human bodies wear out."

"But it's just an overlay, isn't it? The way you look?"

"Egon says it's molecular conversion," Mel corrected, poking himself in the chest. "Can change back, but this is real. Human form, only lasts as long as human life."

"You mean if you stay in this form, you give up on being immortal even if you're still a demon?" Peter hadn't expected that. Maybe that was why Mel didn't want to make a commitment to Jackie. He'd be giving up years and centuries and millennia he'd have had otherwise. But that wasn't what he'd told the secretary. He'd said he might lose control and hurt her. He'd frightened her pretty badly. Had that been on purpose, to make her back off? Most women would be uneasy if they thought their boyfriends could get violent.

"Can you change involuntarily?" Peter prompted as they reached the terrace and stopped there, leaning on the balustrade. The storm had vanished completely, and the sky was blue with puffy little cloud pillows here and there. One directly overhead cast them into temporary shadow, but the day was warm, the trees alive with buds. No trace of lingering storm clouds on the horizon. Good. Peter didn't want to be rained on, especially by a paranormal storm.

Off to the left the grounds spread out around a slight curve in the river, but to the right, the valley cut in close and the ground dropped away to the distant Hudson. Eyeing the drop uncomfortably, Peter turned his back on it and glanced expectantly at the demon.

"You mean if I don't want to?" Mel frowned, expecting a trick question. "Maybe."

"When?"

"Don't know. Haven't yet." Mel avoided his eyes. Gazing up at the tall, blond demon, Peter shook his head. When he'd taken human form, Mel had chosen to resemble Eddie a good deal, although he was bigger, sturdier, with slightly thicker features. In resembling Eddie, he resembled Egon, a linebacker Egon without the subtlety Peter had come to expect in the physicist's face. Mel hadn't learned subtlety yet; maybe he never would. But the fact that he tried for it in the narrowed eyes made Peter suspicious.

"Hey, would you burst out of your clothes like the Hulk?" Mel would understand the reference. He loved comic books.

The demon looked intrigued. "Did once when I scared a groupie," he admitted. "Guy was bugging Eddie and Whitney, and I scared him off. Should have seen him run."

Peter had to chuckle at the image, wondering why they hadn't gotten any calls about the incident or why there had been nothing in the newspapers. Maybe it had been in another part of the country, on tour. People in San Francisco and Fargo weren't likely to call the Ghostbusters, and some rock-concert attendees heightened the experience with the drug of choice and might have convinced themselves what they'd seen had been chemically induced.

Not that the team wasn't busy enough in the Tri-State area, busting all the ghosts that wandered through the walls between worlds that had been thinned when Gozer came through. Egon and Ray had once speculated about whether the area would return to normal and they'd find themselves out of a job, but had realized that as long as ghosts popped over on a regular basis, the walls would never completely strengthen on their own. It gave the team job security.

"I bet he ran," Peter agreed. "You ought to be a bodyguard for Eddie."

"I am," Mel said simply. "They call me a roadie, but I watch after Eddie, I'll always watch after Eddie." Sorrow ran across his face, there and gone so quickly Peter was almost sure he'd missed it. "Long as I can," he amended.

"Long as you can? What would stop you?"

"Nothing." The word was spoken in an undertone. Mel hung his head. "Long as I can, nobody will hurt Eddie."

"Is somebody trying to?" Okay, so they'd fended off the demon groupie who had plagued Eddie last year. That didn't mean there couldn't be a human one. Look at what had happened to John Lennon, after all. "Come on, Mel, is that it? Is somebody after Eddie?"

Mel shrugged extravagantly. "Don't know. Haven't seen anybody doing it. I'm always on watch. Sometimes, people in the audience have an aura -- Eddie can't see it, Whitney can't see it. Nobody but me can see it. Good or bad aura. But I can see it. When it's a bad aura, I'm always careful, watch that person because a person has to be really evil for a bad aura to show. Ordinary guys who can be a jerk sometimes don't have a major aura."

"I wonder if Egon could test that with a P.K.E. meter," Peter mused thoughtfully.

Mel shook his shaggy head. "No. Only demons -- like you call Class 7's -- can see it. And psychics. A psychic came backstage once." He gave a sheepish grin. "She saw me taking down the equipment with the other roadies, and afterwards she wanted to tell Eddie there was something really weird about me."

"No kidding? She could see your natural form?"

Mel nodded. "Not the actual shape, but the feeling of it. She said it was like a -- an overlay. She said it wasn't bad but it was different and she liked Eddie's music so much she wanted to make sure he wasn't in danger. After she talked to both of us, she said I was good for Eddie and Eddie was good for me, and I needed to stay with him...." His voice trailed off slowly, a distant glaze in his eyes.

"So then, what?" prompted Peter, jogging the demon's arm. "Come on, Mel, what's going on here? You can trust me."

"Nothing," Mel said with a great show of innocence. "She said someday I might have danger for Eddie so I should be careful. I won't have danger for Eddie. They can't make me."

"Who can't make you?" Peter had an uneasy feeling about this conversation. He'd come up here expecting only that Mel would 'hulk out' in times of strong emotion and that maybe he could coach him through it so he and Jackie could get together. Then they'd discovered paranormal thunderstorms and now Mel was implying a worse problem. Peter wasn't sure what it was, but it did not sound good.

"Anybody." Mel turned around to face the river, hands on the railing, shoulders hunched. "Nobody can make me hurt Eddie. Will go away first, before that happens."

"Mel, are you losing control of your shapeshifting?"

The demon turned to him in surprise. "No. Sometimes come close, but mostly okay."

"What about Jackie?"

Mel grabbed him by the shoulders, fingers digging tightly, emotion vividly imprinted on his face at the thought of danger to his erstwhile girlfriend. "Won't ever hurt Jackie either."

Peter wiggled helplessly in the tight grip. "Easy, let's not break Dr. Venkman. How about we extend the 'never hurt' rule to include me, too?"

Mel let go at once, flexing his fingers. "Sorry." Avoiding Peter's eyes he turned away. Peter hunched his shoulders cautiously to make sure nothing was broken or dislocated. Whirling back, Mel patted Peter's shoulders, tugging his shirt into place, and stroking softly as if to soothe the minor pain. He said sadly, "Can't be with Jackie."

"You never told her, did you?" Peter remembered their discussion at Christmas when he'd first learned Mel had a girlfriend. He backed away from Mel and leaned back against the balustrade. "Don't you trust her?"

The blond head bobbed. "More than anything, except Eddie. But if I tell her, I have to go away. Don't want to scare her."

Peter felt sorry for him. "Mel, listen. Jackie came to see us at our headquarters, to hire us. She told us her boyfriend was possessed. That's what she figured out from what you said. Don't you think it would be kinder to her to tell her the truth? If you lose her, what's different from now, except that you were honest with her? And I don't think you'll lose her."

Mel's eyes glittered too brightly. "Yes, I will, Peter," he said sadly. "I'll lose her. Forever."

"Jackie's smart and she's strong, Mel. She loves you. Don't you think she might help you find a way to make it work? If you're not losing control of your shapeshifting -- I mean, I got the feeling you were afraid you'd hulk out at a romantic moment and hurt her."

"Don't know, never tried," Mel said. "But better not." He heaved a sigh. "I couldn't be with her," he said gravely, sounding more mature and more unhappy than Peter had heard before. "It wouldn't be honest and it wouldn't be fair to her, not without telling her, and I can't."

"You do know about what happens between men and women when they're in love?" Maybe it was time to haul out the birds and the bees lecture after all.

"Mating? Seen it on TV. Sex, anyway. Eddie says love is better than just sex. He talked to me about it. I know the difference and I know how to do it." He blushed. "I, uh, never did, but I know what to do. I'm not really human, Peter. I just look that way. Maybe can't give Jackie a baby."

"Is that it?" Peter hadn't expected such a complication. "Who knows? Your body functions as a human body, after all. Maybe you could."

"Yeah. Rosemary's Baby," Mel said broodingly. "Saw that movie on cable."

Peter gave his arm a soothing pat. "You're hardly the devil, buddy. Anyway, not everybody has to have children. I think you owe Jackie the right to make that choice."

But Mel shook his head stubbornly. "Can't. It's safer this way, Peter. I can't explain. There's things about being what I am that have to be private."

Suddenly an icy breeze whipped Peter's hair, disarraying it wildly. He glanced up in surprise and saw that the cloud above them had spawned, and all the little clouds in the sky were dancing around it, coming closer and closer as if they'd decided to gang up on the hapless psychologist. Peter wished for a P.K.E. meter. Was another of those weird storms coming? Maybe they should head for shelter.

The demon looked up, too, his eyes widening. "No," he muttered under his breath, his hands clenching into fists. "I won't. I won't. I won't. Get out of here, Peter. Hurry!"

Before Peter's stunned eyes, the cloud swooped downward in a funnel like a tornado and encircled him in a fierce, driving gale, pounding him with raindrops that stabbed like bee stings. There wasn't time to 'hurry' before he was trapped in swirling darkness. "Mel!" he hollered frantically, struggling to fight his way out of the whirlwind, but it lifted him right up off his feet, over the railing and suspended him for a moment over the drop to the Hudson far below. Peter let out an inarticulate bellow of terror and averted his eyes, throwing up an arm to shield his face.

The cloud thickened around him and, through it, he could hear Mel shouting his name, and crying out, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I can't! I'm sorry, Peter!" Buried in rain and storm, he couldn't find his voice to do more than yell inarticulately in response.

Then, with a roar of a thousand express trains, the miniature tornado carried Peter away, spinning him so rapidly he had to fight against vertigo, helpless against the storm that entrapped him as consciousness faded away. The clouds carried him, compressing into a tighter and tighter ball until they swooped down, plunged into the river, and vanished from sight. He didn't even feel the splash.

"Did you hear yelling?" Trailed by Whitney, Ray emerged from the rec room where they had been watching a video tape of a great movie called The Creature from the Abyss. He found Egon in the corridor before him, his P.K.E. meter in hand, a puzzled and alarmed expression on his face, his glasses perched on the very tip of his nose. As Ray stared, the meter went into overload, squealing with sound that shot up the register until the sound hurt. Outside, something roared like a train and distant yelling appeared to protest it. Winston, bursting into the room, clapped his hands over his ears, and Ray did the same. Whitney cried out, "Cy!" and raced for the stairs to protect her small son. As Egon hastily adjusted the frantically reacting detection device, Eddie and Tommy Graves arrived in the entry-hall at a dead run. Egon raised a startled hand and pushed his glasses into place a second before they would have fallen off completely.

"What's going on?" cried Eddie, turning wildly, staring. "Where's Whitney?"

Ray lifted his hands from ears that still rang. "She went to make sure Cy was okay. She'll be right back. Egon, what the heck was that?"

"It was the opening of a trans-dimensional gate, Ray." Egon frowned, taking a hasty inventory of their company with his eyes. "Where's Peter?"

"Where's Mel?" Tommy asked at the same moment.

"They went off together. If anything went wrong, Mel would protect Peter," Ray insisted. "He'd never hurt any of us, you know that." He hoped he didn't sound as uneasy as he felt. Raising his voice, he bellowed, "Peter!" at the top of his lungs.

No answer.

"I think they went out on the terrace after lunch." Eddie pointed a long finger in that direction just as a thoroughly disheveled Mel staggered into the house, his hair a fierce tangle that made it spikier than Eddie's, his clothing wringing wet as if he'd walked through a carwash. His face was twisted into an expression of abject misery and huge, fat tears leaked from his eyes and trailed down his cheeks. Avoiding their eyes, he came up to Eddie and stopped before him, hanging his head.

Egon launched himself at the demon and grabbed him by the shirt front. "Where's Peter?" Shaking the demon as if he weighed less than Nina Corey, he repeated the question. The meter he'd tucked under his arm dropped to the floor, the beeping subsiding, the lights at the tips of the antennae fading.

Pouncing on it, Ray pointed it toward the terrace. For an instant, the readings strengthened then they faded. While the meters were largely directional, inclined to react more strongly when aimed at a psi phenomenon, this one was dying away fast. The gateway Egon mentioned was closed and the meter could only pick up residuals from the event, not an open passageway. That was bad.

"Where is he?" Egon insisted fiercely. "Where is Peter?" His voice was tight and angry, and the fact that it was a demon he was shaking didn't make him back down one inch.

Hearing footsteps on the stairs, Ray saw Whitney, holding a squirming toddler in her arms, with Nina Corey at her side, the women hesitating on the landing. "Take Cy back upstairs, love," Eddie urged. "I don't know what's wrong, but let's keep him out of it. Nina, go with her. I'll let you know as soon as I find out what happened."

Whitney agreed only to protect her son. "Somebody come up and tell me what's going on when you find out," she said. Accustomed by now to paranormal crises, she tightened her grip around the child and retreated up the stairs. Indomitable as always, Nina went with her. If not for the baby, both women wouldn't have budged an inch, Ray could tell.

When she had vanished, Eddie turned back to his roadie. "Answer him, Mel." An edge of unfamiliar hardness crept into his mellow baritone.

"I'm sorry," Mel wailed. "I can't. I can't. I won't. I'm sorry." He uncurled Egon's fingers from the fabric of his shirt with careful deliberation so as not to hurt them. "The storm took him," he said. "I couldn't stop it. Too strong for me. I tried."

Egon abandoned Mel without a backward glance and, trailed hotly by Ray and Winston, raced for the terrace, snatching the meter from Ray's hand as he ran. They arrived to find a bare stretch of flagstones soaking wet from rain though the sky was mostly blue, a pair of lawn chairs upended, one of them hanging half over the balustrade. Peter wasn't on the terrace. There was no evidence that he had ever been there.

Egon made hasty adjustments on the P.K.E. meter and held it up to take additional readings. It blipped faintly once, and then stopped. The antennae went down.

"What's that, homeboy?" Automatically, Winston plucked the red and white striped chair from the railing and set it right side up. He trailed a toe through a small puddle on the flagstones, then lifted his face. Ray stared up, too. A few cumulus clouds sat like giant cotton balls against the serene blue of the sky. "And where did all this water come from?"

Eddie walked up to his cousin and touched his arm to get his attention. "Another paranormal storm?"

"A miniature one, it seems." Egon reset the meter and pointed it in all directions. The readings were fainter than before, but then residuals would be. "A gateway opened right here, precisely where I'm standing. It was temporary, transitory, created for the moment and I believe it connected to the Netherworld. There isn't usually a gate here. We've taken readings before and never detected one."

"You mean somebody opened one here on purpose?" Ray went to the balustrade and gripped it as he leaned over to peer down the jagged slope to the distant river, his eyes raking the terrain for traces of a fall. "Peter!" he hollered, although he was pretty sure the different reading Egon had taken had been for Venkman's biorhythms. The slope was steep but it was covered with rocks and underbrush. If Peter had been knocked over the edge by the opening of the gateway, he wouldn't have fallen all the way down, would he? Trees and brush would have stopped him much closer to the top, and there would be a trail of broken branches and overturned rocks to mark his progress. There were none.

"I don't believe he fell, Raymond."

Whirling, Ray met Egon's gaze and saw the unhappy confirmation of his own suspicions. "You think he got pulled through the gate, don't you?"

"The readings support that." Egon lifted his eyes to the demon. "Tell me what happened, Mel." It was a command.

Mel hung his head, so pathetic that Eddie clapped him consolingly on the shoulder. "It was the storm," he said. "There was a little cloud over us when we came outside." He gestured wildly up at the sky. "Peter asked questions. Then the cloud got bigger and turned into a tornado. Grabbed Peter and picked him up. He yelled but I couldn't stop it. Took him away, down there." He stabbed a long, thick finger toward the river.

All five humans stared down at the distant water. Ray knew it couldn't have been a natural tornado. They didn't just suddenly materialize out of a clear sky, grab one person, and depart. It was special, created to open the gate and pull Peter through. But why Peter? Why not Mel himself? Staring worriedly down at the river, Ray couldn't fight off his worry. If he were simply down there in the water, they'd be able to detect him with the meter. So he had to have been taken through the gate to the Netherworld. They didn't even know where in the Netherworld he had been taken. How could they ever hope to get him back?

"Do you know why?" Egon persisted. His voice was level, even calm, but Ray knew him too well not to realize how upset he was. He was trying not to alarm Mel so he could get answers, but he was also holding himself stiff and unyielding so he could find the strength to deal with the crisis. Peter might be...might be dead already, but if he wasn't, Egon would stop at nothing to get him back.

The demon sighed abjectly, unable to meet their accusing eyes. "Too many questions," he mumbled. "Asked too much."

"Too much for whom?" Egon didn't back down. He wouldn't. But the hand that gripped the handle of the meter was white-knuckled. Noticing, Winston edged a step closer and dropped a hand on Egon's shoulder. "For you?" Egon persisted. "Peter is your friend. Did you do this to him?"

"No. Wouldn't hurt Peter." Mel sighed. "Can't tell. Can't ever tell. Not now. Not ever."

"If you did tell," Egon began carefully, his eyes lost in thought, "would Peter suffer from it?"

"Hostage," Mel admitted, then gnawed at his bottom lip. He would have taken the word back if he could. Nervously, he shot a glance at the sky, relaxing only slightly when he saw that nothing had changed there.

Egon slid out from under Winston's reassuring grip and grasped Mel's wrist. "You have to explain. A hostage for what, Melchazat? You must answer my question."

Suddenly Ray snapped his fingers in understanding. By using Mel's full name, Egon could compel him to answer honestly. To know a demon's full and proper name gave the one who used it a form of power over him. Egon could not command Mel's actions, not without a pentagram to confine him or any of the other traditional accouterments of demon-summoning. But he could force answers, assuming Mel would answer at all.

"For me." Mel wouldn't meet anyone's eyes. His shoulders quivered and a harsh sob tore at his throat. "Want to stay. Want to be human. Want to be with Jackie. Can't. Can't. Can't."

Eddie slung a comforting arm around the demon's shoulders. "Mel? Listen to me. Has someone from where you came from been getting after you? Threatening you? Threatening my family?"

"Did you break a rule by coming here?" gasped Ray, picking up on the possibility. "Are the other demons out to bring you back? Is that what all this is about?"

The shaggy head wiggled up and down in a feeble attempt at a nod. His hand curled into fists and he hunched his shoulders to shrug off Eddie's comforting arm. "Said they'd hurt somebody I loved," Mel whispered, unable to face them. Abruptly, he gripped the balustrade and bent over it, his fingers tightening and crumbling the stone beneath his grip. "Thought they'd go away if I stopped dating Jackie, and they did. But came back. Storms. Checking up on me. Won't let me be human."

"And you let them take Peter." Egon's words were flat and measured but they ripped through Ray's heart as he heard the pain most of the others wouldn't catch. "You had no right...." He broke off abruptly as his voice caught. "To the Netherworld? Where, exactly? Tell me."

Ray reached out and grasped Egon's wrist, seeking comfort as much as offering it, halting him before he could demand answers. "Mel?" He made his voice as gentle as he could. "Peter's not dead, is he?"

The demon hesitated. The hands that bent the railing were bright blue. "No," he said, then he added with the force of a bomb tossed in their midst, "Not yet."

Peter Venkman roused slowly, conscious at first of nothing but discomfort. He was soaking wet, chilled and shivering, and no matter how much he tried to huddle up into a ball for warmth, it didn't help. A nasty, icy wind whistled through gaps in the stone around him, ruffling his saturated clothing and teasing out goose bumps on his clammy skin.

He didn't know where he was and, at first, he was too miserable to care. Drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms around them, he simply lay on his side, the uncontrollable shivering clicking his teeth together like castanets. He ached everywhere, not from any specific injuries but as if his entire body was a black and blue block of ice.

Only gradually did real awareness come back, enough of it to make him realize just how nasty was his situation. One eyelid lifted cautiously, doing sentry duty, trying to perceive where he was and why he felt so wretched. A vista of stone bars growing up out of a rocky floor and rising to join a stone ceiling to form a natural prison greeted his wary eye, and he closed it immediately in denial. But the shuddering cold didn't abate and, the second time, he opened both eyes and squinted at the barricade that sealed him into the rocky cell.

That was when he remembered the weird tornado and the way it had swirled him up, encircled him, and plunged him down into the heart of the Hudson River. This was no underwater cavern, though. They didn't usually come equipped as jails. Neither would an underwater cave explain the tang of sulphur in the air every time he drew a cautious breath.

"Somehow, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore." Peter's teeth chattered so hard he could scarcely speak, but the hollow, echoing ring of his voice against the stone stirred him and compelled him to sit up, leaving a puddle of rank river water in the small hollow beneath him. Groaning, he tried to stand, only to duck before his head could come into sharp contact with the low ceiling.

Stooped over to avoid poking any new holes in his cranium, he sat down in a dry spot and pulled his shirttail out of his jeans, wringing it out. Water splattered and glistened against the stone.

He didn't seem to be injured. Arms and legs worked, and the general ache that made everything throb was pervasive but not serious, probably brought on by the cold. He was all in one piece and he had his mind. That meant he had to plan. Catch him sitting here waiting for whoever had brought him here to come back? No way. Besides, if he sat here long enough, he'd turn into a block of ice.

The stone bars mocked him. They were too solid to break; even when he kicked them, he only stubbed his toe and spent a minute or two hopping around comically on one foot until the top of his head brushed the low ceiling and he called himself to order. He put wary weight on his foot. Not broken, just sore, and already easing. But there was no way to escape the cell, not unless he went on a crash diet and shrank down to three inches wide. Not an option.

Okay, this was bad. If he didn't get out of these wet things, he'd probably come down with galloping pneumonia in the next ten minutes, but he was a prisoner in a cell without a door, and the last thing he wanted to do was strip when he was already helpless. Crawling up to the bars, he suddenly remembered the time Egon had been imprisoned in Tolay's keep in the Netherworld. This place resembled the cell where they had found the physicist when they'd crossed over to rescue him. Only, from where he was positioned, he couldn't see any other cells, nor could he hear the voices of other prisoners. The light that enabled him to see came from a couple of dancing flambeaux set in metal holders in the corridor outside, on either side of the bars and from others that lined the corridor curving away beyond his angle of vision. The corners of Peter's prison were dark and shadowy, but there was enough flickering light to be sure he was alone.

Alone....

Closing his eyes, Peter concentrated on listening as hard as he could, but he heard nothing to suggest other people, only the wind whistling through narrow slits in the cell and outside in the corridor, making the torch flames dance wildly. The shadows almost felt alive, but that was a natural phenomenon, not an indication of the presence of ghosts.

Okay, if he was alone, that gave him a few minutes. Quickly, Peter stripped to the skin, squeezed the water out of his clothes, and put them back on. No one interrupted, no one came to watch, and he felt marginally better now that water had stopped trickling down his back. But his skin was icy and his clothing hung on him like an wintry shroud. He had to get warm.

Pressing up as tight against the bars as he could, he stretched an arm through and grabbed for the nearest torch. His fingers barely brushed the handle. Not good enough. Try harder, Peter. He flattened himself against the stone, arching his shoulder so hard he came close to dislocating it. There! He had it! Gingerly, he worked the handle free of the holder grid with his fingertips, holding his breath for fear he'd drop it out of reach. Then, with a sigh of relief, he pulled the torch into the cell, holding it aloft to find anything to make a fire.

There was a tangle of cloth in the corner. It wouldn't burn long, but the rude bed beside it had a wooden frame. Yanking away the filthy pallet to use for sleeping when he got desperate, he smashed the frame into as small pieces as he could manage. Stacking it neatly to build a fire, he grabbed for the rags to use as kindling.

The bundle tumbled toward him, spilling out a motley collection of sticks. No, not sticks. A round object bounced against the toes of his shoes and he reached for automatically it only to jerk his hand back as if stung with a horrified, "Yaaaa!" as he recognized it for what it was, a human skull. The bundle of cloth contained a long-abandoned human body, dead so long the flesh had gone from the bones.

Automatically, Peter retreated to the other side of the cell, pressed up against the stone wall. Then he forced himself to move back. Just because this poor schmuck had died here didn't mean Peter was going to. This character hadn't been a Ghostbuster. He didn't have three buddies who knew how to get to the Netherworld and who would move heaven and earth to come to his rescue. He wouldn't die here all alone. He'd be rescued, and probably pretty quick, too. Course the guys would have to trek back to the City to get the gizmo Ray had designed to rescue Egon, but that only meant Peter had to take care of himself till then.

Shivering, he returned to the dead man, and made himself kneel beside the pathetic bundle. "Guess you don't need your clothes anymore, bunky," he said in an undertone. "And I have to say they're not my style, but if I don't get warm, I'm gonna join you, and I've gotta think since we have the same enemies, we're probably on the same side. You're not gonna grudge them to me, are you?"

The skull chose not to speak. Well, that was good. Peter hadn't really wanted an answer. With shaky fingers, he separated out the bones from the rotted fabric, tearing the cloth into long strips and poking them in among the stacked wood of his fire. When he had finished, he arranged the bones neatly in a pile in its corner and set the skull on top of them, then he held the torch up to the wood. The dusty fabric caught at once and flared up so brightly he had to jump back, but it proved enough to ignite the broken slats. After a few minutes, the fire had well and truly caught and heat began to permeate the icy damp of the cell.

Peter slid out of his shirt and held it up over the fire, hoping the heat would dry it out enough to make him comfortable. Warmed by the dancing blaze, he sat as close to it as he could, watching his jeans start to steam. The fire wouldn't last indefinitely. He had to be as dry as possible before it burned itself out. Once he removed the threat of freezing to death or contacting a cold-induced illness, he could think past his comfort to his eventual escape or rescue.

Then would be time enough to try to figure out what had happened and who had brought him here. It had to do with those weird storms -- and Mel knew about them. He hadn't wanted to admit it, but he knew. He'd sounded pretty upset when he was yelling, "I won't," at the clouds. What was it he wouldn't do? Go along with what the storms wanted? Well, he'd blown that one in a big way. Peter was trapped in a nasty, cold, smelly place that felt like the Netherworld, and Mel had done nothing to prevent it. Maybe he couldn't, but he'd known something was about to happen. He'd been cagey from the moment they arrived. An ugly shadow hung over him, and he knew what it was, even if he hadn't told anybody. Maybe he couldn't tell anybody, but that didn't sound right.

When he'd left the Netherworld behind, Mel had sworn allegiance to Eddie. What if he'd broken some weird demon rules by doing so, rules that might have rebounded on him? Back when the guys and Eddie had encountered him, Melchazat had been in the service of the demon Astarine, who had been Eddie's most dangerous groupie. Planning to force the singer into consenting to come with her to her Keep and become her own pet singer, she had ordered her servants to obey Eddie when he arrived, not realizing Eddie might find that a means of contravening her plans of enslaving him. He hadn't come as her reluctant guest but with the Ghostbusters in an attempt to rescue his kidnapped baby son. Unable to find Cy in the Netherworld, he had still taken the time and trouble to be kind to Mel, who had been so charmed by such unnatural (for demons) behavior that he had switched masters on the spot. Eddie didn't consider himself Mel's master, but Mel still did even if he'd stopped saying it out loud.

Had Mel's change of masters brought trouble down on Mel, Eddie, and anybody connected with him? Something had definitely brought major trouble down on Peter, even if he had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He felt the material of his shirt. Still damp. Huddling closer to the fire, Peter let the heat soak into his pores, trying to ignore the icy drafts that teased at his exposed back.

"I don't know where you are, guys, but hurry up," he said under his breath to his absent friends. "Little Petey Venkman doesn't like this."

It had been Winston who had shepherded the group into the house, guiding them to the blue salon, where he pushed Egon and Ray into a pair of sapphire brocade wing chairs side by side, and gestured Eddie and Tommy to the wide, overstuffed sofa. Mel chose not to sit, standing uneasily near the door, his face twisted with massive guilt. Noticing the distressed faces of his teammates and Eddie's brooding regret, Zeddemore realized he'd have to take charge. Let Egon keep taking his readings and trying to make sense of them. They'd need those readings later, when they had a plan to retrieve Peter. Because they were going to retrieve him and that was the bottom line!

Whitney appeared in the doorway alone; she must have left Cy with Nina. Noticing her, Tommy got up and slipped out of the room in the direction of the stairs to help stand guard over his boss's son. "Coffee?" Whitney offered as if she knew she were throwing them a palliative. When there was nothing else to do in a crisis, she had fallen back on good manners.

"Sounds fine, love." Eddie's voice was dispirited. "Thank you." Whitney dropped a quick kiss on the crown of his head, and retreated.

Winston drew a deep, steadying breath. "Okay, listen up, guys. Mel, we need answers. Where would they take Peter? Someplace like the Netherworld? Oh, man...."

Mel nodded, fumbling for words that wouldn't come. He plopped down gracelessly on the piano bench with such force Winston half expected it to shatter from the impact. "I...think so." He bowed his head over his clasped hands. The blue of his natural form had faded, but his knuckles were white with the tightness of his grip. "I -- can't talk about it. When I try, nothing comes out. But I think I can...answer questions. I'll try." He drew in a shuddering sigh that made his whole frame quiver and leaned back inadvertently to a jangle of piano keys before he straightened up hastily.

"Back to Astarine's keep?" Eddie rose and started to pace the room in a long-legged, impatient stride, his face taut with concentration. "Where he came from in the first place? But why go there? She's gone, you guys trapped her. She couldn't have gotten free and wanted him back, not when you've got her locked up in the containment unit. So who's doing it? And why?"

Egon bounced up to his feet, even his hair crackling with suppressed energy. "Mel was not her only servant." He gestured with his meter in the general direction of the terrace. "There must have been other rock demons under her control. We don't really know how the chain of command works or what rules they have to follow. It's entirely possible another demon inherited them and feels he must have Mel back, too, as part of her retinue. Is that it, Mel?"

The big demon glanced up for an instant, his eyes huge and glistening with tears. "Yes." He struggled to explain more but the words just wouldn't come. Then he burst out in a desperate babble, "Don't want to go. Want to stay here. They can't hurt the people here. Against the rules, because Eddie is my master now, not Astarine. People in this house are Eddie's 'retinue'. Safe."

"But we're not," Winston exclaimed, snapping his fingers in realization. "Because we're not technically more than guests. We're friends of Eddie's but not part of the 'retinue', is that it, Mel?"

Mel nodded jerkily, avoiding his eyes.

"What about other people?" Eddie put in, stilling his pacing when he fetched up in front of Mel. Taking the demon's arm to get his attention he persisted, "Jackson? Does he count too?" Jackson MacKensie was the drummer in Eddie's band and, while he was a frequent guest at Segue and Eddie's closest friend, he didn't live there. He had an apartment in Manhattan and another in his home town of Chicago, if Winston could remember right. The Ghostbusters had never spent much time with Jackson; he hadn't usually been around during a crisis. They'd met him and Winston liked him, but had never really had a conversation with him about anything but music. "He'd be a part of the retinue, wouldn't he?"

Mel frowned. "Don't know. Not here all the time. Maybe, maybe not."

"I should give him a call, let him know he could be in trouble," Eddie fussed. "And I'm going to send the cook home. I don't think she'd be in danger, but more likely she would be if she were here."

Ray jumped up excitedly as if he'd been adding sums in his head and coming up with lots of answers. "Is that why you asked if we had our proton packs with us, Mel? You thought we'd need them because we wouldn't be on the protected list?"

"Didn't know." Mel's shoulders lifted in a massive shrug. "Thought I'd have a warning first. Proton packs would help. Better to be safe."

"Is that an official rule? Do they have to warn you?" Egon got up, too, activated meter in his hand, and began to pace up and down the room, pointing it in different directions every few moments.

Whitney appeared in the doorway, pushing a cart before her, complete with a pot of coffee and a number of cups. She'd evidently heard at least part of the conversation and her eyes were huge with wonder. "Demons have rules?"

"Oh, yes, definitely," Egon told her. He stopped his restless prowling near the windows that looked out over the river, but faced the room instead. "A contract with a demon will adhere completely to the exact letter of the law, but they'd try to make it so obscure the contractee won't realize what he's committing to. One must be extremely careful about deals with demons. If Eddie's 'retinue' is safe, that would probably include only those who actually live in this house, Eddie, Whitney, Cy, and by extension, Tommy and Nina, possibly the cook. Guests to the house would not be held to be anything but temporary adjuncts and would be fair game. Jackson might be protected, as a member of the band, but there would be no guarantee. Mel, you assumed you'd have warning, but you didn't."

"Did," Mel said sadly. "The storm. Storms every time company came, cook and maids, Malcolm last week. Figured cook wasn't safe. Storm today when the Ghostbusters came, too."

"He's right," cried Whitney in astonishment, a coffee cup jerking in her hands. "I didn't make that connection until now. It was always storming when someone arrived and then it would clear up. You mean those were always threats? Did you know it, Mel?"

Melchazat stood up and paced over to the window, gazing out at the sunny afternoon. "Always knew it. But nobody disappeared. Thought I had more time. I didn't want to go back. Wanted to stay here. Love it here. Love Earth. And all my friends." He sounded as if he were crying. "Didn't know they'd take Peter. I tried to stop it but I couldn't get them to see I belong here. I'm sorry." He whirled around, grabbed Egon, who was nearest, in a fierce hug, squeezing him so hard the physicist gasped for air. "I'm sorry." Releasing Egon, he spun back to the window again while Egon caught his breath, adjusting his clothing and hair.

"Aw." Ray darted over and patted Mel sympathetically on the back. "I know you didn't mean for Peter to be taken, Mel. Will you help us get him back?"

Mel was silent so long that Egon's face hardened. His worry for Peter had never diminished, he'd simply shunted it aside to allow himself to function at peak efficiency but, at Mel's refusal to speak, it crowded back into his eyes. Alarm sprang into Ray's face and he grabbed Mel by the arm.

"You won't help us? Peter's your friend, Mel. Remember how good to you he was at Christmas? How can you refuse to help us rescue him?"

Mel faced the room, and it dawned on Winston that, in spite of his bulk, he resembled a trapped animal before a hunter's gun. "Not won't. Can't." He scooped up Ray's hands and squeezed them. "Not allowed to. Egon said there are rules, and he's right. I have to follow them. Just didn't know Peter would pay my debt."

"Mel, listen." Winston edged up and jogged his arm. "Will it stop with Peter?"

Egon rounded on him, his face taut with strain. "You can't seriously mean to let them keep Peter to appease them?"

"Get serious, homeboy, no way," Winston defended himself, knowing they were all under a strain or Egon would have said no such thing. "I just want to know if we should be having this conversation with proton packs on and the atomic destabilizer right at hand. If they plan to keep on snatching people who are 'fair game', I want to be armed and be ready." He dropped a hand on Egon's shoulder and gave him a comforting squeeze. "We're gonna get Peter back. You know we are. We got you back when Tolay had you, and we'll do the same for Pete. If we could find you in the Netherworld without any clues to what part you were in, then we can find him, too."

Mel spoke up. "They won't do anything for now. They'll wait to see what I do about it. If I haven't come home by tomorrow at this time, they'll do something else."

"Grab another person? Destroy Segue? What?" Egon persisted.

"Destroy Segue? Eddie, I have to take Cy away from here," Whitney cried, stricken. The color left her face.

"Of course you do, love. If Cy's part of my retinue, he's safe from them. Mel? Is that right?"

Mel nodded. He began to count off on his fingers. "You, Whitney, Cy, Nina, Tommy. Sure of that. Safe from them. They won't take you to the Netherworld."

Well, that was lucky, Winston thought. Without realizing he had done it, Mel had just confirmed Peter's location. Of course the Netherworld was the size of the known universe. If he wasn't at Astarine's keep, they would have no way to find him easily. But then he probably would be, wouldn't he?

"And if they hurt any of us by mistake?" Eddie persisted grimly.

"Won't. Because then I'd get to stay. They'll be careful with you."

"Why do they want you back so much, Mel?" Ray asked sympathetically. "Did you break a rule by coming here?"

Mel pondered that, scratching his hair. It was drying after the mini-rainstorm, but it still stuck up in all directions, like Eddie's habitual 'do' but less organized. "Bent one, maybe. Astarine said for us to serve Eddie. So I did. Eddie was good to me, and Astarine never was. I didn't know what that felt like until Eddie came. But she didn't mean for me to serve Eddie instead of her. She didn't really say so, that's why I could stay here."

"Then what changed?" Egon persisted. Winston could see his mental clock ticking, counting down the minutes since Peter had vanished, the minutes he'd been in jeopardy. Spengler needed complete information before he acted, but it was hard to pull it out of Mel, who might even have a geis upon him, a compulsion not to reveal the truth about this one subject. It seemed that questions could evoke answers, but he couldn't simply volunteer information.

"Borthardian." The name escaped from Mel's lips before he could stop it, but alarm flared in his eyes and he cast a nervous glance over his shoulder, and hunched up tightly, quivering with fear.

"Borthardian? Is that another demon?" Ray was quick with things like that.

Mel's head bobbed fractionally once but he didn't speak.

"Do we have Tobin's Spirit Guide with us, Egon?"

"The pocket version. It's in my suitcase upstairs." He hurried from the room, and no one moved more than a few inches or said anything while he was gone except for Whitney, who poured out the coffee and passed it around. Winston curled his fingers around the cup, grateful for its warmth. Mel took a swallow and shuddered as it went down, not that it tasted bad; it was great coffee.

Setting his cup on the table, Ray patted Mel's arm. "Don't worry, Mel. We'll figure it out. And we'll get Peter back, too, see if we don't." He sounded so determined that Winston was afraid he was riding for a fall. They'd rescued Egon from Tolay's keep, and they should be able to rescue Peter, too. But they couldn't do it without equipment that was back in the city, and by the time someone went there, loaded up everything, and drove back again it would be late evening. Peter would have been stranded for hours. Winston didn't even want to think about what peril he might be in at the moment, and he could tell Ray was forcing his natural optimism to the surface. Winston would be the last one to be a doomsayer, but he couldn't quite work up the belief Ray still held.

Egon returned with the portable computerized version of Tobin already activated. "I found Borthardian," he announced to the room at large. "He's a demon who has been known since the Middle Ages. There's a warning about him because those who go to summon demons, believing they can control the spirits, have always failed to bind him. Borthardian tricks them into believing he is bound over to them, then he either destroys them or takes them back to his realm as slaves."

"And that's bad, right?" Winston scratched his head. "Oh, man, I knew I wasn't gonna like this."

"But Peter didn't try to summon him, and he didn't make any pacts with him," disagreed Ray. He leaned on Egon's arm to read the screen, his brow furrowed as he concentrated. "Peter will know better than to try to make a deal with him, won't he?"

"I hope he will," Egon replied. He keyed in additional information, glowering at the tiny screen. "What alarms me is that Peter was raised by a con man and he believes he can outsmart most people. He might try to work out a deal on his own. According to Tobin, Borthardian has never been defeated in that way."

"Yet." Ray's grin blazed out. "He never met any of the Ghostbusters before. And we've encountered demons before. Look at that time when we had to deal with the chickens disappearing."

"Do I have to?" Winston grimaced. "That wasn't fun. And this is worse because Pete's trapped over there. What's he got to bargain with, anyway?"

Egon slammed the pocket computer against his palm. "We must go after him. That means someone must return to the city for our equipment. The molecular phase amplifier will take us over there. We used it to go to Astarine's Keep before, and will again. It would function better here, where the gate opened than it would if we tried to use it at headquarters because I'd have to make so many configurations to do it at a different location that it would take hours. From here, I'd simply have to set it and ask someone to activate it." He paused, turning hopefully to Mel. "Is there any chance you can transport us there without it?"

Winston waved his hands at Egon to interrupt, frowning. "Uh, bad idea, homeboy. If we use our own equipment then we have a way back. Even if Mel could take us, who's to say he won't wind up having to stay there and serve this Borthardian dude, and then we'd all be trapped. It takes a powerful demon to bring us back, if I remember right. And this Borthardian dude is a lot more powerful than Mel, if Tobin has the full scoop on him, and he might keep us from cashing in our return ticket."

"I can take you there," Mel offered, then his face fell as he did the math in his head. "No, only two. Not powerful enough to take more."

"Two throwers aren't enough to stop a Class 7 demon, Egon." Ray spoke mournfully, his face falling into dejected lines. "We could find Peter, but we might not be able to rescue him."

"The longer we wait, the greater jeopardy we'd find Peter in," Egon replied. "One of us could go after the equipment -- whoever goes could take Whitney and Cy to safety. If they are protected, not only would it remove them from a dangerous environment, it might protect whoever was driving Ecto. They could wait at the firehall with Janine."

"If I know Janine, she'll want to come back with me," Winston disagreed, all too familiar with the secretary's stubbornness. He had already accepted that he was the logical one to go. Ray knew the most about occult subjects and Egon could do more with field modification of equipment than any of them. Besides, Winston could get the most out of Ecto. He knew he'd have to bring Janine back with him. If Egon and Ray hadn't rescued Peter by the time he returned, they'd need more than one person to go into the Netherworld after them. They might even have to take Eddie, who knew how to use a pack and thrower, and who had some personal protection from Borthardian.

"Then you'll go, Winston?" Egon asked, squashing down his impatience.

He nodded. "I'll leave now. Whitney, do you want to come to town and bring Cy?"

She shook her head stubbornly. "If it's true that we won't be harmed, then I won't go unless Eddie does. Is it true, Mel?"

He put his hands on her shoulders and smiled down at her. "I'd let them tear me into tiny pieces before I'd let them hurt you or Cy or Eddie," he vowed. "They can't. Not in the rules."

"But they can try to stop us?" Ray started for the door. "Come on, Egon, let's go get our stuff out of Ecto so Winston can take off."

"I want you to be safe," Eddie insisted, grabbing his wife away from Mel and encircling her in his arms. "I think you should go. Take Nina and Tommy with you."

"No. I have to be with you. I just have to. And I won't entrust Cy to strangers, or leave him with Nina and Tommy, or even with Janine. It's the only way, Eddie."

"I thought I'd put on Peter's pack and go with them," Eddie started but she cut him off with a palm pressed against his lips.

"You can't, dear heart. Mel said he could only take two, and he has to take the two who can do the best there. That's the way it must be. But you can wear Peter's pack while they're gone in case anything happens here." She whirled to face the demon. "Do you think it will, Mel?"

"Don't know. Not to hurt you, but trouble."

"Then we'd best hurry," Egon fell into step with Ray and they went out to collect their equipment from the converted hearse.

Winston doled out the packs, retaining his own in case he encountered trouble on the road, which was a possibility all of them thought of but none of them wanted to mention. Tommy Graves offered to go with him, and Eddie seconded that, but Winston shook his head. "No, you need to stay here and watch Whitney. I don't think they'll pay any attention to me if I'm not even here."

"That's not certain, Winston," Egon argued. He had brought the atomic destabilizer, not because he had specifically deemed it necessary but because, when demons were involved, it was second nature. More often than not, they kept it in Ecto with their regular packs anyway.

"I'll make it," Winston decided. "I don't want Cy to disappear like the last time we messed with Netherworld demons. Give him all the protection he can get."

"Keep a meter activated all the way," Ray cautioned.

Eddie clapped Winston on the shoulder, then slid his arms through the straps of Peter's pack. Egon put on the destabilizer pack, and Ray took his own and settled it on his back. When Winston put Ecto in gear and circled it around the circular drive that fronted the mid-Victorian mansion, they were still standing on the steps that led up to the tower entrance, watching him. Ray lifted a hand in farewell.

"Okay, Zeddemore," Winston said to himself. "Go like a bat out of hell." And don't let anything fall apart before I can get back.

By the time the fire had faded to embers, Peter's shirt was dry except in the seams, and his jeans were, if not yet dry, close enough to it that they'd finish up the job on their own. He was glad the season had been cool enough for him to wear a long-sleeved shirt. If only he'd taken an Eskimo parka out with him onto the terrace.

The fire had removed some of the cold from the cell but, as it died, the nasty breezes that oozed through the slits in the stone began to win the place back to winter. Peter dragged the lumpy pallet closer and sat on it, hoping it wasn't inhabited by its own particular livestock. At least Skeleton Joe over there had died on the floor and not the pallet, not that Peter had the luxury to avoid it even if he'd found the remains curled up there.

Weird that he'd been left alone here. No one had come by to gloat, no hulking demons had sneered at him, no jailers guarded the outside of his cell. The lonely winds howled through the cavernous prison with only the torches burning to indicate that anyone but Peter and the skeleton had ever been here. He'd propped his torch up against a rock, but it wouldn't burn forever. The thought of losing the light from the torches, stranded down here in the bowels of the earth all alone, made his stomach twist sickly. He was abandoned here, that's what it was. He knew it. If he'd been taken away for any reason but to manipulate Mel, somebody would have talked to him already.

Okay, so maybe the demons from the Netherworld lost points if somebody defected. They might want to bring Mel back where he came from, and what better way than to take hostages? Mel had yelled, "I won't." Wouldn't what? Go back? If that were true, then he wouldn't trade himself for Peter. Coldness seeped into the psychologist's veins at the thought of being trapped here forever. If the cold didn't kill him, he'd die of thirst before he could die of hunger. Or maybe the demons would show up any minute and think it was fun to pluck off his arms and legs for sport. He shuddered.

No, don't go there, Peter. Not a good idea.

He hadn't heard anything from outside the cell except the moaning wind that swept through the underground prison. That didn't mean he was alone. Maybe there were other prisoners. Calling for them might alert the bad guys he was awake, but the solitude was getting to him fast. Even a demon might be an improvement over staying here alone. The guys would come, of course they'd come, but probably not for hours. They'd have to go after the equipment and bring it back -- or have Egon and Ray reconfigure everything, and that took time. If they set it up on the terrace, where Peter had disappeared, the currents and eddies of the gateway would resonate and the phase amplifier would bring the guys to his general vicinity. At least that was what Peter had gotten out of Ray's eager explanation and Egon's scientific discourse on its principles. Egon would say his description was scientifically inaccurate but that didn't matter. The guys would come. They'd find him. He knew they would. He just had to hold on till then.

He edged up to the bars. "Hey? Anybody else in here?" Rather than raise his voice and alert the jailers, he called in an undertone.

The voice was so near he flinched involuntarily. "Yeah, man, right beside you. Keep it soft, or they'll show up again, and I've gotta say, there's no way I want to see that head character again."

"Pretty bad, huh?" The voice was human, the language suggesting its owner came from the same world as Peter. From the tone of his voice, he sounded African American.

"Well, if you're into guys who are ten feet tall with horns, then you'll be a happy camper. I've gotta say, what I've seen of stuff like that never thrilled me, and I've seen my share of weird stuff."

"Yeah, I've seen a lot of weird things myself," Peter agreed. "Where are you from?"

"Well, I travel a lot, but Chicago, mostly. I was in Chicago when I got busted and wound up here. One minute I was minding my own business, waiting for my lady to come over, the next there was a big, blue guy in my apartment, bumping his head on my ceiling, and he grabbed me, and all at once, I'm here. Not great."

"I got sucked up in a tornado," Peter explained. "Come to think of it, there was a big, blue guy around when it happened to me, too."

"Yeah? Hey, this is gonna sound weird, but I know one of those blue guys personally. He doesn't usually look like that, but he can. When I saw the one in my apartment, I thought it was him for a second, but it wasn't. It was a stranger."

"You know one?" That was weird. How many guys like Mel were there hanging out on Earth, anyway? "How do you know one, anyway?"

"I'm in a rock band," the other man explained, to Peter's astonishment. "And we've got one who works as a roadie for us."

Peter clapped his hand against his forehead in recognition as the other man's identity dawned on him. "Jackson?" he asked. "Jackson MacKensie?"

"What the hell!? Who are you? How do you know that?"

"I'm Peter Venkman. You're in Eddie's band. I don't think we ever met except that one time backstage for two minutes -- you had already left Segue when we went up there to bust the ghost in the attic -- but something's going on, and it involves Mel. We thought he was just afraid to tell his girlfriend what he was, but it turns out there's something else he's afraid of, and whatever it is, the other demons are taking hostages. Eddie didn't know you'd been grabbed. When did it happen?" He grabbed the stale, smelly pallet and hung it over his shoulders, sitting down on the corner of floor closest to Jackson's cell.

"Last night, according to my watch. I saw them bring you in, but I didn't see your face. I was afraid somebody was going after the band, but you weren't Eddie -- I could see brown hair. I figured I'd better lie low and wait and see what was going on. I could hear you moving around and then you took one of the torches, but for all I knew, you were somebody stuck down here to get around me and win my confidence." He still sounded wary. "You're really Venkman? The Ghostbuster?"

"In the flesh. And I'm not here to win confidences. We're both prisoners." He heaved a depressed sigh. "Have they bothered you or threatened you or any other fun stuff?"

"No, just dumped me here. I wasn't sure what to expect. That character Jaren'h that Eddie accidentally freed from that statue ⁽³⁾ didn't mind trashing people, and I was sure I was about to be eaten." He gave a disparaging chuckle as if to scorn the possibility but, to Peter, it sounded like whistling in the dark. "You say Eddie didn't know I got snatched?"

"Well, not when they grabbed me, he didn't. We'd had lunch and I went out on the terrace to talk to Mel -- we were up at Segue. If your girlfriend showed up and you weren't there, what would she do?"

"Maybe think I got held up with a rehearsal, though we're between gigs right now having a couple of weeks break before we start working on the next tour. I went back to Chicago and I was gonna try to write a new song. Sharonna knows I wouldn't stand her up."

"But you can't go to the police with a missing persons' report when there's no sign of foul play," Peter realized. "At least not till more than twenty-four hours have passed. Or is it forty-eight? But you're in a famous band and they might act faster. Would Sharonna call Eddie?" Telling Eddie wouldn't bring rescue any faster, but it would definitely warn the guys that more was going on here than one disappearance.

"She might, but I think she'd probably wait awhile, check things out, see if my car was gone. She'd check the apartment -- she's got a key." The sound of a foot kicking against the stone echoed to Peter, followed by a muted curse. "I don't want her going in there. What if she winds up here, too?"

"I don't think so," consoled Peter. "Mel doesn't know her, after all. I have a feeling somebody down here is using us to manipulate Mel into coming back where he came from."

"And this is where he came from? Oh, man." Jackson did not sound happy. "You mean this is that Netherworld place Eddie mentioned? Where you guys went when that demon grabbed Cy? This is not great, is it?"

"Well, I can think of a lot of places I'd rather be," Peter concurred. "Like having a root canal. Or on the Titanic." He huddled into the dubious warmth of the pallet. "You as cold as I am?"

"Don't even talk about the cold," Jackson replied. "So what do we do next? You're the Ghostbuster. You have any great ideas?"

"The guys will come for me. I know that. We have a gizmo that lets us pop over here whenever we need to -- luckily we don't need to very often. On a scale of one to ten, this place rates a minus one hundred and thirty."

"Yeah, and I've gotta say the food sucks."

"You got food?" Peter asked wistfully.

"I got a bowl of something for breakfast. I don't know what gruel is, that stuff they gave Oliver Twist at the orphanage, but I'm willing to bet that was what they gave me for breakfast."

Peter made a wry face. "Rats. And me on a low-gruel diet."

With a sputter of laughter, Jackson continued. "And that's all. No dinner last night, no lunch today, just gruel."

"So they want to keep us alive -- but make sure we don't enjoy it." Gruel was okay because it was a thousand times better than gruel-and-thumbscrews. "I've been thinking they might want Mel back," Peter offered. "Like maybe he broke some obscure demonic rule by living with the humans. And maybe Mel didn't want to go. I know I sure wouldn't. How you gonna keep him down in the Netherworld after he's seen Times Square?"

"Yeah, but Mel would do anything for Eddie," Jackson argued. "If he thought Eddie was at risk, he'd give it all up in a minute. He'd die for Eddie -- assuming demons can die. Can they?"

"Well, they can be destroyed or trapped." Weird. Mel would react to a threat against Eddie in a second. So why hadn't the bad demons tried that route first? It would have been the easiest way to get Mel to do what they wanted and make him suffer at the same time? "I just don't get it. If they want Mel back, you're right, all they'd have to do is threaten Eddie, and Mel would come back here in a heartbeat. It'd break his heart but I know he'd rather see Eddie safe even if it meant he had to give it all up. He gave up his girlfriend right before all this happened. I thought he was just afraid she'd find out he was a demon or that he'd hulk out when they were having some nookie and he didn't want to scare her." Jackson gave a snort of laughter at the image that evoked. "But now, I bet he was getting her out of the way because he knew what was going down. They want him back -- and maybe for some reason Eddie's safe."

"If Eddie's his master -- never liked that 'master' thing, even if I know it means something different to Mel than it does to me -- if Eddie's his master, maybe they can't go after Eddie. Maybe he's off limits. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, let alone the best friend I ever had."

"Yeah." Peter appreciated the sentiment. When Egon had been trapped in the Netherworld, the other three of them had agreed to set their equipment to return them with Egon or not at all. They didn't intend to come back without him. Sounded like Jackson would understand that. "The Ghostbusters aren't safe, then, not unless Egon is because he's Eddie's cousin. The guys'll come after me. I don't know for sure where we are, but I'd bet good money we're in the dungeons under Astarine's Keep -- she was the demon who went after Eddie last year."

"But you guys zapped and trapped her, didn't you?" Jackson asked hopefully.

"She's still in the containment unit. But who's to say she didn't have buddies who are out for revenge, or that her other servants aren't pissed off at us -- or at Mel for getting away?"

"Yeah. Nice thought." He heaved a sigh. "All I ever wanted was to be a musician. Now I'm dealing with spooky entities that burst out of statues, and haunted attics and the Netherworld."

"The guys will get you back to Sharonna," Peter promised. He knew they'd come to rescue him, he knew it all the way down to the soles of his feet. He just didn't know if they would come in time.

As Ray and Egon pulled their jumpsuits on and adjusted their packs, a telephone rang in a nearby room, and Tommy jumped up to answer it. Egon turned hopefully and watched him. Perhaps Peter had escaped and was calling to let them know. He couldn't entirely believe it, but if it was possible....

Tommy returned quickly and Egon could tell from the way his brow crinkled and his chin set that he wasn't bearing good news. "Eddie. I think we've got more troubles. That was Jackson's girlfriend Sharonna on the phone asking for you."

The singer jumped to his feet. "Jackson! But he's in Chicago."

"Not anymore."

Eddie vanished in the direction of the phone, alarm darkening his eyes, and was gone for nearly ten minutes while Tommy glowered at all of them impartially, Mel hung his head guiltily, and Whitney hesitated, torn between going after her husband and playing hostess. When the singer returned, he appeared shaken, his hair more disarrayed than usual, lines around his mouth. "Jackson's disappeared," he explained in a voice that landed with a dull thud at his feet. "Sharonna went to see him last night; they were going to have dinner at his place. When she arrived, he wasn't there, and she thought he'd run out on an errand or was just late. After he didn't come, she searched the apartment and found his wallet in the bedroom, and his keys, and his car was still in the underground parking garage. She called the police, and while it looks suspicious, there was no evidence of foul play, no trace of a break-in or robbery. She said there was money lying on the table and it wasn't touched."

He drew a quick breath and continued urgently, "She knows a little bit about our experiences with the supernatural and she got worried. The police are running checks, mostly because he was gone without his keys, money and car, and because he's famous, but they haven't found anything. The doorman saw him go into the building and saw Sharonna go up not half an hour later. There's a separate elevator to the underground garage and he would have had to cross the lobby to get to it. The doorman did go out to the street a few times, once to help a woman out of a cab and another time to flag down a cab for a tenant, but he doesn't think he was gone long enough to have missed Jackson because the basement elevator is slow." Eddie began to pace. "Sharonna covered all the bases. It's remotely possible the guy missed him, but she doesn't think so and, even so, he would have taken his car if he'd gone down there. Apparently the doorman is a fan of our band."

"So what could have happened?" Whitney asked, although she was too intelligent not to suspect a connection between his disappearance and Peter's. Paler than usual, she caught up with Eddie in his pacing and took his arm, halting him. Her fingers squeezed reassuringly.

Although Eddie put his hand over hers in a gesture of great tenderness, he didn't seem remotely reassured. "I don't know, love. But I'm afraid it's part of the same thing as Peter's disappearance. It has to be. God, I've known Jackson for years, even longer than I've known you, Whit." She wrapped an arm around his waist.

Eddie gnawed his bottom lip while he considered then his voice hardened slightly. "Mel, you have to tell us now." He straightened, a rueful but determined expression on his face. "Do you still consider me your master?" It was a title he'd never accepted and refused to trade on, but lives were at stake and he had to. Egon, who had known him since he was born, could sense how much it bothered him to resort to such a tactic, but he had to approve of it, if it would save Peter's life.

Mel nodded vehemently. "Always. Know you don't like me to say it, but you are." His face was full of such distress and shame that he couldn't quite meet Eddie's eyes. For such a tall figure, he was curiously shrunken.

Eddie sucked in his breath, cast an uneasy glance at Egon, then turned back to the demon. "Then I -- god, this is ridiculous, but I have to. Mel, I command you to tell me what this is about." His fingers tightened involuntarily around Whitney's and she flinched but didn't pull away.

Mel stood frozen for an endless moment. Then he bowed his head. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and Egon could hear the stark devastation in his voice. Eddie flinched from it but stood his ground.

At last, Mel lifted his head, focusing on none of them. "Borthardian is distant kin to Astarine. He now controls her domain. Everything she possessed had to come to him, all her slaves, all her possessions, all her holdings. She had never recorded that I had changed masters -- and she never accepted it anyway. She believed me dead, but none at the keep knew that. If she had been given time to pass that information before her entrapment, I wouldn't have mattered. But Borthardian would probably have wanted me back anyway. He despises humans. He uses them and destroys them and manipulates them. He's evil. What people usually imagine when they think of