Originally published in Remote Control 13

I should have felt exhausted, the pleasant kind that comes from a job well done, the satisfaction of working in my chosen field, garnering the respect of my peers, the pleasure of knowing the Physics Conference was behind me. Now I could go home to my friends, collapse on the sofa and watch mindless drivel on television with Peter, listen to Ray babbling about some new ghost, maybe play a game of chess with Winston. In spite of the frenetic urgency of the conference, the pure intellectual challenge of delving deep into different processes and fields, I had been plagued with a discomfort all evening, a need to return home as quickly as possible, a need for...something I couldn't explain. I hope that the others hadn't noticed it. In spite of the need, I couldn't leave. I had to finish my project, to test it, to refine it. Ah, the joy of success. I couldn't wait to tell Ray all about it. He would love to hear how it had gone, and he would come up with twelve theories by the end of the week on ways to adapt my discoveries to the business of busting ghosts.

Yet, my exhaustion was edgy, uncomfortable, as if every nerve ending in my body tingled and itched when they actually did not. The urge to look over my shoulder had hit me midway through the conference and it hadn't gone away. Odd, but I'd experienced that same feeling often in the last several weeks. Totally obsessed with the conference, I had thought of little else for a long time. I scarcely remember breakfast this morning, I had worked so hard. Ray and Winston had been there, talking to me urgently, but I think I blew them off, answering absently, agreeing with them without even listening. Peter, of course, was sleeping in. I believe it was his day off, and even when it wasn't, he didn't like to get up early. Peter? There had been something about Peter...

The cab pulled up in front of the firehall just behind another cab that was disgorging Peter. I saw him lean in to pay the driver, then he stretched painfully while the cab drew away. When mine replaced it and I got out, he tensed and whirled as if he, too, were sleepy and he hadn't noticed my arrival until then. He stiffened up, staring at me as if I had grown a new face or a second head.

"A date, Peter?" I asked with a glance at my wristwatch. It was 11:30, actually rather early for one with Peter's dating proclivities.

Shock and disbelief ran across his face so rapidly I scarcely noticed them, followed by a look of deep hurt that disappeared as soon as it manifested itself. He pasted on a bland, neutral look, the kind he wears when he doesn't want anyone to guess anything is wrong, the kind I had learned to read when we were both undergraduates. It had been a long time since Peter had been able to hide those kind of reactions from me. A date, home early, unhappiness... Perhaps he had broken up with Karin.

"I take it you didn't enjoy a pleasant evening," I suggested, steering him toward the door. "Would you like to tell me about it over a cup of cocoa?"

"No!" he spat angrily. "I don't want your stupid cocoa." He yanked his arm away from my hand as if I had contaminated it. "Back off, Spengler," he added, his voice as cold as absolute zero. I honestly could not remember the last time he had used that tone with me. Fitting his key into the lock, he stormed into the firehall, letting the door swing closed in my face. I put out a hand to catch it before it could click shut again and followed him inside.

In spite of the hour, Janine was still here. Surely she didn't work this late as a general rule. Ignoring me, she intercepted Peter, grabbing up his hand and squeezing it, making some remark in an undertone while she pointed at me with her other hand.

Peter detached himself from her, although not as firmly as he had yanked free of my touch. He said something I couldn't hear and hastened up the stairs without looking back. Janine's face tightened. Could Ray or Winston have been injured? That would explain Janine's presence, although it wouldn't explain Peter's behavior.

"Janine, what is wrong with Peter?" I asked.

She whirled to stare at me, eyes wide in disbelief. "You don't know?"

"I'm sorry. I feared he had a bad experience on his date. Contrary to public opinion, I am unable to read his mind."

"Evidently." She stormed over to me, her heels clicking against the floor. Was she more dressed up than usual? Feminine apparel is one subject at which I possess no mastery. I know she was wearing fancier clothes than her usual working clothes, a form fitting dress in emerald green that suited her coloring. She looked garbed for an evening on the town.

"I can tell that he is upset," I persisted, alarmed and worried. The niggling sense of discomfort in the back of my mind that I had felt all evening was still there; now, it expanded to include Peter. There was another sensation, one I'd been conscious of all week, as if I were riding a runaway train, unable to get off, like the man in the old Kingston Trio song, MTA. Winston liked the Kingston Trio and played some of their old albums occasionally. "He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston..." I did not comprehend the feeling but I had it. I was riding mindlessly through the night, unable to focus properly.

"And you don't think he has every right to be?" she challenged. "Egon, how could you?"

"Me? What did I do? I wasn't even here."

"Precisely. Don't you know what day this is?"

I shook my head. "Thursday?" I hazarded. Had I actually lost track of time? That seemed inconceivable. I had always known time and direction instinctively. I knew without hesitation that it was nearly 11:40 p.m.

"Thursday?" She dragged me over to her desk and stabbed a finger down at the desk calendar. Saturday. The 15^th. How could it be Saturday? The conference wasn't due to end until...Saturday... I shook my head. How could I, so organized, have failed to register the passing of time?

"Winston said he and Ray reminded you at breakfast," she pointed out. "They said you agreed, that you would be here on time."

"On time for..." My voice trailed off. "November 15^th. Peter's birthday party." I slapped myself on the forehead, appalled. The guys and I had planned the party months ago. Peter took such delight in the surprise parties we always threw for him, perhaps as a recompense for all those parties his father had missed when he was a boy. Even now, a gift from Charlie Venkman, even a card from him, was an earth-shaking event in its rarity. We had surprise birthdays for all of us, enjoying the plotting to conceal the plans, to deceive the intended 'victim' until the actual moment.

"Ray was so sure you'd used this conference as a bluff to fool Peter," Janine continued. "He kept waiting for you to come. Peter did, too. He was sort of grinning, making hints, expecting you to walk through the door at any second. I could tell he thought you actually believed you'd conned him this year, and he was going to tell you he'd known all along. Then it got later and later, and you didn't come, and Ray sneaked off and called the hotel, and they said they approached you and you said you were too busy to come to the telephone."

That was true, at one point there had been a hotel staffer with an interruption. I had tucked the message in my pocket without reading it and totally forgotten about it. Digging my hand into my pocket, I produced it. It said, "Ray wanted to remind you to hurry home for Peter's party."

I showed it to her. She grabbed it from my hand and flung it down on her desk. "Egon, that's terrible. I never thought you could behave that way. If you meant to stay at the conference, if it was more important to you than your best friend, the least you could have done was told him up front. You think he'd have held you to the actual day if he knew how much you wanted to attend the conference? We could have had his party tomorrow night."

"And will have," I said firmly.

Janine shook her head. "I don't think it will be that easy," she informed me. "We waited as long as we could. Around 9:30, Peter went downstairs. He didn't say where he was going, and when Ray went down after him, he'd left, without a word. We put up all the decorations then, to have ready for when he came back, but he didn't come back until now."

"Thank you, Janine." I needed to go upstairs quickly. I hurried up after Peter and found instead Ray and Winston cleaning up something on the floor. It looked like the ruins of Peter's birthday cake.

Ray raced over to me, "Egon, where were you? Peter came up just now and threw his cake on the floor. What did you say to him?"

"I...forgot, Raymond," I acknowledged. "I saw him outside, and I asked him if he'd been on a date. I didn't know what day it was."

"So, were you in a coma at breakfast when we reminded you of the party?" Winston demanded, pausing, dustpan full of cake crumbs in his hand. "You said you'd be there. What happened to you? I know we're grown men and birthdays aren't really that big a deal--but we've always made them a big deal. And I think that's the one time we actually see the little kid in Pete. He was really excited. Half expected you to pop in riding your weather balloon or something fancy. But you just didn't bother. That's low, man. I'd never have thought it of you."

He pushed past me as if I were the next thing to be swept up and went into the kitchen to dump the dustpan. Ray picked up a gift-wrapped package and shook it gently to make sure it was intact before he replaced it on the table. "I can't believe you did that to Peter," he said. "He really felt bad."

Thoroughly chastised by my fellow Ghostbusters and feeling as low as a paramecium, I bowed my head. "I don't understand it, Ray. All day, I've felt a strange sense of urgency, a feeling that everything was beyond my control."

"Really?" A spark of interest touched his eyes, then it faded again. His face hardened. "Too bad Peter's party was such an inconvenience," he snapped and turned away to straighten the stack of presents. Mine weren't among them. I had hidden them too well for Peter to find them, in the one place he would never look for them--under his bed. He must have noticed their absence when he came upstairs.

"Ray, where is he?" I asked. How could I have done this? I have always had a perfect time sense, and Peter's friendship is more important to me than any conference in the world. Peter himself often says that I can become caught up in my research and forget to take out the trash, but to forget this long-planned birthday when I had known all along I would cut the conference short for it was unconscionable.

"Upstairs," Ray told me, his voice still stiff and angry. "He said to leave him alone."

"I can't do that," I said. "I have to find a way to make this right. The way I behaved toward him was unthinkable."

"You called that right," Winston hollered from the kitchen. "Unthinkable. What is wrong with you, man?"

Had he sensed the strange feeling I'd had all day, that something was wrong, that I was riding helplessly on a runaway train? No, he was just disgusted with my behavior. Why shouldn't he be? I was disgusted with it myself.

Squaring my shoulders, I started for the stairs.

I can't believe he did that to me. Egon, of all people. Egon, the guy I can trust, the guy who's so reliable you can use him to set the universe by, and he blows me off. If his conference meant that damned much to him, all he'd had to do was say so ahead of time, let me know. I'm not a kid. Who says we have to have the party on the actual day? Or even have a party at all? Okay, so I admit, I get a big kick out of the surprise parties, every one of them. The ones for me, the ones for all the guys. It isn't that I'm such a great guy at parties--though I am. It's just that it gives me such a great sense of being one of the best families in the known universe. It makes up for all those years when Dad wasn't around and poor Mom was doing her best and trying so hard and trying not to let me guess that, when Pop didn't show up, it hurt her too.

I was just so sure that the conference was a cover. He always found some way to convince me he'd forgotten, that he'd be out of town or involved in something or that no party was going to happen. Then, it always did, and it was always great. Not this year, though. Me, the great Peter Venkman, was stood up.

Okay, yeah, so I know that I'm a grown man and that lots of adults don't have parties at all, or even want to get gifts. I don't like to think I'm getting older, but I like the acknowledgment. I know part of it is Pop's usual absence. I'm a good psychologist and it isn't hard to figure out that a part of my craving for fame and glory is a compensation for all the times he didn't show up. That doesn't mean I don't enjoy the limelight and being a celebrity. Yet, the parties mean more than doing the talk shows, getting picked to be the Grand Marshall of the Macy's parade last year, having the whole team chosen as the Ghost Hunter of the Year. The guys are showing me that I deserve to have a family and I deserve to have my family love me. And everybody needs love.

So, the ego is a cover for an insecure little boy waiting all those years for his dad to come home at Christmas and birthdays when he never did. I know it. I understand it. That doesn't stop me loving those parties as much as if I were still ten years old.

The thing is, Egon probably didn't mean to shoot me down this year. He just loves his brainy stuff so much he gets carried away with it. I remember his stupid weather balloon experiments and how he didn't even hear the phone ringing two feet away. This conference has been driving him frantic since that guy Kelly asked him to be on the panel a month ago. Never saw Egon on such a crazy roller coaster ride before. Just lapping it up and coming back for more.

But it's still my birthday. And he still forgot.

When he asked me if I'd had a bad date, I couldn't believe it. I'd've thought coming home and seeing me, that he'd know. I wanted to rub it in so bad, but he didn't even get it. When I came upstairs and saw all the decorations and the cake waiting, I just couldn't take it. Okay, so I lost it for a minute there. Guess I owe Ray and Winston a big apology tomorrow. Egon...Not sure I owe him the time of day right now.

"Peter?"

I jerked to my feet as if it would put me at a crazy disadvantage if he came in and found me sitting down. God, my best friend, my oldest friend, and I was just as uncomfortable as if I was confronting a hostile stranger or a Class 7 demon.

"Nice going, Spengs." I laid on the sarcasm with a shovel. "You remember who I am. It's Venkman. Peter Venkman. I live right here, sleep in the next bed. Sound familiar?"

He stared at me, and there was a strange, hollow desperation in his eyes that I don't remember seeing there before. Guess he knew he'd gone too far.

"Peter, I am so sorry." Would have been nice if I'd believed it, but instead it was almost as if it was a stranger talking. Something about him just didn't feel right. Was that me, my hurt feelings? Or had I just been wrong all this time, thinking he wouldn't let me down like Dad always had. "I didn't realize what day it was."

"And Ray and Winston didn't remind you this morning?" I would have grinned as I admitted I heard them if he'd actually have come home. I'd been near the firepole upstairs when Ray had proclaimed earnestly, "Be sure to be home by seven for Peter's party."

Egon's, "Naturally, Raymond," had made me grin, proof positive that his stuffy old conference had been a cover. He worked so hard on perfecting them to make me believe he'd forgotten that I was sure the conference was this year's plot. Nobody had warned me that the rules of the game had changed, that his priorities had shifted. That wasn't fair, but then I'd known since I was a little kid that life wasn't.

"They did. And Ray phoned, but I didn't read the message. I was..." His voice trailed off and he stared at me as if my hurt and hostility had finally registered.

"Busy," I finished. "Doing something important. Okay, thanks for letting me know. I'll be prepared next time." I brushed past him and went out of the room, heading for the roof. I wanted some fresh air, and there was suddenly none in the bedroom. A part of me knew I was acting like a whiny little kid. It was just a stupid party, for Pete's sake. But we'd made the parties important over the years. We'd loved them.

Egon followed me. I should have known he would. When he joined me on the roof, I was staring up at the sky. Light pollution and smog made the sky too hazy for all but the brightest stars, though tonight was crisp and cool and it was good for seeing. Egon always called it 'seeing' when he referred to astronomical observations. Probably one of his endless techie terms. I hunted out Orion, one of the few constellations I could recognize, and stared at the three bright stars that made up its belt, so I wouldn't have to look Egon in the eye and watch him while he covered for his change of attitude.

"So what was this precious conference about, anyway?" I demanded when the silence stretched out long enough to make me uncomfortable. I sneaked a peek at him to see how he would react.

He jumped. His thoughts had been somewhere far away. Probably in the lab somewhere. "Peter?" It was as if he had forgotten where he was and why he was there.

"Should I start wearing a sign so you won't forget who I am?" I snapped. "All this, Peter? Peter? stuff is getting old fast."

His eyes were desperate. That was different. Even more than being desperate, he looked frightened and helpless. Spengs, the least helpless man I'd ever met. "That's a new look for you, isn't it?" I ventured and remembered speaking those lines long ago, when I'd had the door opened by the Gatekeeper instead of Dana Barrett on the night that Gozer came.

He said, "Please, Peter..." and put out a hand toward me. When I only stared at it, he lowered it, then he turned around and walked like an automaton over toward the edge of the roof, putting his hands on the parapet. For a second there, I got the crazy idea that he was about to climb up on it and jump off, and my heart kicked into overdrive.

I raced toward him and grabbed his arm, just as he did start to climb up there. What the hell...? He sure couldn't be feeling like that over missing a birthday party.

Whirling him around to face me, I saw something dark and cold and angry looking out of his eyes, and it sure wasn't Egon Spengler. "You know," he said in a voice about two octaves deeper than his normal voice. "You must die."

"Geez, make up your mind," I kidded in an attempt to stall. "Half a sec ago, it was you who was gonna bite the big one here. Hey, Egon, you still in there?" Please, don't say, 'I am not Egon, you pitiful fool. I am a mighty demon,' I thought frantically.

"He is here, he is controlled. He did not even recognize the control. But now it is too late, for I know what he knows, and I will take that information to the realm of the spirits."

"Uh, knows what he knows?" I ventured uneasily. This really sounded bad. Okay, so Egon probably did have the day wrong, if this nut had been hanging out in his brain for a couple of days. He was panicked and desperate and I'd seen that in his eyes because a part of him had realized that something was wrong, but he didn't understand it. I'd been brooding over hurt feelings while my best friend was possessed.

I started toward the door downstairs, dragging him with me, and he balked, digging his feet into the rooftop, pitting a suddenly impossible strength against my own. Okay, so I worked out and had great muscles, but I was no match for a demon.

Opening my mouth, I screamed, "RAAAAAAYYY!" at the top of my lungs.

The entity in Egon cold-cocked me without the slightest hesitation and knocked me flat on my butt. Stunned and groggy, I rubbed my chin, gazing up at my friend who gazed back at me with a stranger's eyes. They were even faintly glowing now, yellow and menacing. Yick! Next thing I knew, he'd shoot fire at me.

'I know what he knows.' Yikes, he knew about how our equipment worked, how to open the containment unit. Just like when Watt had possessed me, this character controlled Egon and could zip on down to the containment unit and open it up. All he had to do was pretend to be Egon long enough to get past Ray and Winston. Or he could even jump off the roof, smashing Egon's body on the concrete below, emerging from him just before impact, and swoop down to the containment with no one the wiser. That was what the demon had intended before, I was sure of it. All of that raced through my mind in a split second.

It had let Egon come home as himself. It had probably blurred the edges of his mind so that he didn't know what was going on or what time it was. "Egon!" I said sharply and was rewarded with the flash of desperation I had seen before. He was in there and, now that he knew, he was fighting it. But I'd been possessed and I was sure that not even Egon could kick the entity out without help.

As I stared up at him, the desperation faded into smug control and the entity came at me in Egon's form, hands curling into fists.

"RAAAAAAYYYY!" I screeched before it started swinging at me. "WIIIINNNSTONNN!"

Gosh, I was worried about Peter and Egon. It wasn't like Egon to do something like this, forgetting about Peter's party. Exchanging an uneasy look with Winston, I asked, "Do you think we should go up there and help?"

Winston shook his head. "Not yet. Pete was pretty steamed."

"I think he felt awfully bad," I corrected. "Gosh, if one of you forgot my birthday, I'd sure mind." The first birthday party we'd held once we became a team had been Winston's, and I could still remember how excited he'd been, at least until Slimer gobbled down his birthday cake. Sure, we were grown-ups and didn't need birthday parties, but we had a tough job and we did need to unwind after some of our cases. Peter said that and he meant it instead of just dreaming up excuses for parties. Besides, families gave parties for each other, and we'd been a family for years now. Peter, Egon, and I were getting that way fast before we became Ghostbusters, and the job put the finishing touches on it. I thought it was nice.

I didn't think this was, though. Peter had been so disappointed. I'd watched him, back when we still thought Egon would pop in at any second. He'd been trying so hard to pretend it was just another normal evening. We'd kidded about Egon at his conference, off playing mad scientist, to keep the cover going, and Pete had loved it. Even when he was sprawled in front of the TV faking that he didn't know, I could see it in his eyes. Peter doesn't let the excited little boy that's in all of us--well, maybe all of us but Egon--out very often, but it was waiting to come out then.

When Egon was so late, I was scared that maybe he'd been in an accident or something and I went up to the lab and called. They said he was still there and too busy to take my call. I think I felt almost as bad as Peter did.

How could Egon have forgotten? Okay, so he forgets to take out the trash sometimes when he's working, but the trash isn't important--and Peter is.

Winston gave me a comradely clap on the shoulder. "They'll work it out, homeboy," he said. "But if I know Pete, he'll make Egon pay and pay and pay..." He broke off. "Listen, did you hear something?"

"You don't think they're fighting, do you?" I asked worriedly. Gee, that would be terrible. But Peter had the worst temper of all of us and, when he felt bad, sometimes he got mad instead. I hurried toward the spiral stairs, and that was when I heard Peter's distant voice yelling for me and Winston.

We exchanged a doubtful glance. If they were fighting, he wouldn't be yelling for us--unless he'd punched Egon out and hurt him. But Peter didn't sound like that. He sounded...

"Get your proton pack," I urged. "I think something's wrong. Wait. There are a couple of packs in the lab. I charged them this afternoon. Come on."

We raced up the stairs and threw the packs on, realizing that the guys had gone up onto the roof. I heard scuffling sounds up there, and it didn't sound good. I hoped they hadn't been attacked by a nasty ghost. Grabbing up a P.K.E. meter, I turned it on and frowned when it pinged weirdly. I hadn't seen Egon use a meter all week. At our last bust, he'd let me handle it. Did that mean something?

We burst out onto the roof to a really unlikely sight. Peter was down, his hands raised to fend off a flurry of blows that Egon was throwing at him. Pete looked battered but Egon didn't have any marks on his face. I'd have expected it to be the other way around. Weird that Peter wouldn't fight back.

"Egon!" yelled Winston. He sounded really shocked. He hadn't expected this either.

The meter in my hand made loud beeps and the screen was blurred and cluttered with static. I couldn't get a clear reading but what I could pick up was Class 7 all the way--only where was it? Egon was the one who had hurt Peter, and Egon wasn't--

At Winston's yell, Egon's head came up and he glared at us. Oh, gosh, no, it wasn't Egon. Something else glared at us with glowing yellow eyes. Egon snarled like a wild animal and raised a hand, palm-outward, to hold us back. I got a really, really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Oh, man, that's not Egon," Winston groaned at my side. His thrower came up and aimed it.

"No, wait," I cried. "It is Egon, Winston. I think he's possessed."

"Give the man a gold star," growled Egon in a voice much deeper than usual. Golly, it was like when Watt had Peter. The demon had been hiding inside Egon all along. How long had it been here? Now that I thought about it, Egon had been acting kind of funny for at least a few days, but we all thought he was just caught up in that conference. We hadn't taken any readings of him, but when I'd used the meter at that bust, it hadn't done anything like this.

What if the demon had been able to hide itself inside Egon? That was terrible.

"Pete, you hurt?" Winston started for him. I think he was going to drag him out of range but, before he could do that, Egon sent out a blast of energy from his palm and it hit Winston in the middle of the chest. He flew backward through the air and landed hard against the parapet. I heard his breath go out in a whoosh and was afraid that landing that way on his pack might have broke a rib or two. He was awake and he waved a hand at me to let me know, but he'd be thinking of breathing for a minute or two instead of fighting. He couldn't help me.

"Can you tell me who you are?" I asked the demon. I had to have time, to figure out what to do.

"You need not know that. Only know that I have stripped knowledge from your friend's mind. I know how to defeat you Ghostbusters, and defeat you I will."

He could have just zapped us but he must have decided he wanted to find out how our equipment worked. The thought of demons with proton packs was not a happy one. Gosh, that would be tough.

"Did you hurt Egon?" He'd seemed so vague and unlike himself when he'd come upstairs. I guess I just thought he'd been caught up in his work and forgot and then felt bad about it, but the party had made us all think about that instead of other problems.

I fiddled with the meter in my hand. We needed the exact frequency of the demon in order to pull him out of Egon, but the readings were so blurred and intermingled that I just couldn't get it. Watt had just taken over entirely, but this demon had hidden inside Egon--it might have been there for days. It had pretended to be Egon, if it had been reading his mind. I couldn't get its readings to separate from his. Without the exact frequency, we couldn't pull him out of Egon.

"Does it matter if I hurt him or not?" the demon demanded sarcastically. "He'll be just as dead one way or another. I hope he suffered. I want all of you to suffer."

Peter stirred weakly and gazed up at Egon, who towered over him. "Not as much as I want that for you, bunky," he muttered.

The demon in Egon's body dismissed him without a thought. "Hurt his little feelings," he mocked. "I made him forget your birthday party. Aw, poor little Petey, nobody loves him. Did it make him want to go off and cry?"

Peter erupted off the rooftop like a rocket before the demon had a clue he even meant to move and his fist connected hard with the point of Egon's jaw. The red-rimmed glasses went flying and I heard them land in a tinkle of breaking glass. With a yelp, Peter sagged back, grabbing his wrist and waving his hand about. I hoped he hadn't broken something. Then I realized that was silly. I couldn't worry about that now. Because Egon wasn't falling down. His eyes rolled back in his head and he started to, but the demon forced him upright. Egon was unconscious, animated by the entity inside him, and it was spooky. His eyes were closed, but his head turned toward Peter and he curled one of Egon's hands into a fist. Each motion was jerky like the Frankenstein monster or a monster movie mummy as he took a step toward Peter, who was groggy and in pain and hadn't seen him coming.

I jerked up my thrower, twisting the dial down so I wouldn't hurt Egon, and blasted him full in the chest. Behind me, Winston let out a horrible yell of protest and struggled to stand up. I could hear his feet scrambling against the tarred rooftop as he fought for a purchase, still wheezing.

At the impact, the demon stopped and turned Egon's head toward me. His eyes were slitted open but the eyes inside weren't focused. Peter used the second's interval to scramble awkwardly in my direction, not far enough to be completely out of range but enough that he had a few seconds' safety. He caught my eye and I saw something in his expression that made me feel sick, even if I knew it was right.

Egon would want us to stop this thing, no matter what. It had gone into his head and messed with his mind and, for Egon, that would be the greatest violation imaginable. Egon would say to go for it. We might have to kill him in order to save the world.

But I couldn't neutronize Egon. I just couldn't. There had to be another way. There just had to be.

The zombie movements continued as 'Egon' paced me. I backed up slowly, one step at a time, drawing him away from the downed Peter, giving Winston time to get his breathing under control. It usually took four of us to stop a Class 7, but this one was in Egon and we couldn't blast him with full streams. I couldn't even really fire a second time at minimal power if I wanted Egon to survive. Being neutronized at low power disrupted the body like a min-electric shock. Too many hits like that could kill a human being. Under the right--or wrong--circumstances, even one blast could. Although Egon was moving, he might be dead right now. I might have already killed him. I felt terrible, but I knew I'd had to do it.

Winston was on his feet, coming up behind me. He bent over Peter, whispered something in his ear, and Peter shook his head violently. Winston repeated it. Bruised face twisted with pain, Peter sagged for a second under the hand Winston put on his shoulder, then he scuttled over and disappeared down the stairs. Winston looked at me past the demon's shoulder and mouthed, "Stall."

Stall? Okay, but Peter couldn't use the atomic destabilizer. That wouldn't work in a situation like this. What did Winston have in mind? "Why are you doing this?" I demanded. "Can't we make a deal? You've got Egon, but if you give him back--"

"I shall not give him back. I rather like the idea of a body I can control. There is much that can be enjoyed in human form, and I plan to enjoy it."

At least that meant Egon wasn't dead. I pretended to be interested. I probably would have been interested if the stakes hadn't been so high. "You mean you can experience whatever Egon does?"

"Precisely." The eyes were a little wider open now, but I couldn't see Egon in there at all. I wondered if he could see out. "To enjoy the physical from a human perspective. Disgustingly physical creatures, all of you. Out there are women for me to savor..." He made a sweeping gesture with Egon's hand that nearly hit Winston in the face. The glowing eyes faltered and, in that moment's lapse, I saw Egon, desperate and struggling, looking out at me as he fought for control. Egon had the most controlled mind I have ever met, but I didn't think even he could win. I didn't think any human could.

"Yeah, right," Winston mocked. "I can imagine your finesse! Humans aren't as dumb as you think we are."

"Wrong. This one, one of the smartest of all humans, did not know I was here. I have been here for weeks, since my human servant introduced me to Egon Spengler."

Human servant? Egon had been set up? I cast a questioning look at Winston, who shrugged his shoulders. We could figure that out later. In the distance, I could hear Peter returning, trying to be stealthy.

"You have another servant?" I demanded loudly to cover the sound of his return. "You mean you're possessing two people at once?" Maybe that would explain why the readings were so fuzzy. "Wow, I didn't know even something as powerful as you could do that. Who is it? Where is he? Why isn't he here?"

"Because I do not need him," growled the entity. "I only control him, not possess him. He thought to summon me up, and I came, but he did not know to control me and, instead, I controlled him. He is my slave, but it was Egon I wanted, to learn the ways of Ghostbusting."

"So that you could make ghost traps and proton packs?" I went on. I had to keep him talking. Behind him, Peter slipped silently up the stairs. I couldn't see him clearly past the demon, but I saw a movement as he edged up to Winston. Egon's body stood right before me, so close I could have touched it with the thrower tip. I didn't want to fire again. Gosh, I couldn't kill Egon. How could I live with that? But how could I live with letting him hurt anyone else? If only the meter would give a clear reading. Had the demon made Egon mess with it in case we started to get wise? It would know from being in Egon's mind that it was possible to separate a demon from its host.

"So that I could counter them," it finished. "It is so easy. If I could tell even one ghost what I know, how to phase out and slip through your containment streams, you would never trap another. I will tell them--tonight. They will descend on you in a swarm and kill you, and I will 'live' in this body until I tire of it, then I will leave it and allow the authorities to incarcerate him--for killing his friends. Venkman will be much marked when he is found. It will not be hard to tell who did it." He lifted Egon's bruised knuckles and waved them in my face.

"Close your eyes!"

Winston's shout was so loud and insistent that I did it without hesitating. I trusted the guys completely; and I knew Winston had a plan. As I closed them I had one vivid vision of a brilliant white light that overwhelmed everything like an atomic bomb detonating in the next block. It seared my eyeballs for a split second, and its afterimages lingered even after I squeezed my eyes as tightly shut as possible.

Oh, man, this was one of the worst nights I can ever remember. Egon not making it for Pete's party, poor old Pete taking it so bad, and who could blame him? He loved those parties. All of us did. Then Egon showed up and he'd forgotten about it. Egon, who might forget to take out the garbage or pick up milk at the market but who never forgets the personal stuff.

And then worse. It wasn't even Egon. Guy's been walking around with a demon inside him and didn't even know it. I hate it when we have to do demons, and this time was worse, because we couldn't just blast it like usual or we'd have incinerated our buddy.

Getting tossed across the roof wasn't fun, either. I still hurt from that one; thought at first that I cracked a rib when I hit but I think I was only bruised. It didn't hurt when I breathed, any more than it did any time you got the wind knocked out of you, and I could move. I watched Pete, down for the count, unsteady but alert, battered and furious, ready to take out the demon with his bare hands if he could claw it out of Egon. He was so far past feeling bad about the party that it might have happened on another planet. Egon was in trouble, and I knew from long experience that nobody, and I mean nobody, got between Peter Venkman and his friends.

What scared him was the fear that there was no way to stop the demon without stopping Egon, too. Scared me, too. I hoped Ray hadn't thought of that, because Ray was the one who might have to stop him. We might have to blast Egon to save the world, and that would destroy us along with him. Oh, man...

I knew we couldn't use the atomic destabilizer. We'd destabilize Egon in the process and, if we tried to trap the demon with Egon destabilized, we'd trap Egon with him and be unable to separate him from the demon--for all eternity. We'd had to do that once with Drool, a harmless and good-natured little goblin, and none of us had felt good about it. We weren't about to do it with our brother, Egon.

Demon was good at camouflage, too. Fooled us for days, it sounded like. Sending Pete down was the only thing I could think of. I wasn't sure it would work, but it was the only shot I had. We weren't gonna trick this guy out of Egon, and he'd messed the readings on purpose so we couldn't get his readings and do a Watt on him. Pretty smart, Old Scales.

Then Pete fumbled his way up the stairs again. Ray heard him and started talking and the demon, who probably thought we didn't have a prayer, gloated a little. That kind of mind loves to gloat. Nothing we'd done had touched it, even Peter trying to deck Egon to give us a chance. It probably wanted to toy with us a little before it squashed us like bugs.

Peter passed the traps into my hand, two of them, keeping two for himself. I got a quick look at his eyes and saw that they were equal and reactive. Never mind they were full of all kinds of dark emotions. He was hurting in a lot of ways, probably even feeling bad that he hadn't trusted Egon, but there wasn't time for that and he wasn't letting it get in the way. He mouthed, "You sure of this?"

I nodded, even though I wasn't. I just had an idea it would work.

We came up behind the demon, silent and wary, and I couldn't even warn Ray until the last second. When we were so close that any closer would have set off the demon's mental alarms, I nodded at Pete and we let the triggers down at our feet.

"Close your eyes!" It was all the warning we could give Ray as we jumped onto the triggers and thrust the traps out at the demon, pressing them right up against Egon's back. It was tough to hold a bucking trap in each hand without dropping them, but dropping them wasn't an option. I turned my head sideways to avoid the worst of the brilliant glow from the open traps, and saw Peter's head tucked down against his chest, his eyes squeezed tightly closed.

The demon shrieked. Man, it was punishing poor Egon's vocal cords. If this worked out, he'd be hoarse for a week.

It began to writhe and squirm, arms waving wildly. Confined by Egon's body, it couldn't soar aloft to escape. Tormented sounds tore from its mouth, nasty curses, pleas to stop, threats that it would rend us limb from limb. Somewhere in the middle of all that demon angst, I heard another voice, a more familiar one.

"It's working," Egon gasped, breathless and urgent. "It's wor--"

The demon didn't let him finish but we knew it was enough. On the other side of him, Ray snatched the trap off his proton pack, squinting through one slitted eye, and pressed it, open, against Egon's chest.

Surrounded, battered, helpless under the traps' suction, the demon came apart and dissolved into gaseous clouds that swooped into the mini-containment units. I saw three parts go into my two traps, more pieces zap into Peter's. The biggest part came out Egon's chest and hit Ray's trap so hard he reeled backward and sat down hard as the trap closed. Peter and I shut down, too, and darkness descended. I blinked hard to rid my eyes of the afterimage.

Egon sucked in a deep, shuddering breath that lifted his chest, then he sagged like a wet towel somebody tried to stand on end and slid backward. It was Peter, sore and aching, who reached out and caught him, lowering him to the tarred surface of the roof, one arm around his shoulders as he eased him down, and pulled the blond head against his shoulder. Ray and I helped to straighten out his legs.

"Spengs? It's gone. Talk to us." Peter's voice was very worried. For a man who had slam dunked his birthday cake such a short time ago, he had sure done a quick reversal of polarity. Course it wasn't Egon who had forgotten Pete's birthday. It was a demon who had used Egon's brain as a tennis ball, batting it back and forth. For all we knew, he might not come out of it okay.

"We got it, Egon, you're safe now," encouraged Ray, gently chafing one cheek. He glanced up worriedly. "Maybe we better call 911." He had Egon's glasses in his hand. One of the lenses was missing, but he leaned in and settled them on Egon's nose so he could see out of one eye, anyway.

"He's gonna make it," Peter insisted. "You can believe that old demon could keep our Egon down."

Clearest case of wishful thinking I ever saw, let me tell you. I watched Peter's arm tighten convulsively around Egon's shoulder. Those two had the longest history of any of us and they had a few issues to work out from tonight.

But Egon had been there when we were sucking Scaly out of him. He wasn't gone. I was pretty sure he'd be back any second. I'd better be right. The alternative wasn't worth thinking about.

Then Egon's eyelids fluttered and he said without opening them, "I genuinely thought it was Thursday, Peter. Even though I knew the conference was to end on Saturday and I knew it had ended, I was unable to make the connection."

"No wonder, with a Class 7 turning your brain to mush," Peter muttered. "You think I'm mad at you, Egon?"

"Well," Egon replied, his voice weary and strained but a lot closer to normal than any of us had expected, "You were." I caught Ray's eyes and grinned and he beamed back at me, delighted.

"Sure, put all the blame on Venkman," Peter kidded, but he sounded too happy and relieved to mean a word of it. I had an idea he was jollying Egon along to get him through the reaction that was sure to hit. Egon had just had his mind played with. The only thing worse for him than that would be if one of us had been zapped. "Just because I can always set the world's clocks by your schedule doesn't mean..." He gave a wicked chortle. "Egon Mean Time," he sputtered and went into a fit of laughter that was all out of proportion to his words, as much a reaction as anything Egon might have endured.

Old Egon pushed himself into a sitting position and stared at Peter as if he knew. He started laughing, too, because that was just the kind of weird humor he liked best. For a second they sat there giggling like idiots, then they leaned in and hugged each other hard. I was half afraid they were going to lose it, but the hug seemed to revitalize them and, when they let go, they both looked happier. Ray edged in and hugged Egon, too.

"Gosh, I'm glad you're back. That must have been awful, Egon."

Peter put up a hasty hand to stop Ray's comment, then lowered it again. Knowing Pete, he probably realized Egon had to deal with it. Better to say it now and have it over with.

"It was actually fascinating, once I realized, Raymond," Egon said in that pedantic tone he gets sometimes, like a musty old professor. "If only I had known sooner. What a waste. I could have studied it. Perhaps I could have reasoned my way out of it." He hesitated and I suddenly knew what Peter had already realized, that, any second now, he was going to start to think he had failed, because the great brain hadn't picked up on it.

I cut in fast. "Hey, Egon, who do you suppose his slave was?"

Peter glanced up quickly and winked at me, giving me a quick thumbs' up gesture for the question.

"Slave?" He backtracked to figure it out. "Hmmm. I assume it must have been Dan Kelly, the man who recruited me for the conference. There were several times I found his behavior more than peculiar. He has an interest in the occult as well as physics and often spoke of discovering a way to marry the two. His interest in our equipment was intense."

"Gosh, he was controlled by the demon. We'd better check him out," cried Ray. "Poor guy, he probably didn't mean to, just got in over his head. We can go see him in the morning and make sure he's all right. With the demon gone, he won't be controlled any more, and we can take along meters to be sure." He snapped his fingers. "Hey, Egon, did it make you reset the meters so we couldn't pick up on it? You haven't used a meter for days."

"That should have told us you weren't operating on all thrusters, Spengs baby," Peter retorted. Just so long as the real Egon is in there now." He tapped the top of Egon's head with his fingertips then winced. "Owwww!" Snatching his hand back, he flexed his fingers, then cradled his hand against his chest. "That hurts," he wailed reproachfully.

"If you will pick fights, Peter..." Ray chided, grabbing his hand and examining it. "Wow, are your knuckles bruised! Next time you try to punch out a demon...don't."

"Speaking of punching out..." I grabbed Egon's hands and held them out. They were as much a mess as Peter's.

Egon looked at them in stunned disbelief, then his eyes went to Peter's face. He flushed. "Peter, I am so sorry--" he began in the most abject tones yet.

Peter held up his hands, palms outward like the demon. "Not another word, Spengler, or I am going to make you eat them. You think that was you? You think I'm not glad he didn't inhabit Winston here who knows how to throw a punch?" He cast a quick, apologetic glance my way to reassure me he didn't really mean it. "You're not a boxing kind of guy, Egon. If you did, it would be with gloves and Marquis of Queensbury rules--whatever they are. You had a really unfair advantage, too. He didn't care if he punched me out but, by then, I didn't exactly want to hit you any longer." He stood up and stretched out his good hand to Egon. "I'm fine, you're fine, we're both sore, but we're all gonna live, and that's what counts. So, what do you say we head downstairs and I open all my presents. You did get me presents, didn't you, Egon?" he asked. "Or did the demon make you forget that, too?"

"Of course I bought you presents, Peter," Egon replied. "Mine is the next birthday. The last thing I would want would be to offer you a chance at retaliation. I merely concealed them."

"Are you kidding?" Peter challenged. "I tore this place apart, looking for them. Betcha the demon made you dump them. What a birthday, huh?"

"I hid them where you would never look for them, Peter," Egon chided him, waggling a finger in his face.

"Where?"

Egon beamed. "Under your bed."

There was a stunned silence. "Are you saying I never clean under my bed?" Peter asked with mock hauteur.

"If the shoe fits, Peter," Egon replied.

Peter glanced at me and Ray. "Man has a point," he conceded, then he grinned like a kid and raced madly for the stairs.

"Are you really all right, Peter?" I asked him an hour later. It was very late, but I hadn't yet wanted to go to bed. The party over, Janine had gone home, much shocked to hear what had happened and inclined to linger until we reassured her, and the rest of us had gravitated to the rec area, too wired with fading tensions to go to bed. I had made a quick telephone call to Dan Kelly, to find him stunned and claiming repentance but half afraid to call me and apologize. He knew what had happened, but he had been unable to control it. Now that it was over, he made earnest vows not to mess with the occult again. I suspect there is a weakness to his nature. Perhaps he can learn from this experience. I set up an appointment for us to visit him tomorrow afternoon--actually later today, since it was past midnight. We could take the necessary readings after I adjusted the P.K.E. meters to correct the demon's tampering.

It felt strange and unreal to believe I had actually been possessed and failed to know it, but Ray showed me all the readings he had been able to take with the doctored meter, and it would have been impossible to know. There had been no way for me to warn the guys what was happening, and they would have assumed my unusual behavior was simply because I was fixated on the conference. The demon had come far too close.

Realizing I couldn't have stopped the demon or given my friends clues made it somewhat easier to accept what had happened, although I was not happy to think that my brain had been invaded and that the demon had nearly brought about the destruction of the Ghostbusters. I was certain that it had made me miss Peter's party on purpose, knowing that it would set us at odds and give it time to do what it wanted to do in the firehall before anyone realized that it was even here. Even hurt and miserable, feeling that I had let him down, Peter had figured it out. He'd known, just by talking to me, that it wasn't really me. Of course the demon was growing impatient by then with my need to reconcile with Peter and might have tipped his hand, but Peter had known. I was very lucky to have his friendship and that of Ray and Winston.

"Oh, sure, Spengs," Peter responded to my question. He lay sprawled out on the couch, surrounded by his presents. He'd opened them with great joy, tearing the paper aside like a little child in his eagerness to get to the 'goodies' inside. My father had never encouraged me to open gifts that way, but the others all did. Lately, I'd started to feel the same excitement at the sight of a gift package. When my birthday came, perhaps I would break down and do the same.

"I mean, I'm not gonna dare show my face in public for at least a week," he said, touching the worst of the bruises. "I got the back-up cake, the one you guys bought for Slimer and had to fight the spud for it, and somebody--" He cast a wicked grin at Ray, who had been watching a late night horror movie "--scheduled a bust for first thing Sunday morning! Apart from that, I'm fine."

He did sound himself, but I wasn't entirely certain. My absence from the party must have hurt him very much. Even knowing the demon had controlled that, I felt bad about it.

Noticing the look in my eyes, he reached out and grasped my wrists. "Egon, that wasn't you," he pointed out. "Sure, I wanted to deck you at the time--hey, I did deck you," he added with a tap on my bruised chin. "But that wasn't you. Maybe we should've known..."

I shook my head. "You couldn't have known, Peter. None of us could. In any case, you did realize in time. I'm just glad we could work together like we did, in spite of your anger at me."

"By then it wasn't so much anger as worry," Peter admitted. "You scared us up there on the roof, big guy."

"Now that it is gone, I realize how it made me behave," I admitted. "While it was actually possessing me, it allowed me periods of awareness, but it concealed itself. Now that its influence is gone, I realized it meant to gain whatever information it could from me during the conference, then to return home and assimilate what it could here before it destroyed all of us. Fortunately, it didn't understand the importance of the party. When everyone was angry--and rightly so--I honestly believe it panicked. Until then, it had controlled everything but my desire to make it right with you, Peter, nearly overrode it entirely. It decided to waste no more time in subtlety. As I walked toward the edge of the roof, I was shocked when I realized it meant me to jump," I pointed out. "It intended to distract the rest of you with my death, emerge from my body, and destroy the firehall while you were involved with, er, my corpse."

"I wasn't too happy about that part myself," Peter returned. "It's okay, Egon. This is what we do. No wonder the demons want to make things tough for us. We zap and trap them all the time. They probably have conventions in the containment unit." He stretched comfortably, paused to wince, then stretched again. "You ever really forget my birthday I'll send you in there to join them. This time doesn't count."

He meant it. I felt warm and relieved inside. They had fought for me, even at a time when none of them had been disposed to think kindly of me. I was one of the most fortunate of men.

I couldn't say so, of course. Such things weren't for speaking aloud. I said them with my eyes and Peter saw it, but when I spoke aloud, it was to complain. "Honestly, Peter, no one could ever forget your birthday."

He started to preen himself, then he jerked to a stop and eyed me with vast suspicion, even though it didn't mask the delight in his eyes. "Why not?" he asked. I saw Winston and Ray waiting, struggling not to smile.

"Because you're sure to remind us," I explained. "Every single time."

Winston and Ray cracked up, and then I did something truly wicked. I reached out with both hands and vigorously mussed up Peter's hair.

I should have known he would retaliate.

It proved once and for all that I was forgiven. That I was free. That I was home.

"Come on, guys," said Winston, laughing, as he hauled us to our feet. "Let's call it a night."

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