The Cleverness of Wizards [Altamira]

The cold, damp air of the undercroft nipped against warm, pink flesh left undefended by the thin fabric of a generic tee. The young man who wore it was bent over an unmistakably old wooden table that still looked and felt as sturdy as could be, as if it had been crafted from cement rather than carved from simple oak. Long, strong fingers held a generic pencil and wrote on plain white paper in a precise cursive that may as well have been computer-generated onto the page, so fast and so precisely did it flow from the pencil. The only imperfections in the lettering were a result of the very rare, very slight imperfections in the surface beneath. Not forty seconds after he began writing, he stopped and straightened.

A single candle flickered on the table, illuminating the simple note, and he reread it with clinical precision that comes from wanting perfection from everything.

To the hireling,

The tower door is unlocked and open. The ghost may be found in the sub-basement, which may be accessed through the undercroft. Access to the undercroft is clearest through the stairwell in the southwest corridor. I will return to assist and render payment.

Sokoll

Reasonably satisfied that even a hireling would be able to understand the directions, he folded the paper in half and set it down on the table. He tapped it cautiously, glanced around cautiously, then frowned at the trapdoor that lead down into the sub-basement. The ghost was a tricky one, and he was never entirely sure what it knew, what it pretended to know, what it pretended not to know, and what it simply did not know. The shade spoke little and seemed to dislike everyone. Even the so-called spiritual mediums brought in to communicate with the ghost had received a colder welcome than they would have from the average snowman. It was absolutely impossible to deal with the thing.

Even so, leaving the tower without telling the ghost seemed unwise. All kinds of trickery could be done to the things Aleksandr had brought to the tower and although he had yet to see the ghost leave the sub-basement he was fairly certain that it could. It lingered near the bones of its corpse most of the time. The wizard stopped tapping the note and sighed. He might as well.

He picked up his coat from the table and slid into it before placing his had firmly atop his head and slipping the note into his jacket pocket. The staff he left where it was. The last time he had taken a visible weapon down there with him, the ghost had reacted terribly. Four columns and an entire section of the ceiling were added to the renovations list after that incident. He walked to the trapdoor, heaved it open, and climbed down the rope ladder into the darkness below. As soon as his feet hit the ground he channeled defensive energy into his gauntlet and held up a closed fist so that he could use the magical light as something of a flashlight.

The sub-basement was a strange part of the ruins. The tower was almost completely intact from the outside, and most of the floors were intact, but everything from the basement up was a mess. Whatever had caused the damage had been thorough. The entire structure was almost unusable. The only portion that was almost entirely whole was the sub-basement. It was expansive, with at least twenty separate rooms of sizes varying from large to huge, and from what Aleksandr knew of architecture he could tell that it was a masterpiece of underground engineering. The only places that were damaged had been damaged by the malevolent spirits that haunted it. The first time Aleksandr had come to the tower, he had assumed that the abundance of spirits was a mere coincidence. Now he knew better.

Most of them had been murdered here.

He found the ghost where it most frequently remained, standing in the shadows of the smallest room in the sub-basement. It glowed vivid orange when the light spilled across it, and the spirit narrowed its eyes at Aleksandr. The wizard stopped just close enough that he could speak with it in a reasonable tone.

"I am leaving the tower," he announced, "In my absence, a hireling of mine may arrive and come to visit you. Please behave yourself as much as you know how."

The spirit said nothing and looked him in the eyes. Aleksandr felt suddenly very cold, very alone, and very helpless. It was a terrible feeling. He jerked his chin up, turned, and strode from the room with as much dignity as he could maintain with the ghost giggling at his back. He knew the man before he died. He never imagined a simple thug with a blade would become such an eerie and dangerous spirit post-mortem. It was unthinkable, the amount of latent spiritual energy that simple swordsman had possessed. It was just as unthinkable how immune that energy was to his every attempt at exploitation or control.

Aleksandr left the tower in a hurry after that, snatching up his staff and rod as he passed through the undercroft, and paused only once he was out in the cool forest air. He turned and pinned the note to the door with a small nail. Hopefully the hireling would be punctual and up to the task of beginning without him. His experience with minor magicians had been poor recently. The all seemed to be lying showboats or incompetent, bumbling little failures. He turned from the door of the ruin and strode into the forest in the direction of the nearby town, disappearing into the forest within moments.

Inside the tower ruin, below the undercroft, in the smallest room of the sub-basement, the ghost of Kichaa Mesoa stirred from haunting its own bones and meandered slowly towards the hall. It was going to be visited again today. Visitors were always interesting.

Ghosts, wizards, old abandoned towers--yes, this sounded like a job for Cadenza. Or at least, the kind of job she would be stuck with. It had been pawned off on her this morning by Rain and Raisha, and she was still wondering as she packed what she had done this time to deserve it. The only upside to the situation she could see was that the wizard who'd hired them was said to be loaded. And while Cadenza was in no way hurting for money, you could never have too much pocket change. Especially not when you had a kid. Kate was going to need a college fund someday...

The letter they'd given her had been on plain white paper, and had read thusly:

To the hireling, (how warm and inviting, Cadenza thought. It sounded like a medieval kind of demon. Hireling.)

The tower door is unlocked and open. (Oh goodie. Was there a plate of cookies with milk, too?) The ghost may be found in the sub-basement, which may be accessed through the undercroft. Access to the undercroft is clearest through the stairwell in the southwest corridor. I will return to assist and render payment. (Straightforward enough.)

Sokoll

The handwriting was about as devoid of personality as dry white bread. Sitting on a white napkin. In a vacuum-sealed bag. The whole message was professional beyond professional, and something about that irked Cadenza; she couldn't imagine someone who could manage to write like this to be afraid or bothered by anything, much less ghosts. Unless, of course, this ghost really mucked up their perfect little sterile order--which must have been the case. This was, then, a real serious spooky problem she'd got on her hands, a real hands-on pest of a ghoul. And the woman barely had the enthusiasm to care. It was going to be quite a night.

The forest was particularly chilly that night, which seemed fitting. It was always chilly for this sort of thing. Cadenza found herself already missing the desert heat as she weaved through underbrush and cursed when her boots snagged on roots, shivering under her tailored wool coat the whole time. "Thriller" blared on her iPod and shut out the hoots of owls and chirping of crickets and other creepy crawlies, putting her in the mood for the work that lay ahead of her; she figured she ought to have a sense of humor about the whole thing, or else it'd be an even bigger pain.

Out of the gloom, she could see the looming form of the tower rising up over the canopy of the trees. It seemed to be in pretty good shape for such a supposedly old building, stones all in place, no blown-out walls or crumbling old steeples like she'd been half-expecting. It didn't really look like the sort of place that would be haunted, except for how the moonlight was hitting it. Juuust right, to cast a long, dark shadow that stretched into the forest, beckoning the creatures there to dare take a step closer. Not that any of the little bunnies or deer would.

With a bit of defiance--maybe the feel of the place was getting to her--Cadenza strode out into that elongated shadow, with her shoulders squared, and headed straight across the clearing and through the open tower door. Heeere we go.

It was considerably warmer inside, and the woman found herself grateful for that. She shrugged her jacket off and folded it on her arm as she walked along, eyes taking in the various halls and rooms. Most of the place seemed intact, like the outside suggested. Maybe a bit more banged-up. But that was to be expected from an old place like this--especially if the ghost was as bad as he'd been made out to be. After getting more or less acquainted with the general feel of the place, Cadenza started to look around for this undercroft the guy kept mentioning. Southwest, he'd said. What, was I supposed to bring a damn compass?

After a bit of wandering about and backtracking through the stone halls, she eventually found the stairwell Perfect-and-Precise Sokoll had indicated (did he even have a first name? Most likely not. Someone might give him a nickname or shorten it then, and that probably would just not do for Mr. Congeniality, the gypsy mused in the back of her mind) and started on her way down, humming along with the tune still on loop on her iPod. Thrilla niiight...

The ghost was about to have some company, and she came packing a bag with quite an an array of the best magical charms and herbs.

The wizard tower, most frequently called Arborview by the citizens of the minuscule town just a few miles north-northwest, had a lot of ghosts. It was more haunted than all but the most highly populated graveyards—Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, for instance—and almost seemed to be a collector. In a sense, it was. The energy of the tower was almost irresistible to ghosts, shades, and wraiths of all shapes and sizes. Spirits just loved Arborview, and it had nothing to do with the great forest views.

Kichaa Mesoa had died at twenty-two years of age. It had been a confusing and difficult time in his life. His death was violent, and his last thoughts were very strong, angry, jealous thoughts. It was the kind of death that could make even the nicest person in the world imprint a really nasty ghost on the right location. The ghost Kichaa Mesoa left behind was exactly the kind of ghost the children had nightmares about and the adults refused to talk about. It was a malevolent spirit. If it had the capability to murder it would probably murder any living thing that stepped within the authoritative purview of the Arborview tower. If it had the willpower to cause damage that was more than merely cosmetic, the tower would probably have been leveled.

So when it started giggling about its guest, it was not happy about having someone to talk to and it was not the distant, but fundamentally good person who had died and left it behind as a legacy. It was happy about having someone more fun to play with than the coldly detached young wizard and the half-brainless spirits he had raised and enslaved for general use around the tower. It was giggling because it was going to cause trouble. Ideally, it would be able to kill this new visitor. The last ones had given it several ideas that it never got time to try out. This time, the ghost was going to do something unpeaceful.

A rickety old wizard tower with more infused magical energy than the average planet just made it so much easier to be dangerous.

When the woman stepped on the premises, the ghost was aware of her and started following her immediately. It followed her through the hallways, into the rooms, back into the hallways, and did its best not to giggle at her. She was so lost. It was so sad to watch women trying to navigate. The first female visitor had taken half the day trying to find the stairway to the library, and she had only managed to find it because the wizard sent her one of his servant spirits to scare her in the right direction.

That had been a fun one.

This one was going to be more fun. She was definitely prettier. The long hair, the great butt, the tight clothing—she looked rather like a gypsy, and she wore the look well. It was going to be fun making that mascara run. She would probably look a lot less pretty with makeup running down her face and little tears in her cute little costume. Old buildings were funny. Sometimes a snag or a wall looked like it was one place, then seemed to move as soon as you looked away. Oops, you have a tear in your shirt now. Oh dear, it must have hurt to bump your knee like that. Did that falling ceiling hurt your foot? How very sad.

The ghost finally started chuckling when she got to the undercroft. Her music obviously made it hard for her to hear him, so he started clapping slowly, mockingly.

"Bravo," he giggled, "only twenty-nine minutes to find the right stairway."

When she reached the pitch blackness of the sub-basement, off went the iPod, filling the first room with a last soft glow of bluish light before it powered down. Cadenza stashed it into her bag, and the rhythms still rocking in her head, she glanced around as her eyes adjusted, hands resting on her hips in a stance that had always come naturally to her. It was a confident stance, and a defensive one, and not one that would be assumed by anyone who was afraid of the dark. Because the gypsy, personally, never had been. It was only a bit of light short of being one big, thick patch of shadow, anyhow.

Thankfully, Cadenza had always had good night-vision. You needed it, spending so much of your childhood on the streets. Magic only helped make it even clearer. The room stood out to her in silhouettes and outlines of furniture corners and edges, and grayish planes of stone floors--but there was something more. Even this first chamber was filled with an otherworldly feel, a chill that ran down the backbone, gave the fidgety more reason to panic. But again, Cadenza was not fidgety. Dealing with Spirits and the like was her bread and butter at the moment. It wasn't her favorite job, but she had a talent for it, and the tough nerves for it. One couldn't practice gypsy magic without running into a few disgruntled ghosts of ancestors or past lovers, or other bitter people (in-laws were popular complaints.) She wasn't worried. This ghost might be a handful, but he was standing between her and possibly a nice long vacation after this job, and that was not a good place to stand--or one you typically lasted standing in for very long.

The woman began to meander through the unlit halls, keeping her eyes and ears and magical senses open for the spectral annoyance. Come on out, Casper you sly bastard...

About the time Cadenza was thinking that, the resident haunts were starting to become aware of her presence. Many of them were weak enough or useless enough to have been overlooked by the resident necromancer, and among those was the ghost of the late Doctor Hermetius Voyle. The good doctor had a philosophical doctorate in being generally bad at anything he ever tried except searching. He had become an archaeologist primarily because it was the only job left where the primary goal was looking for things that had yet to be found. Perhaps his greatest archeological discovery had been finding Arborview some fifteen hundred years before. He had starved to not long afterwards.

Doctor Hermetius Voyle was the first ghost to become aware of the visitor, besides the ghost of Kichaa Mesoa, and was definitely the most polite ghost she would meet. He drifted from his little cranny in one of the nearer rooms until he was at the door, took one look at her, and waved cheerfully at her.

"Good evening, miss!" he shouted, his voice warbling rather disconcertingly. He had never quite got the hang of speaking non-corporeally. "Hello, Amnesia!"

Amnesia was the name the other ghosts had given the ghost of Kichaa Mesoa. It had never been able to recollect its name or any of the events that transpired before his death. It was remarkable that it was even able to speak, or that it had a personality. For whateer reason, it simply knew things or did not know things. It was probably because it was a malevolent spirit. Several of the spirits inside the tower really disliked it because of how savage it could be when bothered, but Hermetius had never been either afraid of it or unhappy with it. It was probably because Hermetius was rather stupid, even for a ghost.

"Hello, Doctor," the malevolent ghost said, "How are you today?"

It was purely conversational. The answer was always the same, "For some reason, I feel quite hungry. I don't suppose you would have any food, would you?"

"No, doctor, but our visitor is a scullery maid. She might have some," it responded sarcastically.

The good, dead doctor had no ear for sarcasm and turned to Cadenza with the puppy-dog look of a child who has been starved for days and hears that a certain person may have a sandwich for them. The ghost of Kichaa Mesoa chuckled and drifted through a nearby wall, not quite walking but also not flying, to leave Cadenza with a hanger-on. Now he had a pretty effective way of keeping track of her. Hermetius never stopped talking, and he was loud.

This would not be the first time Cadenza had someone unwanted nipping at her heels. Now usually, those people had interests in her other than bumming a sandwich off her, but... some of the same tricks for getting rid of them applied. You had to humor them, for one. Let them think you gave a damn. She waited for a moment when the doctor would finally pause in his rambling speech, tuning most of it out and watching the spot where "Amnesia" had floated off through.

It was some time before he was done, and she was left with the faint oncoming signs of a headache. He was going to pay for that, she thought.

"You want a sandwich, old boy, huh...? Wanna sandwich...?" Cadenza finally spoke up before he could resume, adopting a tone that suggested she classed the doctor's ghost in the same IQ range as a braindead puppy. This tended to help. There was probably some psychology crap you could say it used, like appealing to an inner child side of a person or something along those lines, but she didn't care to mull it over that deeply. Long story short, it worked.

Hermetius forgot his next train of chattering and instead nodded obediently at this, like the pliant, playdough-brained man the gypsy judged he was. "Oh yes, please, my dear woman...! I have been dying for one for such a long time now..."

Dying, har har... if only he could recognize irony. Cadenza grinned a little to herself, and produced a turkey-and-cheese sandwich from her bag, holding it up like it were a squeaky toy. "Well then, come and get ittt, Hermiee..." she prompted in a sing-song voice that made even her want to cringe with its sappy sweetness. Gods, the things you had to do to compromise and make a buck. Pride was tough to forget.

The good doctor's eyes followed the cling-wrapped morsel from side to side with hunger in his ghastly eyes. If he still had a functioning tongue, it would've salivated. But at the moment, his starvation was purely mental, or spiritual even... he had died wanting a sandwich badly enough that, well, even his ghost still wanted a sandwich.

With wispy blue hands, he reached for the turkey-and-cheese, and suddenly gave a wail when the food seemed to bite him first. Something hard, metallic, and magic clamped down on his fingers, and he became vaguely aware of the gypsy woman murmuring something as a pulse ran through his body, making it all feel like... fizz. He could actually feel it. His spirit began to dissociate into tendrils of wispy, spectral smoke, collecting into the charm that he now, somewhere in the remains of his mind, realized had been inside the decoy sandwich.

In a matter of minutes, Doctor Hermetius Voyle's good-natured, albeit mildly and persistently irritating consciousness was contained in nothing more than a small metal figurine. Cadenza tossed this away like it were nothing more but a bit of chewed gum wrapped in paper, and after a moment's thought, threw the sandwich along with it as she strode out into the blackness of the next room.

"Enjoy the sandwich, Doc!"

The tower was an old ruin. Old ruins were fun. The ghost of Kichaa Mesoa knew the ruin really well, better than Sokoll did and way better than the funny gypsy lady did, so he knew that there were loose blocks of stone in just about all of the ceilings. He knew that there were certain blocks of floor that shifted when weight was put on the right part. He knew that some of the walls were structurally unsound and would probably cave in if someone who weighed more than fifty or so pounds were to lean on them. A lot of fun and dangerous things could happen just by bad luck in a place like that.

A lot more fun and dangerous things could happen if there was a malevolent spirit pulling down the ceiling, rocking the floor, and pushing over the walls. While the good doctor rambled and the exorcist listened impatiently—he could tell she was impatient because of who she was talking to—he walked through the hallways and started picking out the places he would play tricks. The possibilities were nearly endless, but by the time Cadenza got moving, the ghost was ready for her. He drifted through a wall into the same room she chose and, grinning disarmingly, cocked his head at her.

"Look out for traps," he advised, just as a chunk of stone about the size of a Volkswagen fell from right above her head.

"Bloody fuh--!" was all she had time to say before the stone came crashing down, flattening whatever was below it like smooth peanut butter on bread. By tumbling backwards through a shadow, Cadenza just narrowly evaded becoming some extra chunky bits in that equation.

The gypsy landed on her rear with a great thud in the magical hall and a muddled and fast-paced series of shouted curses flying from her lips. If it were possible for anyone to be there with her, they would have been embarrassed to hear the sorts of things coming from the lady's mouth. She cursed worse than an old sailor stuck in New York traffic. The huge stone the ghost had dislodged had hit her hand and cracked a few knuckles before she'd fallen completely through the shadow on the floor, and even after she let healing magic run through it, it ached terribly and put her in an even more sour mood.

"How the **** did he manage to do that?" she yelled, to no one in particular. It echoed off the shadow walls with a hollow sound. "He's *****ing immaterial! He's not supposed to be able to touch anything..."

Cadenza picked herself up and dusted herself off, already beginning to see why Scrupulous Sokoll hadn't wanted to deal with this ghost himself. The thing was bloody sadistic, for one. The woman herself had no pure and light-hearted sense of humor, but it was quickly becoming obvious that "Amnesia" or whatever the hell he went by (Amnesia seemed like something a woman who'd never picked up a book before might think was a pretty name for a daughter, Cadenza personally thought) was even worse. He probably wouldn't be satisfied if she got out of this tower alive. And if that was the case, he and the wizard could just kiss her ass. She didn't need this much trouble. Kate was expecting her to come the hell home, after all.

Sighing a bit and collecting her things, the woman rematerialized from the shadows in another room in the sub-basement. She was going to leave, she decided. But not until she got back at this ghost even just a little for leaving her with the peabrained doctor and now freaking her out. It was that damned pride problem, again--Cadenza couldn't completely ignore it.

The whole magic thing was unknown to the ghost. He had little enough memory of his past life, and what he did remember had absolutely nothing to do with anything magical or arcane. All he had ever known about shadows was that they were basically areas where there was less light, but not a complete absence of it. He had also found that shadows were very nice for slinking around and scaring people, living or dead. Therefore, it was no magical knowledge or arcana insight that told him Cadenza Madrigal had survived the falling rock.

It was simple deduction. He had heard absolutely no squishy noises. That meant that nothing had been squished. There was also a minimal amount of blood and guts around the rim of the stone, which meant that the lady either had some kind of neatness gene that made her death clean and sanitary ... which seemed unlikely ... or she was un-squished.

"Clever girl," the ghost murmured, half-walking and half-drifting out into the hallway. It came as a completely justified surprise that she was not there. After all, where else would she have gone? It was not as if someone could simply vanish into thin air. He started murmuring to himself as he walked down the hall, "Funny ... I wonder where ..."

Then he happened to look in the door of a room just in time to see her appear inside, stand up, and start getting ready to leave. The process of getting ready to leave was one he had become more than slightly familiar with over the course of his prankster-ing. He had no desire to let her actually leave, so he drifted back down the hall rather than play another trick. The average speed of a drifting ghost is, conveniently for the ghost, just as immaterial as the ghost. He could move as quickly as he felt he could move, which was effectively like teleportation but in a different sort of way. He reached the hatch and, smiling wickedly to himself, made it lock from the upstairs. It would at least slow her down and alert him if she managed to get away and run off.

Sooner or later Sokoll would come back and spoil his fun, but until then he had lots more he was hoping to do. Maybe he would even find a way to kill her off and make her into a ghost. He could antagonize her for eternity, then.

"Exorcist lady," he called, "Come out and play with me."

The nation of Adaefed, part of the Rochester Republic, had always had a reputation for some strange goings-on; witches, and cults, and tales of horrible dragons and other beasts. With this old haunted tower here, it wasn't hard to see why the tourism industry was suffering. Cadenza never wanted to come back. If it was up to her, in fact, she would blow the whole hellhole to bits.

Maybe someday. She was a world-class grudge-holder.

But for right now, she settled for disturbing the menacing bastard of a ghost as much as possible before she left. As he called out for her to come and play in a sly, provoking voice, the woman busied herself chalking an octagon out on the stone floor, free-handing it with practiced accuracy. At each point, she placed a charm, that gleamed in the darkness of the room once set down, and seemed to lock into their places in the eight corners. A few murmured words set the whole arrangement aglow.

When she'd finished, she sat back and admired her work, sprinkling a last touch of ground herbs into a heap in the center of the shape for good measure. "Ohh ghooost," Cadenza called back, "I've got our playground set up noow..."

The ghost wandered in, smiling, and took one look at the curious arrangement before he snorted and left again. He walked back out into the hall, paused for a moment to consider, then turned and wandered down to the next room. A dour-looking librarian type barred his way when he tried to enter. She was Elhiaza Block and her surname was an astoundingly accurate description of her as a person. She had about as much liveliness as a rock and all the empathy of one, as well, but she was easy to manipulate. She had this one little thing she found absolutely abhorrent.

"Elhiaza," the ghost of Kichaa greeted.

"Mrs. Block," she corrected.

He continued without correcting himself, "There's a woman in the next room. She looks like she wants to sleep here."

Almost before the words had left his mouth, the stern lady was storming off through the walls to see what that was all about. None of the ghosts quite knew why she was so against anyone falling asleep in the sub-basement, but she had run off several dozen over the course of time just Kichaa had been there. It was truly hilarious to see a hardened warrior retreating against her onslaught of grammatically perfect verbiage. The gypsy would probably have to spend at least five seconds on getting her to shut up, and that was all the time Kichaa needed.

He wandered through the wall and drifted quickly past Elhiaza Block and the victim of her coldly polite slanders. There was a loose stone in the floor around ... aha, there it was. The stone lifted, less because he was physically raising it and more because he wanted it to raise, and he tossed it. It sailed through the air for less than two seconds before it plonked down with a heavy impact that sent little shudders through the floor.

"No playing with sticks," he teased.

Then a Chinese fighting stick, a bo, fell from the ceiling right at Cadenza's head.

It was sort of ironic; all throughout Miss (or rather, Mrs., as she very primly asserted, leaving the gypsy to wonder how long her poor husband could've survived being married to this ramrod proper woman) Block's diatribe, Cadenza had been hoping for something like a blow to the head. More like a shot to the head. But anything to rescue her from being assaulted with all the pedantic precision of a librarian would have worked fine.

That was when the bo hit her.

Her first feeling when it struck her on the noggin was almost gratitude. Of course, Mrs. Block continued on berating her for how improper it was to keel over in the middle of a conversation, but it was all so much white noise to Cadenza as she slumped forward onto the floor and clutched at her head. Damn, she thought, after a moment where her mind had gone blank and numb from the initial pain, not enough to put me down for the count.

It ached dully for a while, and she decided it'd be in her best interest to play dead, lest the aching get even worse from continued Mrs. Block-exposure. She should come with a warning label, Cadenza thought. Right between her perpetually furrowed, neatly-trimmed little brows. The gypsy laid there for minutes, pulling off quite a convincing little act, and after some time the ghostly woman huffed in exasperation at how poor a listener she was being and started to float off, still gesticulating in her anger.

That's when she crossed over the octagon.

Her gray dress seemed to snag on the first charm, and then her spectral, sensible shoe on the next. Soon she found herself trapped, a discovery with which she was none too pleased. Mrs. Block began scolding whomever had had the gall to draw on the property's historic floors when Cadenza sat up, and gave her a cheeky grin.

"Godsdamn," she took special amusement in how the swear word made the ghost woman cringe, "will I be glad to see you go. Ciao, Miss Block."

And with those words, and a scream (probably the first Block ever uttered, Cadenza snickered to herself) followed by a bright violet flash, Elhiaza Block's ghost was reduced to nothing but dust in the center of the octagon, ashes amongst the ground herbs.

OoC: Two down. x3 Kichaa's gonna get lonely soon at this rate.

Sokoll, who had been watching rather curiously, stepped into the room almost the same moment the harmless ghost was destroyed. He frowned at the octagon, then at Cadenza Madrigal, and murmured something under his breath. He gestured vaguely in the direction of the large piece of floor stone and it scraped its way back where it came from in a single fluid movement as the wizard walked carefully into the room.

"My, my," the ghost murmured, floating around the circle to stand on the opposite side of the gypsy from his wizard problem, "this one plays with fire."

"Miss Mandrigal, I presume," Sokoll said. His delivery was crisp and almost toneless, about as boring and perfect as his writing, but there was an underlying shade of disappointment. His eyes roved past her to the ghost who was drifting steadily closer to her shoulder and he asked, "Was it not clear that I wanted a professional to handle this job? Why did they send ... you?"

"...What the ****'s that supposed to mean? Oh, and it's Madrigal, Sodkoll," she dropped the British swear word in his name without missing a beat, "I'm trying to get rid of your ghost friend over here, but he keeps sending his little buddies to get in the way."

Cadenza nodded towards the pile of dust that had once been Mrs. Block.

"That was gonna be him in a little while, if we'd been spared your interruption now. They sent me 'cause I get results. Of course, if you wanna just pay me for my time right this moment, I'd happily be on my way home, meu amigo."

Kichaa held a hand to his chest, right over his heart, and silently mouthed "I'm hurt by that" to Sokoll as he crept slowly and silently up behind the gypsy lady. The wizard sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. It was going to be a trial to get through this with Kichaa involved, but now he had to deal with some kind of puffed-up drama queen. He should have specified that he only wanted someone who had actually dealt with an intelligent undead, not just the stupid lumbering zombies everyone seemed to think were so dangerous.

He let go of his nose in time to see the ghost shushing him and standing right at the shoulder of his exorcist. The disconcerting thing was not so much that the ghost was so close to someone, but that he had not tried to bring down a load of granite on her head. Something with that seemed quite wrong.

"Miss," he began, in the tone someone takes with an annoying telemarketer who seems to think that asking them to go screw themselves and asking them for the next fall catalogue are the same thing, "I understand that brute force and tricks work for some ghosts, but please believe me when I say that if an amateur charm—like the one in the hall—or a weak little ritual like that one were going to seal this ghost, I would not have asked for a professional exorcist. I would have called the magician who worked at my nephew's birthday party."

Although his accent bled through the annoyance in his last sentence, he was reasonably confident he had kept himself fairly controlled. The ghost was holding his hand over his lips in a comic manner and fanning himself as if he was about to burst into dramatic tears. Sokoll just shook his head and sighed.

"Honestly, have you even noticed that it is right behind you?"

"Yes, actually, I've known for the past couple of minutes. I also know he thinks he's being pretty smart right now, but we can leave that one up to everyone's own judgment there. As for you..."

She jabbed the wizard with a finger, and he gave her a look that suggested he likened her poke to being spat upon by a baby.

"...if this is going to be your attitude about how I do my job, you can just take that check you were going to pay me and shove it up your ass. I don't need someone like you snubbing me after the evening I've already had. The douchebag behind me can laugh at that if he wants. I'm going home to my kid."

And with that, Cadenza hefted her bag on her shoulder and brushed past Sokoll towards the exit. The locked exit. But with magic, no lock managed to hold her for very long.

The wizard just sighed and glanced accusingly at the ghost. It was probably for the best that the amateur brush off. She would probably just end up being hurt if she stayed, and he had found that missing persons often translated into hassles. Hassles often translated into the discovery of dead bodies and the discovery of dead bodies, strangely, often translated into more dead bodies. That kind of event was fine when his only intentions were to pass through, but this tower was of great significance. He could not have some overzealous constable barging into his life.

Malevolent ghost that he was, Kichaa just shrugged and smiled. Something about the way he did it made Sokoll feel ill at ease, but he just shook his head and frowned. This was a lot of trouble to go to, but the ghost did seem like he was enjoying himself. Perhaps he would overstep himself and the amateur would snag him on blind luck. It was a hope.

"Miss Madrigal," he called after her, "Please wait a moment."

He walked out with the ghost, carrying a Chinese fighting staff he had never seen before, in tow. He caught sight of her before she was all the way to the exit and, sparing a glance to make sure the ghost was not preparing to batter his brains out, tried to catch up to her. The ghost just drifted past him at an alarming velocity and whirled around in front of the exorcist, peculiar fighting staff held horizontally to bar her path through the hallway. He was smiling.

"Come on, now, I'm sure he's going to give you more money. Don't you like me?"

Cadenza could only stare, an eyebrow arched, her lips curled in a small scowl.

"...You can't be serious."

And the ghost just smiled brazenly back at her, nodding. Looked back with vaguely familiar eyes, a face cut like a diamond with pronounced cheekbones, nearly square. She felt she'd seen it before, somewhere back in a hazy memory, but she'd also... heard it described to her, mentioned to her in a gushing voice many more times after... Again, she repeated, but this time only in her thoughts: ...You can't be serious.

This is Selene's Kichaa. "Amnesia" is... that guy I ran into once at the bar, the guy she told me about months later, when Z'd died, the one who was comforting her, that'd she'd started to have feelings for...

Her blue eyes went a little wide in recognition, and the scowl faded from her face. She couldn't tell if the ghost noticed. She was too wrapped up in putting together the new pieces, to answer old wonders. She said she'd sent him a letter... never understood why he wouldn't answer back, thought it was so unlike him. But... he must've been dead then, must've... how long has he been here...?

He's dead. My gods... I have to tell her...

When the woman finally spoke, her voice was hardly above a breath, and had lost the earlier edge. It was simply an astounded, "Kichaa..."

Aleksandr Sokoll stopped dead in the hall, not more than a few meters from the exorcist woman, and suddenly gave her his total and focused attention.

That name.

She knew his name. That was bad. Assuming it was his real name, it could be catastrophic. The wizard stared holes into the back of her head, then shifted to catch the expression of the ghost. He let out a breath. He had no apparent reaction to hearing the name. His head was half-cocked in curiosity and his smile had dwindled slightly to a bemused smirk, but otherwise the name had about as much effect on him as throwing a rock would have. Sokoll felt much better when the ghost reacted belatedly by widening his eyes, his mouth forming an inaudible ‘oh' as if he had suddenly been told the secret of the universe, and took a half-step forward to the woman.

Oh, good. He was still playing tricks.

The trick, of course, was that he did not recognize the name. Kichaa took half a step forward toward the woman and the staff clattered to the ground at his feet.

"My name!" he said, in a tone of reverent joy, "You told me my name!"

Weeping with (utterly fake, but convincing) tears, the big ghost kept walking forward and spread his arms wide, like he wanted a hug from the gypsy. Sokoll looked away and coughed, scratching the side of his jaw. This was just getting strange.

"...Kichaa ****ing Mesoa, you never wanted to hug me in life, so don't start now."

She backed away, but the ghost merely grinned more at this.

"How 'bout a kiss then?" he prodded, trying to keep a straight face.

"You can kiss Sokoll's ass," was the immediate response, and Cadenza was dying to steal a look at the wizard's face afterward, but with the ghost harassing her, there wasn't much chance.

She wasn't sure how much Kichaa really remembered of his past life, or of who she was, but he was still as much a bastard to her dead as he was alive. The only thing that kept her standing there and tolerating it all was finding out more for Selene's sake.