Unwanted Guests (Real Ghostbusters) - Part 2 of 3
Title: Unwanted Guests (Part 2 of 3)
Author: omorka
Fandom: The Real Ghostbusters
Pairing/character: Ensemble, but focal Peter/Egon/Ray
Rating: FRAO/NC-17
Word Count: ~25000 total
Kink: Threesome, hurt/comfort, possession
Notes/Warnings: Slash, M/M/M threesome, oral sex, frottage, a non-con-ish moment, minor transformation/body horror, occult content. Thanks to my beta, peoriapeoria, who took this on at the last minute; all remaining typos and continuity errors are mine, not hers. Standard disclaimer: I don't own the boys.
Summary: The 'Busters respond to an out-of-town call - unusual phantoms have invaded a wealthy man's private mansion. In dealing with the problem, Peter, Egon, and Ray call up a few unresolved issues from their own pasts.
Artist: ms_ellery, who did a lovely cover and wallpapers, also on short notice - huzzah!
Part 1
An overstuffed armchair in navy blue had been dragged into the center of the room and draped in golden satin braids. One of the phantoms, the one holding the spear, stood guard just inside the door, glaring at them. Behind the guard and off to the side, Egon's uniform was draped over a wooden ladder-backed chair, with his glasses folded and tucked into one of the chest pockets, and his boots and pack tossed carelessly beneath the chair. He was seated on the armchair, gazing regally at them with eyes that glowed with blue starfire.
He'd been changed, physically. His frame, always tall and thin, had been supernaturally elongated. His hair was now shining white-gold, and his usual pipe-curl had relaxed into something closer to a standard pompadour, with the tail in back now trailing over one shoulder. His ears were long and came to delicate points, and his fingers were similarly pointed. He was wearing a simple tunic the color of the first leaves of spring, a fragile green-gold, and a simple golden circlet rested on his head.
His face was little changed, except for the ears and a subtle sharpening of his chin. The expression there, on the other hand, was that of a stranger, cool and regal and utterly uncaring.
He raised an eyebrow at them; the gesture was so deeply Egon's that it nearly broke Ray's heart to see it on that strange face. "So, the mortals have sent a Druid, a Warrior, and a Worker to stop me. It is good to know that some things haven't changed."
Peter and Ray exchanged a glance. Ray turned back. "So you're considering Egon an Outsider? I guess he'd have to be, if you're claiming to be a king."
The Elvenking in Egon's body scowled at them. "What do you mean?"
"And I think you're mistaking which one of us is which," Peter added. "I mean, I'm the most formally educated one after Egon, so that would make me the Druid, wouldn't it?"
Ray nodded in agreement. "And Winston's the one who's had actual war experience, and I grew up on a farm."
The guardian glided between them and the door. "Whether scholar or warrior, your body will make a fine enough host for me. So good a throwing arm will not go to waste, I assure you." He advanced on Peter, spear ready.
Egon, or the thing in Egon's body, waved a hand. "Kill the other two, and you may have him. I grow weary of toying with these mortals."
"Nobody's killing anyone," snarled Peter, and he swung the skillet at the guardian's spear. The specter jumped back, hovering a few inches above the floor. Winston dropped the shovel, raised his thrower, and let the guardian have a stream at three-quarter power; the elf-spirit jerked and screamed, dodging wildly to get out of the blast.
Ray edged forward. "Egon? Egon, are you still in there?" He brandished the oak twig in front of him like a weapon.
The Elvenking smiled. "No, little one, he is not. All that dwells in his breast now is me." One hand glimmered with leaf-green light, and Ray barely ducked in time to avoid the burst of energy flung at him.
"Egon doesn't live there, dummy," Peter called back, advancing on the guardian and taking a wild swing. "Egon, I bet you can hear me. This jackass is doing magic with your body, and I know how you hate that. C'mon, Spengs, fight him off!"
"I tell you, he is no longer here," snarled the Elvenking through Egon's lips. He raised both hands, and energy swirled around them, purple and white.
The guardian broke off from Peter and dove for Ray, instead. Ray reached out with the oak twig and parried, turning the spear aside to miss him by inches. The guardian drew back and thrust again; Ray caught it on the twig a second time, but was thrown off balance.
"Ray!" Winston fired again, but pulled his stream; he couldn't get a clear shot at the guardian without putting Ray in danger. Egon - no, the ghost possessing him, Winston reminded himself - let loose a purple whirlwind, and Winston ducked and rolled to get out of its way as it knocked the doors from their hinges.
The guardian rose as if trying to escape, then whirled and jabbed again. Ray swung with the twig, and connected, but not in time; the spear point missed his chest and grazed his side instead. He cried out and dropped the mistletoe, clutching at his ribs as redness oozed between his fingers.
A look of anguish crossed Egon's features, but was quickly replaced with the Elvenking's cold smile.
Peter spun around and the frying pan came down heavily on the spectral spear. It snapped in two with a crackle of PKE energy, then spun into golden mist and faded like the trees had.
"You are not hurting Ray again," Peter growled, hoisting the skillet again. "And you're sure not getting a piece of me, either." The guardian tried to glide upward, but Peter was faster; the pan struck the specter directly in the face. The guardian dropped to the floor, stunned.
Winston was already behind him; he hit the quick-release on his belt. "Bye, sucker." He stomped the foot pedal and the trap's doors opened; the guardian scrabbled at the floor for purchase futilely, and was sucked away.
Winston left the trap to Peter and charged across the room. "Ray, are you all right?"
Ray pulled his hand away from his side. "It hurts, and it's bleeding, but I think it's pretty shallow. Don't worry about me; worry about Egon."
Peter finished hooking the trap to his harness with his off-hand and turned to his possessed friend. "Okay, Egon, I know you're in there. I saw you when that asshole got Ray. You can fight this guy, I know you can."
The Elvenking smiled. "You won't fire your lightning at me. You fear too much to hurt your friend."
"Any chance we can use the Watt gambit?" Peter asked over his shoulder, still edging closer to Egon.
Ray shook his head. "We don't have a clear reading of this specter. I could back-calculate its energy frequencies from a reading of Egon now, since we know what his usual electrometabolic readings are, but it would take a while."
"Then we'll have to do this the hard way." Peter's eyebrows drew together. "Egon. Listen to me. You can fight him. We're here for you."
The Elvenking's sneer faltered for a second. Then it returned. "He cannot. No mortal could."
Ray drew himself up and fumbled on the floor for the mistletoe. "Winston, could you go get me some salt and a clean knife from the kitchen? No, wait, you don't need to go back down the stairs if you don't have to; can you get some water from the bathroom there, and I'll go get the rest?"
"Seriously? You're going to do a straight-up exorcism?" He knew Ray knew how to do that, but he'd never actually seen the team's occultist perform one. Winston didn't think he liked the idea.
"If that's what it takes. I'll be back in a sec; Peter, do you think you can hold him?"
"No problem. I'll tackle him if I have to; as long as he stays in Egon, he's physical." Peter took another step forward, still clutching the handle of the frying pan like a baseball bat.
"Great. Hold these," Ray said, pressing the oak and mistletoe into Winston's hands as he bounced out the door.
For a moment, Egon's features smoothed into something like their normal state. He held up both hands. "Peter, you wouldn't hurt me, would you?"
Peter scowled. "Egon, not in a million years, and he knows that. You, on the other hand - for hurting him, I'd gladly see you rot in Hell. But, since we haven't been there in a while, the containment unit will have to do." His eyes softened. "Egon, I'm here, Ray's going to get some of his schtick, it's going to be okay." The being who was half Egon and half Elvenking glanced at the skillet and seemed to shrink back.
Winston hesitated. "Peter -"
"Go get Ray's water. I can hold him, and I want this over as soon as possible." Peter's emerald eyes met the glowing ice that didn't belong, could never belong, to his friend.
Winston gave Peter a dubious look, but he left. Immediately the Elvenking smiled, a terrible, twisted thing, and flung out both hands. Red-gold fire poured from them at Peter's midsection.
Peter flung himself to the floor; the flames passed over his head, singeing the back of his uniform as he shielded himself with the frying pan. As soon as the heat passed, he yanked himself back to his feet again. "Look, you bastard, I realize you don't know when you're beat, but - "
Egon - that was Egon, he was sure of it - was staring at his hands in utter horror. For an instant, the blue starlight faded from his eyes, and they met Peter's in relief. Then the Elvenking shook him, and the long face took on a calculating grin. "Well played," he purred.
Peter grimaced, and swung the frying pan so it caught him along the forearm, not hard enough to break anything - hopefully not enough to even bruise; Egon wasn't as delicate as he often looked. The Elvenking cried out in surprise, and clutched at his wrist. "Why - how - "
"I know what would happen to Egon if he thought he'd hurt me. I'm not letting you get your jollies that way. And if Ray explained this right," he continued, smacking him in the other arm with the skillet, "I imagine the steel can't actually hurt you while you're in a human body, but it should still fritz out your magic."
Winston hustled back into the room, holding a crystal vase full of water. "Pete, we're gonna have to restrain him while Ray draws the circle, you know that, right?"
Peter obviously hadn't thought about that. "Uh, yeah. Fortunately," he recovered, "he was kind enough to provide for the eventuality." He reached behind him with his off hand and snagged one of the satin braids from the armchair.
For the first time, the Elvenking looked like he might actually be frightened. He bolted towards the door; Winston blocked him expertly, and Peter went in for the tackle. All three of them went down in a heap.
"Okay, I got - oh, looks like you've started without me," chirped Ray, stopping in the doorway. "Can you guys get him into the chair?"
"I will not submit to this indignity," the Elvenking shouted, although honestly if that had been Egon speaking, it might not have sounded much different.
"You lost that choice when you decided to mess with our buddy," growled Winston, scooping Egon's legs up in a tight grip.
Peter hauled Egon up by the shoulders. "Ray, move the stuff off the other chair." Ray swept Egon's uniform onto the floor, then rolled it into a bundle and stuck it on top of the proton pack. Peter wrestled the Elvenking, writhing like a medusa, into the smaller chair and twisted his arms behind him.
They quickly realized they'd miscalculated; between the short lengths and the slipperiness of the satin, it took all the braid they had to tie Egon's legs to the chair.
"And it doesn't look like our client's kinky enough to have any extra rope," Ray reported from under the bed.
Peter shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'll hold his arms while you do your hoodoo." He pinned Egon's wrists against the back of the chair.
"Sounds fine to me; having another person inside the circle shouldn't hurt anything. Give Winston the frying pan; I'll have a steel knife if he tries any funny spellwork." Ray dropped a pinch of salt into the vase full of water and stirred it with the mistletoe, mumbling "Creature of Water, of sea and sky, blood of the body, tear of eye, Healer of wounds, o gentle cure, let this space of ours be pure." He began sprinkling the salt water around the room, starting from the center and working outwards.
The Elvenking hissed as the droplets splashed onto him, and squirmed. Peter yanked at his wrists a bit. "Cut that out. You don't want to go through with this, you know what you can do."
"I will not give him back to you. Ever." The Elvenking tried to spit in Peter's face. Peter dodged, and it got him in the shoulder instead; he bit back a response.
Ray fumbled in one of his belt pouches and pulled out a tealight candle, a tiny brass incense burner, a cone of incense, and his old cigarette lighter. Setting the candle down, he lit the incense and dropped it carefully in the censer, whispering to it, "Creature of Air, of smoke and tree, breeze of the morning, wind so free, Free our minds of fear and hatred, let this place we stand be sacred." He paced a slow circle counter-clockwise around the room, wafting the smoke - it smelled like cedar and cinnamon and something else Peter couldn't quite place - into the corners. The Elvenking cringed again as Ray passed him; somehow Ray seemed taller, and the possessed man shorter, than before.
The occultist set the incense burner down and lit the candle. "Creature of fire, of light, be with us; purifier bright, be with us, Brighten our hearts, though they be lowly, make this place of ours be holy," he murmured, and the candle flame reflected in his amber eyes seemed to make them glow.
Winston shivered. Ray was his buddy, a fellow shade-tree mechanic, an engineer and gadgeteer; all those things about him were comforting and homely. He was a geek, a voracious reader of fantasy and science fiction, a comic-book collector; those things all made him seem harmless and childlike, even innocent. But he was also an occultist, a researcher into powers and beings Winston couldn't imagine and didn't want to. This was a side of Ray that was decidedly not childlike or innocent, and despite the fact that he knew Ray would never use it to hurt anyone or even for simple selfish reasons, the fact that he did it at all scared Winston half to death.
But if it got Egon back without them having to blast him with the throwers . . . he had to admit it seemed like a decent trade-off. And it looked like the spook in Egon's body was almost as scared as he was. That was a good sign, right?
Ray picked up the box of salt he'd brought from the kitchen and began pouring it in a circular path around Peter and Egon. "Creature of Earth, of sea and rock, crack the wall, open the lock, Make us steadfast, make us strong; this space is clear - here ends my song." He stood up, the circle complete. "The circle is cast; we stand between worlds."
"What would a mortal like you know about being between worlds?" snarled the Elvenking, straining against Peter's grasp.
"If Egon didn't have a better grip on his memories, you'd probably know better than to ask that by now," Ray said, smiling. "Now that you know I'm serious, will you get out of him on your own, or am I going to have to make it hard on you?"
"You can't have him back. I won't let you," the elf spat. Peter recoiled slightly, but caught himself; Winston flinched in sympathy.
Ray's eyelids lowered slightly. "That's what they all say." He raised the knife, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply; something in the room seemed to vibrate, like a plucked harp-string. When he opened his eyes again, they were dark, dilated, but full of every reflection in the room - the candle, the wall lamps, the light of the Elvenking's eyes all glistened in his. He lowered the knife and began to trace patterns in the air - four pentacles, each slightly different.
The Elvenking cringed. "I am not of your world. Your elements have no hold over me," he protested, but he turned his face - Egon's face - away.
"You're in a mortal body," Ray reminded. "Until you relinquish that hold, this world's substance can affect you." He traced another sigil. "By the power of Gaia, of the Earth, I command you - leave him."
"No," whispered the elf-ghost, squeezing his eyes shut. "No. Never."
Ray poured out another handful of salt, and sprinkled it over Egon. The elven spirit hissed as if it hurt. "By the salt of the Earth and the Sea, I command you - leave him!"
Peter leaned forward and whispered in Egon's ear, "Come on, big guy, Ray's got him on the run, fight him!"
"N-no," protested the Elvenking. Egon's shoulders were shaking.
Ray plucked the mistletoe out of the vase and shook it over Egon's body, splattering him with droplets. "By the water of the Sea and Sky, I command you - leave him!" Ray's voice seemed deeper than normal, his shadow longer.
"I w-won't," the thing in Egon's body whined. He strained against Peter's hold, as if it were hurting him.
"By the fire of the Sun and the Depths, I command you - " Ray held the candle in one hand; the other brushed Egon's chest, and the Elvenking flinched from the touch. "Leave. Him." The free hand trailed upwards, one finger tracing Egon's jawline, and the thing in his body whined and tried to worm away, directly into Peter's arm; it flinched again, trying to curl up away from both of them.
Ray looked Peter directly in the eye, and an unspoken word passed between the two of them. Peter glanced back at Winston, raised an eyebrow, and mouthed "Sorry about this." Winston blinked in surprise.
Ray set the candle down carefully and kneeled in front of the bound figure. He spread his hands, wide and thick-fingered, over Egon's thighs. "Egon, please, come back, we need you."
Peter leaned forward, letting Egon's hair brush the front of his uniform. "We need you, Egon. Both of us. We always have."
"We love you, Egon," Ray murmured, his voice so low and thick it was almost a whisper. "I told you once, remember?" He leaned farther in; the elf-spirit recoiled, shrinking back into the chair as if Ray were on fire. "It's still true, Egon, every word of it." His hands glided up to Egon's sides in a half-embrace.
"I told you more than once," chuckled Peter, leaning all the way over the back of the chair. "Remember, Egon? Remember the couch in the library basement? God, we were so young and stupid, and everything I couldn't say . . . " He broke off, bent around the chair, and pressed a kiss to Egon's lips. The Elvenking flailed, frantically trying to push him away -
- But when he opened Egon's mouth, what came out was "P-peter . . . "
Ray pushed himself up until he was almost in Egon's lap, and met those ice-gleaming eyes with his own, liquid, amber, and sparkling. His voice was husky, but his tone was unmistakable: "By the power of mortal love and lust, I command you - leave him."
The Elvenking threw Egon's head back against Peter's shoulder and wailed. Their friend's body quaked, trembled, shuddered - and then Egon was surrounded by a swirling golden mist as the specter poured through his skin, still wailing.
Winston didn't bother firing. He sprinted across the room, snatched one of the two empty traps from Egon's pack, and stomped on the switch. The elf-ghost didn't even have time to take its own form back; it spiraled into the pyramid of light, keening its agony.
Egon went limp between Ray and Peter; as the last of the golden fog was tugged away, his features seemed to pull back - his ears lost their points, his spine shrank a few inches, and his hair shortened back to a tousled, curly mess streaked with ectoplasm. The leaf-green tunic dissolved and followed the ghost that had created it. The trap snapped shut.
"Egon?" Peter asked, one hand curling under Egon's jaw. "You okay, big guy?"
A moan tumbled from Egon's lips, and he shifted slightly under Ray's weight. Then his eyes flickered open. "I - ah - " He flushed bright red.
"Oops!" Ray sat back on his heels. "Uh, Winston, could you toss Egon's clothes back over here?"
---
Egon edged out of the bathroom, his face throughly scrubbed, the zipper on his jumpsuit pulled up to his chin, one hand pressed against the wall for balance. He reached for his pack, still unsteady on his feet.
Peter went to lay a hand on his wrist, thought better of it at the last second, and grabbed the strap on the pack instead. "Hold on there, big guy. You're not stable enough for an extra fifty pounds on your back yet."
Egon straightened his glasses. "Ray has a spear-wound and Winston took a blow to the head that broke skin." He glanced aside, not meeting anyone's eyes. "You're not making any attempt to stop them from carrying their throwers."
Peter's mouth skewed. "Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled about either of them packing protons at the moment, either." His lip curled into a grim shadow of a grin. "But I figured if I tried to stop all of you, you'd accuse me of being a glory hog again."
"You got it," chuckled Winston.
Ray opened the window and dumped the remains of the incense out. "Besides, this is barely a scratch." He tapped the edge of the bandage Winston had carefully applied. "And right now we need you working on a different problem. There's an open interdimensional gate two rooms over."
"What?" Egon's head came up so quickly he knocked his glasses askew again; he pushed them back up his nose with one finger before Peter could do it for him.
"Just a small one." Ray brushed his feet through the circle of salt on the floor, scattering the grains in all directions. A mess of salt the client would blame on the ghosts; a circle was evidence of ritual, and would freak the mundanes out. "But it's one of the reasons why our readings have been so weird."
"Of course," Egon exclaimed. "Extradimensional energy would make them all read as Class Sevens. That must be the artifact I read from outside." His voice was steadier now. "Which room is it in?"
"Two doors down," Peter answered, pointing. Egon nodded and headed down the hallway; Peter shouldered Egon's pack and grinned at Ray. "Nice distraction technique there."
Ray poured the water out of the window after the ash. "It wasn't 100% distraction. We do need to take care of that before anything else comes through, and Egon's better with gates than I am. Even magical ones, which I suspect this one is."
"I can't believe you two knuckleheads are letting him wander off on his own like this," Winston grumbled, heading back into the hallway.
"Oops, yeah, you've got a point there." Peter looked around the room. "I think the rest of this is yours, Tex. Need any help with the clean-up?"
"Nah, I've got it. Go keep an eye on Egon." Ray tucked the last of the tools into his belt pouch and closed the window.
When Peter made it down the hall, Egon was already standing with PKE meter in hand, observing the vortex as if it were a particularly troublesome lab specimen. Winston had his thrower aimed towards the slowly pulsing well of energy, but his eyes were pinned to Egon.
"These readings are highly unusual," the physicist commented. "This is no pocket dimension on the other side, nor is it the Netherworld."
"The court of the Unseelie Sidhe?" Peter offered, aiming his own thrower at the swirl of purple lightning and blue sparks.
Egon's mouth twitched into a grin. "Careful, Peter. Keep talking like that, and we'll have to conclude you actually did the reading."
Peter leaned against the wall jauntily. "Well, I did read my Bonewits, back when he was the only other researcher working on this stuff. But mostly Ray was explaining how he knew to go for the oak and mistletoe." Something flickered in the miniature maelstrom. He blinked and frowned at it.
Egon reached towards the gate with one hand. Peter refrained from bolting towards him, and the scientist drew back after a second. "It has a temporal field as well as an interdimensional one. This is very dangerous."
"You can feel a time-distortion field?" Winston asked, surprised.
Egon shrugged. "Perhaps the Elvenking left a little of his own ability in me when he was . . . searching my memories." He shuddered slightly at the suggestion.
"I'd blame Bogey rather than big, golden, and too pretty to believe," Ray offered as he stepped in. "You were exposed to some serious gate magic at a pretty young age." A realization flickered across Ray's face; his eyes widened, then narrowed as the gate pulsed weakly.
"There is some merit to that suggestion," Egon mused, fiddling with a dial on the side of the meter. "At any rate, these readings suggest that the gate is in a state of flux. In order to close it, we will need to either destabilize it completely, or force it to remain in one state long enough to collapse the waveform."
"Just tell us what to do, big guy," Peter said, thrower still in hand.
Egon nodded. "Everyone reset for a frequency of 3000 milliRhines, half power. Be ready to cut off on my mark." The physicist retrieved his own thrower from Peter, turned the dial precisely three-quarters of a rotation, and aimed it carefully. "Ready?"
"Ready," chorused the other three.
"Fire," ordered Egon, and four proton streams danced across the surface of the blue and purple sphere. It throbbed and rippled slightly. After a slow count of twelve, Egon raised one hand; as he signaled, the streams stopped as one. He studied the meter again.
"Excellent. We appear to have stabilized it. I should be able to determine the frequency to close it momentarily." Egon fished in his pocket for a calculator and began tapping in numbers.
"Do you hear something?" Winston asked, one ear cocked.
The others fell silent. A female voice was shouting, far in the distance.
" . . . Immense sacrifices made to open the mortal realms to us! My father suffered ostracism, exile, and finally the flesh-death to bring the riches of a magically unspoiled world to us," the voice cried. "You may turn your back on his sacrifices, you ungrateful fools, but I will follow in his footsteps, even to the stars and back!"
"Uh-oh," murmured Ray. He hurried out of the room again.
"Is it just me, or does it sound like the Elvenking had a little pointy-eared princess waiting in the wings?" asked Peter.
Another voice was speaking: "Ilelana, your father's dreams were just that - dreams. You have never been to the mortal realms; I have. They are magically unspoiled, yes, but they teem with cold iron and coal-smoke. The mortals tame lightning and use it for puppet-shows; they burn forests and choke the streams with the ashes. Even if you could fight them all with magic, you do not want to rule there."
"Even so, I will go," the female voice insisted. "They are foolish with their power, as we have been with ours. I would as soon live where the magic runs clear and the water runs muddy than the other way around!" A noise rose up behind her voice, as if a crowd were shouting.
Ray jogged back into the room, carrying the oak twig and mistletoe again, Peter's frying pan tucked under one arm. "More trouble?"
"Maybe more than we thought." The center of the vortex began to clear. Two silhouettes were visible, one in ornate armor, the other in a flowing robe. The figure in the robe spoke again. "Your army is very impressive, child, but they are none of them seasoned warriors. You may slay many mortals, but they are not fools; they will adapt and drive you back." It stepped back, and raised a scroll in one hand. "By the power vested in me by the Autumn Court of the Seelie Sidhe, I hereby forbid you from - "
A hail of arrows struck the figure and the scroll; it collapsed, midsentence.
"You have no authority to forbid me anything," growled the figure in armor to the body. "My warriors! The portal opens!"
A roar went up. Peter did some quick estimations based on the football and baseball stadiums he'd been in. "Ten thousand, at least."
"I'd estimate approximately thirty thousand, if the portal isn't damping the noise too severely." Egon took another reading and typed faster on the calculator. "Ray, set your thrower to 500 milliRhines, full power."
"Got it." Ray took out a multi-tool and began lowering the frequency on his thrower.
"Winston, stay where you are. Peter, change to 1500 miiliRhines." Egon stuck the calculator back in his pocket and pulled out a screwdriver of his own.
The crowd noise got louder. Peter was sure he could hear swords banging against shields. "Uh, do we want to be here when that thing opens all the way?" The figure in the center was beginning to gain detail - female, with long golden hair reaching almost to her knees, and an ethereal beauty marred only by a sword nearly as large as she was.
"No." Egon finished adjusting his thrower. "So we will make sure it does not. Fire in three-second pulses, one at a time, lowest frequency to highest; I'll count off. Ray, you start."
Ray fired for three seconds, then shut off as Peter took over, then Winston, then Egon, then Ray again. The edges of the vortex began to ripple, then to flap like a flag.
"What manner of sorcery is this?" screamed the voice from the other side of the gate. Sparks of green energy began flying through. "Mortals? Father? Father!"
"Can we go any faster?" Peter whined. Egon shook his head and took over from Winston. The vortex wobbled and became elliptical instead of round.
"If you have harmed my father's shade, I swear, I will hunt you to the ends of eternity!" The tip of a sword slashed through the thin line of blue energy at the center of the vortex.
"Yeah, about that," Peter shouted back, as he took his turn firing. "See, he tried to mess with us, so we had to lock him up. Sorry about that."
"You will die, mortal scum!" she shrieked, slashing wildly at the vortex. Egon fired. "Everyone, now, three-second burst and then stop! Don't cross the streams!"
The vortex spun, flattened to a two-dimensional disc between the beams, flared and winked out of existence. The tip of the sword clattered to the floor.
"Nice going, Egon!" Winston cheered. Egon adjusted his glasses and smiled weakly.
Ray patted Egon on the back. "Let's get the rest of our stuff back into Ecto, swing by the motel to give Carl our bill, and head back home."
"Sounds good to me," Peter agreed, scooping up the fragment of bronze from the floor.
---
The road rolled by underneath them in the dark. Peter debated opening his eyes for the fourteenth time.
The silence in the car was palpable. Winston was focused on the highway with a keenness that might have been appropriate had they been driving on a back road in a blizzard with one headlight out. Egon had folded inward, his face blank but his eyes alive with something that might have been embarrassment. Ray was shifting his weight every few moments, vibrating with nervousness.
Ray fidgeted hard enough to shake the car. Peter found himself with his eyes open involuntarily. He sighed; he wasn't about to get to sleep, either. "Hey, Ray, cool it with the hyperactivity. Ecto can't take much more of this."
"Sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to wake you up." Peter was pretty sure Ray knew he hadn't actually been asleep. Ray stretched, and continued, "But don't worry about Ecto; she's tougher than she looks."
The uncomfortable silence curled back through the car like smoke, and Peter had just leaned his head back to pretend to return to his nap when Ray spoke up again. "Hey, Winston, you okay?"
"Sure, Ray. Just tired." Winston feigned stifling a yawn. "We're going to be getting in awfully late."
"Do you want me to take a turn at the wheel?" Ray offered. Winston shook his head. Peter was still unsure about giving driving duty to someone who'd had a bleeding scalp wound earlier in the evening, but Winston insisted he was fine.
The silence was just creeping back again when Ray swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "Um, Winston, I think I owe you an apology."
Winston looked apprehensive. "For what, m'man?"
"I know you're really not comfortable with magic," Ray said, a little softer. "I mean, I know you know I do this sort of thing, and it's sort of a live-and-let-live thing between us. But I didn't see a way out of the situation without using it." He paused, and glanced sideways at Egon's reflection in the rear-view mirror. "I knew the ghosts were using it, and for me, it was sort of fighting fire with fire. And at the time I started with it, it was just me and Peter, and he doesn't mind so much, so I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry for dragging you into it." He twisted his right hand in the palm of his left and looked sideways at Winston.
Winston didn't look at Ray, but he reached across with one hand and patted him lightly on the knee. "It's okay, man. I've gone back and forth about how okay I am with it, honestly. Some days, I guess the old habits just come down hard." He allowed himself a small grin. "I mean, my grandma is half Puerto Rican, and her sisters all did things like read cards. That's not real magic, not like the stuff you do, but it's not like I'm a stranger to it. But at the same time, Dad doesn't approve of them, either."
"I didn't know your dad was annoyed about that, too," Peter piped up. Egon shifted slightly at the sound, although he had to have known that Peter couldn't have fallen asleep again that fast.
"Yeah, for all that Mama's the really devout one, Dad's worldview is pretty strictly Baptist." Winston's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "He deals with what we do by pretending it's not real, even though he knows better. I'm sure if I asked him, he'd say that Slimer's either a collective hallucination or a damned soul."
"I'm not completely convinced that he's wrong about that last," joked Peter, but for all that his own mother had identified as Catholic, he'd never really picked it up.
Winston snorted. "Anyway, when the whole thing with the Undying One happened, I had to really think about what I believed." He chuckled dryly. "I mean, I didn't feel damned or anything. And I really couldn't just decide that hadn't happened."
Ray grimaced. "It hadn't even occurred to me that you'd worry about that."
"I didn't for very long." A road sign flashed by, letting them know they were only an hour from the outskirts of the city. Winston paused to read it, then went on, "I won't tell you I'm totally okay with it all, because I'm not. Not yet. It still creeps me out a little bit when you talk about it. And when you're actually doing it, the serious stuff - not the mistletoe part, that was fine, but the salt and the circle and the chanting - I hate to admit it, but sometimes you do get a bit scary for me."
"Me?" Ray sounded small, somehow. "Not just the magic?"
"They're not separate things, Ray." Winston made a turn onto a tollway on-ramp. "At least, they weren't for me, that time. It's not like there's you and then there's the magic, like a proton pack. You can't just take it off. It's part of you, just like your engineering degree and your courage and your comic-book trivia." Ecto changed over into the middle lane of the highway, and Winston finally took his eyes away from the road long enough to look directly at Ray. "So yeah, Ray. You. But it doesn't make us any less friends. I mean, Peter's slick talk and prophetic dreams both scare me silly sometimes, too, and he's not losing any sleep over it."
"What, me worry?" Peter grinned, then let his face grow serious. "Yeah, and that's two halves of the whole with you and the magic thing, Ray. The fast-talking is half natural talent and half practiced skill." He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at Egon again, waiting for the physicist to burst his bubble. Nothing. Damn. "The dreams are completely out of my control; they're a part of me that feels foreign, even to me."
"I still think you could do something about that, with training," Ray mused.
Peter shrugged. "We never did get it to work on demand, back in college. I'll admit, I haven't tried much since. We've always been too busy when it acted up. But my point here is that with you, the magic is both of those at once - something that was always part of you, and something that required a fair amount of study."
Ray nodded. "Yeah, you're right. But that means I could have just walked away from it, instead of studying, so if it's really, um, well, sinful, I guess, then half of it's still on me, right?"
Egon finally stirred. "Ray, that's utter nonsense and you know it."
"Huh?" Ray jumped at Egon's voice.
The physicist uncoiled slightly. "Your occult expertise has saved our lives on more than one occasion, not just tonight. You couldn't study it so deeply and not attempt to put at least the basic principles into practice."
"That's not true, Egon, and you know that better than anyone," Ray answered softly.
Egon bristled and didn't respond. Peter thought about it for a moment, and then responded for him. "What do you mean by that, Ray?"
"Egon knows as much as I do about the theory of magic and general occultism, probably more." Ray gave Peter a curious backwards look; Peter shot him a tiny shrug that meant humor me. Ray nodded slightly. "He's certainly done all the reading I have, and some in languages I can't even pronounce. I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure that Egon's never tried out as much as a simple spell out of all of it, but I've never seen him use it."
Ray took a deep breath and twisted around in his seat to face Egon. "I guess I owe you an apology, too, Egon. I mean, I know how you feel about your magician ancestors. If I could have figured out a way to rescue you without using it, I would have, but - "
"That's quite enough, Ray," Egon rumbled. Ray flinched back into his seat, and Egon sighed. "I'm sorry. That came out harsher than I intended. I'm not at all offended either by your practice of the magical arts in general or by this particular instance." His voice dropped. "I'm quite grateful that you managed to remove and trap the Elvenking, no matter how you did it."
"You're welcome, Egon." Ray was flustered again. "I just - I know - "
"You know the things my father always said about magic and the occult, because I heard them so many times about my own peculiar interests that I internalized them and parrot them back like a programmed automaton," Egon said flatly. "Ray, I wouldn't have been interested in telekinesis and ghosts when we met if I didn't at least recognize the legitimacy of various forms of occult practice. I may find it embarrassing on a personal level, but I recognize that that's a conditioned response on my part."
Egon paused. "It's not just Father, of course. It's Uncle Cyrus and Grandfather and everyone else on that side of the family. They think they've purged the Spenglers of any trace of our occult history; my own interests were a refulgence of rank superstition, from their perspective, and they did their best to wring it out of me." His voice was rising slightly. "It was easier to learn to mock it with them, to consign Zedekiah and his dabbling to family legend and dismiss it, than to fight for the idea that I might be entitled to something other than the power of Science by birth." His eyes darted to the reflections on Ecto's window-glass, and he calmed down again. "It was too easy to see myself as a wizard. The Bogeyman's appearance just made things more complicated - here was the proof that my wildest dreams were real, but they were nightmares." He shook his head sharply, as if to clear it.
"So you blamed all occult stuff for him?" Ray asked, carefully. Peter realized that the two of them had been dancing around this ever since Ray had found out about Egon's history with the Bogeyman. Not the conversation about long-repressed issues he'd expected to be having tonight, but if it needed to happen, he was glad to facilitate.
"Not exactly. It brought home how dangerous it was. One the one hand, I was told by the people I most respected and trusted that it didn't exist and wasn't important; on the other hand, my firsthand experience told me it did exist and was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. And underneath all that was sheer curious fascination." Egon sank half an inch back into the bench seat, eyes slightly unfocused. "What if I took it up, learned it, and was no more successful than Zedekiah? Worse - what if I became a magus, was competent at it, and grew corrupted by the power?"
"Yeah, I gotcha," murmured Winston.
"Corrupted? How?" Ray just sounded baffled.
Egon shook his head again. "Ray, you've seen how I become in the lab when I'm near a breakthrough. I can be almost monomaniacal. I am capable of crafting experiments for the sake of knowledge, without consideration for the practical side-effects, that are nearly disastrous." A flicker of shame crossed his features and settled near his eyes. "Imagine my doing the same with spellwork."
Ray opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again in thought. Finally he asked, "Do you worry about me doing that?"
"No," chorused the other three men. Egon continued, "You might misjudge the effects of your occult work in your enthusiasm, Ray, but I trust you to at least consider them. You don't push buttons merely to see what will happen if you think there is significant risk; I do."
"No, but I've enormously underestimated the risk of pushing a particular button dozens of times," Ray objected. "If you think that you'd be a danger doing that with magic, then I'm a danger, too, and you ought to be trying to stop me."
"Ray, I trust you with my life, both in the lab and otherwise," Egon replied vehemently. "I can't imagine you becoming corrupted the same way."
"You're pretty incorruptible yourself, big guy," Peter pointed out. "You and Ray might reject temptation for different reasons, but you're both fundamentally pretty good people."
"Unlike you, you mean?" Winston grinned. "Fat chance. We've seen the big teddy bear underneath the con-man exterior."
"What makes you think it isn't the other way around?" Peter's grin grew wolfish. "Anyway, Egon, the fact that you've worried about it automatically means it's less likely. Not a zero percent chance, but nothing we do comes with guarantees."
Egon studied Peter's face, then Ray's. "You sound like you think I should start practicing."
Peter shrugged. "Think about what would have happened if the elves had wanted short and energetic instead of tall and elegant."
Egon frowned. "I could have modified the Watt technique to separate Ray from the Elvenking, but - it might have taken longer than we had, assuming the gate would have opened at the same time without our interference."
"And we'd still have been dealing with the ghost trees, or wasting pack charge right and left zapping them," Winston added. "Would we still have had enough power in the cells to close the portal?"
"I see," Egon said, nodding slowly. "There is a fair bit of merit to having more than one of us with practical as well as theoretical knowledge."
"And my talents aren't the right ones," Peter added unnecessarily.
"And I've still got a long way to go before I can get comfortable with doing that myself," Winston followed.
Egon met Peter's gaze carefully. "Do you really think I wouldn't become obsessed?"
"No more than you already are," Peter replied.
Egon was silent, eyes turned down, for a moment. "Yes," he finally said. "Ray, do you think you could - teach me?"
"Everything I know," Ray beamed. "Shouldn't take you more than a few months."
"A lifetime of research on your part will take significantly longer than that," Egon chided, but a small smile crept across his face.
Peter relaxed. That wasn't the only source of tension in the car, but enough was broken that he wasn't too worried. He listened to Ray and Winston banter about the line between mystery and fantasy as he finally fell asleep.
Egon wasn't participating, he noticed as he dropped off. But then, neither was he, so he could hardly judge.
---
It was that uncomfortable stretch between midnight and the crack of dawn when Ecto finally arrived at the firehouse doors; the streets were, while not empty, quiet. Peter found himself gently shaken awake, Ray murmuring, "C'mon, Peter, your bed'll be a lot more comfortable."
"Traps first," Peter yawned, climbing out of the back seat with only minor difficulty. His feet ached in his boots, but if he unlaced them, he might trip over them; not smooth at all. And padding around the metal grid floor of the basement in his stocking feet would hurt in an entirely different way. He picked up the shop cloth with the bronze fragment from Ecto's floor and set it on Janine's desk. A souvenir, from one warrior woman to another.
"Sure thing," Winston agreed, handing him two with blinking lights. They clumped heavily down the stairs and lined up to dispose of their quarry. Egon held only one trap, but Peter was pretty sure he knew who was in it; he suspected that Winston had handed him the lieutenant who had threatened to do the same to him.
The containment unit cycled seven times, and the deep thrumming that filled the basement dropped a quarter of a tone. Egon and Ray exchanged a glance that Peter recognized from their early days of running the business.
Peter cleared his throat. "Getting crowded in there again?"
Ray nodded slowly. "We've been talking about ways of expanding the capacity of the unit, but so far all the ones we've come up with would require shutting the grid down."
"Couldn't we just build a second unit?" Winston asked, parking the used trap cartridges in the recharge unit. Peter felt a fleeting streak of guilt and ambled over to help with the last two.
"Where would we put it?" Ray shrugged, hanging the trigger mechanisms on the wall hooks to wait for new cartridges.
Egon rubbed his chin. "I have a few potential ideas for boosting capacity that might not require a power shutdown. The math works out, but I'll need to test them to see if they're feasible with the actual equipment we have installed." He headed back upstairs, eyes turned upwards towards his thoughts - and, Peter noticed, away from the others.
Winston and Peter finished with the last cartridge. "Well, Egon may have the mental energy to spend time in the lab after tonight, but I don't," Winston announced. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to bed."
"I think I should probably eat something first," Ray mused.
"Yeah, I think I'm with Ray, there," Peter agreed. "It's been seven or eight hours since we had a meal, and he did some pretty serious work."
"We all did," Ray protested, but Winston gave him a small grin and patted him on the shoulder. "No, Pete's right - you probably do need to keep your energy up. I'll see you guys in the morning, okay?" He checked the recharge grid and then followed Egon.
Ray waited until Winston had cleared the doorway and then glanced back at Peter. "Uh, how badly do we need to talk?"
Part 3
Author: omorka
Fandom: The Real Ghostbusters
Pairing/character: Ensemble, but focal Peter/Egon/Ray
Rating: FRAO/NC-17
Word Count: ~25000 total
Kink: Threesome, hurt/comfort, possession
Notes/Warnings: Slash, M/M/M threesome, oral sex, frottage, a non-con-ish moment, minor transformation/body horror, occult content. Thanks to my beta, peoriapeoria, who took this on at the last minute; all remaining typos and continuity errors are mine, not hers. Standard disclaimer: I don't own the boys.
Summary: The 'Busters respond to an out-of-town call - unusual phantoms have invaded a wealthy man's private mansion. In dealing with the problem, Peter, Egon, and Ray call up a few unresolved issues from their own pasts.
Artist: ms_ellery, who did a lovely cover and wallpapers, also on short notice - huzzah!
Part 1
An overstuffed armchair in navy blue had been dragged into the center of the room and draped in golden satin braids. One of the phantoms, the one holding the spear, stood guard just inside the door, glaring at them. Behind the guard and off to the side, Egon's uniform was draped over a wooden ladder-backed chair, with his glasses folded and tucked into one of the chest pockets, and his boots and pack tossed carelessly beneath the chair. He was seated on the armchair, gazing regally at them with eyes that glowed with blue starfire.
He'd been changed, physically. His frame, always tall and thin, had been supernaturally elongated. His hair was now shining white-gold, and his usual pipe-curl had relaxed into something closer to a standard pompadour, with the tail in back now trailing over one shoulder. His ears were long and came to delicate points, and his fingers were similarly pointed. He was wearing a simple tunic the color of the first leaves of spring, a fragile green-gold, and a simple golden circlet rested on his head.
His face was little changed, except for the ears and a subtle sharpening of his chin. The expression there, on the other hand, was that of a stranger, cool and regal and utterly uncaring.
He raised an eyebrow at them; the gesture was so deeply Egon's that it nearly broke Ray's heart to see it on that strange face. "So, the mortals have sent a Druid, a Warrior, and a Worker to stop me. It is good to know that some things haven't changed."
Peter and Ray exchanged a glance. Ray turned back. "So you're considering Egon an Outsider? I guess he'd have to be, if you're claiming to be a king."
The Elvenking in Egon's body scowled at them. "What do you mean?"
"And I think you're mistaking which one of us is which," Peter added. "I mean, I'm the most formally educated one after Egon, so that would make me the Druid, wouldn't it?"
Ray nodded in agreement. "And Winston's the one who's had actual war experience, and I grew up on a farm."
The guardian glided between them and the door. "Whether scholar or warrior, your body will make a fine enough host for me. So good a throwing arm will not go to waste, I assure you." He advanced on Peter, spear ready.
Egon, or the thing in Egon's body, waved a hand. "Kill the other two, and you may have him. I grow weary of toying with these mortals."
"Nobody's killing anyone," snarled Peter, and he swung the skillet at the guardian's spear. The specter jumped back, hovering a few inches above the floor. Winston dropped the shovel, raised his thrower, and let the guardian have a stream at three-quarter power; the elf-spirit jerked and screamed, dodging wildly to get out of the blast.
Ray edged forward. "Egon? Egon, are you still in there?" He brandished the oak twig in front of him like a weapon.
The Elvenking smiled. "No, little one, he is not. All that dwells in his breast now is me." One hand glimmered with leaf-green light, and Ray barely ducked in time to avoid the burst of energy flung at him.
"Egon doesn't live there, dummy," Peter called back, advancing on the guardian and taking a wild swing. "Egon, I bet you can hear me. This jackass is doing magic with your body, and I know how you hate that. C'mon, Spengs, fight him off!"
"I tell you, he is no longer here," snarled the Elvenking through Egon's lips. He raised both hands, and energy swirled around them, purple and white.
The guardian broke off from Peter and dove for Ray, instead. Ray reached out with the oak twig and parried, turning the spear aside to miss him by inches. The guardian drew back and thrust again; Ray caught it on the twig a second time, but was thrown off balance.
"Ray!" Winston fired again, but pulled his stream; he couldn't get a clear shot at the guardian without putting Ray in danger. Egon - no, the ghost possessing him, Winston reminded himself - let loose a purple whirlwind, and Winston ducked and rolled to get out of its way as it knocked the doors from their hinges.
The guardian rose as if trying to escape, then whirled and jabbed again. Ray swung with the twig, and connected, but not in time; the spear point missed his chest and grazed his side instead. He cried out and dropped the mistletoe, clutching at his ribs as redness oozed between his fingers.
A look of anguish crossed Egon's features, but was quickly replaced with the Elvenking's cold smile.
Peter spun around and the frying pan came down heavily on the spectral spear. It snapped in two with a crackle of PKE energy, then spun into golden mist and faded like the trees had.
"You are not hurting Ray again," Peter growled, hoisting the skillet again. "And you're sure not getting a piece of me, either." The guardian tried to glide upward, but Peter was faster; the pan struck the specter directly in the face. The guardian dropped to the floor, stunned.
Winston was already behind him; he hit the quick-release on his belt. "Bye, sucker." He stomped the foot pedal and the trap's doors opened; the guardian scrabbled at the floor for purchase futilely, and was sucked away.
Winston left the trap to Peter and charged across the room. "Ray, are you all right?"
Ray pulled his hand away from his side. "It hurts, and it's bleeding, but I think it's pretty shallow. Don't worry about me; worry about Egon."
Peter finished hooking the trap to his harness with his off-hand and turned to his possessed friend. "Okay, Egon, I know you're in there. I saw you when that asshole got Ray. You can fight this guy, I know you can."
The Elvenking smiled. "You won't fire your lightning at me. You fear too much to hurt your friend."
"Any chance we can use the Watt gambit?" Peter asked over his shoulder, still edging closer to Egon.
Ray shook his head. "We don't have a clear reading of this specter. I could back-calculate its energy frequencies from a reading of Egon now, since we know what his usual electrometabolic readings are, but it would take a while."
"Then we'll have to do this the hard way." Peter's eyebrows drew together. "Egon. Listen to me. You can fight him. We're here for you."
The Elvenking's sneer faltered for a second. Then it returned. "He cannot. No mortal could."
Ray drew himself up and fumbled on the floor for the mistletoe. "Winston, could you go get me some salt and a clean knife from the kitchen? No, wait, you don't need to go back down the stairs if you don't have to; can you get some water from the bathroom there, and I'll go get the rest?"
"Seriously? You're going to do a straight-up exorcism?" He knew Ray knew how to do that, but he'd never actually seen the team's occultist perform one. Winston didn't think he liked the idea.
"If that's what it takes. I'll be back in a sec; Peter, do you think you can hold him?"
"No problem. I'll tackle him if I have to; as long as he stays in Egon, he's physical." Peter took another step forward, still clutching the handle of the frying pan like a baseball bat.
"Great. Hold these," Ray said, pressing the oak and mistletoe into Winston's hands as he bounced out the door.
For a moment, Egon's features smoothed into something like their normal state. He held up both hands. "Peter, you wouldn't hurt me, would you?"
Peter scowled. "Egon, not in a million years, and he knows that. You, on the other hand - for hurting him, I'd gladly see you rot in Hell. But, since we haven't been there in a while, the containment unit will have to do." His eyes softened. "Egon, I'm here, Ray's going to get some of his schtick, it's going to be okay." The being who was half Egon and half Elvenking glanced at the skillet and seemed to shrink back.
Winston hesitated. "Peter -"
"Go get Ray's water. I can hold him, and I want this over as soon as possible." Peter's emerald eyes met the glowing ice that didn't belong, could never belong, to his friend.
Winston gave Peter a dubious look, but he left. Immediately the Elvenking smiled, a terrible, twisted thing, and flung out both hands. Red-gold fire poured from them at Peter's midsection.
Peter flung himself to the floor; the flames passed over his head, singeing the back of his uniform as he shielded himself with the frying pan. As soon as the heat passed, he yanked himself back to his feet again. "Look, you bastard, I realize you don't know when you're beat, but - "
Egon - that was Egon, he was sure of it - was staring at his hands in utter horror. For an instant, the blue starlight faded from his eyes, and they met Peter's in relief. Then the Elvenking shook him, and the long face took on a calculating grin. "Well played," he purred.
Peter grimaced, and swung the frying pan so it caught him along the forearm, not hard enough to break anything - hopefully not enough to even bruise; Egon wasn't as delicate as he often looked. The Elvenking cried out in surprise, and clutched at his wrist. "Why - how - "
"I know what would happen to Egon if he thought he'd hurt me. I'm not letting you get your jollies that way. And if Ray explained this right," he continued, smacking him in the other arm with the skillet, "I imagine the steel can't actually hurt you while you're in a human body, but it should still fritz out your magic."
Winston hustled back into the room, holding a crystal vase full of water. "Pete, we're gonna have to restrain him while Ray draws the circle, you know that, right?"
Peter obviously hadn't thought about that. "Uh, yeah. Fortunately," he recovered, "he was kind enough to provide for the eventuality." He reached behind him with his off hand and snagged one of the satin braids from the armchair.
For the first time, the Elvenking looked like he might actually be frightened. He bolted towards the door; Winston blocked him expertly, and Peter went in for the tackle. All three of them went down in a heap.
"Okay, I got - oh, looks like you've started without me," chirped Ray, stopping in the doorway. "Can you guys get him into the chair?"
"I will not submit to this indignity," the Elvenking shouted, although honestly if that had been Egon speaking, it might not have sounded much different.
"You lost that choice when you decided to mess with our buddy," growled Winston, scooping Egon's legs up in a tight grip.
Peter hauled Egon up by the shoulders. "Ray, move the stuff off the other chair." Ray swept Egon's uniform onto the floor, then rolled it into a bundle and stuck it on top of the proton pack. Peter wrestled the Elvenking, writhing like a medusa, into the smaller chair and twisted his arms behind him.
They quickly realized they'd miscalculated; between the short lengths and the slipperiness of the satin, it took all the braid they had to tie Egon's legs to the chair.
"And it doesn't look like our client's kinky enough to have any extra rope," Ray reported from under the bed.
Peter shook his head. "Don't worry about it. I'll hold his arms while you do your hoodoo." He pinned Egon's wrists against the back of the chair.
"Sounds fine to me; having another person inside the circle shouldn't hurt anything. Give Winston the frying pan; I'll have a steel knife if he tries any funny spellwork." Ray dropped a pinch of salt into the vase full of water and stirred it with the mistletoe, mumbling "Creature of Water, of sea and sky, blood of the body, tear of eye, Healer of wounds, o gentle cure, let this space of ours be pure." He began sprinkling the salt water around the room, starting from the center and working outwards.
The Elvenking hissed as the droplets splashed onto him, and squirmed. Peter yanked at his wrists a bit. "Cut that out. You don't want to go through with this, you know what you can do."
"I will not give him back to you. Ever." The Elvenking tried to spit in Peter's face. Peter dodged, and it got him in the shoulder instead; he bit back a response.
Ray fumbled in one of his belt pouches and pulled out a tealight candle, a tiny brass incense burner, a cone of incense, and his old cigarette lighter. Setting the candle down, he lit the incense and dropped it carefully in the censer, whispering to it, "Creature of Air, of smoke and tree, breeze of the morning, wind so free, Free our minds of fear and hatred, let this place we stand be sacred." He paced a slow circle counter-clockwise around the room, wafting the smoke - it smelled like cedar and cinnamon and something else Peter couldn't quite place - into the corners. The Elvenking cringed again as Ray passed him; somehow Ray seemed taller, and the possessed man shorter, than before.
The occultist set the incense burner down and lit the candle. "Creature of fire, of light, be with us; purifier bright, be with us, Brighten our hearts, though they be lowly, make this place of ours be holy," he murmured, and the candle flame reflected in his amber eyes seemed to make them glow.
Winston shivered. Ray was his buddy, a fellow shade-tree mechanic, an engineer and gadgeteer; all those things about him were comforting and homely. He was a geek, a voracious reader of fantasy and science fiction, a comic-book collector; those things all made him seem harmless and childlike, even innocent. But he was also an occultist, a researcher into powers and beings Winston couldn't imagine and didn't want to. This was a side of Ray that was decidedly not childlike or innocent, and despite the fact that he knew Ray would never use it to hurt anyone or even for simple selfish reasons, the fact that he did it at all scared Winston half to death.
But if it got Egon back without them having to blast him with the throwers . . . he had to admit it seemed like a decent trade-off. And it looked like the spook in Egon's body was almost as scared as he was. That was a good sign, right?
Ray picked up the box of salt he'd brought from the kitchen and began pouring it in a circular path around Peter and Egon. "Creature of Earth, of sea and rock, crack the wall, open the lock, Make us steadfast, make us strong; this space is clear - here ends my song." He stood up, the circle complete. "The circle is cast; we stand between worlds."
"What would a mortal like you know about being between worlds?" snarled the Elvenking, straining against Peter's grasp.
"If Egon didn't have a better grip on his memories, you'd probably know better than to ask that by now," Ray said, smiling. "Now that you know I'm serious, will you get out of him on your own, or am I going to have to make it hard on you?"
"You can't have him back. I won't let you," the elf spat. Peter recoiled slightly, but caught himself; Winston flinched in sympathy.
Ray's eyelids lowered slightly. "That's what they all say." He raised the knife, closed his eyes, and breathed deeply; something in the room seemed to vibrate, like a plucked harp-string. When he opened his eyes again, they were dark, dilated, but full of every reflection in the room - the candle, the wall lamps, the light of the Elvenking's eyes all glistened in his. He lowered the knife and began to trace patterns in the air - four pentacles, each slightly different.
The Elvenking cringed. "I am not of your world. Your elements have no hold over me," he protested, but he turned his face - Egon's face - away.
"You're in a mortal body," Ray reminded. "Until you relinquish that hold, this world's substance can affect you." He traced another sigil. "By the power of Gaia, of the Earth, I command you - leave him."
"No," whispered the elf-ghost, squeezing his eyes shut. "No. Never."
Ray poured out another handful of salt, and sprinkled it over Egon. The elven spirit hissed as if it hurt. "By the salt of the Earth and the Sea, I command you - leave him!"
Peter leaned forward and whispered in Egon's ear, "Come on, big guy, Ray's got him on the run, fight him!"
"N-no," protested the Elvenking. Egon's shoulders were shaking.
Ray plucked the mistletoe out of the vase and shook it over Egon's body, splattering him with droplets. "By the water of the Sea and Sky, I command you - leave him!" Ray's voice seemed deeper than normal, his shadow longer.
"I w-won't," the thing in Egon's body whined. He strained against Peter's hold, as if it were hurting him.
"By the fire of the Sun and the Depths, I command you - " Ray held the candle in one hand; the other brushed Egon's chest, and the Elvenking flinched from the touch. "Leave. Him." The free hand trailed upwards, one finger tracing Egon's jawline, and the thing in his body whined and tried to worm away, directly into Peter's arm; it flinched again, trying to curl up away from both of them.
Ray looked Peter directly in the eye, and an unspoken word passed between the two of them. Peter glanced back at Winston, raised an eyebrow, and mouthed "Sorry about this." Winston blinked in surprise.
Ray set the candle down carefully and kneeled in front of the bound figure. He spread his hands, wide and thick-fingered, over Egon's thighs. "Egon, please, come back, we need you."
Peter leaned forward, letting Egon's hair brush the front of his uniform. "We need you, Egon. Both of us. We always have."
"We love you, Egon," Ray murmured, his voice so low and thick it was almost a whisper. "I told you once, remember?" He leaned farther in; the elf-spirit recoiled, shrinking back into the chair as if Ray were on fire. "It's still true, Egon, every word of it." His hands glided up to Egon's sides in a half-embrace.
"I told you more than once," chuckled Peter, leaning all the way over the back of the chair. "Remember, Egon? Remember the couch in the library basement? God, we were so young and stupid, and everything I couldn't say . . . " He broke off, bent around the chair, and pressed a kiss to Egon's lips. The Elvenking flailed, frantically trying to push him away -
- But when he opened Egon's mouth, what came out was "P-peter . . . "
Ray pushed himself up until he was almost in Egon's lap, and met those ice-gleaming eyes with his own, liquid, amber, and sparkling. His voice was husky, but his tone was unmistakable: "By the power of mortal love and lust, I command you - leave him."
The Elvenking threw Egon's head back against Peter's shoulder and wailed. Their friend's body quaked, trembled, shuddered - and then Egon was surrounded by a swirling golden mist as the specter poured through his skin, still wailing.
Winston didn't bother firing. He sprinted across the room, snatched one of the two empty traps from Egon's pack, and stomped on the switch. The elf-ghost didn't even have time to take its own form back; it spiraled into the pyramid of light, keening its agony.
Egon went limp between Ray and Peter; as the last of the golden fog was tugged away, his features seemed to pull back - his ears lost their points, his spine shrank a few inches, and his hair shortened back to a tousled, curly mess streaked with ectoplasm. The leaf-green tunic dissolved and followed the ghost that had created it. The trap snapped shut.
"Egon?" Peter asked, one hand curling under Egon's jaw. "You okay, big guy?"
A moan tumbled from Egon's lips, and he shifted slightly under Ray's weight. Then his eyes flickered open. "I - ah - " He flushed bright red.
"Oops!" Ray sat back on his heels. "Uh, Winston, could you toss Egon's clothes back over here?"
---
Egon edged out of the bathroom, his face throughly scrubbed, the zipper on his jumpsuit pulled up to his chin, one hand pressed against the wall for balance. He reached for his pack, still unsteady on his feet.
Peter went to lay a hand on his wrist, thought better of it at the last second, and grabbed the strap on the pack instead. "Hold on there, big guy. You're not stable enough for an extra fifty pounds on your back yet."
Egon straightened his glasses. "Ray has a spear-wound and Winston took a blow to the head that broke skin." He glanced aside, not meeting anyone's eyes. "You're not making any attempt to stop them from carrying their throwers."
Peter's mouth skewed. "Yeah, I'm not exactly thrilled about either of them packing protons at the moment, either." His lip curled into a grim shadow of a grin. "But I figured if I tried to stop all of you, you'd accuse me of being a glory hog again."
"You got it," chuckled Winston.
Ray opened the window and dumped the remains of the incense out. "Besides, this is barely a scratch." He tapped the edge of the bandage Winston had carefully applied. "And right now we need you working on a different problem. There's an open interdimensional gate two rooms over."
"What?" Egon's head came up so quickly he knocked his glasses askew again; he pushed them back up his nose with one finger before Peter could do it for him.
"Just a small one." Ray brushed his feet through the circle of salt on the floor, scattering the grains in all directions. A mess of salt the client would blame on the ghosts; a circle was evidence of ritual, and would freak the mundanes out. "But it's one of the reasons why our readings have been so weird."
"Of course," Egon exclaimed. "Extradimensional energy would make them all read as Class Sevens. That must be the artifact I read from outside." His voice was steadier now. "Which room is it in?"
"Two doors down," Peter answered, pointing. Egon nodded and headed down the hallway; Peter shouldered Egon's pack and grinned at Ray. "Nice distraction technique there."
Ray poured the water out of the window after the ash. "It wasn't 100% distraction. We do need to take care of that before anything else comes through, and Egon's better with gates than I am. Even magical ones, which I suspect this one is."
"I can't believe you two knuckleheads are letting him wander off on his own like this," Winston grumbled, heading back into the hallway.
"Oops, yeah, you've got a point there." Peter looked around the room. "I think the rest of this is yours, Tex. Need any help with the clean-up?"
"Nah, I've got it. Go keep an eye on Egon." Ray tucked the last of the tools into his belt pouch and closed the window.
When Peter made it down the hall, Egon was already standing with PKE meter in hand, observing the vortex as if it were a particularly troublesome lab specimen. Winston had his thrower aimed towards the slowly pulsing well of energy, but his eyes were pinned to Egon.
"These readings are highly unusual," the physicist commented. "This is no pocket dimension on the other side, nor is it the Netherworld."
"The court of the Unseelie Sidhe?" Peter offered, aiming his own thrower at the swirl of purple lightning and blue sparks.
Egon's mouth twitched into a grin. "Careful, Peter. Keep talking like that, and we'll have to conclude you actually did the reading."
Peter leaned against the wall jauntily. "Well, I did read my Bonewits, back when he was the only other researcher working on this stuff. But mostly Ray was explaining how he knew to go for the oak and mistletoe." Something flickered in the miniature maelstrom. He blinked and frowned at it.
Egon reached towards the gate with one hand. Peter refrained from bolting towards him, and the scientist drew back after a second. "It has a temporal field as well as an interdimensional one. This is very dangerous."
"You can feel a time-distortion field?" Winston asked, surprised.
Egon shrugged. "Perhaps the Elvenking left a little of his own ability in me when he was . . . searching my memories." He shuddered slightly at the suggestion.
"I'd blame Bogey rather than big, golden, and too pretty to believe," Ray offered as he stepped in. "You were exposed to some serious gate magic at a pretty young age." A realization flickered across Ray's face; his eyes widened, then narrowed as the gate pulsed weakly.
"There is some merit to that suggestion," Egon mused, fiddling with a dial on the side of the meter. "At any rate, these readings suggest that the gate is in a state of flux. In order to close it, we will need to either destabilize it completely, or force it to remain in one state long enough to collapse the waveform."
"Just tell us what to do, big guy," Peter said, thrower still in hand.
Egon nodded. "Everyone reset for a frequency of 3000 milliRhines, half power. Be ready to cut off on my mark." The physicist retrieved his own thrower from Peter, turned the dial precisely three-quarters of a rotation, and aimed it carefully. "Ready?"
"Ready," chorused the other three.
"Fire," ordered Egon, and four proton streams danced across the surface of the blue and purple sphere. It throbbed and rippled slightly. After a slow count of twelve, Egon raised one hand; as he signaled, the streams stopped as one. He studied the meter again.
"Excellent. We appear to have stabilized it. I should be able to determine the frequency to close it momentarily." Egon fished in his pocket for a calculator and began tapping in numbers.
"Do you hear something?" Winston asked, one ear cocked.
The others fell silent. A female voice was shouting, far in the distance.
" . . . Immense sacrifices made to open the mortal realms to us! My father suffered ostracism, exile, and finally the flesh-death to bring the riches of a magically unspoiled world to us," the voice cried. "You may turn your back on his sacrifices, you ungrateful fools, but I will follow in his footsteps, even to the stars and back!"
"Uh-oh," murmured Ray. He hurried out of the room again.
"Is it just me, or does it sound like the Elvenking had a little pointy-eared princess waiting in the wings?" asked Peter.
Another voice was speaking: "Ilelana, your father's dreams were just that - dreams. You have never been to the mortal realms; I have. They are magically unspoiled, yes, but they teem with cold iron and coal-smoke. The mortals tame lightning and use it for puppet-shows; they burn forests and choke the streams with the ashes. Even if you could fight them all with magic, you do not want to rule there."
"Even so, I will go," the female voice insisted. "They are foolish with their power, as we have been with ours. I would as soon live where the magic runs clear and the water runs muddy than the other way around!" A noise rose up behind her voice, as if a crowd were shouting.
Ray jogged back into the room, carrying the oak twig and mistletoe again, Peter's frying pan tucked under one arm. "More trouble?"
"Maybe more than we thought." The center of the vortex began to clear. Two silhouettes were visible, one in ornate armor, the other in a flowing robe. The figure in the robe spoke again. "Your army is very impressive, child, but they are none of them seasoned warriors. You may slay many mortals, but they are not fools; they will adapt and drive you back." It stepped back, and raised a scroll in one hand. "By the power vested in me by the Autumn Court of the Seelie Sidhe, I hereby forbid you from - "
A hail of arrows struck the figure and the scroll; it collapsed, midsentence.
"You have no authority to forbid me anything," growled the figure in armor to the body. "My warriors! The portal opens!"
A roar went up. Peter did some quick estimations based on the football and baseball stadiums he'd been in. "Ten thousand, at least."
"I'd estimate approximately thirty thousand, if the portal isn't damping the noise too severely." Egon took another reading and typed faster on the calculator. "Ray, set your thrower to 500 milliRhines, full power."
"Got it." Ray took out a multi-tool and began lowering the frequency on his thrower.
"Winston, stay where you are. Peter, change to 1500 miiliRhines." Egon stuck the calculator back in his pocket and pulled out a screwdriver of his own.
The crowd noise got louder. Peter was sure he could hear swords banging against shields. "Uh, do we want to be here when that thing opens all the way?" The figure in the center was beginning to gain detail - female, with long golden hair reaching almost to her knees, and an ethereal beauty marred only by a sword nearly as large as she was.
"No." Egon finished adjusting his thrower. "So we will make sure it does not. Fire in three-second pulses, one at a time, lowest frequency to highest; I'll count off. Ray, you start."
Ray fired for three seconds, then shut off as Peter took over, then Winston, then Egon, then Ray again. The edges of the vortex began to ripple, then to flap like a flag.
"What manner of sorcery is this?" screamed the voice from the other side of the gate. Sparks of green energy began flying through. "Mortals? Father? Father!"
"Can we go any faster?" Peter whined. Egon shook his head and took over from Winston. The vortex wobbled and became elliptical instead of round.
"If you have harmed my father's shade, I swear, I will hunt you to the ends of eternity!" The tip of a sword slashed through the thin line of blue energy at the center of the vortex.
"Yeah, about that," Peter shouted back, as he took his turn firing. "See, he tried to mess with us, so we had to lock him up. Sorry about that."
"You will die, mortal scum!" she shrieked, slashing wildly at the vortex. Egon fired. "Everyone, now, three-second burst and then stop! Don't cross the streams!"
The vortex spun, flattened to a two-dimensional disc between the beams, flared and winked out of existence. The tip of the sword clattered to the floor.
"Nice going, Egon!" Winston cheered. Egon adjusted his glasses and smiled weakly.
Ray patted Egon on the back. "Let's get the rest of our stuff back into Ecto, swing by the motel to give Carl our bill, and head back home."
"Sounds good to me," Peter agreed, scooping up the fragment of bronze from the floor.
---
The road rolled by underneath them in the dark. Peter debated opening his eyes for the fourteenth time.
The silence in the car was palpable. Winston was focused on the highway with a keenness that might have been appropriate had they been driving on a back road in a blizzard with one headlight out. Egon had folded inward, his face blank but his eyes alive with something that might have been embarrassment. Ray was shifting his weight every few moments, vibrating with nervousness.
Ray fidgeted hard enough to shake the car. Peter found himself with his eyes open involuntarily. He sighed; he wasn't about to get to sleep, either. "Hey, Ray, cool it with the hyperactivity. Ecto can't take much more of this."
"Sorry, Peter. I didn't mean to wake you up." Peter was pretty sure Ray knew he hadn't actually been asleep. Ray stretched, and continued, "But don't worry about Ecto; she's tougher than she looks."
The uncomfortable silence curled back through the car like smoke, and Peter had just leaned his head back to pretend to return to his nap when Ray spoke up again. "Hey, Winston, you okay?"
"Sure, Ray. Just tired." Winston feigned stifling a yawn. "We're going to be getting in awfully late."
"Do you want me to take a turn at the wheel?" Ray offered. Winston shook his head. Peter was still unsure about giving driving duty to someone who'd had a bleeding scalp wound earlier in the evening, but Winston insisted he was fine.
The silence was just creeping back again when Ray swallowed hard and cleared his throat. "Um, Winston, I think I owe you an apology."
Winston looked apprehensive. "For what, m'man?"
"I know you're really not comfortable with magic," Ray said, a little softer. "I mean, I know you know I do this sort of thing, and it's sort of a live-and-let-live thing between us. But I didn't see a way out of the situation without using it." He paused, and glanced sideways at Egon's reflection in the rear-view mirror. "I knew the ghosts were using it, and for me, it was sort of fighting fire with fire. And at the time I started with it, it was just me and Peter, and he doesn't mind so much, so I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry for dragging you into it." He twisted his right hand in the palm of his left and looked sideways at Winston.
Winston didn't look at Ray, but he reached across with one hand and patted him lightly on the knee. "It's okay, man. I've gone back and forth about how okay I am with it, honestly. Some days, I guess the old habits just come down hard." He allowed himself a small grin. "I mean, my grandma is half Puerto Rican, and her sisters all did things like read cards. That's not real magic, not like the stuff you do, but it's not like I'm a stranger to it. But at the same time, Dad doesn't approve of them, either."
"I didn't know your dad was annoyed about that, too," Peter piped up. Egon shifted slightly at the sound, although he had to have known that Peter couldn't have fallen asleep again that fast.
"Yeah, for all that Mama's the really devout one, Dad's worldview is pretty strictly Baptist." Winston's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "He deals with what we do by pretending it's not real, even though he knows better. I'm sure if I asked him, he'd say that Slimer's either a collective hallucination or a damned soul."
"I'm not completely convinced that he's wrong about that last," joked Peter, but for all that his own mother had identified as Catholic, he'd never really picked it up.
Winston snorted. "Anyway, when the whole thing with the Undying One happened, I had to really think about what I believed." He chuckled dryly. "I mean, I didn't feel damned or anything. And I really couldn't just decide that hadn't happened."
Ray grimaced. "It hadn't even occurred to me that you'd worry about that."
"I didn't for very long." A road sign flashed by, letting them know they were only an hour from the outskirts of the city. Winston paused to read it, then went on, "I won't tell you I'm totally okay with it all, because I'm not. Not yet. It still creeps me out a little bit when you talk about it. And when you're actually doing it, the serious stuff - not the mistletoe part, that was fine, but the salt and the circle and the chanting - I hate to admit it, but sometimes you do get a bit scary for me."
"Me?" Ray sounded small, somehow. "Not just the magic?"
"They're not separate things, Ray." Winston made a turn onto a tollway on-ramp. "At least, they weren't for me, that time. It's not like there's you and then there's the magic, like a proton pack. You can't just take it off. It's part of you, just like your engineering degree and your courage and your comic-book trivia." Ecto changed over into the middle lane of the highway, and Winston finally took his eyes away from the road long enough to look directly at Ray. "So yeah, Ray. You. But it doesn't make us any less friends. I mean, Peter's slick talk and prophetic dreams both scare me silly sometimes, too, and he's not losing any sleep over it."
"What, me worry?" Peter grinned, then let his face grow serious. "Yeah, and that's two halves of the whole with you and the magic thing, Ray. The fast-talking is half natural talent and half practiced skill." He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced at Egon again, waiting for the physicist to burst his bubble. Nothing. Damn. "The dreams are completely out of my control; they're a part of me that feels foreign, even to me."
"I still think you could do something about that, with training," Ray mused.
Peter shrugged. "We never did get it to work on demand, back in college. I'll admit, I haven't tried much since. We've always been too busy when it acted up. But my point here is that with you, the magic is both of those at once - something that was always part of you, and something that required a fair amount of study."
Ray nodded. "Yeah, you're right. But that means I could have just walked away from it, instead of studying, so if it's really, um, well, sinful, I guess, then half of it's still on me, right?"
Egon finally stirred. "Ray, that's utter nonsense and you know it."
"Huh?" Ray jumped at Egon's voice.
The physicist uncoiled slightly. "Your occult expertise has saved our lives on more than one occasion, not just tonight. You couldn't study it so deeply and not attempt to put at least the basic principles into practice."
"That's not true, Egon, and you know that better than anyone," Ray answered softly.
Egon bristled and didn't respond. Peter thought about it for a moment, and then responded for him. "What do you mean by that, Ray?"
"Egon knows as much as I do about the theory of magic and general occultism, probably more." Ray gave Peter a curious backwards look; Peter shot him a tiny shrug that meant humor me. Ray nodded slightly. "He's certainly done all the reading I have, and some in languages I can't even pronounce. I'd be lying if I said I knew for sure that Egon's never tried out as much as a simple spell out of all of it, but I've never seen him use it."
Ray took a deep breath and twisted around in his seat to face Egon. "I guess I owe you an apology, too, Egon. I mean, I know how you feel about your magician ancestors. If I could have figured out a way to rescue you without using it, I would have, but - "
"That's quite enough, Ray," Egon rumbled. Ray flinched back into his seat, and Egon sighed. "I'm sorry. That came out harsher than I intended. I'm not at all offended either by your practice of the magical arts in general or by this particular instance." His voice dropped. "I'm quite grateful that you managed to remove and trap the Elvenking, no matter how you did it."
"You're welcome, Egon." Ray was flustered again. "I just - I know - "
"You know the things my father always said about magic and the occult, because I heard them so many times about my own peculiar interests that I internalized them and parrot them back like a programmed automaton," Egon said flatly. "Ray, I wouldn't have been interested in telekinesis and ghosts when we met if I didn't at least recognize the legitimacy of various forms of occult practice. I may find it embarrassing on a personal level, but I recognize that that's a conditioned response on my part."
Egon paused. "It's not just Father, of course. It's Uncle Cyrus and Grandfather and everyone else on that side of the family. They think they've purged the Spenglers of any trace of our occult history; my own interests were a refulgence of rank superstition, from their perspective, and they did their best to wring it out of me." His voice was rising slightly. "It was easier to learn to mock it with them, to consign Zedekiah and his dabbling to family legend and dismiss it, than to fight for the idea that I might be entitled to something other than the power of Science by birth." His eyes darted to the reflections on Ecto's window-glass, and he calmed down again. "It was too easy to see myself as a wizard. The Bogeyman's appearance just made things more complicated - here was the proof that my wildest dreams were real, but they were nightmares." He shook his head sharply, as if to clear it.
"So you blamed all occult stuff for him?" Ray asked, carefully. Peter realized that the two of them had been dancing around this ever since Ray had found out about Egon's history with the Bogeyman. Not the conversation about long-repressed issues he'd expected to be having tonight, but if it needed to happen, he was glad to facilitate.
"Not exactly. It brought home how dangerous it was. One the one hand, I was told by the people I most respected and trusted that it didn't exist and wasn't important; on the other hand, my firsthand experience told me it did exist and was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to me. And underneath all that was sheer curious fascination." Egon sank half an inch back into the bench seat, eyes slightly unfocused. "What if I took it up, learned it, and was no more successful than Zedekiah? Worse - what if I became a magus, was competent at it, and grew corrupted by the power?"
"Yeah, I gotcha," murmured Winston.
"Corrupted? How?" Ray just sounded baffled.
Egon shook his head again. "Ray, you've seen how I become in the lab when I'm near a breakthrough. I can be almost monomaniacal. I am capable of crafting experiments for the sake of knowledge, without consideration for the practical side-effects, that are nearly disastrous." A flicker of shame crossed his features and settled near his eyes. "Imagine my doing the same with spellwork."
Ray opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again in thought. Finally he asked, "Do you worry about me doing that?"
"No," chorused the other three men. Egon continued, "You might misjudge the effects of your occult work in your enthusiasm, Ray, but I trust you to at least consider them. You don't push buttons merely to see what will happen if you think there is significant risk; I do."
"No, but I've enormously underestimated the risk of pushing a particular button dozens of times," Ray objected. "If you think that you'd be a danger doing that with magic, then I'm a danger, too, and you ought to be trying to stop me."
"Ray, I trust you with my life, both in the lab and otherwise," Egon replied vehemently. "I can't imagine you becoming corrupted the same way."
"You're pretty incorruptible yourself, big guy," Peter pointed out. "You and Ray might reject temptation for different reasons, but you're both fundamentally pretty good people."
"Unlike you, you mean?" Winston grinned. "Fat chance. We've seen the big teddy bear underneath the con-man exterior."
"What makes you think it isn't the other way around?" Peter's grin grew wolfish. "Anyway, Egon, the fact that you've worried about it automatically means it's less likely. Not a zero percent chance, but nothing we do comes with guarantees."
Egon studied Peter's face, then Ray's. "You sound like you think I should start practicing."
Peter shrugged. "Think about what would have happened if the elves had wanted short and energetic instead of tall and elegant."
Egon frowned. "I could have modified the Watt technique to separate Ray from the Elvenking, but - it might have taken longer than we had, assuming the gate would have opened at the same time without our interference."
"And we'd still have been dealing with the ghost trees, or wasting pack charge right and left zapping them," Winston added. "Would we still have had enough power in the cells to close the portal?"
"I see," Egon said, nodding slowly. "There is a fair bit of merit to having more than one of us with practical as well as theoretical knowledge."
"And my talents aren't the right ones," Peter added unnecessarily.
"And I've still got a long way to go before I can get comfortable with doing that myself," Winston followed.
Egon met Peter's gaze carefully. "Do you really think I wouldn't become obsessed?"
"No more than you already are," Peter replied.
Egon was silent, eyes turned down, for a moment. "Yes," he finally said. "Ray, do you think you could - teach me?"
"Everything I know," Ray beamed. "Shouldn't take you more than a few months."
"A lifetime of research on your part will take significantly longer than that," Egon chided, but a small smile crept across his face.
Peter relaxed. That wasn't the only source of tension in the car, but enough was broken that he wasn't too worried. He listened to Ray and Winston banter about the line between mystery and fantasy as he finally fell asleep.
Egon wasn't participating, he noticed as he dropped off. But then, neither was he, so he could hardly judge.
---
It was that uncomfortable stretch between midnight and the crack of dawn when Ecto finally arrived at the firehouse doors; the streets were, while not empty, quiet. Peter found himself gently shaken awake, Ray murmuring, "C'mon, Peter, your bed'll be a lot more comfortable."
"Traps first," Peter yawned, climbing out of the back seat with only minor difficulty. His feet ached in his boots, but if he unlaced them, he might trip over them; not smooth at all. And padding around the metal grid floor of the basement in his stocking feet would hurt in an entirely different way. He picked up the shop cloth with the bronze fragment from Ecto's floor and set it on Janine's desk. A souvenir, from one warrior woman to another.
"Sure thing," Winston agreed, handing him two with blinking lights. They clumped heavily down the stairs and lined up to dispose of their quarry. Egon held only one trap, but Peter was pretty sure he knew who was in it; he suspected that Winston had handed him the lieutenant who had threatened to do the same to him.
The containment unit cycled seven times, and the deep thrumming that filled the basement dropped a quarter of a tone. Egon and Ray exchanged a glance that Peter recognized from their early days of running the business.
Peter cleared his throat. "Getting crowded in there again?"
Ray nodded slowly. "We've been talking about ways of expanding the capacity of the unit, but so far all the ones we've come up with would require shutting the grid down."
"Couldn't we just build a second unit?" Winston asked, parking the used trap cartridges in the recharge unit. Peter felt a fleeting streak of guilt and ambled over to help with the last two.
"Where would we put it?" Ray shrugged, hanging the trigger mechanisms on the wall hooks to wait for new cartridges.
Egon rubbed his chin. "I have a few potential ideas for boosting capacity that might not require a power shutdown. The math works out, but I'll need to test them to see if they're feasible with the actual equipment we have installed." He headed back upstairs, eyes turned upwards towards his thoughts - and, Peter noticed, away from the others.
Winston and Peter finished with the last cartridge. "Well, Egon may have the mental energy to spend time in the lab after tonight, but I don't," Winston announced. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to bed."
"I think I should probably eat something first," Ray mused.
"Yeah, I think I'm with Ray, there," Peter agreed. "It's been seven or eight hours since we had a meal, and he did some pretty serious work."
"We all did," Ray protested, but Winston gave him a small grin and patted him on the shoulder. "No, Pete's right - you probably do need to keep your energy up. I'll see you guys in the morning, okay?" He checked the recharge grid and then followed Egon.
Ray waited until Winston had cleared the doorway and then glanced back at Peter. "Uh, how badly do we need to talk?"
Part 3