Ghost Week (100)

PSI-2

Erik’s uncle had tried to impress upon him some rules for exploring abandoned buildings. (Because there are a lot of them and I know you’re going to eventually, dear one.) Always wear shoes. Don’t put your hands where you can’t see. Keep your feet on the ground. That last one was difficult because a lot of places had stairs, either going up or down, and he usually had Soup and Maggie with him and Soup and Maggie didn’t have rules like that.

Uncle Mordecai had shown him a long scar running up the back of his leg. It was just a faint line, like the seam in a stocking, but that was pretty impressive because colored people didn’t scar like that unless you really messed them up. That happened because I fell through a rotten wood floor into a crawlspace and cut myself open on a nail. If it sounds hollow underneath you, or you see stairs going down, your feet are not on the ground and I want you to politely excuse yourself. I know you won’t always, but please try.

How come there was abandoned stuff when you were a kid? Erik had wanted to know. Was there another war?

There is always another war, his uncle replied. But I grew up in a lot of crap neighborhoods in Rainbow — well, Brickdust Row, only the colored people ever said ‘Rainbow Row’ anyway — and there is always abandoned stuff in those.

The bombed-out warehouse behind the house in Green Dragon Alley was fairly safe, by any standards. No basement or crawlspaces, not even a roof to cave in on them, just the scars of old walls like a big blueprint and some bricks remaining. All the furniture and metal and good stuff had been taken ages ago, there were only splinters and rubble that no one bothered to clean up and sometimes a dead animal. It was therefore not interesting and they rarely played in there anymore. But it was a good place to sit around and talk, if they didn’t want to be right on the back stairs where the adults could hear them.

And a dead building seemed appropriate for morbid tales just before sundown in the middle of Ghost Week. The sky was bruising purple and the wind was cold and ocean-smelling, bearing moisture that would form fogs like gauzy shrouds in the darkness.

“The green dragon used to be on one of those walls over there, right?” Maggie said. She indicated the crumbled bricks which would’ve fronted on the alley.

Erik shrugged. “Auntie Hyacinth said there was one painted somewhere, but I dunno if it was there.”

“Deductive reasoning, Erik,” Maggie said. “There’s not a dragon painted here now, and these are the only walls that are knocked down.”

“What if it was graffiti and they scrubbed it off?” Erik said.

“Aw, that’s a real shame,” Soup said. “I would’ve liked to see it.” He was eating an apple, which he did methodically, without a care for the core. He spat out the seeds. There were the vague, splintered remnants of a bonfire here, which made a convenient target. There had been a much bigger and better fire just a little farther down in Strawberry Square, which was still being cleaned up.

“Maybe it’ll come back for Ghost Week,” Erik said.

“Calliope said we got Ghost Week from Wakoku,” Maggie put in. “They have a whole festival, with paper lanterns and stuff. They do it in Xin, too, but we probably got it from Wakoku because of diplomacy. Wakoku and Marsellia are friends.”

“Yeah, they gave us all those cherry trees, didn’t they?” Soup said. He spat out another seed. Direct hit! “That was a dumb gift, you can’t even eat off of ‘em, they just get flowers.”

“I like the flowers,” Erik said weakly.

“You suppose people died in this building when it blew up?” Soup said, grinning. “All their heads and body parts flyin’ around everywhere?”

“We had… people… die in our house,” Erik said, frowning. He pointed. “Way… more.”

“In your bedroom, you think?” Soup said with a smile.

Erik shuddered. That’s not fair. It’s supposed to be scary right now, but my bedroom is supposed to stay safe. Specifically if I am under the covers with nothing poking out. He couldn’t say it, though.

“I’m not that bothered about people dying,” Maggie said. “There’s probably noplace around here where people didn’t die, because of the siege. People die all the time, anyway.” She gazed back at the house. “I’m just a little worried about them coming back.”

“You think they’re mad at us?” Erik asked. He’d just got a little inkling of that. And, frankly, now he was worried about that too.

“Yeah,” Maggie said. “Maybe at my mom, for getting them killed, or at Miss Hyacinth for not saving them. Or at me for walking around being alive.”

“Why’d we go out of our way to borrow a holiday where all the dead people come back, anyway?” Soup said. “It’s not even like Yule with free food.”

“We get free stuff on Mischief Night,” Maggie said. “Don’t you still have some of that?”

Soup patted his pockets. “Yeah, but it’s not all week. Shouldn’t people still be giving me stuff? What if I’m a ghost?”

“I think if ghosts liked to eat candy and apples, we would’ve noticed by now,” Erik said. “Even if it was like the Invisibles and they liked to have the food and not really eat it, there’d be shrines for them.”

“They burn paper offerings for ghosts in Wakoku,” Maggie said. “Fake money, and food, and even cars and radios. I think it’s supposed to become real, somehow.”

Erik shifted uncomfortably and looked around. “Maybe they’re mad because we don’t do that.”

Soup snatched him, making him shriek. “Hey, keep your voice down,” he hissed. “Maybe they don’t know we’re supposed to be giving them free cars!” He was grinning again, though, probably because he got Erik to scream.

“It’d be damn near impossible to make a whole car out of a piece of paper,” Maggie said critically. In the back of her mind, she was attempting it. “You need mass. Where’s the mass supposed to come from? Even if you got it car-shaped, it wouldn’t have any density. It’d blow away in the wind.”

“Maybe ghosts don’t mind,” Soup said. Erik had both arms around him and was halfheartedly trying to drag him to the ground. Soup was pretending he didn’t notice. It wasn’t hard.

Erik let go and looked up. “Seriously, though, you guys think my mom would like a car?” That would be really nice for her if none of the other dead people in Marsellia had one. They’d be jealous.

“I guess you could draw one and throw it in the oven,” Maggie said. “It couldn’t hurt.”

Erik nodded once firmly.

“You ever see your mom hanging around since your head got bashed in?” Soup asked. “Or, any dead people?”

Erik accepted this with a shrug. He didn’t mind Soup saying he got his head bashed in, that was what happened, and he did see stuff. “It’s complicated. I don’t see, like, ghosts. Even since Mischief Night.” He couldn’t say for sure about last year, he’d been pretty screwed up last year. Because of his head getting bashed in and all. “But some of the Invisibles say they used to be people…”

“Oh, the Man Joshua is supposed to be,” Maggie broke in. “There’s whole books about it. They nailed him to a cross and he died but he came back. I think The Velveteen Rabbit is supposed to be about that, but it’s a metaphor, for kids. So nobody gets nailed to anything.” She considered. “The rabbit gets burned in a fire, I guess that’s better…?”

“I’ve never seen the Man Joshua around,” Erik said. “And he’s not supposed to ride people, so I don’t think I’d see him unless he was walking by and it was an accident. But a lot of the Invisibles are like that, they say they died and came back. My uncle says they can say whatever the want, though. They know stuff. They can fake you out if they want.”

Maggie sat forward. “Why bother? Why would they pretend to be people when they can already do all that god stuff?”

“You might trust them more and let them in if they say they were a nice person you knew about,” Erik said. “Or someone really good at something.” He looked down and shook his head. “Or they might want you to think they can… talk to dead people… someone… you… love… but really they don’t know any dead people or anything about people dying and they’re just telling you stuff out of your own head.”

“Geez, if you can’t trust the gods, who can you trust?” Soup said.

“Definitely not the gods,” Erik replied.

“I guess we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Maggie said. “Everyone’s just making it up. Even Ghost Week is made up. It’s old, but it’s made up.”

“My uncle thinks it’s supposed to be that way,” Erik said. “Like, we wouldn’t be as nice to each other or try as hard if we knew for sure what we were gonna get.” He shrugged. “But he’s just guessing.”

Soup drew out a piece of candy in a crinkly wrapper and unwrapped it.

“You’re gonna ruin your dinner,” Maggie teased.

“This is dinner,” Soup said. He popped the candy insolently into his mouth. “Breakfast is a stiff piss and a cigarette. Some idiot gave me a pamphlet about how Mischief Night and Ghost Week are evil and I’m going to hell. You guys want it? I can’t sell it.”

“Does it have cool pictures of people on fire or is it just words?” Maggie said.

“Lots of pictures,” Soup said. He tossed her a small booklet that had been cheaply bound with a single staple. The drawings were still and in flat black and white, but quite evocative. Erik sat down on the uneven remains of a wall next to Maggie and read over her shoulder.

“Demons, huh?” Maggie said. She indicated a picture of some little transparent guys with hooves and horns and pitchforks. They were cavorting around a boy and a girl dressed as cartoon characters. “Is that just what people call Invisibles they don’t like or are they their own thing?”

“I think it depends who you ask,” Erik said. “Lots of people don’t know anything about anything and they just make things up. Like Invisibles going into colored people who don’t ask them in, or going into regular people. See? That little guy’s making the girl ask for candy.” In the picture, the little girl and the demon were shrieking Forfeit! in gleeful tandem. “If there’s something that does that it’s not any kind of Invisible I’ve heard of.”

“Maybe it’s a metaphor, for your base impulses.”

“What’s ‘base impulses?’” Erik asked. He had a pretty good idea of ‘metaphor.’ It was pretending for grown-ups.

“That part of you that says ‘do it anyway’ when you know you shouldn’t,” Maggie said.

“It’s okay asking for candy on Mischief Night,” Erik said, frowning. “Everyone does that.” Of course, his uncle was always telling him just because everyone was doing something, that didn’t make it okay. “Maggie, what’s ‘peer pressure?’”

“Doing it ‘cos your friends say it’s cool,” she replied absently. Never mind that no one had said ‘peer pressure.’ Erik heard things that didn’t need saying, you just had to roll with it. “I guess it could be a metaphor for that.” She turned the page. “Oh, yeah. Wow. Straight to hell. Here’s the good stuff.”

Erik recoiled from the image of screaming people with their hair on fire, but he did not look away. “Is… hell real, you guys think?”

Maggie filtered that through her limited religious experience and her lifetime of logical training. She kicked the heels of her shoes against the wall she was sitting on as she spoke, “I think if it wasn’t real, they would still like to make it up to scare people into being good. Because it’s easier than explaining why you shouldn’t do something, and you can’t argue about it because it doesn’t have to make sense. Like some people hit their kids.” She turned another page. “Huh. So the ghosts during Ghost Week are really demons from hell pretending to be people. That’s an interesting interpretation, it has a nice symmetry with Mischief Night.” The demons had little human masks and were holding out paper bags and pillowcases. Worship! they said.

“‘Hell is other people,’” Soup said around a mouthful of candy. “I read it on the back of a matchbook.”

“‘Close cover to strike,’” Maggie said. She grabbed Soup’s hat by the brim and tipped it over his eyes.

Erik rescued the little booklet and folded it open again. He wasn’t done with hell yet. “Hey, these guys are drowning.” He reached up and adjusted his metal eye. He did that when he didn’t get what he was seeing. He didn’t even notice anymore. “I thought hell was supposed to be hot?” They were chained and floating underwater with bubbles coming out of their mouths. Those who did not act when they should have, the text informed him, shall be helpless for all eternity.

“I think hell’s supposed to have neighborhoods,” Soup said. He fussily adjusted his chequered driving cap and gave the brim a rakish twist to one side. “They sort you out and you have to go with other people who were bad the same way.”

“Like ghettos?” Erik said.

Maggie blinked at him. “Where’d you learn ‘ghettos?’” It wasn’t just the vocabulary, it was the context. She couldn’t picture Erik with his nose in a history book. Not unless there were lots of pictures. Tommy the Turtle Learns About Racism in the 14th Century.

Erik snickered. “Not… a… turtle, Maggie. My uncle said. He used to live over there.” He pointed down the alley, towards Strawberry Square and Brickdust Row. Though a part of Strawberryfield, with its edge against the square, it was all cheaply-built red brick buildings in that direction, until you hit SoHo and the brownstones. “It used to be Rainbow Row. There were walls and gates, and they had their own police and stuff.”

“How old is your uncle?” Maggie said, her face squinched into a moue of disbelief.

“It wasn’t like that when he was there,” Erik said. “There were pieces of walls like here, but no gate and no police anymore… not colored police.”

“Ghost walls and ghost police,” Soup said.

“There aren’t even pieces of walls since the siege,” Erik said, nodding. “And not so many colored people. Everything got switched up and moved around ‘cos of the bombs. Lots of people never moved back.”

“And we ate the zoo!” Soup said. He snickered. “Ghost animals, walking around.”

“Pissed off ‘cos they’d rather be driving,” Maggie added with a grin. She peered over Erik’s shoulder and regarded the drowned denizens of hell. “There’s dead bodies in the canals, you guys know that?”

Erik stood up and wobbled a few urgent steps, “Right… now?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to go look or go hide inside from the murderers.

“Well, yeah, but not new ones… That I am aware of,” she added diplomatically. “I heard my mom and dad talking about it. Mom thinks it’s unsanitary. People were throwing dead people in the canals during the siege to start with, and they didn’t all get washed out. When it was over and they needed to clean up, they picked some canals and threw all the bodies in and paved over ‘em. We’ve got roads and we don’t use the canals anymore, but they still get ocean water in ‘em. So there’s probably all pieces of dead people out there when we’re swimming.”

“Agh!” Erik said, which was all he could manage. His expression was enough to prove this was not a positive or happy reaction.

Soup appeared a great deal more enthused, but he rarely swam. “I heard there was mass graves downtown, is that where they are?”

“Probably. I can’t see them dumping a whole lot of new pavement in Strawberryfield. It’s all cobbles.”

“There can’t really be that many, though,” Soup said. “I mean, I’ll grant you the bones, okay, but why wouldn’t we eat the rest of ‘em? We ate the zoo.”

Maggie flung an irritated gesture, “I dunno, morality?”

Soup grandly shook his head. “That’s a thing people say they have when they’re not hungry.”

“Nobody wanted to get near the dead bodies because you couldn’t be sure what killed them,” Erik said. “People got sick, contagious stuff. Typhoid. Anathema. You couldn’t tell if something was a bruise or a scrape or a rash. Even if they were shot, they might’ve been sick. Milo took clothes off of dead people and sold them, but he didn’t know about getting sick. Sometimes people died from wearing clothes off dead people, but he didn’t know that either. He just wanted to eat. Sometimes ladies killed their babies because they couldn’t feed them, and some of the babies got eaten. And the dead bodies went into the canals, so many they got jammed up in each other like beaver dams of twisted branches, and the skin got gray and slimy. When they pulled the bodies out to put them in the canal on Angel Lane, they had these long poles with hooks on the end, and the skin sloughed off and it looked like… like…” He touched a hand to his head. “I… I dunno” He could see it, but he didn’t know what it looked like. Bad. Really bad. “I’m… sorry.”

Soup and Maggie were staring at him, open-mouthed. “Okay, he is way creepier now he gets footnotes,” Soup said finally.

“You okay there, Erik?” Maggie said. “That was a long one.”

Erik sat down without a care for the wood splinters and hugged his knees to his chest. Maggie sat next to him and put an arm around his shoulders. She kicked some of the stray rubble out of the way; it made a scraping sound which reminded Erik of bones. “Did… I… say… about… Milo?”

“Something about him killing people with clothes,” Soup said, and Maggie shot him a glare. “What? He did.”

“Oh,” Erik said. He drew a few breaths. “Okay. That part’s okay.”

“Oh, yeah, that part’s okay,” Soup said, nodding. “Sure! I’m a little bothered about people eating their babies, but whatever!”

Erik shuddered and Maggie wrapped her arm a little tighter. There was fun scary, and then there was skin falling off real dead people in the canal. You had to draw a line. “Calliope said her grandma ate a ghost once,” she offered. “Her mom told her.”

“How in the hell did she manage that?” Soup said. “She suck it up with a straw?”

“I think ghosts are different in Wakoku,” Maggie said. “This one was bothering girls at her grandma’s school. I guess it must’ve been like a military school where you stay there, because they had all their beds lined up in a room, and the ghost would sit on some of them so they couldn’t breathe. You could hear it working its way down the line, all the girls gasping. And finally Calliope’s grandma went ‘Okay, I’ve had enough of this, we’ve got to get that ghost.’ Because it went down the line of beds like that, you could predict it, so they heated up knitting needles on the stove and they waited for it and they stabbed it. You don’t wanna mess with girls,” she added, shaking her head. “Or telegraph your movements. Calliope said they couldn’t see it until they killed it, but then it was this big hairy round thing with no eyes and four legs like dog legs and a big mouth with human teeth. When they cut it open it was white inside like a cucumber with no seeds.”

“Didn’t they feed them at that school?” Soup asked, wide-eyed. “I mean, like, regular food? I gotta say, I would not look at something like that and go, ‘I should cut that open and see what’s inside’ let alone eat it.” He found it offensive that there was food out there he would not eat, even if it was just a story.

“I think they were mad at it,” Maggie said. “Like a dominance thing. ‘Don’t mess with us or we’ll kill you and eat you and poop you out.’ Calliope said her mom said her grandpa said her grandma said it tasted like raw pumpkin, even though they fried it in oil. They had it with rice.”

“Could you really kill a ghost?” Erik said. “Aren’t they dead already? It sounds like a monster.”

“Not like any monster I’ve ever heard of,” Soup said.

Maggie shrugged. “It’s different in Wakoku. They feed their ghosts and give them stuff, maybe that’s what does it.” She snickered. “Maybe there are monsters out there pretending they’re ghosts for the attention, like the demons in that comic.”

Erik was frowning and looked almost tearfully disappointed. “How… come… she… didn’t… tell… me… the… ghost… story?”

“It’s kinda girl-friendly,” Maggie said. “Sisters doin’ it for themselves, you know. Kickin’ ass, killin’ ghosts. And it’s scary, maybe she didn’t want to scare you. But, honestly, she probably just didn’t think of it while you were in the room. She was cleaning hair out of her brush when she told me.”

“I… guess,” Erik said. He sighed. “She’s not mean.”

“She kicked Milo to the curb so hard he bounced,” Soup said. Maggie swatted him on the back of the head. “Hey!”

“We don’t joke about real shit that hurts people, Soup!” There was genuine anguish in her voice, peeking out from under the anger.

“Like hell we don’t,” he replied. He removed his hat and rubbed his head. His hair needed trimming, it was over his ears and curling at the tips.

“Well, we don’t do it this soon!” Maggie said. “And not about Milo and not around me!”

Soup leapt up on one of the walls and got himself out of reach before saying, “Maybe Milo’s relationship will come back for Ghost Week!” He looked like a proud rooster. A proud, reckless, and ultimately doomed rooster.

“I can kill you from here, you know!” Maggie snarled. “And if I do, I’m not gonna send you any paper cars or money… or food!”

Soup took his hat in his hands and aped contriteness. He did not come down from the wall. “Aw, Maggie, you wouldn’t starve a dead guy, would ya?”

“I’d burn you a paper apple with a razor blade in it!”

“I wouldn’t like Milo and Calliope to like each other again for Ghost Week,” Erik said, regardless of Maggie killing Soup. He didn’t really mind if Maggie killed Soup, Soup deserved it. “Then they’d stop again after Cloquette Day when all the fireworks and noises chase the ghosts away.”

Maggie had her hand up as if to summon a thunderbolt, or possibly some locusts, or a bear. She dropped it and put both hands over her face with a groan. “Oh, gods, no. I cannot go through all that again. Milo will run out of pants to wear and have staples in both legs. Dead things should stay dead!”

“It’s… not… dead,” Erik said. “It’s… different. Complicated. Not… dead.” He put up both hands so they’d let him finish, “Milo… might… let… it… but… Calliope… won’t.”

“Like a mad scientist!” Soup declared. He clawed the air and cried out to the heavens, “LIIIVE!”

Erik gave a curt little nod. “Yeah.”

“Boy, you’re no fun,” Soup said. “You guys are no fun. Ghost Week is supposed to be fun.” He sat down on the wall, defeated.

“Real stuff about real people getting hurt is not fun,” Maggie said.

“The dead babies are real,” Erik said. “Calliope thinks her grandma really did eat a ghost too.”

“We didn’t know the babies and Calliope is weird,” Maggie said.

“I wonder what a baby tastes like?” Soup said.

“Regret,” Erik replied, stone-faced.

Soup grinned. “Did he just make a joke?” He pushed off the edge of the wall, landed lightly on his feet and clapped Erik on the back. “I think he made a joke, folks!”

Erik could not entirely suppress a smile. “If I can’t sleep tonight I’m telling my uncle it was you guys.”

Soup continued to pat him on the back but his eyes narrowed and his voice sharpened, “‘Cos you’re a whiny baby who tattles and not a cool guy who acts responsible for himself.” He jumped back and folded his arms. “I know a ghost story about tattling, but it’s one of those weird Wakokuhito monster-ghosts. You want it?”

Erik nodded rapidly. He sat down and drew his knees up again but this time with a smile.

“Masochist,” Maggie muttered aside.

Erik frowned at that. Something about whips and chains? And a chocolate eclair?

(Or you could always ask Hyacinth to scour me with her tongue.)

But he was getting awfully sick of knowing things and Soup was talking already.

“…and the monster is just ripping this guy’s guts out. There are intestines falling out, and all kinds of gooshy stuff, and the monster is eating it. Like it’s spaghetti. And he’s standing there in the alley with his hands over his mouth, trying so hard not to scream, but as he’s turning to run he knocks over a trash can and the monster is on him like that. Like that.” Soup snapped his fingers. “But it doesn’t kill him. It says, ‘Tell no one of what you’ve seen here tonight.’ And he’s like, ‘Yes, sir, Mister Monster. Whatever you say!’ And as he’s running away he can hear it eating behind him. And he runs right into this girl. Really cute girl he’s never seen before. But he’s, like, in no shape. She takes him home and gives him a blanket and a cup of soup and she keeps asking what’s happened and he won’t tell her, but she’s really nice. Like, really nice. And cute — boy! They fall in love. They get married. They have kids — cute kids! And one night he’s lying next to her in bed and maybe he’s had too many beers or something and he decides it’s time to tell her about the monster, ‘Honey, I’ve been so afraid all this time, but now I finally think I’m past it and we can be happy!’ And she screams!” He clutched both hands in his hair and tipped back his head. “Raaaah! Not even like a human scream, but so sad. ‘You broke your prooomise!’ And her face peels back — her whole head peels back — and it’s the monster and the monster says, ‘I really thought we could have been happy together, but you betrayed me and now you must die!’ And she eats him.” Soup nodded and folded his arms again.

Erik was leaning forward with hands pressed to his face. “What… about… the… kids?”

“Oh, they eat him too. And they make a hilarious puppet out of his skull.”

Maggie was leaning back against one of the almost-walls with a smirk. “So you’re saying if Erik tells his uncle you gave him nightmares later, your face is gonna peel back and you’ll eat him?”

“It’s a metaphor, Maggie, try to keep up,” Soup said. He sniffed.

Erik peered at Soup. “You… would.”

“Maybe if you were already in the refrigerator I’d have a cold sandwich, but I wouldn’t kill you and pull your guts out,” Soup said.

“Super,” Erik said. He drew a few slow breaths. “Oh, I need a… happy story before dinner or I’m gonna… puke. Maggie, do you think your dad will tell me the one about the guy staying overnight in the scary house and the cats keep coming in and saying ‘Should we do it now? No, wait’ll Big Tim comes.’ And every time it’s a bigger cat that comes in until it’s the size of an elephant and finally the guy says, ‘When Big Tim gets here, you tell him I couldn’t wait?’”

“That is literally the entire story, Erik,” Maggie said. “You’ve just told it.”

Erik shook his head with a wide, honest expression. “Nuh-uh, your… dad tells it… better!”

“Can I come to dinner?” Soup said.

Maggie glared at him.

Soup lifted his chin and put a hand over his heart. “I promise I’ll be super nice to Calliope and Ann or Milo and no jokes and no more scary stories unless he asks.” He nodded at Erik. “C’mon, I wanna hear the one about the cats. It sounds awesome.”

“If you break your promise you’re gonna find out real fast if I can get my face to peel back,” Maggie said.

They had Soup for dinner. Sanaam happily told the story about the cats, and other bowdlerized, innocuous tales of the sort adults like to pretend children prefer and tell each other when adults are not around — as if they’d never been children themselves. The three kids were varying degrees of freaked out about Lucy and Calliope after hearing how moms killed their babies during the siege, but they just exchanged heavy glances, nobody else seemed to notice and all-in-all it was a pleasant evening.

…Until Soup was faced with the prospect of finding someplace safe to sleep all by himself and navigating the foggy, gaslit streets in the dark in the middle of Ghost Week. “Uh… You guys mind if I sleep over?”

Maggie and Erik, who were not too thrilled with the prospect of sleeping in their respective beds in the basement and Room 102 where people had undoubtedly died, also clamored for an impromptu slumber party. Soup took his hat in his hands and spoke sincerely about having to sleep in a cardboard box sometimes, and the adults in the household guiltily allowed all three kids to camp out in the basement in cots.

“Did people die down here too, you guys?” Soup asked, with his borrowed blanket pulled over his head.

“Yes,” Maggie replied, irritated but nowhere near asleep.

“…You guys ever hear the one about the lady who lives in mirrors and kills you?”

“That’s Ann and she won’t unless you hurt Milo,” Erik said, also not asleep. “Or somebody.”

“Ha. Right,” Soup said.

They eventually got Maggie to override the timer on the mage lights so they just stayed on the whole time. When Milo came down in the morning and tried to turn them off, he blew one up and scared the hell out of everyone.