Chapter Four Hundred and Eight - Ghost Stories

I was careful not to let my Cleaning magic touch the notebook. I wasn’t sure if it would interact with the little ghostly lines scratched across parts of the list, and it would be rude to erase the ghost’s work.

Or, instead of calling it the ghost’s notebook, maybe I should have called it Lavinia’s; that seemed to be the name of the person who owned it, and who I suspected quite strongly was the ghost.

I glanced around the nook I was in, then nodded my head. “Alright. Can I show this to someone? Or someones? I think they’d like to know what you’re up to, and maybe... well, maybe we can work things out in a nice, friendly way.”

A book slid forwards on one of the shelves, just enough that I noticed it without the book clattering to the floor, which was probably for the best, since it seemed a little old. The Gratitude of Ser Hawke, read the title, which I decided to translate into a simple thank-you from the ghost.

It was a surprisingly nice ghost, all said.

Really, what had it done that was so bad? Sure, it made a bit of a mess, but someone being a bit of a mess wasn’t a reason to say that they didn’t deserve some friends too.

With the notebook in hand, I started to navigate out of the corner I was in, only I think I took a wrong turn at some point. The building was, I suspected, a bit bigger on the inside than it was on the outside, because I ended up walking much deeper into the stacks than I should have been able to. I even had to use Proportion Distortion once to squeeze through a corridor that narrowed and narrowed down until it was too small for a human-sized person to walk through.

The books in that smaller section were all sized for mousefolk, which was an interesting discovery. Of course they’d write books that small for themselves. It probably saved a lot on paper and ink costs.

Eventually, I had to ask Lavinia for help, and the ghost helpfully pointed me along the right passages, through a rotating wall, and down a spiral staircase that brought me back to the mezzanine where my friends were.

Amaryllis and Caprica were deep in the ghostly literature section, and as I approached, they both looked up from the book they were studying. “I found the ghost,” I announced.

“Oh, good, you killed it,” Amaryllis said with a nod.

“Um... not exactly,” I said.

She sighed. “Did you befriend the ghost we were supposed to kill, Broccoli?”

I grinned, unrepentant, and raised the notebook. “I got this from them.”

Amaryllis and Caprica took the notebook and started to go through it carefully. “This isn’t so old,” Caprica said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The notebook. The paper’s not yellowed, the ink hasn’t faded. Look, this book here." She tapped an entry on the first page of Lavinia's notebook, written in mortal ink. "This one came out while I was still in school. I remember seeing it new. It’s a Sylph book, maybe five or six years old. By the time the book made it to Inkwren... call it four years ago?”

“Oh! So the person that wrote the notebook only died a few years ago, then,” I said with a nod. That was a good deduction on Caprica’s part.

“This just looks like a list of books someone wanted to read,” Amaryllis said. “Why would the ghost give you this?”

“I think it’s maybe why they’re a ghost in the first place,” I said.

Amaryllis’ brows drew together, and she let go of the notebook to reach for one of the tomes they’d been pouring over before. “We did discover that there are several types of ghosts. Or at least, experts in that field decided to classify different ghosts into different categories.”

“Alright,” I said. “And what do you think Lavinia is?”

“We thought that they were a poltergeist originally. Now, keep in mind that the person who wrote this clearly used artificial categories for the different types of spirits right next to actual World-given categories.”

I blinked. “What’s the difference?” I asked.

Amaryllis hummed. “Easy to forget that you’re not from around here, sometimes,” she said. “Alright, think about it like this. Let’s say you suddenly decided that you want to take up blacksmithing as a career, or just as a hobby.”

“Uh, alright,” I said. I could imagine that, at least as a hypothetical.

“Would that make you a blacksmith?” she asked.

“I... guess?”

She nodded. “It would, insofar as you do the task and know what you’re doing. But you wouldn’t have a Blacksmithing, or a Blacksmithing-adjacent class. You won’t have skills to help you with your work. If Awen picked up the same hobby, she would probably be better because she has supporting skills, but neither of you would hold a candle to someone with an actual Blacksmithing class. So, in that case, we can broadly categorise people into three spaces. People who do something without assistance, people who do something and have skills that assist them, and people who do it and have a supporting class.”

I got it so far. “But what’s that got to do with, you know, the ghost?”

“Right,” she said. “Well, ghost hunters and people who study that kind of spirit have categories that they put ghosts and spirits into. Ancestor spirits, benign ghosts, poltergeists, malevolent spirits, and things like wraiths.”

“Alright,” I said. “And not all of those categories are... World-defined, right? So the ghosts might not all have classes, or something?”

Amaryllis smiled. “Your occasional intelligence is what makes your friendship so tolerable, Broccoli,” she said.

“Thank you?”

“Essentially, Caprica and I thought that the ghost was a poltergeist. Those are ghostly spirits whose passing is marked by anger and resentment. They’re usually fairly violent. In fact, most ghosts are, though they’re usually so weak that they’re a non-threat. Poltergeists, however, can catapult objects around and cause actual harm.”

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“You didn’t think that the ghost was a wraith or anything worse?” I asked.

Caprica shook her head as she finished looking at the notebook. “No. A wraith would be a lot more violent, and aggressively so. Pecorina would have had a lot more trouble on her hands if that was the case, and would likely have called on the city guard or their equivalent already.”

“But Lavinia isn’t like that. They seem... actually, kind of nice, once I started talking to them.”

“They were able to talk?” Amaryllis asked.

“Uh, not quite. They threw books at me, but the titles told a story.”

Amaryllis stared. “Are you certain? Maybe they threw one of those books hard enough that you started imagining things?” I pouted at her, and she grinned. “Fine, fine. So they can kind of communicate. That’ll make it easier to lure them into a trap.”

“No,” I said. “It’ll make it easier to befriend them.”

“Really?” she asked, clearly a bit exasperated.

“Why not? I think they’re a ghost because they want to finish their reading list, right?”

“That’s plausible,” Caprica said as she closed the notebook up and gave it back. “How ghosts are made is a subject of some debate, but generally, they appear when someone has a lot of regrets, or something they really wanted to accomplish.”

“I, for example,” Amaryllis began. “Might become a ghost determined to haunt you lunatics.”

“I’ll learn how to make the best ghostly tea,” I promised. It was a bit more morbid than our usual jokes, but it was still a little funny. “But... yeah, maybe instead of hurting the ghost, we can help them move on?”

Amaryllis rubbed the side of a talon against her chin. “Sounds like more work than just exorcising them,” she said.

Caprica shrugged. “It’ll depend on Pecorina at the end of the day. This is her bookshop, so she ought to be the one to decide.”

That was true. Maybe we could relocate the ghost to another library if Pecorina didn’t want them, that would also technically fulfil the bookshop owner’s request, but if the ghost mostly wanted to stay here, then... yeah, talking to Pecorina was the right choice.

“Alright,” I said as I stretched my back out with a nice pop. “Let’s head over to wherever Pecorina is, and tell her about our plan.”

My friends followed me as we navigated through the easier sections of the bookstore. The bits closer to the front and more out in the open all seemed nice and straightforward. It was only when I looked down into the deeper end of the stacks that my eyes got strained and it started to feel like I was staring into the abyss.

We found Pecorina on the first floor, cashing someone out at the register, but that didn’t take too long and she floated over to us, a smile on her whiskered face. “So, how goes the ghost hunt?”

I was a little hesitant, but I shoved that aside. “We think we’ve found a better solution,” I said.

One of Pecorina’s eyebrows shot up. “A better solution? The task might be difficult to carry out, but I don’t think it’s difficult to comprehend. Unless you’re giving up and just want to pay for the book outright?”

I shook my head. “No, no, it’s just that I think I know why Lavinia is haunting your shop.”

Pecorina’s breath caught. “Lavinia?” she asked.

“You knew her?” I asked.

For some reason, it hadn’t crossed my mind that Pecorina might know the ghost.

She waved my question away. “It’s the name of an old client, one I haven’t seen in a few years. I imagined she moved on, graduated from the Academy she attended, or dropped out. People come and go all the time.”

I glanced at my friends, then took the notebook from Caprica. “I think this might have been hers,” I said. “It’s the ghosts. She led me to it.”

Pecorina gestured and the notebook floated out of my grasp and opened up. The pages flipped aside, one by one as she scanned them all. “Oh, the poor dear,” she said. “But why is she haunting my stacks now?”

“If that list is a list of the books she wanted to read, then it’s possible that the ghost just has unfinished business,” Amaryllis said.

Caprica nodded and continued where she left off. "We propose to let her stay, help her finish reading the books she wanted, and in return, she might be willing to help around the store."

Pecorina was silent for a moment before breaking into a slow smile. “A bookshop with a bookghost. Though, I suspect our little ghost lacks some of the talents I’d look for in a new employee. For one, I generally only hire people who are corporeal.”

I held back a giggle at that. It was a bit strange. “Ah, but I think I could negotiate it so that Lavania will work for books.”

“Books are hardly cheap, you know,” she said.

“Well, she’d hardly need to keep them forever,” I said with a gesture to the notebook. “Just long enough to read, and then, well, then she might pass on.”

“She might make for a good security measure as well,” Pecorina muttered.

“Oh, and she helped guide me through the bookshelves. I got a little lost.”

Pecorina nodded. “That’s quite common. I usually send pamphlets with maps after any wayward customers if they don't emerge after a while. Having a ghostly guide might be even better. Very well! Have you spoken to Lavinia about this?”

“Sorta?” I said. “Um... come on, if we find her, we can explain things. I bet she wouldn’t mind.”

“An introduction…” Pecorina mused. "It sounds fair. Should we gather some of her favourite titles for her? A kind of... housewarming gift?"

“Library-warming, more like,” Caprica corrected with a chuckle, earning an eye roll from Amaryllis.

“Yes, I think that would be lovely,” I agreed. “I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”

***