Schmendrick’s head snapped alert on its long neck: up periscope. She looked at me.

I nodded. “Do your thing, but stay safe.”

She snarled in her language. The words caused her mouth to glow violet inside her head, shining through the muscles and skin of her face, silhouetted by curved bones in her skull, by pegs and needles of teeth.

Her shout echoed down through the Observatory, earning responses from others in her pack.

The air filled with the smell of lightning. Schmendrick vanished, or nearly so; she was a shadow, the edges of her outline scarily indistinct. She blurred soundlessly from her nest and out into the corridor.

Mandy’s eyes were huge, and the fascinated half-smile was back. “What’s happening?”

“Catching the ghost,” I said. We followed the stealthed shimmer of Schmendrick as she was joined by another, then another of her nearly-invisible pack. More Hunters drifted in, silent, almost casual.

The Radio was playing a silly song: Late last night upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there! He wasn’t there again today, how I wish he’d stay away…

“What’s that? You hear it?” Mandy whispered excitedly. The whispers, the Huntspeak, Schmendrick had called it, buzzed at the edge of hearing.

I nodded and held a finger to my lips. Mandy bounced excitedly on her toes. In the buzz of sneaky communication, there were a few words I’d been taught: Flank. Wait. Move. Then, in a buzzing shout that wasn’t loud, but made my ears ring nonetheless: PREY CONTACT!

“Oh no, God why?” the ghost shouted. “I’m sorry, I said I was sorry, please!” And it began weeping, its bass voice soggy with remorse. It was close by, maybe a few doors down the hall.

Blurry members of Los Cazadores began seeping quickly from all over the Observatory. They were converging on an empty room, or one I’d thought was empty. Their whispers took on a triumphant, gleeful tone. Ready. Ready.

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A long silence. It was broken by the sobbing of the ghost, quite nearby. Its voice had an odd crackly, static sound. Electric.

An ecstatic whisper from the Hunt: STRIKE!

And the entire pack struck. Scarlet and violet strobes blazed in the dark room, casting blurry shadows out into the corridor. Mandy sprinted ahead of me, holding the top of her sarong in place with one hand.

We slid to a halt outside the kill zone, or she did; I kept going; she grabbed my hand and hauled me back with intimidating strength. We both peered around the door frame.

Stealth mode was off. The pack swarmed visibly around something, a thrashing, fighting invisible something. Magic blazed and sparked.

A screeching groan shook the walls as a blazing violet curve was slowly etched into the floor. It grew, slowly, burning, filling the room with acrid smoke that smelled of dead leaves. It was becoming a wide circle, one that was scarring and melting its way into the stone at our feet.

“Oh my god!” The ghost said, for once sounding something other than miserable. Now it was panicked. “Help! HELP ME GOD!”

Schmendrick herself climbed the empty air, clawing and biting, rending with the dreadful talons of her legs, gripping with her knobby hands. Husband joined her, biting and snarling. The pack’s joyful yapping and baying filled the Observatory as more and more of the Hunt climbed their struggling, invisible victim.

“NO!” The ghost shouted, and then cut loose with an honest-to-God ghostly wail, long and wordless. Mandy, still holding my hand, was bouncing with excitement…

The blazing circle on the floor flared brightly as it completed itself, or as the Hunt completed creating it. A loud hiss, one final burst of smoke, and the glow faded. The Hunt, still shouting and barking in a satisfied manner, ran in a clockwise circle around the emblem on the floor.

Then a phrase I understood from Husband, in the Cazador language: GO EAT! And they all flooded out the door and down the hall, yelling and laughing. I assumed Husband had a pile of fish he’d been about to bring to his wife.

Schmendrick was the only one left. She sat on the floor near the glowing circle. “Carry me, Mandy,” she ordered. “Wait, no, cold. Owen, carry me.”

“I have to stay here, sweetie. You all did so great, thank you! Can Mandy go back to keep you company?”

When I was alone in the room, seemingly, I sat on the floor, back against the wall. I waited.

The smoke finally cleared. I heard a buzzing sigh.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sup,” said the ghost mournfully.

“Are you Sean?”

“I think so.”