The first time I encountered a ghost, I was with my mother. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old, and she had taken me to look into rumors of strange noises in a clearing in the woods not far from where we lived.

The ghost we had found there had been a sad thing, roaming aimlessly in search of something it had lost years earlier, before it had died. It didn't have enough energy to manifest completely, just a ball of mist in the vague shape of a person, radiating a sense of loss and sadness.

My mother had searched the whole clearing, finally locating a little gold locket. The spirit had come to it immediately, its loss and sadness gone, replaced with a sense of relief. My mother had carefully buried the pendant while the spirit watched, then bid it depart in peace.

As it faded away, I - in my innocence - decided that helping ghosts move on was a wonderful thing.

Years later, Master Tremane had taken me to my first poltergeist case. I had foolishly tried to communicate with it, to talk it into passing beyond...and walked away with a spectacular black eye, a lump on the side of my head and a few small cuts on my face from a particularly vigorous vase.

I had expected Master Tremane to be angry with me for embarrassing him. But he had laughed and clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder. "Alys, dear child, I would be a hypocrite of the first order if I chastised you for that," he had said. "When I did the same thing myself during my training!"

After that, he had taken me with him whenever he went to look into a haunting. "You're going to be dealing with these sorts of things all your life," he had told me. "The sooner you start learning to deal with them in all their variety, the better."

What I learned was this: Not all hauntings are created equal. Most of the time, ghosts are harmless things, sometimes not even self-aware enough to respond to attempts at communication. Sometimes they were never self-aware to begin with, but were merely the psychic recording of an event imprinted on a location. Others times, as in most poltergeist cases, they were never human in the first place and were something that we still don't have an explanation for. Elementals and demons needed to be handled with kid gloves, the latter preferably by a holy man of some sort, the former by a Shaman or Hermetic Mage who really knows what they're doing.

But every once in a while, you ran into a ghost that had been a genuinely nasty or insane person in life, and had carried those traits over into the afterlife. In their own way, they were worse than demons. After all, they had full access to the mortal world and free will. Demons had neither.

As Athena and I slowly made our way down the cellar stairs, our way lit only by the magelight from my staff, I had a very bad feeling that what we were about to deal with was precisely that. The spirit - or worse, spirits - of someone who had been a patient here when it had still been an asylum.

All haunted buildings have an atmosphere to them that a practitioner of magic - or anyone with enough magical or psychic talent - can sense. This one had made my skin crawl more than a bit as I'd viewed its aura from the outside. As we descended into the darkness, I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Just behind me, Athena made a soft, unsettled noise in the back of her throat. She probably felt it more intensely than I did.

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs and felt her press lightly against my back as I willed the magelight to grow in intensity, brightening the area around us. But for some reason, the light from my staff didn't seem to penetrate very far into the darkness. We could see the nearest wall of the basement - made of old brick - about eight feet to the right of the bottom of the stairs, and an area of tightly-fitted flagstone floor in roughly the same radius.

"Mistress," Athena whispered, "There's something down here with us. I can feel it watching us."

I nodded. I couldn't exactly feel it myself, but I was fully prepared to take her word for it. Her senses were sharper than mine and probably broader of spectrum as well. For that matter, her vision was probably better at penetrating the darkness than mine was.

"What can you see beyond the light?" I asked her quietly.

She shifted against my back. "Very little, Mistress," she replied just as quietly. "It's like the darkness is soaking up all light, and I need at least a little to be able to see in it."

"Then it's not natural darkness," I murmured.

"No, Mistress," she agreed seriously. "It isn't."

"Well then," I said a more natural voice, pretending that I wasn't the least bit unsettled or intimidated by something that could swallow up and block out the light from my staff. "Let's see what there is to see down here."

We moved away from the stairs, walking slowly so as not to trip over anything. Shapes loomed up out of the darkness as we walked. An old fashioned boiler and oil heater, as well as the hulk of an old - and very creepy looking - coal furnace. I silently thanked the gods that it wasn't burning. I'd seen one alight once, and it had reminded me of some sort of evil demon crouched in its corner.

We found a few old wooden crates, sealed and nailed shut. Stacks of more modern cardboard boxes with such prosaic labels as 'kitchen' and 'master bed' written on them filled one corner. I imagined those must be the previous owner's remnants, as Mrs. Muldrew had indicated.

As we moved towards the back corner of the house opposite where we'd entered the basement, the darkness seemed to coalesce around us, growing almost tangible. It pressed in on us, slowly reducing our circle of light to a scant four feet. I pressed more energy into the magelight spell, and while it grew brighter in our immediate area, it did nothing to push the darkness out away from us again.

I dug in my bag and pulled out a chunk of quartz crystal, milky white and roughly the size of my fist. With an effort of will, I infused it with another magelight spell and set it on the floor. Like the light from my staff, it did little to push the darkness away from us.

"What's that for?" Athena asked quietly. Her voice seemed strangely muffled, and I finally admitted to myself that I was getting nervous.

"I want to see how far away from it we can get and still see it," I replied just as quietly. "Let's head back towards the stairs."

With a nod, she turned back the way we had come. I quickly followed her, resting my right hand on her left shoulder and glancing back every few feet. The quartz crystal remained a bright beacon in the darkness, holding the shadows at bay out to about three feet from it in all directions. When we were about thirty feet from it, it suddenly blinked out. The sudden darkness where it sat immediately became the center of a cracking, splintering sound that sent shivers up my spine.

"That can't be good," Athena whispered.

I shook my head. "It's not. Stairs?"

"We should be right on top of them," she replied, sounding frustrated. "I don't understand it, they should be right here."

"Could you have gotten turned around in this murk?" I asked gently.

She shook her head. "My sense of direction has always been flawless, Mistress. I'm quite certain we've come back around to where we started. But it's changed."

Unfortunately, that was entirely possible. If we were dealing with an inhuman entity - or, perhaps worse, a collection of insane human spirits - they could have a startling amount of control over how we perceived our surroundings. Not over the physical world itself, but it was well documented that a powerful spirit could overcome even the best psychic defenses, at least as far as projecting illusions went. But to befuddle and confuse Athena's superior instinct and senses was a more difficult matter.

That scared me more than a little. It meant that the entity or entities we were dealing with were more powerful than I had first thought. Which meant that this was going to be harder...

Athena's hand touched my face, and my train of thought shattered. I realized I was on the verge of hyperventilating and forced myself to take a few deep breaths.

After a moment, I felt my calm returning and took in Athena's worried eyes. The magelight on my staff had dwindled to almost nothing, and now it flared back to brilliance as I centered my thoughts. "Thank you, Athena."

She nodded slightly. "Of course, Mistress. What do we do?"

I thought about it. Clearly, my fear had been a pathway for whatever was here to follow into my mind. Athena had disrupted that by providing me with something familiar - no pun intended - to focus my thoughts on.

I had an idea.

"Close your eyes," I said softly. "Think about your sister, and take us to the stairs."

She smiled, reassured by my unspoken faith in her. Without questioning my intentions, her eyes closed and she turned in place for a moment before starting to walk. I reached out and clasped her shoulder gently so we couldn't be separated and followed her through the darkness.

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In moments, she seemed to step up onto thin air, and the illusion shattered. The stairs instantly became visible to me, and I could see Artemis standing in the doorway at the top peering down at us.

<> she said with some concern. <>

I smiled up at her. <>

Artemis nodded her head slightly and backed away from the stairs as we made our way back up. I squeezed Athena's shoulder gently and murmured, "Well done."

She flashed me a quick, relieved smile over her shoulder. "Thank you, Mistress."

"This is," I said to Mrs. Muldrew a few minutes later, "Going to be a bit more difficult than I'd hoped."

She had made me a cup of tea, and we were back in her parlor. Athena had her hands curled around a cup as well, and the chill we'd felt in the basement was slowly being dispelled by the hot tea. Artemis was sprawled on the floor by Mrs. Muldrew's chair, tail flipping lazily.

"Is it bad, dear?" She asked nervously.

"It could be worse," I said in what I hoped was a reassuring way. "I think that what we have here is a fairly simple haunting in its own way, but I believe there's more than one entity at work. If they worked together at a single goal, we'd see something like what happened to us in the basement...an illusion powerful enough to befuddle even Athena's senses." I paused for a moment to gather my thoughts, then added, "I'd like to look through what your husband found out about the history of the building, if that would be possible."

"Of course," she said with a nod. "He made copies of everything in case we needed it for some reason. It's all in his study."

"Which is another room I wanted to take a look at," I smiled. "That's convenient." I finished my tea and rose, picking up my bag and staff. "Shall we?"

Athena quickly finished her tea and she and Artemis were by my side in an instant as Mrs. Muldrew led us through the house.

My first impression had not been mistaken. It was a beautifully and elegantly furnished house, done in a pseudo-Victorian style that appealed to me greatly. Old-fashioned rosewood furniture, vases and paintings, elegant carpeting and drapes lined every hallway. Glimpses of the rooms we were passing showed a dining room large enough to seat at least twenty, complete with beautiful tapestries on the walls; a recreational room with a billiards table and full bar; and several lavishly appointed guest rooms.

The house was also huge, taking up almost a quarter of a city block outside. Inside it was practically a maze of hallways and rooms. I silently thanked the gods for sending me Athena and Artemis...without them, I doubted I'd be able to find my way out if left on my own.

Aside from the decor, one thing about the house remained solidly constant as we made our way through it. Always, no matter where we were, there was a feeling of being watched. Both Athena and Artemis kept glancing around warily, their postures tense and alert.

I felt it as a tingling sensation on the back of my neck. A quiet sense of malevolent attention fixed on us.

Mrs. Muldrew led us to her husband's study on the second floor, darkly furnished in rich woods with a huge old mahogany desk as the room's centerpiece. As a whole, the room's contents were much like the rest of the house; pseudo-Victorian, quietly dignified and elegant. There were a couple of bookcases filled to bursting with medical textbooks, reference guides, journals and other publications. Two shelves held a display of antique surgical implements.

"Your husband is a doctor?" I asked curiously, thinking about how much the spirits of a former asylum would dislike having a medical professional living in their domain.

She nodded. "Yes, he's a surgeon. He's working with some of today's brightest minds to improve the techniques used to remove brain tumors."

Oh, lovely.

"That needs to be factored into the equation," I murmured to myself.

"What does?" Mrs. Muldrew asked, having overheard me.

"These spirits might have been riled up by your husband's profession," I replied slowly, thinking out loud as much as responding to her question. "If the spirits here are remnants of the old asylum, they might rather strongly dislike having a brain surgeon living here, whether his work is relevant to their history or not. Where are the documents your husband gathered about the house?"

"Right there on his desk," she replied. "Please, feel free to have a seat and go through them. I need to get in touch with our cleaning service and see if they have any new employees who might be willing to come here. Will you be all right on your own for a bit?"

I nodded and smiled reassuringly. "Of course."

She smiled. "Very good. I'll be back to check on you soon."

As soon as she was gone, I moved around the desk and sat down in the leather desk chair behind it. Athena moved to the shelves of old surgical implements curiously, and Artemis - being very much herself - flopped down onto the thick carpet by the desk and yawned hugely.

I delved into the pile of folders and envelopes on the desk, pulling out old deeds and construction permits, licenses to practice psychiatric medicine on the premises, bills of purchase for the surrounding buildings that eventually became part of the structure as a whole, and more. He had found the original structural blueprints, as well as sets of blueprints for every expansion the building - and later, buildings - had undergone, right up to a relatively new set that had been drawn up ten years earlier during the renovations that had turned it into a residence. He'd even managed to get slightly out of date blueprints for the other buildings that had been split off from it.

The sense of malevolent attention had intensified when we entered the room. After fifteen minutes it had become so strong that Artemis sat up and was looking around constantly, the fur on the back of her neck and down the length of her tail bristled out. Athena was pacing restlessly back and forth beside the windows behind me, occasionally stopping to look out. Even I could feel it with crystal clarity after a while, as the hairs on the back of my neck bristled like my familiars' tails.

I looked up from the blueprints I was examining and glanced around, frowning. "Do you girls feel that too?"

"You mean the skin-crawling feeling of being watched?" Athena asked dryly. "Hard to miss."

<> Artemis rose to her paws and padded over to the door and peered out into the hallway. <>

"It feels like someone's undressing me with their eyes. It's creepy as hell." I looked around slowly. "Is that your intention?" I asked the air. "To make us so uncomfortable that we'll leave?"

Athena jumped and uttered a startled meow, swinging around with her claws out and slashing at thin air. She stopped and looked bewildered.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Someone...something pinched my tail," she said in confusion.

I pursed my lips and looked around, then sighed. "This is one of those times I wish I actually was a Druid. A purification ritual would be really nice right about now." I considered my options, then nodded to myself and picked up my bag from the floor beside the chair and started rummaging through the pockets. "Which one did I put it in..."

"Mistress?" Athena asked, padding over.

"Ah!" I brought out the jar of fine white salt I’d taken from Hollis’ supply room and held it out to her. "Here, take this."

"Yes, Mistress," she took it and looked at it for a moment, then at me, waiting for instructions.

I closed my bag back up and nodded to the floor. "Use it to trace a circle around the desk. Not too much, maybe an inch wide. Make the circle big enough for all of us to be inside it with the desk."

She nodded and went to work as Artemis padded over curiously. <>

"I'm going to keep out whatever it is that's trying to distract us," I said, digging in my bag again. "Stay inside the circle, okay?"

Artemis nodded and sat down on the other side of the chair, watching her sister.

Athena returned to me a few moments later, set the jar down on the table and brushed a little bit of excess salt off her hands. "All set, Mistress."

I held out four palm-sized chunks of quartz crystal to her. "Cardinal directions."

She looked at me blankly. "Sorry?"

I laughed. "No, I'm sorry Athena. My bad. North, south, east, west. As close to them as you can get, one at each point."

Athena looked relieved. "Yes, Mistress!" She took them and moved away, mumbling "Cardinal directions" under her breath. She glanced around for a moment, then went to work with the instinctive direction-sense she'd already demonstrated in the basement.

Artemis watched curiously. <>

I smiled down at her and took a moment to ruffle her ears gently. "Good to know, pet. Keep those eyes and ears alert, then."

<> she wrinkled her nose. <>

"That's all right, pet," I said absently as I watched Athena at work. "I doubt you'd smell our watchers anyway."

Artemis huffed softly, clearly annoyed by the idea of not being able to smell her prey.

When Athena returned to me again, I rose from the table and moved to the circle. "Looks good. Well done."

She practically glowed with my praise as I walked around the inside of the circle, then glanced around. "North?" I asked her.

Athena pointed to one of the chunks of crystal.

"Thank you," I said, moving to it and kneeling down by it. I touched it lightly with the tip of my index finger and whispered a few words in Gaelic about raising a wall. As I finished, all four crystals began to glow with a gentle white light, which quickly spread into the salt encircling us.

A few moments later, the feeling of being watched was completely gone. I rose and smiled. "There, better?"

Athena nodded with the same relief I felt. "Yes, Mistress."

Artemis yawned. <>

I smiled. "Later, pet. Keep watch."

Artemis sighed and padded around the desk and sat down facing the door, being careful to stay inside the circle. I sat back down at the desk and returned to examining the blueprints.

"Athena, come and take a look at this," I said about fifteen minutes later, moving two sets of blueprints side-by-side.

"I don't actually know how to read, Mistress," she murmured regretfully as she came up beside me.

"That's all right. We'll fix that soon enough," I smiled up at her and took her hand to reassure her, squeezing it gently. "Right now, I just need an extra pair of eyes. I want to see if you see what I did. These are building blueprints...they show the layout of the building we're in now," I explained. "The ones on the right are the current ones, after it was renovated to be a house. The ones on the left are the last set from when it was still an asylum."

She leaned down, still holding my hand in hers as she looked at them curiously. "They're mostly the same, aren't they?"

I nodded. "The architect who did the remodeling used as much of the building's original structure as possible, I think. What do you see?"

I watched her expressive face with interest as she examined the diagrams. Curiosity and confusion warred for space there at first, followed by a sudden focus of attention and alertness. "The basement," she said after a moment. "The basement we were in a little while ago is a third the size of the one shown on the old blueprints."

I smiled. "Good," I looked back down at the blueprints. "I was afraid I was reading it wrong. I wonder why they did that...why close off so much of the basement?"

"Perhaps it was unsound?" She asked. "Or unfinished?"

"Both are possible," I agreed. "But I can't find any reference to a wall being put up in the basement in the renovation reports. I think we need to take another look at the basement."

She made a face. "Do we have to?"

"I'm afraid so," I said with a nod. "Artemis will be coming along to protect us this time."

From the other side of the desk, I heard Artemis yawn. It was a surprisingly expressive sound, conveying disdain for our nervousness. <>

Athena and I both laughed. But our eyes met, and we silently acknowledged the strained note to the laughter with little nods. "It needs to be done," I said quietly. "Our answers are probably down there."

She smiled warmly. "Where you go, Mistress, I go."

"I can't ask more than that."