Fred's workshop had slowly taken on the appearance of a second bedroom. He had found a particularly comfortable (if out of style) sofa and furnished it with the pillows and a wild-patterned blue-grey blanket from his dorm room. He had a sturdy, large desk balanced on three legs and a stack of wood blocks. Currently it was cluttered with a stack of yearbooks - courtesy of the library, an ancient file of passive files - courtesy of Fred having claimed to be running an errand for Professor Moore, an all-too-innocent looking battered diary and a fresh leatherbound notebook. Catherine's suitcase was sitting, unopened, on a low table nearby. Several new lamps had been added over the past few nights... The boy told himself it was only to help keep him alert if the study lasted too late into the nighttime hours.

I guess it's about time to find some facts. I wonder if Abe or Ali will show up...

He'd sent them both notes that he was planning on digging for more clues tonight. Hopefully they would show up, as it was easier on his nerves to do this with company.

He sat at the desk and began to flip through the books of bygone Brunnholders.

Ali was wrapped in a long cloak she had bought with the left over money from the ball gown, and as she stalked through the grounds, she was happy for it. It was a deep, brownish grey that blended in beautifully with twilight and midnight, and warm. She had bought it telling herself it wa smerely for it's beauty, but she loved the practicality too. It, paired with her rags from the human store, were perfect traveling gear.

Even if she never would get the chance.

Sighing, she snuck into the building where the note said Hunter would be. She wasn't that happy to be here, the dance still preying upon her mind. That woman and him had danced so... so... she had seen his eyes, once, through the black mask of the Chrove. They had been alight. Ali wanted that look to herself, which she wasn't ever going to get. She was lil'Ali, and she wasn't worth the attention that a statuesque giant got.

Keeping as quiet as she could, Alisoina slipped off her shoes as she approached Hunter's work room. She saw the light creeping from under the door, and a bad idea occurred to her. Oh, it was mean, it was rude and it was childish. Yet, if he was going to treat her like a child...

Sucking on her bottom lip, she crept inside, using all her available skill to be silent. Getting closer to the working Hunter, she paused, drawing her muscles taught. Finally, when the moment seemed right...

"BOO!"

The farther back in the records one went, there were fewer and lower-quality spectrograms. By the time he got to the volumes he sought, there were none.
Of course, the technology isn't much older than I am...
But there were some portraits, galdori being a vain people. Actually, the older plates were better in some instances than spectrograms.

Let's see age-wise they-
"BOO!"

Hunter's seat went flying out from under him. The volume in his hand went careening into the stack of other books, which in turn cascaded onto the floor with a series of "thunks". Hunter himself, caught off guard, had jumped up and landed on the desk top. His elevation was short-lived as one of the rickety legs refused to bear his weight.

"Ouch!"

The would-be ghost hunter found himself on hands and knees, looking up at...

"Alisoina. Was that really necessary?"

Abe entered Parford Wing for the second time in as many days, a still-damp umbrella tucked under her arm.

Her own coat was a black, woolen affair in a style at least a decade older than her. Whether fashionably antique or just plain old, the coat had been well-kept, seemingly not worn for most of it existence. In fact, it had been lovingly repaired at least twice, and, though it might fetch a good price, Abe would never sell it. It was her mother's.

Paired with black pants and an ivory shirt, the coat might have made her look like a scholar in mourning -- were it not for the whimsical orange scarf about her neck. The rich, rust-colored silk harbored a gold pattern of gears and bumble bees. She loved that scarf; not only was it disarmingly ridiculous, it had amusing implications if taken as a commentary on Anaxi society.

After taking a snaking path to avoid passing Professor Moore's office (she did not want to seem over-eager), she finally found the Vespasian boy's workshop. Purely by luck, Miss Denore was standing near the door, her back to the healer. Abe quietly observed the young lady remove her shoes, and, puzzled, sneaked down the hallway some distance behind her.

When she heard the crash, the healer abandoned stealth and sped to the door. A light pushed opened it, and a strange sight met her eyes. Vespasian was prostrate on the floor, the Denore girl hovering triumphantly above him. It didn't take much to figure out what happened.

Abe cleared her throat, somehow giving the noise a sarcastic edge. "A-hem. Am I interrupting anything?"

Somehow, Ali enjoyed seeing her once-obsession's pain almost as much as she felt the pang of guilt-ridden affection. However, she was cold now, a lover to no man, and (mistakenly) the obsession of a ghost. Besides, the desk wasn't all that pretty of a thing to begin with, or so she tried to mollify herself with as she stared imperiously down at him.


"Quite. If you aren't prepared to be dealing with ghosts or monsters at all times then you are obviously not prepared. I could have been a spectre." She tossed russet curls over her shoulder. "You can't be too careful, you know." Her smile remained painfully controlled, revealing neither cunning nor kindness.


Ali, slinking into Hunter's unoccupied seat, crossed her legs daintily and smiled at the woman. It was the strange one from the library... the one who had said something about Alioe. Ali tried to recall what on earth she had to do with this.

"No, nothing of real substance." Eyebrow arching, Ali turned her electric gaze on Hunter, the question clear; what is she doing here?

Hunter allowed his young friend a moment to gloat and then got up and began reorganizing the books. He walked to the desk and kicked out the stack of block so that it set level on the floor - with no legs.


The boy bit back a reply. This was Ali, not someone older who should have known better. Hadn't he used fun to draw her into the game? Then certainly she deserved a bit of revenge for the perceived scorn of his behavior at the dance.
Although if she'd only allowed me to...


"No, of course not, Abe. Come on in."
He pulled over another couple of chairs so that there was room for three at the somewhat shorter desk.
"Although it's somewhat deceptive to speak of substance where the ghosts are concerned."

"Abe, meet my partner Alisoina. Ali, this is Healer Abeline Ixbridge. She helped me save that boy from the ghosts the other night. i thought a fresh pair of eyes and her resources as staff would be a valuable aid. Don't you agree?"

Abe acknowledged the pun with a small nod; she rather liked puns.

Seeing the two offered chairs were nearly identical, she claimed the closer one by hooking her umbrella on the back. She sat primly, knees together, watching Vespasian detachedly. Are those dark circles under his eyes? He must still be having difficulty sleeping. Perhaps I should prescribe -- no, I doubt a pill would be effective against haunting.


Though she felt something of Alisoina's chilly reception of her, the healer bowed her head respectfully. It was a reaction she was well-accustomed to, and it never warranted an intentional loss of composure. "Miss Denore."

From behind thick glasses, her expectant gaze settled again on Hunter, not warm, but far from icy. "Now, Master Vespasian, what do you have for us? Any luck finding more about our friends in the East Garden?"

Alisoina's eyes went wide with a mix of outrage and surprise turning to Hunter, her expression screamed You Told an Adult??? In fact, she'd hoped they would accomplish solving the mystery on their own. It would be grand. It would be romantic. It would lead them down the path of adventure.

However, Abeline ruined all chances of that. If Ali didn't love that damned map so much she would tear it from the wall. It felt like a mockery of her feelings, feelings she still had even if she denied them. Fine. No more chances. Her interest in Hunter ended here. She would use him to get whatever information was necessary, then they could free the garden ghosts. She would never have to speak to him again. She had been the beloved of a ghost, for Alioe's sake. She didn't need him at all.


Ali wanted to speak up about her visitation, and she leaned forward to speak... before sitting back, silent. The question had been directed at Hunter, after all. She didn't care if they knew, and besides, if they needed her they'd ask. She raised her eyebrow and looked to Hunter, petulance dripping from her eyes even if her voice was soft and friendly.

"Please share, I haven't the foggiest what the both of you seem to know." Ali was acting like a pissy child, and she knew it. However, she also didn't care.

Alisoina's undertones were... not very "under". Hunter was regretting getting someone so young involved with this business.
But without her, you wouldn't have gotten nearly so much information by now.

"Let's see. We know they appear mainly at night. We know how and approximately where and why they died. Thanks to Alisoina's lead, we have confirmation of their communication with at least one other student and from that same source - the diary. The diary gave us a set of initials, C.L.B., for the girl and her first name: Catherine. The gardener's name is Couldin. Unfortunately a side effect of contact with the diary appears to be an extension of the ghost's ability to manifest to us, albeit in a weaker manner than direct contact. I wonder if that contact could be destroyed by destroying the diary, but it is a purely theoretical question as I have no intention of testing it..."

"I visited the garden last week to speak with one of the older groundskeepers. He remembered Couldin and Catherine... He was able to confirm some parts of the story and provided me with the Catherine's brothers name: Billy. He also..."

Hunter hesitated. The travel case was a tempting item to explore, but he did not want to give the ghosts any more hold over him or Ali than they already had.

"He also told me to bring this," he indicated the small suitcase, "In case it might help. And because he was tired of keeping it, I suspect. It's the bag that Catherine packed for the elopement."

"I visited Couldin's grave... but we'll get to that later. What we need right now is more information. Therefore I've pulled these old yearbooks and some older Passive files. We know the date of the event: Dentis 1, 2662. If we search for years around then, we might get lucky. Billy sounds like he would have been well known, with his own circle of cronies. One of them was named, or nicknamed, Bastine. Catherine's initials may help. I - if we find pictures I think I could recognize them."

"We still need to find some manner of bringing them to peace once we do have these facts. So far the only thing I can think of is moving the bodies to the phasmonia with some sort of burial ritual..."

He had been writing an outline of their progress down as he spoke and pushed the paper over to Abe.

"Alisoina, have you had any luck following other leads? Or,"
How to ask this without scaring her...
"Have you had any odd experiences that might be communication from the ghosts?"

At the mention of destroying the journal, an unmistakable feeling washed over the room. It had always been there, watching, listening in the background. But now it felt stronger, the darkest corners of the room seemed to become darker, but there was enough lamplight to keep it at bay it seemed. The atmosphere didn't become menacing enough to force the galdori out, but it did feel...uncomfortable. As though the presence was waiting for the wrong move.

Alisoina would feel a brush on the back of her neck, almost like a breath. And a voice, so sad...so very very quiet in her ear.

"Catherine..." Her fingers felt cold, as though a draft had blown on them.

"There's no call for destroying anything," the healer said, warily peering at a corner. Whatever this is, it's definitely sentient... and here.

"We want to help." Her voice was faint, and it wasn't clear whether she was addressing Fred or the presence.

Lost in thought for a moment, she laced her fingers together and held a knuckle to her lips. "Perhaps.. perhaps our phasmonia is not the right place to put their bodies to rest. They wanted to leave Brunnhold, to be somewhere they could be together. It may not be right to trap them here."

While she didn't relish the idea of a trip to Qrieth with two skeletons as cargo, Abe would go if it was absolutely necessary. If I took an aeroship, I wouldn't have to be gone for more than a week or two. On the other hand, I'd be using up all my vacation time, I wouldn't be available if there was an emergency here, and I might lose my research position with Professor Moore...

She rather hoped the ghosts didn't still want to go to Gior.

The tickling coolness at her neck caused Ali to stiffen, and involuntarily, her eyelids fluttered. She was... she couldn't possibly have blushed at the feeling, nor the sinking cold in her fingers. There was no way her heart pounded a little faster, a little harder, at the thought that Couldin was there with them, with her. She shook her head once, clearing it of the fog that clouded her thoughts.

"I-- yes. The night after the dance. Couldin visited my dormitory." Her voice was tremulous, her mood spinning from stupid, childish anger to serious and thoughtful... with, perhaps, a light sense of breathlessness. "And destroying the diary is out of the question w-- I won't allow it." She'd almost said we, almost gave voice to the strange feeling that she was tied to this far more deeply than ever before. This wasn't a game, she was loosing herself...

Because she wanted to be Catherine so badly it hurt.

Sighing, Ali finally let go of her petty anger at Hunter's rejection. Wiping at her eyes with her free hand, Alisoina averted their welling gaze into the darkened corners. "They just want to be free. I don't know about the bodies... but he can't leave the garden. I think we need to find the players in this game before we move the pieces." She straightened, and with a correct, not, reached towards Hunter. "We should begin with the yearbooks."

Hunter's normally pale skin went perhaps an even whiter shade. Not so much at the manifestation as at the reaction it seemed to elicit in Alisoina.
She is very close to possessed. We need to solve this soon or we may both be lost. The ghosts could simply consume us in their attempt to... No. Don't think that way.
He had a rather tight grip on the book in his hand, but it loosened and he relaxed somewhat as he presented it to Ali's outstretched hand.

"Well, what they want is a problem. Partially because we're not certain what that may be, and partially because it may not be the correct course of action to free them once we find out. If we find out. You are both right. We need more information."

His eyes sought out the healer's. There would have to be a more frank discussion of the risks. Surely she was more knowledgeable about how such things might affect the psyche than he...

He grabbed another book from the stack and began to scan through it for possible clues.

"A visitation!?" Abe stared at Alisoina with a mix of shock and.. respect? The girl earned the trust of one of the ghosts, something Abe doubted she herself could do. The healer knew her personality was far from warm and friendly.

After the shock faded, she realized the gravity of the situation. "This could be very serious, Miss Denore." She sucked in a breath, collecting some notes from her bag. She lifted her glasses to squint at a page.

"The ghost. Couldin. Did he speak to you? I hope you didn't touch him. Even if he was in an incorporeal form, any contact could leave you more vulnerable to..." A frown tugged at the corner of her lip. This was getting out of hand.

"You are right, Miss Denore. We should seek out the brother and his accomplices -- er, pardon the legal terminology, but we are dealing with a murder. Two murders. Well, one murder and an accidental act of manslaughter."

"Unfortunately, I doubt the courts would find Couldin's death to be anything but a waste of their time... but, if we can find this Billy, we should attempt to speak with him. Perhaps he will feel enough guilt about his sister's death to apologize to the two spirits. That might help them move on."

The cold feeling in Alisoina's hand moved, dissapeared for a moment as Fredrick handed her the Yearbook. Softly, the voice in her ear whispered, so fast and so quiet words were indistinguishable. But the emotion was there, and it trickled onto her. Love, sadness, longing.

As Fred began to read, smiling spectagrams looked back at him, with names under each. Class Of 2662. Johnathon Wentworth smiled back with thick framed glasses and brown hair. Suerjin Bahjol with her pale skin and hoxian features gave the spectra a haughty glare. More names...more pictures. This appeared to be the Ninth Form book. Perhaps Alisoina had the Eighth Form one. Something would catch Fred's eye as he flipped the pages. There was a name, a familiar one. Smiling back at him, a rather jocklike boy, with strong features and a smirk.

Bastine Theraldon.

Around them, the air felt moist, cold. In Alisoina's ear, the voice stopped. She would feel a sudden gut wrenching fear as Bastine's picture smirked up at Fred.

Hunter kept his thoughts on the legal implications to himself. Catherine's death was clearly an accident. Couldin's... self defense was arguable for the initial attack, but the picking out of the passive's eyes... it was more serious and spoke of an unstable personality. Did they really want to find this man and reveal what they knew. Hunter imagined himself being buried in an unmarked grave. Would he choose to haunt the grounds as well?

The yearbook was a welcome distraction from such thoughts. Among the Brunnholders of years past were more than a few familiar names. Current students had had family attending the university for generations it seemed. The name Wentworth stuck out... Hunter considered the possibility that the older sister had been intentionally targeted by the ghost. Had Catherine known her relative? Could he have been involved?

Almost unexpectedly, the name Bastine appeared.
Theraldon? Isn't that- yes, it is...

"I think we've got something..."
He looked closer to determine if there were activities listed that might tie him to other persons of interest.

There was a small listing beside the photo, a most likely and 'best' list.

Most Likely To Join The Seventen
Most Likely To Be Mayor
Best Hair
Best Sportsman

There wasn't anything really useful to their research.

She was silent, but her eyes gave her thoughts away. She looked… distant. She;d told him once, she had! How could he not remember? She was Alisoina, she was sure she wasn’t Catherine… she was almost sure she wasn’t his Catherine….

The rest of her words came as if from underwater. Ali was distracted, the coolness, Couldin, left her hand, and her fingers closed, as if to catch his hand. But then, he was inside her head almost, the words pouring directly into her soul. Pink lips opened, as if to return his promises and declarations, but she closed her petal soft mouth as Bastine’s picture was suddenly everything and everywhere.

“Him. It’s…” She paused, unsure at her own certainty. Couldin knew, and so did she. She just didn’t know how to express it to Abeline and Hunter without seeming moony. But she was moony, moonstruck by green eyes and strong, cold hands. Shaking past the mistiness of her strange, un-Alisoinan affection, she straightened, trying to control her thudding heart.

“That’s him. I’m quite sure.” She looked between her companions, daring them to contradict her. If they did, or belittled her in anyway, she would walk away. She could live with her ghostly suitor and search for answers on her own time. Which, if Couldin kept mistaking her for Catherine with such loving ways, might be a long time indeed.

With her glasses up on her forehead, Abe saw Alisoina only as an orange-topped green blob, a sort of carrot in reverse. Had she been able to see the girl as more than an indistinct vegetable, and to read her expression, the healer would have become extremely concerned. As it was, she merely seized on the new line of inquiry.

She leaned in close to Frederick, peering at the yearbook. It was upside down from her vantage point, but she could just make out the words. "Bastine.. that's the name of one of Billy's cronies, isn't it?" She squinted. "Bastine Ther-Theraldon!?"

Abe shot back, nearly falling out of her chair. The inert piece of furniture could barely contain her sudden energy, but she exerted her will over her body, folding up her legs and hugging them tightly. The only vent for her excitement were her eyes, a pair of blazing dark orbs.

A relative of Khymarah? Maybe I'll be visting Vienda sooner rather than later!

"Haha! Good work, sir." Her eyes fixated on where she imagined Alisoina still was. "And you, madam? Anything in that one?"

Hunter wasn't sure Abe's blunt questions were the right tactic for the moody girl, but he couldn't just come out and say that. He looked at the picture instead.


There was a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. She knew. And Hunter was pretty certain of how she knew. His suspicions confirmed, it was only a matter of time before the guilt welled up within him.

"Yes, Miss Denore. I agree."


"Yes. Theraldon. Probably a relative of the same Miss Theraldon involved in Professor Moore's project. I'm trying to keep him out of this - he has enough controversy with his own research, I think."

"Absolutely." She deposited her lenses back on her beaky nose, finally able to see again. "I'll be assisting that same research tomorrow."

Her reservations about Professor Moore went unsaid; she preferred to keep her ulterior motives to herself, in case her fears were unfounded. However, a certain anxiety registered on her features.

"If we have any interesting results, I may have reason to see Miss Theraldon personally. I doubt there'd be any useful information in her or her manor, but one never knows..."

She trailed off, observing Alisoina's faraway look for the first time. "Oh, dear." An eyebrow raised at Hunter, she shot him a glance that said, 'If I go, you must watch her.'

Alisoina was only half paying attention to the rest of the world, and it showed from her tight expression, her pale skin. Most of her was enraptured with the words and sounds of Couldin in her head. He warped her, made her strange and unthinking; sly wit and cutty replies faded from her, leaving a sanguine sweetness that she assumed was what he associated with Catherine. She wasn't as sweet as a mouse or bunny, like the redhead he mistook her for, she was a sharp shew. Ali would be the first to admit it.

But with trembling fingers and shallow breaths, she was all of what Couldin wanted. Ali was fading, and fast. It was what she wanted, what he wanted, it would help them if she just gave in, right? And it was so heady, his affection, with every second he was getting deeper and deeper inside her skull...

Shivering, she pulled at the yearbook, and with dead eyes began flipping through it, allowing Couldin to work through her, allowing him access to every part of her. That was what lovers did, right? Opened every part of themselves, gave up control... and Ali-- Catherine wanted love. She wanted it enough to die for it.

Alisoina's fingers would move with a deliberate, almost knowing movement. Her hands would grasp the yearbook with such assurance, it was like she'd held it before. They didn't have to wait long, before she would stop, run her finger along the page, linger on a spectagram. The voice in her head whispered, full of love and longing so painful it would make her heart ache. At the same time, Alisoina would find her lips moving in time with the haunting voice.

"Catherine..."

The corner of the room got darker and a small pool of water had begun to slowly collect, seeping under the wall it seemed. The galdori would smell a thick, cloying stagnant watery scent. In Alisoina's head, the voice made a sound almost like regret, then quite suddenly, it was gone. He was gone. If they had been close to an open window, they would have heard the faint sound of a monstrous roar floating out from the East Garden.

The spectagram, nestled between other smiling faces, was that of a young woman. She had shoulder length hair, held back by a thin black headband. Her face was a frozen picture of delicate beauty, smiling sweetly and with obvious genuine pleasure at the viewers. Under the picture was a name. A full name.

Catherine L. Bryan

((Ali's possessed theme music~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28CyibV ... L&index=18 ))

And there suddenly was the face that inspired such love. Her hands had moved of their own accord, theirs and Couldin's, and then....

"Catherine..."

She was just as lovely as Alisoina would have imagined. She was sweet and delicate and feminine, things that the girl did not see in herself. Yet, once the sneer was ripped off her face, Ali herself shared many of Catherine's features.

Suddenly, Couldin was gone. It shocked Alisoina far more than the gathering water, the scent of liquid rot. Her heart... broke. She was alone, and though she may have heard the faint whisper of the ghost's rage, Alisoina was totally unprepared for the loneliness of singularity. With a small, totally broken sigh, she blinked back tears and clung to the yearbook.

"Catherine Bryan. That's her name." She held onto just enough of herself to say the words in a small voice before burying her head in her arms and drawing her small frame into a tight ball on the chair. Oh Couldin... if she could only be Catherine, only be everything he wanted and she needed to be...

What extraordinary phenomena! How bizarre! How wonderful!

An infatuation with the unknown distracted the healer, but only for one blindingly sublime, tortuously ephemeral instant.

The girl's voice brought her crashing back down to Vita. There and then, someone needed her expertise, or what little she had regarding ghosts. From Alisoina's marionette-like movements, possession was obvious -- and then it was gone.

Victims of possession, from what Abe had read, oftentimes expressed sympathy for the spirits that invaded them. Whether Alisoina was experiencing a lingering malignant effect, or if she truly had glimpsed an ancient pain, Abe knew she had to proceed with caution.

She went to the curled girl, delicately placing a cold finger on her hand. "Madam?"

A compass on Hunter's desk was spinning madly. Abe picked it up, but remained by Alisoina. Strange. Is there some kind of electromagnetic disturbance..? No, this isn't the time; focus on Miss Denore.

If something happened to that girl, Abe knew she would hold herself fully responsible, and carry the guilt of it to her deathbed.