Chapter 10

I didn't know if I had screamed during the dream, but Jess was staring at me from her place when I woke up. I meant to make out a hint of worry in her eyes, but mostly it was curiosity.

"Bad dream?"

"Was it that obvious?", I answered, rolling from my backpack pillow.

"I would be more worried about you if you woke up like that every morning. Anything about our mission?"

It took me a few moments to concentrate and get the images back. It was almost like they wanted to escape my head. "There was that island, it had a cave on it. Saw the same island before. Charon was in this cave with another woman, she tried to bring him to change position..." And I told Jess everything I had witnessed as precisely as possible.

After she finished, she let out an elongated sigh. "I guess you have a pretty good guess on who that woman is?"

"It's He- your mom, right? Speaking of which..."

"Yes, yes. I'll tell you what Shakespeare meant. Just let me think of how to start." My companion remained quiet for several seconds, before opening her mouth again:

"You remember that griffon? Did you see that it had a mark?"

"Yeah, I thought it was some form of mace. Why do you ask?"

"Because it wasn't a mace.", sighed Jess. "It was a torch. Hecate's torch."

"But then-", I was about to argue that Hecate wouldn't harm her daughter, but then I remembered. This griffon had been extremely focused on me. He practically never took the chance when Jess was unprotected. Hell, even her crash was somewhat cushioned by its corpse. "So you mean that Hecate is trying to keep us from finding Charon? But why should she do that?"

"I don't know. All I have heard of is that Hecate visited Charon often. She's sometimes referred to as a psychopomp, similarly to Thanatos. I don't think she kidnapped him, though. Maybe he ran away? Someone kidnapping a god was unbelievable to begin with..."

Quickly, Jessica's answer to me had turned into something more akin to mumbling to herself. I sighed, and got up. "We can think about this later. More importantly, did you think of anything regarding our ghost problem?"

As if she was the one who just got snapped out of a dream, her head jerked back around to me, this time with the mad-scientist glowing in her eyes I had already seen at the airport: "Yes! I mean- It might work. It works with my small spells, so maybe it works with something big as well."

"And what do you want to do, exactly? What's your- Hey!" Jessica had already gotten up, rummaging through her backpack, pulling out a bunch of chalks and paper. The latter she gave me, along with a pencil and instructions:

"We will need all the names of the ghosts we're transporting. You ask Shakespeare for that, while I prepare the rest."

Before I could even begin to ask questions, she stormed off into the hall full of ghosts and I had no choice but to follow her. The room was exactly like we left it, even Shakespeare was still staring at us, especially now that Jessica had run to the other side of the room and began drawing on the floor.

"Master Shakespeare!", I greeted the poet. "We are working on a method to get as many souls as possible into the underworld, but we need a name list for that. Can you help us with this?"

"I... What? What kind of magic are you using that requires a complete name list of the ghosts?"

I tried my best hiding my insecurity behind a mask of confidence: "Don't worry about that, we just need the list. Can you do this for us?"

The old ghost paused for a couple of seconds, then slowly nodded. "Yes, yes I think I can do that."

"Brilliant! Here, take these. And make sure you don't forget anyone!" After handing him paper and pencil, I went over to Jessica, who had begun drawing two cocentric circles on the floor in front of an elevator. The ghosts around us had made some room, as if they could sense that something supernatural – even by their standards – was about to go down.

"So... Do you mind explaining to me what your plan is?"

She didn't answer me immediately, but first completed the octagon she was currently working on. After she had added little circles in the corner, each filled with some sort of symbol or character I couldn't read, she looked back up to me:

"To make it short, I combine Greek and modern conceptions of magic rituals", she pointed at the circles, "with Chinese rituals for requesting something from the Bureaucracy of Heaven to ferry these souls across", she pointed at the characters in the corners of the octagon and the brazier she had set up in the middle of it all. "If everything goes well, this will work like a charm, if not... I'll need some help."

"What can I do?", I asked maybe a bit too quickly. But I didn't want to feel useless on yet another encounter during this mission.

"Relatively simple. When the ferryman arrives, offer him a drink. He probably won't understand you, but the gesture should be clear. And until then, cut at everything that looks like it wants to disturb the ritual. As long as you patrol between these circles, you should be good."

And before I could ask any more questions, she had pulled out a piece of paper and yet another pencil, continuing: "Oh, and could you sign this? It's important for you to take responsibility for this experiment."

I did as I was told, and Jessica got to work quickly again, adding more characters around the circles. Some of them in Chinese, some in Ancient Greek. I could read none of it, except my name popping up between the characters every now and then in plain English.

Just as Jessica set the last chalk line, Shakespeare came up to us, paperwork in hand. I had been so busy thinking about what my companion wanted to do that I didn't even consider a ghost's ability to interact with the material world.

"This should be all of them", Shakespeare said more to me than acknowledging Jessica's presence. "Do you need anything else for this... ritual?" A glance towards the strange assortment of symbols let him furrow his incorporeal brows.

"Thank you", Jess replied in my stead. "Do you have anything we could use as a brazier? Nothing fancy, a metal baking form would suffice."

"I'll see what can be done."

"Why do we need a list of names again?", I asked as soon as Shakespeare was out of earshot.

"We're trying to ask Yen-Lo-Wang, he's the king of the dead, to send over some emissaries who can ferry the souls from this world into the next. But this guy likes his paperwork, so we'll sacrifice the list of names as well."

"And all of this is really necessary?", I asked, waving my arms vaguely into the direction of Jess's setup.

"Probably more is", she mumbled. "That's where you come in as a protector, after all."

"Right...", I answered, still with a decent mix of confusion and insecurity in my voice. Luckily, Shakespeare returned in this moment, looking even more disgruntled than before. But at least that stopped me from questioning too much about this ritual.

"Would this be enough?", the dead poet asked in a voice that made apparent that he didn't actually want it to suffice. He was holding a pretty big ashtray stretching his arms more towards me than to Jessica.

"This is perfect!", the daughter of Hecate exclaimed, snatching the tray out of Shakespeare's hands. "Now we can actually start the ritual."

"I hope it will work out", the poet replied, sounding not at all like he believed what he said.

The lights in the room had been dimmed further, barely enough for me to still see the chalk lines I wasn't supposed to step on. A small fire burned in the ashtray and the already dark room filled with the smoke of burnt incense. Then, the chanting began.

It was a melody unlike any I had heard before, mixing two languages together and filling the room completely without any sort of instrument to back it up. I almost forgot my patrolling over the sound of Jessica's song but quickly picked it up again. I could only make out silhouettes by this point; Jessica giving the name lists into the fire, as well as some of our ambrosia. Shadows began to dance through the mist, following, just like me, the rhythm of the melody.

Suddenly, my name was called out, and something shifted. The melody began to pick up speed, there was a faint green glow coming from the chalk, it looked like it turned into luminescent jade. And the shadows dancing through the mist turned to us, suddenly holding strange weapons, swords, axes, lances. Instinctively I knew that those weren't the people we had been calling; I got ready.

It felt like hours had passed already, but it probably wasn't more than minutes. I kept fighting, one enemy at a time circling around Jessica. My arms were so heavy that I spent no unnecessary movement, I tried to finish every shade off with just one strike. They were far from being fighters, so I could actually do that. And still, Jess' melody rushed through the room, dictating every movement, mine as well as the shades'. One parry, one counter, another shadow dissipated. They didn't leave any traces when they died, no weapon, no ash, nothing. They just disappeared as soon as my sword hit them.

Then, another rippling came through the smoke: Even though I could barely see anything, The blue glow behind where the elevator doors must have been drew my attention. First in the distance, then rapidly approaching, a ship! A ghostly Chinese Junk, sailing up the nothingness behind the elevator and halting just where the doors must have been. He was – just like his ship – nothing but a blue shimmer himself, yet I could still make out the flowing, highly decorated clothes, the elaborate necklace reaching down to his belly and the almost cylindrical hat he was wearing.

Without looking whether or not the shades were still attacking, I reached back to my backpack and pulled the bottle with nectar out, pouring some of it into the plastic cup I had pulled out with the other hand. Then, slowly, I approached the ferryman, presenting the drink with both my hands. Jess had given me some instructions on what to do, but somehow I knew I would've done exactly this regardless.

The boatsman stretched his hands out to take the cup from mine; I felt like my hands had been dipped in ice-cold water when they met his, but I resisted jerking back. The spirit emptied the cup in one swing, nodding in appreciation afterwards. Then, he called out. A language I couldn't understand, it was neither of the ones Jess had sung in. Her melody had grown silent now, and I could hear dozens, maybe hundreds of voices answer the call of the ferryman. Then, ghosts came rushing in. Some passed through me – just as ice-cold an experience as it was before – some ran past me, but all of them came aboard the ghostly Junk. It only took a couple of seconds until the storm of incorporeal bodies had gone past me.

The boatsman nodded again, and jumped back on his ship. Then, before I could say anything, it had already started moving, and after I blinked once, it was already almost out of sight.

Then, without warning, the lights snapped back on and I was standing right in front of a pair of elevator doors. Turning around, I saw the empty foyer and Jessica, half sitting, half laying in her summoning circle. It was already almost gone, but I could still make out the fading second face, overlaying hers. It was of the same ghostly blue, and looked remarkably similar to Jess'. But something told me it wasn't hers.