“We were useful,” Katie said, floating up to the register. “We got you the REAL recipe for how to catch a goblin.”
“Impossible, I paid for that recipe myself. It’s from someone on the high council.”
“Was it Hilda?” I asked.
He nodded. “Of course. She’s been a friend of mine for years. The only one who looked out for me.”
“Sorry to tell you, pal,” Samantha said, “but she hates you.”
“No,” Frank said. “That’s impossible. She was close with my late wife. We ate dinner together often. My wife even thought of her as a mentor.”
“I’m telling you, dude. She hates you.”
“It’s true,” I added.
Katie floated between me and Samantha and said, “We all heard it with our own ears.”
“But, I’ve been working so hard. So hard.” Frank slammed his fist on the glass counter. “And she just led me along like I was a stupid puppy?”
I nodded. “It’s okay. She gave us a new recipe to try out. All we need are some newt eyes.”
“And you think I have them?” Frank scoffed. “Why? Because stupid old movies say that witches use them?”
“Basically,” Katie said.
Frank sighed. “I hate that I have to prove you right. Listen, everything you know about witches is wrong, and I don’t have time to tell you the truth but mark my words. There is a great conspiracy against witches in the mainstream media. They are trying to subjugate us because—”
“Does that mean you do or don’t have newt eyes?” I asked.
Frank knelt under his counter and shuffled around for a moment, before popping up with a canister labeled “pickled newt eyes.”
“Don’t judge me.” Frank set the canister on the corner. “Our agreement still stands. If you get the goblin, you will bring it to me first, so that I can clip its toenails.”
“You don’t need its toenails,” I said. “Hilda told us the real recipe. You need its bones, ground down into a powder.”
“That’s impossible,” Frank replied. “I deciphered that ingredient straight from a broken tablet written in ancient Luvastitan…oh…yes…I see the problem. Toenail and bones are very similar in the writing. Well, that would have been embarrassing.”
“I’m not sure if I can kill a goblin,” Samantha said.
Frank sighed. “It isn’t ideal, but the future of the world is at stake.”
I nodded. “It’s true. I don’t see any other choice.”
“Bring it to me,” Frank said. “I will deal with it myself.”
“Are you sure?”
Frank pursed his lips. “No, but I suppose there is no other choice. Like you said, we are trying to save the world.”
“Thank you.”
“Very well,” Frank said, holding out the canister of newt eyes. “I suppose you will need this, then.”
“This is so gross,” I said, taking it and eyeballing it.
“We also need ectoplasm,” Samantha said. “Which Katie is willing to give, except…”
“Except that it’s not supposed to be pleasant,” Katie said. “Hilda said that you have to drain me for an hour to get ectoplasm and that it hurts.”
Frank shook his head. “That’s the barbaric way the council does it. I’ve found a much more humane way to drain a ghost which is no more painful than getting your blood drawn.”
“Are you sure?” Katie said hopefully.
“Positive,” Frank said. “If you want, I can show you.”
“If you hurt her, I’ll kill you,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“I will be as delicate as possible.”
“It’s okay,” Katie said, moving closer to Frank. “I’ll stay here and give Frank the ectoplasm he needs for himself and for the spell. You both go to the woods and find the goblin.”
I didn’t like this. “Don’t get hurt.”
Katie nodded. “Not a whole lot somebody could do to me now, Banana.”
“Still,” I said. “Be careful.”
Samantha drove me back to my house and helped me cook the ingredients into a stew. It took most of the evening brewing it according to Hilda’s recipe. The instructions said that the broth needed to be served warm, so I poured it into a thermos before Samantha and I made our way back into the woods.
“Do you think this is going to work?” Samantha asked.
I looked over into the woods as the tear into the Dark Place loomed over us. “I sure hope so. I don’t know what will happen if we can’t close that hole soon.”
“I hope so, too. This planet sucks but I kind of like it here.”
“Me too,” I said with a smile.
When we had walked far enough into the woods that I couldn’t see the lights from my house, Samantha set down the enchanted bird cage, and I opened the thermos.
“At least this smells better than the pie,” I said. “Tastes better too.”
“Yuck, you tasted the pie?”
I walked away from the cage and knelt in the bushes near it. “Katie made me.”
“How can a ghost make you do anything?”
“It’s not because she’s a ghost. It’s because she’s my friend, and I love her.”
Samantha knelt next to me. “You really do love her, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I would do anything for her.”
Samantha stared at the cage. “Did you date, when she was alive?”
“No.” My eyes dropped to the ground. “I didn’t even know she liked me like that until after she was dead.”
“And you liked her, I assume.”
I bit my lip. “I loved her. I still love her.”
“That must be a bummer.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Samantha closed her eyes tightly. “I left my boyfriend in Germany. Hardest thing I ever had to do. Couldn’t even imagine what I would do if I couldn’t see him again.”
“Luckily, I can see her again.”
“For now.”
I turned to her. “What does that mean? For now?”
Samantha looked up at the hole to the Dark Place. “When we close that up, she’ll have to go back, won’t she? I mean, we can’t just have ghosts hanging around here.”
I had never thought about that before. I just assumed she would be back forever, but that wasn’t true, was it? If we succeeded, she would have to go back to the Dark Place, forever, and sooner or later she would forget about me, and devolve into a primordial ooze.
Samantha must
