Fifty arcanes gathered in the darkened lounge. Most of the twenty something arcanes left for their homes, but a few stayed. Sotir’s mentors, as well as Pan’s, occupied the outskirts of the room, but the majority of the lounge’s occupants fell somewhere between the ages of twelve and seventeen. They looked so young and so eager to be entertained by stories of Scaldigir’s dead – as long as Sotir allowed it. It was his party. He would, of course.

Sotir had a nice seat, a thing of solid, plush construction. Pan sat by his feet, along with Aria.

Uda, their least favorite fire starter, sat across the rug. She finger-combed her meticulously arranged hair and grinned. “It’s been forever since I heard a good ghost story. Who goes first?”

The room grew quiet. Pan studied her mentors on the outskirts of the room. Spy sat with her walker, a smile on her face. She really looked old. Kat sat with arms crossed, still on the edge of middle age. Her expression suggested that the idea of ghost stories, especially after a memorial, offended her. Chara stared back at Pan, seeming calm – almost serene. Come to think of it, Brynn stared too. Brynn smiled slightly and raised an eyebrow.

Pan sent her gaze around the room. Everyone stared back.

“They want you to tell a story,” Aria whispered.

Pan put a hand to her breast. “Oh, ghost stories. You think that’s my department.” Pan dismissed their desires with a wave of her hand. “I try not to bring work home.”

“Oh, come on,” Hagen huffed. “Just tell a story.”

“You’ll have all the newest ones.” Uda smiled.

Younger arcanes began to raise their voices in agreement.

Sotir shushed them. “Whose idea was it? She should go first.”

Pan thought back to the shouted suggestion. At the time, she hadn’t distinguished whether the voice was masculine or feminine. Sotir had, and he seemed to know the voice’s owner.

No one spoke up. Pan found it too predictable. She glanced up at Sotir and saw amusement on his face as well.

“Remei, you go first,” Kat ordered.

Remei’s face betrayed a smidgen of surprise, but she sat up and got ready to share her ghost story. “I heard this story from my uncle. He was an arcane, and he heard it during his time in the hospital. It goes like this…”

Wonderful, a hospital story.

“…There was a girl staying in the hospital during her arcanerty. One evening, she started to feel better, so she got up and took a walk in the night, up and down the ward. She was surprised to find that there were no nurses or doctors around. But, at least, she wasn’t alone. There was a boy, a couple of rooms down from hers. His door was open, but he seemed to be sleeping.”

Pan shivered. The logical part of her questioned why no nurses guarded the ward in Remei’s story, but Pan could remember a less fictional time that no nurses could be found on the ward.

Pan recalled her time in the hospital. She woke in the night just two days after her admission. Another girl shared the hall, and Pan felt compelled to go to her.

Remei continued, “The girl was about to go back to her bed when she heard the boy’s medical machines beep. She went into his room, and nurses finally came onto the ward. They moved the boy to a special suite, but it wasn’t in the ward. Without the boy, the girl was the only patient. That was when they came.”

Pan had some idea where Remei’s story would go. So far, it matched Pan’s experience, but Pan knew her version of the story would end so different from Remei’s. Pan found a dying girl – a ghost seer. Pan didn’t know that she was herself a reaper, and by instinct, Pan touched the girl.

Remei’s voice went quieter, “The nurses settled the girl back in her bed, and she tried to sleep. But, she couldn’t. Outside her door, she heard the sound of voices, lots of them, laughing and talking. They sounded young. It wasn’t long before she saw eyes in the hall. They seemed to hover by her door and peek inside. The laughter came a little closer, and the eyes started to appear in her room. She saw them everywhere, creeping close to her bed. They were all the kids that had died from arcanemorphosis, and they’d come for her, mistaking her for the boy. She didn’t know it, but the boy had died. The nurses took him to the morgue too fast for his soul to be claimed.”

Pan’s version of the story involved ghosts too, but none that came for souls. After Pan touched the real ghost seer, she became one herself. She found herself eye to eye with the spirit of the dead ghost seer. Both she and the ghost had been utterly confused. Then, the machines started to beep, and the nurses came. The original ghost seer had gone, but Pan didn’t know where. She certainly hadn’t seen a gaggle of dead arcanes wandering the ward. Had she seen the occasional lost child, dead from arcanerty? Yes, and Pan avoided the ward for just that reason.

“My great uncle said the girl never got to be an arcane,” Remei continued. “She survived, but she was never the same.”

“Remei, never let me catch you telling that story to anyone who’s sick.” All eyes turned to Katiuscia. With crossed arms, the grey-haired woman stared hard at Remei.

“Oh, I...I would never…” Remei shook her head.

“Good.”

Eyes turned again to Pan. The story seemed to be about a ghost seer, someone like her. It was only natural that they would stare. Or maybe, they thought it should be Pan’s turn to tell a story.

Pan looked up at Sotir. He rested his chin in his hand. His eyes darted to meet hers, but she couldn’t hold his gaze long. He seemed glazed, somewhere else entirely. He neither defended her right to remain silent nor asked that she weave a tale. Pan frowned and looked away.

Uda straightened. “I’ll go next.” Uda glanced sidelong at the younger arcanes and a bit beyond.

Pan followed Uda’s eyes to the mentors. Their expressions sat in shadow, hiding as the last light of day sunk below Scaldigir’s horizon.

Uda smiled. “My story is about the mausoleum where they bury all the famous arcane heroes. A friend of my grandfather’s worked in the mausoleum as a night guard – forty years ago. At the time, they moved the remains of the first two reapers to the mausoleum. No one’s really sure why because the reapers weren’t heroes. They were villains.” Uda paused, probably for dramatic effect. “It was then that people reported seeing things, and no one saw as much as my grandfather’s friend.”

Here they went again – a story about Pan’s ilk. At least, no one knew this story could be connected to her.

Pan had been to the mausoleum of famous arcane heroes. She saw no ghosts there, not even reapers. She doubted the reapers had been moved to the location. No one respected Merig of Glyptik, the man who played the scavenger, never stepping in to aid his comrades, unless they had a terrible, undesirable power. He graduated to quiet killings soon after.

And, absolutely no one respected Cesarina of Glyptik, the woman who didn’t even wait for her comrades to die. She just killed them herself. Pan knew their bodies couldn’t be found among heroes.

Remei frowned and curled up tight. She looked at Uda and prodded, “Go on. What kinds of things did he see?” She sounded a bit skeptical but also terribly interested.

Uda leaned in. “At night, the mausoleum gets very quiet. It’s far from any city, and the surrounding town gives it a wide berth. Grandfather’s friend patrolled the grounds every night, and he made his customary walk through the halls. One night, he heard a creak in the rafters. When he looked up, he saw a man crouched above. Dark wings seemed to extend from the man’s back, and he had bright eyes.” Uda scooted close to Remei. “From then on, my grandfather’s friend saw the scavenger every night. Sometimes, it watched visitors, especially living arcanes. But, it wasn’t enough to scare my grandfather’s friend. He didn’t quit. One night though, the scavenger wasn’t there. Instead, my grandfather’s friend saw a shadow, lurking in the back of the building. He followed it. When he reached the place he thought it had been, there was nothing. The lights went out, and something attacked him. He saw its white eyes, hovering in the darkness. Come morning, people found him. His clothes were all torn up, and he was covered in scratches. He quit, and from that day on, no one had to walk the grounds at night.”

Uda looked up to the lounge’s ceiling, to the lights that wouldn’t go on. “Has anyone called in the power outage? Maybe, we’re the only ones, and Cesarina is paying us a visit.”

The room got quiet. The teenagers displayed varying degrees of spooked. Some looked ready to stay up all night. Some looked bored, though maybe they hid the fear. No one had a word to say in answer to Uda’s story, least of all Sotir, who seemed sleepy.

Pan kept quiet too, but she had things to say. First of all, she was pretty sure someone still kept guard at night. Second, she doubted this friend of a friend had seen anything – how convenient a framing device. No one could ask questions, and Pan wasn’t about to try.

Brynn cleared her throat. “I think it’s getting late. I’m going to bed. Not much to do without power. And, yes, we called it in. It’s the whole city.” Brynn stood. She leaned on her staff. “Happy birthday, Sotir.

A male mentor rose and added, “We thank you for your service to Scaldigir and look forward to many more years of it.”

Sotir seemed to come awake. He sat straighter in his seat. “Yes. Thank you for the party.”

“The surprise part was a bit of a failure, but it was otherwise fun.” The man shooed some of the boys off the floor as if sweeping them off to bedtime. He smiled at Kat. “I should have listened to you.”

The other mentors gained their feet.

Katiuscia narrowed her eyes and studied the girls of the group. “Telling reaper stories immediately after a memorial. The ignorance is thick in the air tonight.” Kat glared at Uda. “By the way, don’t spread that rumor. They never moved the reapers to that mausoleum. They’re buried in Glyptik, at the reaper’s family home. People can visit it, and I’m sure they still hire a night watchman – for both locations.”

Uda just shrugged. “There’s no harm in a story. It wasn’t even that scary.”

Kat barked a short, humorless laugh and left. Her voice drifted from beyond the lounge. “Brynn, you’re on duty tonight. If they get up to anything, you deal with it.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll be blunt. You never had kids. You have about ten years extra sleep compared to the rest of us. If one of the younger ones gets scared, it’s your problem.”

Brynn laughed. Her words didn’t carry back.

“Need a hand?” Sotir asked.

Pan glanced at his offer and took it. “I can get up fine, but if you’re offering…”

Sotir tried to smile, but a certain grimness hung in his eyes. He pulled her up close and whispered, “Can I see you later?”

Pan shot a glance at Aria and found her distracted by Pollon.

Pan nodded. “How much later?”

“Give me thirty minutes.”

Again, Pan nodded.