“Gray?” Sean’s Ghost said doubtfully. “Gray, like mud?”

  “She was covered with it. And it controlled her. She was sneaking around, spying, trying to figure out how things worked. Remember: no magic unless we allow it. And yet here was Doctor Harrigan himself, puppeting one of my guys. In my house, where my guys live. Where Schmendrick is having her babies.”

  “I didn’t do it,” he said. Like a kid.

  “I don’t know how you could have, but I do think you can tell me about this. I think you can remember.”

  “I didn’t like remembering the last time. “I became him again. Me again. Like putting on a pair of old shoes. It was…comfortable.” He sounded disgusted.

  “Sean…I want to see what we can learn from you. Just you and me here, nobody in the room. I won’t tell anyone … if you say things.”

  “Things, huh? Why would I care if you told anyone?”

  Weird question. I remembered Sean the fishing instructor, the leader, the iron fist of discipline for everyone. “How people viewed you seemed pretty important when we spoke in the camp.”

  “The camp! Those weren’t people. Who cares if meat has opinions? Just a bunch of talking animals. Myself included. Myself in particular.” Disgust, thick and contemptuous.

  “Are you better now? Better than you were then?”

  “I can think. First time in my life, I can see where the trouble was. I was an animal that thought it was a person. Talking meat.” Usually Sean the Ghost was dreamy, mellow. Now he dripped venom.

  “What would you say to that version of yourself, if you could talk to him?”

  He got louder, angrier, shouting at his past self. “Get off your ass and try to help! It’s not all about you! Why does everyone around you have to be afraid?”

  He wound down, became morose again. “You…you’re very tricky, Owen.”

  “How so?”

  “Because now I have to be better. I have to help.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  “Oops.”

  It took time. Hours. Finally I went and got some air, leaving him be in his circle. I was exhausted, and I think he was as well, in whatever way that worked.

  I sat on the beach, recovering from hours of unfiltered Sean. Breeze, sun, Gary berating Cassie in the distance. Soothing. “Cassie the Human! I don’t KNOW what a horror movie is! I don’t CARE about a shape-changing monster in snow is if it’s not a REAL monster! IDIOCY!”

  “I have gossip.” It was Mandy’s voice, right there, emanating from the water. She wasn’t around in her physical form, just the voice today. “Don’t you get sunburned doing that?”

  “No, there’s a thing we built for the Gardeners. They fly through this hoop and it mists them with sunblock stuff. Works for me too.”

  “Sure does! You know that Eel, the one who tries to murder you and complains about food? Something killed it.”

  I sat up. “Who did it?”

  “Don’t know. Definitely foul play, the poor thing was blasted to bits. Blood in the current for miles. Now the other Copycat Eels will start showing up to fight over its territory.”

  “Maybe the winner will be more neighborly. Blasted to bits?”

  “With explosives. A lot of burned Eel meat. Someone cut loose with a lot of mad. Look at this.” A metal cylinder rolled from the water. It was empty, lightweight. A lidless can the length of my palm.

  “Ohh, I don’t like this. That’s not how the Makers do it…Radio, can you show up here please?”

  “Send the word, send the word over there,

  That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming…”

  That scared me. “Don’t even say that. What can you tell me about this, please?”

  “Explosives. Residue was on the object: sym-trinitrotoluene. The Observatory greets the mighty Undine.”

  “Hey Radio. Also petroleum, stinking up my ocean. Something funny I couldn’t quite figure, another poison. I think it might be radioactivity.”

  “Don’t EVEN say that.” I lay back on the sand. “Radio, can you find anything out there? Bad guys?”

  “The bloody water was laced with hydrocarbons, specifically alkanes.” That song: The Yanks are coming… “There were no visible presences in the nearby Shallow Sea, however there was a noticeable grouping of shell casings similar to the one brought here by Beautiful Mandy. Presumably where the Copycat Eel was slain.”

  “Cassie was … stealthed when she came out here,” I said. “Couldn’t see her. And that’s our whole bag here at the Observatory. Seeing stuff.”

  “Flash!” Shouted the Radio. “The site of the Ammonite Priestess had been destroyed, killing the beings within and leaving no survivors!”

  “Oh now wait a minute,” Mandy said. “Those poor squishy things? They were just lonely dumb monsters from ten thousand years ago. This is bullshit.” Her voice started drifting away. “I gotta go check it out.”

  “Hold on,” I said. And I told her about Cassie and what she’d been through. About what Sean had told me in that extended confession. Because that’s what it had been.

  We were both silent.

  “Harrigan’s going for it,” she finally said.

  I nodded. “I’m going to show you what we’ve been working on.”

  “Oho. All right, this seems important. Let me get dressed, so to speak.”