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Ray parked his cigarette in an upturned hubcap and leaned into Ecto’s guts again. She’d taken a beating on their last outing; a Class Four full-torso apparition had flung a kebab stand at the car from half a story up, and then slimed the entire engine compartment for good measure. The dents in the hood weren’t of any great concern to Ray, but ectoplasm in the air and oil filters certainly was. The radiator didn’t look too bad, so the air filter was probably the best place to start. He wriggled another inch into the engine and started working it free.
Five minutes later, Ray slid out from under the hood with several new grease stains and an air filter thoroughly clogged with purple goo. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, which did not so much remove the grease as rearrange the smears and streaks slightly. “Okay,” he mumbled under his breath, “now I need someplace to put these.”
Someone cleared their throat behind him.
When Ray turned around, two brand new packages of shop towels were sitting on Ecto’s roof. One of them was already open, with a towel unfolded and ready for use. Ray grabbed it and swabbed off his face, then tossed it aside and tugged out another one to set the filter down on. Only then did he think to wonder who had left the towels for him.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he glimpsed a long pair of legs disappearing up the staircase.
---
The gentle flurries drifting down outside were, fortunately for Winston, no longer falling through the hole in the firehouse roof left by the containment unit’s explosion. That stage of the repairs was finally completed, after nearly a month of wrangling with the city inspector. Peck apparently had friends in both high and low places. The containment unit and the main floor were back in operation, and the brains of the operation were starting to reassemble the lab.
Winston poured himself a cup of coffee and added double sugar. The mug served the secondary purpose of warming his hands; since the containment unit was the highest priority in the basement, the reconstructed boiler wasn’t yet up to the task of dealing with the creeping chill of a New York November.
Egon wandered up the cellar stairs with his arms full of what looked to Winston like bits of disassembled radar guns. Winston nodded at him as he passed the front desk; Janine had actually left on time today, for once, and while Winston felt a little uneasy actually sitting in her place, he had no compunctions about stealing her chair while he was on duty.
Blinking at him, Egon set down an armful of parts next to the coffeepot. “Zeddemore, I thought you were going to your parents’ for Thanksgiving,” he stated. “Under the current weather and traffic conditions, I estimate that in order to arrive on time via the train system, you will need to have left no later than -” he checked his watch - “24.6 minutes from now.”
“I’m not gonna say you’re wrong,” Winston agreed. He glanced at the duty roster, currently written in magic marker on a piece of posterboard hung over the two remaining functional filing cabinets.
Egon followed his eyes. “I thought Venkman agreed to make you a salaried employee,” he noted with a frown.
“He did,” Winston answered. “But leaving this desk unattended doesn’t seem like a great idea. We’ve still got calls coming in from all boroughs at all hours, cleaning up the mess Peck made.”
The rest of the radar parts clattered onto the desk. “You’re relieved,” Egon stated flatly, pulling Venkman’s spare chair away from the smoke-and-slime-stained wreck that had once been the back desk.
Winston sat up straight and drained the rest of the coffee. “You sure, man?” he asked.
“99.38% sure,” Egon assured him, sitting stiff-backed in the second chair.
“Thanks,” Winston said, grabbing his backpack from behind the front desk and grinning brightly. “I’ll bring back some of Mom’s sweet potato casserole.”
Egon didn’t answer; he was holding up two nearly identical circuitboards to Janine’s desk lamp and squinting. He did, however, wave as Winston opened the door onto the chilly late autumn evening.
---
“Dammit,” Peter growled as he stripped off yet another slime-covered jumpsuit.
It was always him. If one of them got slimed, it was always, always him. Ray had proposed as a working hypothesis that some trivial trace of the ugly green spud from the Sedgewick had remained on Peter, such that the next ghost had found him a more attractive target, and then the next one had smelled (or sensed, or whatever these spooks did) both of them, and so the effect had snowballed. There didn’t seem to be any way to test it, much less do anything about it, and so here he was again, struggling against the frictionless gunk just to untie his shoelaces.
On the third yank, the knot came loose instead of just slipping out of his hand. Peter raised his hands in victory and promptly lost his footing on the tile floor of the bathroom; he went over in what would have been a perfect slapstick pratfall if he hadn’t banged his wrist against the sink on the way down, incidentally knocking over both cans of shaving cream.
Peter suppressed a stream of profanity that would have made a New Jersey trucker blush. Wedging his boots between the tub and the pedestal of the sink, he managed to lever them both off. Even his socks were soaked through with ectoplasm. At least it smelled vaguely green this time, like cucumbers that were slightly off on the salad bar, instead of the ozone-and-rotting-onions smell that a lot of the pre-Gozer spooks had.
It was still gross. Peter wrestled off his street clothes and jumped into the shower.
The real problem with ectoplasm was that it wasn’t really water-soluble. Soap and shampoo helped, but the only way to get it off was to scrub it off - and until it was off, the tub could be a treacherously slippery place. Halfway through, Peter realized the shower gel bottle was nearly empty, just blowing bubbles at him; fortunately, someone had also left a fresh bar of tar soap in the shower. It didn’t smell as nice, but it would do.
By the time he turned off the water and yanked back the curtain, Peter’s skin was pink all over, even his scalp. As he stepped out, he realized with a groan that he hadn’t gotten a fresh towel from the laundry.
No, wait, there was one right there. Had he misremembered? No, if he’d gotten it, it wouldn’t be nearly this crisply folded. In fact, it was still warm; either it was fresh from the dryer or someone had touched it up with an iron.
Peter toweled off briskly and wrapped the clean terrycloth around his waist. Ray wouldn’t have folded it, either, and Winston might have folded a towel but wouldn’t have toasted it first - nor would he have ignored the social nicety of a closed bathroom door. He was pretty sure he knew who to thank for this one.
He’d have to lay in a new supply of chocolate bars as soon as he could get to the bodega down the street.
---
Janine slammed down the phone. These big-shot lawyers had been calling her all week, and they were getting less and less polite about her telling them none of the Ghostbusters were in right now. Well, they hadn’t been, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that, was there? It wasn’t like the last handful of the ghosts who’d shown up during the rift - what Ray and Egon were now referring to in the past tense as “The Gozer Event” - weren’t still out there and didn’t still need chasing down.
Of course, technically the Ghostbusters were there right now, but they were busy downstairs, storing the spooks from the last bust and fixing a fried trap, but damned if she was going to let what she was pretty sure was Peck’s personal lawyer interrupt their business. She had his number. He could wait until Venkman called him back, or better yet their own lawyer, if they could ever get one who could deal with Ray without flipping out.
It was only getting worse. Oh, sure, she’d been fielding calls from everyone from the mayor’s office up to the EPA itself since the so-called Gozer Event, but they were increasing in both frequency and intensity. And she wasn’t dealing with fellow secretaries and receptionists asking to set up meetings anymore; she was hearing directly from young men with expensive law degrees looking to argue one big case and make partner at their firm. They smelled blood in the water, and they weren’t polite about it. She was seriously worried whether or not she’d have a job once the mop-up was done.
The four boys came up the basement stairs in a knot, commiserating about the day’s specters. She waved a sticky note at Venkman. “You need to return these calls,” she chided. “I keep having to send them to voicemail just to get them off the line. They’re blocking actual clients from getting through.”
Venkman took the note from her and stuck his tongue out at it as the other three kept ambling towards the stairs to the second floor. Ray was gesturing excitedly with what looked like a car radio antenna with a Christmas tree light attached to the end.
“Are these guys for real?” Venkman snorted as he slapped the note on his new desk. “I haven’t even heard of half the writs they’re threatening to serve us with, and I got up to some serious crap in college.”
“I don’t care if you call them or if you get your lawyer friend to do it,” Janine replied, “but someone needs to and it isn’t me.” She was getting a headache, right behind her eyeballs.
“I’ll get it taken care of,” Venkman promised with his mouth and not his eyes as he followed the others upstairs.
“You better,” Janine muttered, turning her attention back to her computer. She reached for her mouse and bumped into something that definitely hadn’t been there before - a little white pasteboard box. Who left that there? Gritting her teeth, she snatched it away from her mousepad and glared at it.
The words For Working on Purim were written across the top in familiar, spidery handwriting. Still skeptical, she opened it; inside were a half-dozen hamentashen, tucked in flimsy ruffles of waxed paper. Three were poppyseed; the other three appeared to be apricot. She plucked one out and tasted it; yes, definitely apricot.
They tasted just like her grandmother’s.
Janine took another bite and smiled.