“And here we have a young ghost, a strong ghost, a ghost of the highest quality! Do I see a paddle for – yes, there, I see a paddle for ten thousand. Do I see fifteen thousand, fifteen thousand – and there it is! Do I see – ”

  Even backstage, the auctioneer’s ghost-enhanced voice rang out as clearly if I had been in the audience. I kept half an ear on it as I tiptoed around a stack of crates. Then I had to duck behind them as a pair of workers rounded the corner, pushing a cart loaded with a seven-foot cage. The ghost inside howled and thrashed at the bars, but the red thread woven through them held it fast. Its mad eyes, like green fire burning at the bottom of a grave, met mine for a moment. It gnashed its teeth. I pulled further back into the shadows.

  “What’s gotten you all worked up?” grumbled one of the workers. He slammed a hand against the bars. “Settle down!”

  The ghost shrieked at him.

  “What’s the point in arguing with a ghost?” asked the other worker. “C’mon, hurry it up.”

  They disappeared through the door that led to the stage. I gave them a count of seven before unfolding myself and creeping the way they’d come. The ghosts for the auction were stored in a single room, not a very large one, because as the patron earlier had grumbled, this wasn’t a very impressive selection. None of the ghosts glowed even half as brightly as the one bound to that the ghost user I’d fought. Some drifted aimlessly in their cages, like jellyfish in an aquarium, while others huddled in the corners, pressing into the red thread that held them. I searched their hazy features, looking for the one I had come for.

  He was at the back, a brighter green than the rest. Probably the most valuable, most anticipated ghost of the lot. Like all the others, he had a red thread looped around his neck that led towards the stage and the auctioneer.

  “Jay,” I whispered. “Jay. It’s me. I’m here.”

  He was one of the drifting ghosts, but at the sound of my voice, he stilled and hung midair.

  “Jay,” I whispered again. “I’ve come to get you out. Can you hear me?”

  He rotated slowly in place, like a balloon on the end of a ribbon. His eyes were twin fires, and even though they held about as much recognition as real fire, it was him. It was Jay. My best friend since kindergarten, with whom I’d made mud pies on the playground and climbed to the top of the jungle gym, and fought through Latin in high school and classical spectrology in college, bound all the time to each other by the red thread around our ankles. Until the car accident severed it forever.

  No. Not forever. That was why I was here.

  I took out the shears I’d stolen from my uncle’s workshop. In this room full of ghosts, the moonsteel glinted green.

  Jay’s eyes fixed on them. “Foo-reeee. Foo-reeee?” He drifted towards me.

  He could speak! He could still speak!

  “Yes! Free. I’m here to free you.” I clacked the shears. “But you can’t attack me when I let you out, okay?”

  I expected him to answer. I actually expected him to answer. But all he said was: “Foo-reeee” as he floated even closer.

  “Jay. I’m serious. You can’t attack me. If you attack me, we’ll get caught.”

  A blank stare.

  I wanted to cry. Well, what did I think was going to happen? I scolded myself. That he’d recognize me? That he’d be my best friend still, just greener and glowier?

  Of course not. He was dead. He was gone. This was all that remained.

  And I couldn’t let this last remnant of my best friend be spent by a student who needed extra energy for college entrance exams, or an auctioneer who needed a louder voice, or a bodyguard who was protecting an unworthy boss. No. Absolutely not.

  “Foo-reeee,” he moaned again, and this time, a thin, reedy voice echoed him.

  “Foo-reeee,” shrilled a ghost across the room.

  “Foo-reeee,” rasped another, and another, and another, until the room was full of the voices of the dead.

  Glowing green-faced ghosts, they could all talk? How had that happened?

  “Jay! Did you do something to them?”

  He’d always had incredible willpower when he was alive, sweeping the rest of us along in his wake. Had that persisted even after death, been transferred or shared somehow with the ghosts near him?

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  “Foo-reeee,” moaned the ghosts. They pressed up into the bars, letting wisps of themselves drift out as far as the red threads allowed. “Foo-reeee.”

  “But I can’t free you all. They’ll notice. They’ll come after us,” I protested, knowing even as I did that I was talking to myself.

  “Foo-reeee,” said Jay’s voice behind me, and I spun back to find him in the center of his cage with both arms raised. A clear command.

  “You want me to free all of them?” I asked incredulously before I could catch myself. He’d always had a strong sense of justice – but this? Did he expect me to just waltz on out of a ghost auction trailing a cloud of stolen ghosts? Just me, and the cloud of mindless ghosts – and the single puppet I had left?

  He would, whispered a voice at the back of my head. He’d do it. He’d will it to work, and it would.

  “Oh, Jay. Never one for half-measures, were you?”

  Blazing green eyes met mine. We’d had many – oh, so many! – staring competitions over the decades. And, as always, Jay won.

  “Okay. I’ll do it. But we’re going to have to be strategic about this....”

  I scanned the room, tracing the threads that bound each ghost to the auctioneer. As soon as I cut any one of them, he would know. As soon as I let any one of them out of its cage, it might attack me. The best I could hope for was that I could run away with Jay and leave the other ghosts to distract the auctioneer and the guards.

  If only Jay were really here! He’d know what to do.

  I wrapped my arms around his cage and tried to lift it. For a device designed to hold something that weighed nothing, it was excessively heavy. Taking out my last puppet, I ordered, “Bring a cart.”

  While it scampered off, I gathered together all of the red threads that bound the ghosts to the auctioneer and held them in one fist.

  Back rattled a cart, pushed by my puppet. “Load that,” I ordered, pointing the shears.

  “Foo-reeee?” asked Jay as the puppet tipped his cage onto the cart sideways. He floated around so he was right side up again.

  “Yes. Free.” To the puppet, I commanded, “Push it out the door.” At the same instant, I snapped the shears shut. The blades severed the red threads.

  The ghosts jerked, then started to fling themselves against the bars. I ran around the room, snipping the threads woven around the cages. As the first ghost pushed through the bars into open air, I dashed after the cart.

  “Go go go!”

  Behind me, a howl sent a chill up my spine.

  “Hey! What’s going?” Running footsteps. The two workers from earlier were back, probably to fetch the next ghost. They flattened themselves against the wall as the cart hurtled past. One made a half-hearted to grab my arm but I clacked the shears at him, and he fell back.

  “Thief! Security!” he shouted.

  A swarm of angry green ghosts flooded into the hallway. The workers screamed and covered their heads with their arms as they spun and ran after me. Two ghosts peeled off from the swarm to dart at them and bare their teeth. As the workers crouched down and wailed, their edges started to blur into a green fog. The angry ghosts were calling the workers’ spirits out of their bodies.

  “Faster!” I shouted at the puppet, jumping onto the cart next to Jay’s cage.

  The puppet pushed harder, and we flew down the hallway.

  The ghosts finished killing the workers and rushed after us, their number increased by two.

  “This was all your idea!” I snapped at Jay’s ghost.

  He raised his arms again. “Foo-reeee!”

  “Yes! They’re free, and they’re mad, and they’re going to rip my spirit out of my body!”

  “Foo-reeee!” Jay pronounced again, but this time his fiery eyes were turned over my head, at the horde chasing us.

  “Foo-reeee! Foo-reeee!” they echoed.

  The fastest of the ghosts stretched out an arm and touched my shoulder. Coldness, like the coldness of the grave, numbed me.

  I used my other arm to grab for the red thread that trailed from its neck. If I’d been thinking, I’d have hung onto all the ghosts’ threads, at least until we were outside. But how was I supposed to know they’d follow me instead of fan out through the auction to wreak havoc?

  The ghost’s teeth sank into my hand. I shrieked as they passed through my flesh, but at once all feeling vanished. I couldn’t feel my hand at all or my wrist. Or my forearm. Or my elbow--

  I flapped my shoulder. “Get off!”

  Behind me, Jay dove at the cage bars and growled at the ghost.

  To my absolute shock, it opened its jaws and tumbled back away from me. The swarm kept following, but gave us a bit of space.

  “Wait! what’s going on?” “Stop them!” more shouts. The security guards had arrived.

  Jay roared. A third of the ghosts peeled off and fell on them. A third more dove through the walls towards the auction hall. Screams, falling furniture, running feet.

  “Are you – commanding them?” I whispered. I’d never heard of such a thing. Ghosts didn’t think clearly enough to organize. I gulped. “Jay. Are you still there?” Without thinking, I stretched a hand towards him.

  His teeth snapped shut two inches from my fingertips. I yanked my hand back.

  Then I saw where we were going, which was straight at an emergency exit. Which was closed.

  “Aaah! Open it open it!”

  The puppet let go of the cart’s handle, bounded off it, sailed over my head and Jay’s cage, and hurtled into the push bar. The door flew open and the cart hurtled through. The puppet dropped to the ground behind it, splinters as the door slammed back shut.

  I jumped off the cart and grabbed its handle to slow it. We were in the loading dock, in the shadow of the museum. Overhead, the bright full moon shone down.

  “We did it, Jay,” I whispered.

  He raised his arms again, looking at where we’d come. Green glowing forms were slipping through the wall and door. They slowed as the moonlight struck them and they raised their arms towards the moon.

  “Foo-reeee. Foo-reeee,” they moaned.

  “Foo-reeee,” Jay replied, as if affirming something.

  He looked back at me. “Foo-reeee?” There was a note of entreaty in the syllables.

  I swallowed. “Yes. Free. That’s why I came.”

  I snipped through the threads around his cage. I’d thought of binding him to me, to keep him safe for as long as I lived, but that wouldn’t be what he wanted. And who was I to tell him what he wanted or should want?

  He slipped through the bars, floated higher towards the moon. The other ghosts rose up after him. “Foo-reeee,” they whispered.

  Higher and higher they rose, until they flowed across the sky like the Milky Way with Jay at their head.

  “Free,” I said softly.

  I watched until their glow was so faint that it was blocked out by the moon’s bright light.