Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

changed because she was dead, and the call of life had no hold over her. JC gave her his best reassuring smile. From the look on her face, it wasn’t that successful. JC looked back at Gog and Magog.
    “So,” he said. “You have a weapon. The jungle. Unfortunately for you, I have a better weapon. Ever seen anything like—this, before?”
    He took a small withered object out of an inner pocket and held it up so they could all see it. A monkey’s paw, made into a Hand of Glory. The thin fingers had been soaked in wax from a dead man, and the fingertips made into wicks. Words had been spoken over the paw, and dread Power invested in it, and its presence alone was like a hammer-blow on the air, its very existence a rotten weight on the surface of the world. Gog and Magog stared at it, fascinated.
    “Bloody hell!” said Happy, straightening up suddenly without even realising.
    “I don’t like it,” said Kim. “It’s nasty. It’s looking at me . . .”
    “Those things are strictly forbidden!” said Happy. “Even the Crowley Project won’t let its people use one of those in the field!”
    “Only because their leaders are scared their field agents might use it against them,” said JC. “All right, I’ll admit having it is against all the rules, but if we were the kind of people who gave a damn about rules, we wouldn’t be field agents, would we?”
    “Come on, JC,” said Happy. “Those things are seriously forbidden. Lots of places they’d hang you just for knowing such things were possible. Hell, they’d hang you for knowing someone who knew things like that were possible.”
    “With good reason,” said Melody. “Some things should be forbidden. Because they’re too powerful.”
    “They have their uses,” JC said easily. “The sight of it pushed the jungle right out of you, didn’t it?”
    Happy and Melody looked at each other. They were both standing like people again.
    “Where did you get it?” said Melody.
    “eBay,” said JC. “You can find all kinds of stuff on eBay. Now hush, children, daddy’s working.”
    He stepped forward, showing the monkey’s paw Hand of Glory to Gog and Magog, and the edge of the blood-red jungle retreated before him. The two beasts stirred uneasily. They couldn’t look at him or the Hand directly.
    “A Hand of Glory can find any door, unlock any lock, reveal anything hidden,” said JC. “And a monkey’s paw can force a change on reality, on a small scale. So put those two things together, and I have the power to find what ReSet did to you and undo it.”
    Gog and Magog looked at each other, then back at JC. Gog growled at him. “We can’t go back. We won’t go back. Not now we’ve tasted real freedom. We were never meant to be human! We might not be New People, but this is better than the small, insignificant things we were.”
    “I’m sorry,” said JC, and part of him really was. “But I have no choice.”
    Gog and Magog charged forward, crossing the intervening space with inhuman speed, claws outstretched for throat and heart. JC said a single activating Word, and flames blossomed at the paw’s fingertips. There was a flash of brilliant light, and when it subsided, the blood-red jungle was gone. Fluorescent light filled the whole empty floor, stretching away before JC. And at his feet, a naked man and woman lay very still. JC blew out the candle fingers, very carefully, and put the withered paw away. He knelt beside the man and woman and checked for pulses. He looked up at the others and shook his head.
    “They’re dead,” he said shortly. He stood up slowly, brushing himself down here and there, checking that his marvellous ice-cream suit was hanging properly. A style is a style, after all. And it kept him from having to think things he didn’t want to think.
    “Did the Hand kill them?” said Kim.
    “Indirectly, perhaps,” said JC. “But you heard them. They didn’t want to live as people, any more.”
    “Maybe they couldn’t,” said Happy. “After all the things they’d done as beasts.”
    “They didn’t feel guilty,” said JC. “They just didn’t want to give it up.”
    Happy looked at him, meaningfully. “If you had that awful thing with you all along, why didn’t you use it before? Did you really think it was that dangerous to us?”
    “I had some concerns. But mostly—well, you don’t use a backpack nuke to crack a nut,” said JC. “Anytime you use something this powerful, it attracts attention. The