Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Do I believe in what?"
"Ghosts. You know, spirits of people who have died but, for whatever reason, haven't made it to heaven or hell or whatever afterlife you believe in. That sort of thing." I watched her closely, worried she'd regret helping me.
To my surprise, she didn't scoff at the question. "As a matter of fact, I do believe in it. When my grandmother died, I knew the exact moment even though I was all the way over in California, and she was in Maine. She woke me up in the middle of the night, and said she loved me, and she wanted me to be happy. In the morning, when I woke up, I thought I'd had a dream, but later my mom called to say Grandma had died at the same exact time I saw her. So yes, I believe in spirits."
"That's going to make things a whole lot easier," I said, and tapped on the window. Marta appeared. I gestured toward the lock, watching Magda.
Marta transformed herself into a solid figure and flipped open the lock. Magda's jaw dropped.
"Did she... is that..." she stammered, pointing at Marta.
"You can see her? Oh, good. I wondered if other people can see them in their solid form. I guess only Zoryas can see them in their normal state. Come on, I don't want anyone to see us loitering out here."
Magda followed me into the window, watching with complete astonishment as Marta, smiling, faded back to her normal translucent self.
"Where'd she go?" Magda asked in a whisper.
"She's here, but in a low-energy state. You can't see her without this," I said, holding up my wrist. The stone had switched into lantern form and was glowing with a gentle silvery light. "I'm a Zorya. They're someone who takes dead people to their final resting places. Or some dead people - I'm not quite sure about all the details. But the upshot is that there are fifteen ghosts here, sixteen if you count the horse, and I'm supposed to take them to Ostri. I don't suppose you've ever heard of it?"
Magda, uncharacteristically silent, just shook her head, her mouth slightly ajar as she looked around the main room of the library. Several of the ghosts were seated at a table, bent over books, alternating between solid and transparent modes in order, I assumed, to save energy.
"Who are they?"
"That's Karl and his wife, Marta. They're the first ghosts I met. Ulfur is over there at the computer with a young woman whose name I don't know. That's his horse eating the potted plant. The rest of the people are from Ulfur's village. Their village was wiped out by a natural disaster sometime in the mid 1800s, from what I can tell. Don't bring up the subject of pigs or chicken."
She pursed her lips for a moment, then nodded. "What are they doing?"
"Researching, hopefully. Hello, everyone!" I raised my voice in order to cut through the murmur of conversation. "I'm back, and I've brought a friend. This is Magda. She's new to all this, like me. Have you found anything out about Ostri?"
"Ulfur did," Ingveldur said with a father's pride, beaming at him. "In a book about mythology. Show the reaper, Ulfur."
"I don't know how helpful it will be," Ulfur said, gesturing to a distant table where a thick book had been placed. He escorted us over to it. I glanced at the book, but it was in Icelandic. "This is an entry for Ostri. It includes alternate spellings, and the etymology of the word, but has little about the meaning. It just says that in Basque and Iberian religions, Ostri was used to refer to heaven. The word changed over time, and later came to mean the Christians' concept of God."
"Hmm. It doesn't say anything about where it is?"
He shook his head.
"Crap. Was there anything about it online?"
"Not much more than what's in the book," he answered, going back to the terminal. "Dagrun found similar references to Ostri, but no specifics about how you get there. The information on the Brotherhood, however, is very interesting."
"Oh, really?" Magda and I crowded around the computer terminal.
"What's the Brotherhood?" Magda asked as I scanned the screen.
"The religious group who maintains the Zoryas. Is this their Web site?"
"Yes." Ulfur watched me as I read the page.
"That is interesting," I said.
"What's interesting?" Magda asked. "All I see is Brotherhood of the Blessed Light, a list of cities, and a Web page counter. There's not much there to be interesting."
"I find it interesting to know that the Brotherhood evidently has branches or churches or whatever they call gatherings of their members in all of the major cities of the world, including seven U.S. cities. And I don't think that's a Web page counter," I said, a chill feeling gripping my stomach.
She looked again. "Then what's it counting? People it's helped? Spirits, I mean?"
I shook my head slowly. "I think it's the number of vampires they've... er... cleansed over the centuries."