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hundred bucks for materials? What kind of materials does a ghost chaser use?”
    Bannister shot him a stern look and said, “Better you don’t know.”
    “We need the job done,” Lucy said. “Please do it, Mr. Bannister.”
    “Just get it over with,” Ray said sullenly.
    “You’ve made a smart decision.” Bannister set down his black box on the countertop and removed a smaller black box that had two electrodes sticking from the top. He plugged the box into the socket where the now quiet toaster was plugged, and switched the device on. All three of them watched as an electrical arc fizzed and crackled between the two electrodes. In the meantime a small fan in the side of the box spun around.
    Frank eyeballed this contraption suspiciously.
    “Why us?” Lucy asked. “Why are they in our house?”
    “Emanations are confined to the graveyard, ma’am,” Bannister said, his voice taking on an authoritative tone. “But sometimes they get out. It’s usually the young ones.”
    “You mean, like the ghosts of people who died before their time?”
    “Exactly. Usually they go off in search of some harmless fun. I often see them on the streets, in people’s houses, down at Granger’s Thrifty Mart.”
    Bannister’s black box seemed to be gaining power. It rattled on the countertop.
    “Granger’s?” Lucy asked, shocked. “They have poltergeists at Granger’s?”
    “Yeah. There’s always a bunch of them hanging around the pet-food stand on Saturday night.”
    “For God’s sake, Bannister.”
    Bannister took umbrage at this aspersion against what he considered very serious business. He narrowed his eyes to slits in a theatrical manner and said quietly, “There’s a whole other world out there that you folks can’t see.”
    He pulled a water pistol out of his bag. “Step aside,” he warned.
    Brandishing the water pistol like a TV cowboy, Bannister started squirting water around.
    “What’s that?” Lucy asked.
    “Holy water,” he replied.
    “Where’d you get that, steal it from the church?” Ray asked.
    “I have a deal going with the pastor,” Bannister added. “He gets it for me at cost.”
    Bannister disappeared into the dining room, squirting as he went, and soon was in the bedroom and the rest of the house.
    “This is bullshit, total bullshit,” Ray said.
    Bannister’s black box suddenly stopped humming. A small green light began to flash.
    Lucy called out, “Mr. Bannister, the machine has stopped. There’s a green light flashing.”
    Frank ambled back into the kitchen, a look of triumph on his normally haggard face. “That’s good,” he said.
    “It is? What does it mean? We caught the ghosts?”
    He opened the top of the box and pulled out a silver foil bag. He quickly sealed the box and offered the bag to Lucy. “Here,” he said. “I bet he” —meaning Ray—“never gave you anything like this.”
    “What is it?” she asked, her interest in Bannister and his work rising.
    “These belong to you—six ectoplasmic emanations. We don’t like to call them ghosts if we can avoid it. The word ghost comes from the Icelandic word for fire, and that has an unfortunate connotation. I mean, we must be sensitive to the needs of emanations. Not all of them are going where the fire is. Relatively few do, in fact, mainly the truly evil ones.”
    “Poltergeists, then?” she asked.
    “Well, that’s better but far from perfect. It comes from the German and means ‘noisy ghost.’ But not all emanations are noisy or troublesome, like these ones.” He shook the bag in front of her eyes. “In fact, most of the emanations I have known are quite happy to spend Saturday nights at the pizza parlor watching girls.”
    Ray shook his head.
    Lucy accepted the present of the silver bag. Bannister said, “Some people like a souvenir.” He grinned, then added, “They can’t escape. Where shall I put ’em, or maybe you’d like to keep them on the mantelpiece as a remembrance of the work we did