Vinia labored to dissipate her confusion. “I thought a car was a vehicle.”

  “It is. But its internal combustion motor generates lethal fumes, if confined to a limited space. A car should be parked in a garage, not run there for hours.”

  Vinia questioned her further and began to get one of her foolish notions. A car, in this respect, was like a fire-breathing dragon. Outside it could be escaped, but if it caught a person in a confined space it could fry him. “I think we need to look at that car.”

  “Oh, the living folk hauled it away.”

  “I mean when it was parked and left running. Is there any way to go back in time and see it?”

  “Time travel? Not in Mhundania!”

  Vinia strained her limited intellect. “In Xanth we hear stories about Mundania. Maybe not all of them are true. One is that they have a way to record events in places, like buildings, that can be looked at later.”

  “Oh, videotapes. We do have those. But not here.” Then she paused, considering. “Then again, now I remember there might have been one. An automatic camera triggered by motion. Those tapes are saved by the police for a decade, then wiped.”

  “How long ago did you die.”

  “Nine and a half years ago. I haven’t aged a day since, since ghosts don’t age. That’s why I still look twenty-one. But—” She paused again. “Oh my ghod! That tape could still be there!”

  “Can we see it? I’ve got a hunch there might be something on it.”

  “Ghosts really can’t handle physical equipment like that. We couldn’t play it; for that you need a living person.”

  “Is there a living person you could contact, who might do it?”

  Ghorgeous was getting excited. “My brother Gheorge. He was off at the bachelor party that night. He was mad as anything about the way we died, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He was going to be best man at the wedding.”

  “Can you contact him now?”

  “Oh, yes. We were very close. We fought, of course, but we loved each other. Sometimes I visit him, and he knows it’s me, though others say he is just imagining it.” Her lovely lips quirked. “They don’t believe in ghosts.”

  Vinia knew that many Mundanes were in denial about ghosts, as they were about the way their world was overheating, likely to make them all ghosts sooner than they liked. “Can you visit him now?”

  “Why not.” Ghorgeous zoomed through a wall and to a nearby house. She went inside. There was a man of about thirty-two reading a book.

  Ghorgeous phased into his head. Gheorge! she thought.

  George looked up. “Is that you, Gorgeous?”

  “Yhes! I have an idea. The motion-triggered automatic camera tape the night of the murder. Can you get it and play it?”

  George’s jaw dropped. “I never thought of that! You’re a genius, sis!”

  “Nho, it’s Vhinia who thought of it.”

  “Who?”

  Vinia was there in his head along with Ghorgeous. “Hello, George. I’m Vinia, from the magic land of Xanth, visiting your sister. I’m not a ghost, just a temporary spirit. It’s a confusing story. Can you help?”

  “Hello, Vinia! I’ll bet it’s confusing! Yes, I think I can get a copy of that tape.”

  Before long George did just that, talking persuasively to the police, who quickly understood his logic. They wanted to solve the murder too. It was what they called a dead case, maybe because it related to ghosts. They located the key tape and he viewed it, with Ghorgeous and Vinia watching over his shoulder.

  The tape showed Gorgeous and her lady friends driving into the garage, parking the car, turning off its motor, and going into the house as the garage door rolled magically down to close it in. Then it showed a man sneaking in.

  “Who is that?” Vinia asked.

  “That’s Rupert!” Gorgeous exclaimed. “I dated him twice and broke it off. He got too serious, too fast, and I didn’t trust him.”

  “I’ve seen that man before, somewhere,” George said.

  Gorgeous extended a vaporous finger into his head.

  “Rupert!” George exclaimed. “Now I remember. A creep who just wanted to get into my sister’s pants. She told him to get lost, and I amended it with a gentle warning.” He lifted one fist. “He got the message.”

  The tape showed Rupert using a tool to do something to the car. The motor started up. “He hot-wired the car!” George exclaimed. “He must have figured that if he couldn’t have her, nobody else could, so he killed her.”

  “Give us the details on this Rupert; somehow this tape got overlooked in the original investigation,” the police detective said.

  George did. Soon they had looked Rupert up and knew where he currently lived. “Thanks. We’ll take it from here.”

  “I feel it!” Gorgeous said. “We solved our murder. We’re free!” She mentally kissed her brother. Then they returned to the house.

  “What did you do?” a ghost friend asked. “We feel the release.”

  Gorgeous quickly explained, giving Vinia full credit for the idea. “Now let’s go to Xanth, and Thanx,” she concluded. “We have some heavy haunting to do.”

  The others were happy to agree.

  “But how do we get there?” Ghorgeous asked. “We’ve never been there. Indeed, in life we did not believe it existed.”

  “I have a way,” Vinia said. “Follow me.” Then she reconsidered. “Um, can you hold hands or something, so we can all go together? I don’t want anyone to get lost. Remember, we’re no longer anchored.”

  The ghosts extended vaporous tendrils that connected to Ghorgeous.

  “Map,” Vinia said to the ring. It appeared. She reached out with Ghorgeous’s hand and touched the section marked THANX.

  And they were there, clustered before the run-down house. “OooOoo!” the ghosts oooOooed, delighted. This was perfect for them.

  Grossclout appeared, frowning. “I see you got here, spooks. It’s about time.”

  Ghorgeous floated up and kissed him, firming her lips for the occasion. “I’m glad to see you, too, Professor Ghrumble. And thank you.” She firmed up her bottom for his grope. Vinia felt it too, being part of the ghost now and wondered yet again what was supposed to be so compelling about such handling. Why should anyone care about kneading a buttock? It was mainly for sitting on. Then the ghost floated on to the house, along with the others. They were eager to start shaping it into a scary scene.

  “I need to move on,” Vinia said. “There are two more contingents to recruit.”

  “And thank you so much, Vhinia, for all you have done for us. I hope we can remain in touch, and be friends, though I know we are of rather different types.”

  There it was again: Vinia had never dreamed of being friends with a ghost, but she did like Ghorgeous. “Yes, I would like that. I may not be staying here in Thanx, after this mission, but I hope to visit.”

  “I can visit you, wherever you may be, now that we are free. Just use your ring to contact me, and I will come to you.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you.”

  “Being with you will be my pleasure, not bother. Farewell for now, living friend.” Ghorgeous mentally kissed her. Vinia was surprised by how well she liked it.

  Vinia detached, as her job here was done. She resumed solid form and returned to Grossclout. “Good job,” he said gruffly.

  Vinia was so amazed and flustered at the unexpected compliment that she almost wet her pants. Fortunately, she was not completely solid, so there was no damage. “I just did what I had to do.”

  “Exactly. Now the next.”

  She realized that Demesne must have advised him to encourage her on occasion, so he had grudgingly done it. Still, she was pleased. “Map,” she said to the ring.

  The map appeared. Vinia touched the section marked SNAILS.

  And she was there, in the host body of a snail, complete with a spiral shell. The snail was perched on the stem of a tall plant waving gently in the breeze. But she was getting used to this type of shift in perspective. “Hello. I am Vinia. Professor Grossclout sent me.”

  “Oh, you’re the one! He must have found us a field.”

  “Field?”

  “A field of florescent fennel to graze on.”

  Oh. “I haven’t seen it myself, but if the professor says it’s there, it’s there. He’s as good as his taciturn word.”

  The snail laughed, internally. “I gather you have interacted with the Demon. Hello. I am Snazzy Snail, one of the stickiest mollusks.”

  Vinia gathered from the context that this as a good thing. “Yes.” That was technically an agreement that she knew the Demon professor but could be taken as approval of stickiness.

  “The professor said you would need some background on us, so you could handle your mission properly.”

  “Yes. I am not a snail, and I don’t really know snail ways, except that they may be rather, well, dilatory. I should be able to guide you better it you acquaint me with your history and need.”

  “We do have time to converse, because it will take a while to join the group. I am setting off at my briskest pace, but you may find it slow.”

  Her briskest pace? Vinia had not been aware that the snail was moving at all. But she saw now that Snazzy was making a slow turn to loop about and travel down the stem toward the ground. “Yes.”

  “You will want to know why we need to move, since we snails can survive just about anywhere on land or underwater. We don’t breathe the way fish or mammals do.”

  “Yes.” It was amazing how much that single word could suggest. If Snazzy thought it was relevant, Vinia did want to hear it.

  The snail completed her U-turn and started down the stem at what might be a dizzying velocity for her kind, but as slow as the shadow on a sundial for humankind. Whatever could snails do to stop an invasion by speedy gnomes? Vinia hesitated to ask. “We are a very special variety of snail. We feed exclusively on florescent fennel. We have powers that most other snails lack.”

  That might be interesting. “Powers?”

  “We can project moods to creatures we are close to. For example, I helped Professor Grossclout. That’s why he’s helping us now.”

  She couldn’t mean doing the sort of thing that Signal Siren or Ghorgeous Ghost had done. She was tiny compared to them, and, well, she was a snail.

  “I am not clear how you helped Grossclout, or how you even encountered him, or why. Maybe if you could provide me more background?”

  “Certainly. We have been happy for millennia, feeding on our special patch of fennel. In return we help protect it from marauders. Our feeding is relatively slight, while others might gobble up the whole field in days. But now something unforecast is occurring, and we are desperate. The sea is advancing and soon will swamp the field.”

  “But you can survive in water, can’t you?”

  “Yes, but the fennel can’t. It needs air for its flowers and spores. If it gets flooded, it will die, and we will die with it, because we can’t eat anything else. We are bound to it.”

  “Now I appreciate your problem. The sea must be stopped. But why is it intruding, after so long a time?”

  “The professor explained it to me. He knows all about every kind of magic, including the science magic of the outer reaches. You see, we live in what you call Mundania.”

  “I know of it. In fact, I just interacted with a ghost there.”

  “One of the barbarian species has gotten out of control,” Snazzy continued. “It is burning so much fossil fuel that it pollutes the air and makes it warm up. That warms the water, which magically expands when heated, and it is flooding the lowland plains like ours. Dry land is disappearing, and so are all manner of species of creature.”

  Vinia realized that the barbarians were the humans of that bleak region. Like herself, only phenomenally ignorant and selfish. She hadn’t realized that the warming was caused by the humans themselves. “But don’t the barbarians see what is happening? Why don’t they stop the burning?”

  “They do see it, but they don’t care, so they keep right on doing it. They will continue until their land becomes unlivable for them, and then they will die out.”

  “But this is crazy! They are committing suicide.”

  “Yes. But that’s tomorrow, meaning the future. All they care about is today.”

  Vinia shook her head. That didn’t work, because she was not in her own body, and the snail didn’t really have a head. “The professor knows about it? Why doesn’t he do something?”

  “He says Mundania is better off without them, so he’s letting nature take its course. Things should improve thereafter.”

  Maybe he was right. Anyone who knew that his present course meant doom, yet refused to change it, surely deserved that doom. The problem was that this also meant doom for other species who didn’t deserve it, like the snails. That bothered Vinia. For one thing, how would Mundane letters ever get delivered without snails?

  Well, that was a problem for others to ponder. “How did you manage to notify the professor?”

  “That was the magic of coincidence, which it appears works well beyond Xanth. It seems that there was a siren, a kind of mermaid with a good voice, who wanted to visit with her distant relatives in Mundania, to try to persuade them to leave before they, too, got washed out. But all she found were dugongs. She came and sat on a rock at the shore near our field, admiring the different colors of the fennel while she pondered. It happened that I was feeding on a fennel beside that rock. A lock of her hair dropped down and stuck to me. Before I realized, she plunged back into the sea on the other side of the rock and swam away, and I was hauled along before I could unstick the hair. I didn’t want to let go in the middle of the sea, because it would take me an awful long time to make my way back to the fennel field, so I made the best of it, hanging on to her hair, hoping she would return to the field soon. But she didn’t; instead she swam to join the professor. It seemed they were having a tryst, and he had brought her to Mundania as a favor so she could check on her relatives. Then the tryst got hot and heavy, and they were whipping fiercely about, and I wound up stuck on his head. So as soon as their siege of activity was over, I used my power to send him a peaceful mood and a thought, and that’s how we came to know each other.”

  “You sent him a peaceful mood?” Vinia repeated, bemused.

  “Yes. It was an effort, because his mind was violent, but I bore down and accomplished it. Unused to it, he promptly slept, using the mermaid’s bosom for a pillow. She seemed glad for the respite.”

  Vinia suspected that the pillow had something to do with his peaceful mood. She had heard of grown women putting men to sleep that way. When she was grown, and had equivalent pillows, she meant to try it on Ion: it could be a useful ploy. “What was the thought you sent?”

  “My identity, and our problem with the rising water. I sent it into his dream. It is possible to accomplish a lot in a dream, because folk more readily accept what they encounter there.”

  Vinia remembered the pool splash party the girls had had on Cloud Nine, which was a kind of dream. “Yes.”

  “Once he was aware of me,” Snazzy continued, “we made a deal. Several nights of his peaceful sleep in exchange for his trying to help us save our field. So I stayed with him awhile, before he returned me to my field. He said he would send someone to help, once he was able to put it together. And here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Vinia agreed. “I do know of a place where you and your tribe could live.”

  “You do?”

  “But you will need to earn your keep. It is an area about to be overrun by gnomes. They have to be stopped.”

  “Oh, we can do that. Gnomes are easy. It’s the implacable sea that’s hard.”

  “You can stop them? How? They move so much faster than you do, and are so much larger, and they can forge right through deep ground.”

  “We can stick them. You’ll see.”

  Vinia remained deeply uncertain, but she had to trust Grossclout’s judgment. If he thought the snails could stop the gnomes, maybe they could. “But there are details to work out. Such as the fact that you can’t just transfer to a new field; there is no such field in Xanth, as far as I know. We’ll have to move your present field there. I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Maybe Snafu will know.”

  “Who?”

  “Our queen. Her name translates to Situation Normal, All Fixed Up. She’s good at solving insoluble problems.”

  Now Vinia remembered a similar acronym, though she wasn’t sure it quite matched. No matter; if it meant the queen could solve the problem, it would do.

  They continued to race along at a snail’s pace. Vinia decided to use the time to get more information, in case it should be useful. “Do snails have any social life?”

  “Why certainly. We are very social creatures. Only …” She trailed off into an ellipsis that did not seem to be related to signaling a stork, at least not directly. If snails even used storks.

  “Only what?” Vinia asked, genuinely curious.

  “Oh, you’d be bored with my problems.”

  “Maybe not. Remember, I’m a completely different species. It’s all new to me.”

  “So you are,” the snail agreed thoughtfully. “It’s that I have the prettiest shell, and it attracts the males. I don’t want them, at least not yet, but they come anyway. I must encase myself in supersticky slime to keep them off me. But my appeal makes the other females jealous, and they exclude me from social events like gossip parties. I really don’t have any friends. That’s why I graze at the edge of the field. I wish I had some girlfriends.”

  Vinia got an idea flash. “I wonder.”

  “I saw that flash. Remember, you are in my mind. What are you thinking?”

  “It’s that I have some unusual female friends that I made while on this special mission. They are adults, while I am a child, but we really like and respect one another. You might join that group. I think you would like them.”