Ghost's stories, part four

Elyssa was asleep in his bed when he returned to his apartment. She'd shown up at his door again earlier that evening, saying that her partner had been asking her why she wasn't in her room when he dropped by last night. She'd tried to play it off, but the whole thing had left her feeling deeply creeped out -- and rightly so, given what Chris had just learned from the ghost.

He left her sleeping, and went to look at the chest of drawers that the Ministry had provided him for his stay here. He didn't have a lot in there, but there were a handful of things that he'd taken with him out of Pettibone...

There it was: his mother's silver necklace, with its small medallion etched to show a pair of crossed swords. Perfect. He scooped it out, then took it from the bedroom to the sitting room with its tiny galley kitchen tucked along one wall. He took a seat on the couch, regarded the emblem, and after a moment's thought concluded that his mother would have unquestionably approved of him using her necklace for this. 

He looked inside himself, touched the dark heart, and asked: Will you help me? 

It stirred, already alert from the encounter with Clarissa's ghost, and extended itself to make its power available. The work he had in mind was outside of anything he'd ever studied, but the heart of the fallen god was more than willing to guide him in this. He spoke the words it gave him, forced his will into the amulet, and made it a home for the justly vengeful dead. 

Then he returned to the pool. 

Clarissa appeared immediately, touching his his shoulder gently. 

"Touch this," he said, holding out the necklace with its altered amulet. "Come into it, and I'll use it to deliver you to Elyssa."

There was a momentary pause, and then a faint sense of pressure on his palm... and then a sense of Clarissa's presence, spiraling in. He looked at the amulet, felt the chill of it against his palm, and smiled. 

What did you do to me? asked Clarissa, her silent voice rich with surprise. 

I anchored you to something that will strengthen you, he told her, something I can give to Elyssa so that you can watch over her. 

How in the moonless night did you manage that? She was standing beside him again, anchored to the medallion but not trapped in it. She felt stronger, too, maybe strong enough to make herself visible; her grip on his shoulder was every bit as firm as it had been when he'd been feeding her with the Grey. 

I called in a favor, Chris told her. Listen: I need you to keep this a secret -- yourself, the amulet, and especially the fact that I made it. When you move on Julius, it has to be just as he's starting to assault Elyssa, and it has to take him completely by surprise. Hide in the amulet until then. Can you still see when you're in there?

Oh, yes. I see everything from in there. If Elyssa wears the amulet, I could talk to her, warn her--

Don't. She can't know in advance, or the magi are going to have questions that... 

Ah. Clarissa turned that thought over. I hadn't considered the consequences. I take my vengeance, and then they question her, of course. They'll have a dead Thornblade, mauled by a wolf; they'll have to question her. But they should be able to tell that she still has their geas, so she can't have done it herself. It'll have to have been a vengeful ghost. And I imagine that you don't want them to know that you're capable of... anything you've done so far, whatever the hell that might be. 

Chris nodded. That would be disastrous, he told her simply. In fact, she's going to have to hide the amulet the moment you move... but if you return to it and wait, I can fetch you back to her and you can talk to her then.

Vengeful ghost, Clarissa said reflectively. Yeah, I can lean into that. I can lean into that hard.