Mabel watched as Gideon went white. "What?" she asked in confusion.

"Who is this?" a deep voice said.

Mabel turned around to see a tall man with fancy clothes. He looked a little bit like Gideon, except that his hair was brown and he had a mustache. Mabel guessed that this was Gideon's father.

Gideon got in between Mabel and his father and assumed a protective stance. "She's an expert on ghosts," he said. His voice shook a little with fear. "I brought her to help."

"Keep your voice down," Gideon's father said. He gave a nearby guest a fake smile, probably to mollify them in case they heard him. "Why didn't you tell your mother and me about this?"

"It hasn't worked so far," Gideon said smoothly. "I didn't want to get your hopes up."

Mabel didn't think it was a very good excuse, but Gideon's father moved on. Probably because he would berate Gideon later.

"Wait," Mr. Northwest said, "does that mean the ghosts are still here?"

Oops. Gideon's face lost even more color. "Yes," he admitted, glancing at the floor. "But their graveyard is in the mansion! We built over their resting place, and they're trapped here!"

His father didn't look surprised. Mabel wondered if that was because he knew about it, or because he was used to the Northwests doing things like that. "There has to be a way to get rid of them."

"They told me that following their demands was the only way, but I'm not sure I believe them," Gideon said. "I told them we weren't going to do what they want."

"Wait," Mabel asked. "What did they want?"

Gideon and his father met each other's eyes quickly. "Um," Gideon said, "they want us to move their gravestones somewhere else. And that would take way too long."

Mabel wanted to hit something. Preferably Gideon. "You've got to be kidding me. You're rich! You can handle it!"

"Gideon," his father cut in, "who is this?"

Mabel stood taller, upset that this man was talking about her instead of to her. Gideon looked like he didn't intend to answer anyway, so she did instead. "My name is Mabel."

"I don't think I've seen you before," Mr. Northwest said, looking quite confused, which in turn confused Mabel. She didn't think he'd be caught dead in the Mystery Museum. "What's your surname?"

Gideon met Mabel's eyes in a panic as if he didn't want her to answer. But what could she do? "Um. . . Pines. I'm Mabel Pines."

Mr. Northwest's eyes widened. He looked at Gideon with even more anger in his expression, which is when Mabel knew that Gideon was in a heap of trouble. "You brought a Pines here?"

Mabel was even more confused. "What? Do you have something against my family?"

Mr. Northwest didn't answer. "We will talk about this later," he said to Gideon. Then he pulled out a bell, rang it, and addressed Mabel. "A servant will escort you out," he said tightly.

Mabel tried to meet Gideon's eyes, but he looked away. So she pleaded with his father. "Wait!" she said. "The guests are in danger! I don't know if the ghosts want to hurt them - "

"Oh, they will," Mr. Northwest said.

"All the more reason to protect the guests! We have to fulfill the ghosts' demands or find some other way to set them free."

"We will do that without your help," Mr. Northwest said firmly. "Don't worry about us."

"But - " Mabel spluttered. "You can't just kick me out!"

"I can and I am."

She turned to Gideon desperately. "Gideon! You can't let him just get rid of me! I gotta stay and warn the guests!"

Gideon wouldn't meet her eyes. He stared at the hard floor in silence.

"Thanks for the help," Mabel said sarcastically.

When Gideon still wouldn't look at her, she softened and touched his arm gently. "Gideon? Please help me."

He glanced up at his father and immediately back to the ground.

"I guess I'm not worth your father's anger," she said, getting angry at Mr. Northwest. "What's he going to do, cut you off from your riches? Make you actually clean for once?" She realized a potential answer that wasn't funny at all and got quiet. "Hurt you?"

Gideon flinched, and Mabel knew she was right. She looked at Mr. Northwest in shocked anger. "He's your son!" she yelled.

Mr. Northwest looked around nervously, but there weren't any guests in the hall currently. "Yes, and it's a father's responsibility to teach his son respect."

Another man came into the hall from the party room. He looked like a servant. Mabel panicked. "N-no! I won't go!"

"You will," Mr. Northwest said. He turned to the servant. "Please escort this young lady home. She's in the Mystery Museum, I presume." He said it like it was an unpleasant insect he couldn't wait to squish.

"Gideon? Gideon! Tell him I want to stay!"

"Just. . . just go," Gideon whispered, still not looking at her. "It's not worth it."

Mabel put Gideon between her and the servant. "No! I'm staying!"

"Mabel." Gideon turned around and grabbed her arms tightly. "Please go," he pleaded. "I'm in enough trouble as it is."

She glanced at Mr. Northwest in fear. "I can't let him hurt you!" she cried.

"It's fine." Gideon tried to give her a reassuring smile, but it just looked pained. "I'm used to it."

The servant stepped up to them and cleared his throat, and Gideon let go.

Mabel frantically searched for a way to get out of this situation, but she could only think of one, and it might not even work.

She stepped towards the servant and glared up at Mr. Northwest. "You," she declared, "are the worst father ever."

As she and the servant started to walk away, she could've sworn she could see Gideon smile.

The servant took her away from the party room, probably so none of the guests would see her - he was probably going to take her out a side door. This was good: It gave Mabel the advantage of losing him in the maze of hallways.

Mabel waited until Gideon and his father were out of sight and then took off, ignoring the shouts of protest from the servant and zooming down the halls as fast as she could go. The servant ran after her, but Mabel had the advantage of youth. She wasn't fast compared to other kids her age, but she was fast compared to adults - especially larger ones like this servant.

She prayed she would remember the way to the graveyard and plunged into the maze.

She was lost for a while until she saw a familiar statue that she had thought looked weird when she'd first seen it. That got her on track, and she made decisions on where to go next at lightning-fast speeds, praying she wouldn't lose the trail. The servant was pretty far, but if she stopped she'd be caught for sure.

Just as she was running out of breath, she found the tapestry that guarded the graveyard. Thank goodness. She made sure in her periphery that the servant wasn't in a position to see her and ducked through the tapestry.

The change from light to darkness was immediate. She didn't have Gideon's amulet this time, and it was pitch black.

She waited for a few minutes to give the servant some time to get far away before taking off her backpack and pulling out some candles, a smudging stick, and a pack of matches. She lit the candle and the smudging stick, waiting until it started smoking and leaning it against the candle. Then she turned towards the gravestone ruins and once again started to wait.

This wait took a lot longer, and Mabel stared at the candle and smudging stick, wondering if she did something wrong.

Then it hit her.

"Oh!" she said out loud. "I'm an idiot." Smudging wasn't for summoning ghosts, it was for banishing them. She grabbed the smudging stick and put it out as fast as she could. She looked at the floor with the candlelight and realized that chalk wouldn't show up on dirt. And the dirt was too caked to draw anything in it with her finger.

So Mabel did the next best thing. She took her candle to the middle of the room and started forming a circle out of gravestone pieces.

She was a little worried about messing with their resting place, but it was already destroyed anyway. They wouldn't mind, right?

She just had to hold to that hope.

Once the circle was complete, Mabel started placing candles from her backpack in the right spots. Then she lit them and waited.

After a while, a ghost showed up. Mabel wasn't able to see it directly, but she caught glimpses of it in the shadows cast by the candles. "H-hello," she said. "M-my name is Mabel, and I want to help you move on to the next life. But you guys said earlier that fulfilling your demands was the only way. Could you tell me what those demands are?"

"I could," the ghost said. Its voice was quiet and piercing, like an earbud with the volume on low. "How do I know you're trustworthy?"

Mabel frowned. She didn't know how to prove it. "Um. . . I've been solving mysteries and interacting with the supernatural around here all winter. I don't know if that helps, though."

The ghost swelled to a larger size. "Supernatural. . . do you by any chance know of Bill Cipher?"

Mabel's entire body started to tremble. She had not been expecting to hear that name. "Yes," she said, her voice small. "I've been possessed by him."

"You have?" the ghost said, sounding surprised. "Well, I'm very sorry."

"Thanks," Mabel said with a glance at the floor.

"Well," the ghost said, "if you were possessed, you must be high in the ranks of his enemies."

"I - I don't feel like I am," Mabel said. "But my family and I are trying to do something important and I think he's trying to stop us."

"He very well could be," the ghost said. "Well, you are trustworthy in my eyes. I will tell you about our demands."

Mabel was confused by what seemed like a sudden change in topics. "Do. . . do they have anything to do with Bill?"

The ghost nodded gravely. "They have everything to do with Bill."

Mabel was quiet for a moment as this knowledge washed over her. "Gideon was lying, then. He told me you want the Northwests to move your gravestones to a better spot." She'd known there was something fishy about the fib. He hadn't even known about the graveyard until today, so how could the ghosts have asked them to move it?

The ghost laughed. It didn't sound like it was from humor, though. "No, that is not even close to what our demands are." It lowered its voice a little. "Have you ever heard of the Order of the Crescent Eye?"

Mabel frowned, thinking it over. "It doesn't ring any bells."

The ghost's voice turned grave. "Then you are lucky. The Order of the Crescent Eye is a cult. Its members worship Bill and wipe the memories of the townspeople to keep the knowledge about the supernatural under wraps."

Mabel stood stock still as the information hit her. Her brain could not compute it immediately. She was too shocked. "B-but - I know about the supernatural!"

"That is probably because of the Cipher Wheel."

Mabel was getting more confused by the second. "The Cipher Wheel?"

"Yes - don't you know about it?"

"N-no."

The ghost's level of surprise wasn't as high as Mabel's level of confusion, but it was a worthy contender. "Your entire family is on it. I thought you knew."

"But what is it?" Mabel asked, frustrated.

"It's a prison," the ghost said. "We fought a war against Bill when we were alive - a very long time ago. We managed to win, and we had to contain him. So we came up with a way to trap him here and cut him off from his home and followers. Ten people, each represented by a symbol, can work together to stop him again if need be. And that pine tree, the one on that shirt you're always wearing, is you."

Mabel thought that finding out about the Order was shocking, but it was nothing compared to this. She could not believe that she was part of a prophecy - one written before she was even born!

She was silent for a long, long time.

"A-and Ford and Dipper are on it too?" she asked suddenly.

"Yes," the ghost said. "That's probably why you've been kept safe from the Order."

Right. The Order. Mabel had momentarily forgotten. "B-but what does the Order have to do with Gideon?"

The ghost was quiet for a moment. "Gideon is a member of the Order, I'm afraid," it said.

Mabel's legs felt weak, and she had to fight to stay on her feet. She felt betrayed - completely and utterly betrayed.

"No," she whispered, her voice so quiet it could easily be mistaken for a gust of wind.

"He's in charge of wiping memories with his amulet," the ghost said, sounding sympathetic to Mabel's shock. "He doesn't worship Bill himself - he just got the job when he got the amulet. Still, if he were to stop helping the Order, it would be badly hurt. And that was our demand: that Gideon and his father cut ties with the Order completely."

Mabel felt a little better upon finding out that Gideon didn't worship Bill - but only a little. "And they refused?"

"Yes," the ghost said.

"Wh-what can I do?" Mabel asked, feeling like there was nothing she could do to help.

"Well," the ghost said, "the amulet is a Northwest heirloom, and it's what got the family involved with the Order in the first place. If Gideon didn't have the amulet, he wouldn't be able to wipe memories anymore."

Something hit Mabel. "Wait," she said, "why does Gideon have the amulet and not his father!?"

"Unfortunately, the amulet doesn't work for adults. When Gideon became old enough to use it, it went to him."

"Oh."

The ghost's earlier words hadn't really had an effect on Mabel, but now they did. "Wait. . . does that mean. . ."

The ghost let her think.

When Mabel spoke again, it was in a whisper. "Does that mean I have to destroy Gideon's amulet?"

When the ghost answered, its voice was grave. "I'm afraid so."

"But - but I just forgave him from stealing from me a while ago. I can't steal from him!"

The ghost took a few seconds to respond. "Which one is more important: not hurting Gideon or fighting against Bill?"

Mabel went quiet. The thing was, she really didn't know which one to pick.

"I-I don't know," she said truthfully. "But I guess I'll try."

"Good," the ghost said. "If you succeed, we ghosts will be freed. It means a lot to us that we move on."

"I want you to move on too," Mabel said. She sighed and started fiddling nervously with a strand of hair, worried about her task. "Well, I guess that's it. Um - thanks."

The ghost nodded. "You're quite welcome. Good luck."

Then it disappeared with a burst of wind, blowing out the candles and leaving Mabel alone in the darkness.