Outside, the pale autumn sun chased my lingering sensation of a ghost's presence and I almost regretted I had to slip into my protective gear for the ride home. Matt stowed his toolbox and bag in the van and turned to me. "I guess I'll head to the next hardware store. I've had a few ideas on how to enhance the sensors and build mountings that are easier to fix on a wall."

In the meantime, I knew my partner was happiest when he had a technical problem to solve. Just like me when I found time to burrow my nose in a book. And that's what I planned for the rest of the day. "Fine by me. I'll head back to Corbières and dive into some serious research. There are some loose ends in this story I'd like to tie up." I zipped up my jacket and put on the helmet. "Do we meet here tonight?"

"It's probably easiest. Good luck with your studies." He slammed the door, backed up the van, and I followed him out of the parking lot, heading back to the highway and my new home. As usual, the ride helped me order my thoughts, and back at the castle, I had a clear idea of where to start my research.

The library provided me with the quiet to run an internet search on Roman religion. While it was hard to find something about curse tablets, I got quite a detailed grasp of common beliefs and basic rituals connected with and surrounding death. When Lou called me for dinner, I was engrossed in the study of the city map of the ancient Aventicum.

"Did you know the Roman city was far bigger than Avenches is today?" I pointed to the plan with an overlap of the known Roman structures with the current city map. "Plus, it was a well planned and organised city with all the major infrastructure, including a theatre, a holy district with the forum, and the amphitheatre. There were even several public bathhouses and, of course, a fortification with the massive city wall that's still visible."

Lou laughed. "It was the capital of this province of the empire back then, right? So a certain infrastructure would be a given, I think."

"Sure, but it's still surprising that most of it disappeared beneath agricultural land with a few exceptions and was replaced by a rather small town in the Middle Ages."

"I agree, the Roman Empire declined fast to judge by sites like Aventicum." We walked down to the cantina and he held the door open for me. "Any news about the ghost?"

"Mmm, I'm convinced there's a female ghost haunting the depot. We're going to check if we can meet her tonight. Want to come?"

Lou raised his brows. "Ghost-spotting? Well, if Sir Guillaume doesn't cause another incident with the whirlpool tonight, why not? But let's get dinner first, before the food is cold."

We ate with the hostel staff, so there was no room for further ghost talk. When Lou and I retreated to the living room for coffee later, Sir Guillaume lounged on the sofa, his legs crossed at the ankles and the heels of his pointed sabatons placed on the glass plate of the coffee table. Lou looked as if he'd bitten into a lemon. "Ouch. Glad you can't scratch the tabletop with your iron leggings."

The knight grinned and sat up, lowering his feet through the table. We both could see he enjoyed his little show, a minor triumph over the living. "No worries, your furniture is safe with me. Are there news on the haunting?"

I placed my plate with cookies where Guillaume's immaterial feet had been moments ago and slumped into an armchair. "There are some clues telling me we might deal with the victim of a curse. I'm can't be sure yet, but it seems the Roman curse tablet mentioned in the Raven's newspaper was found at the same place as an artefact that attracts the ghost haunting the museum's depot. My best bet is that there is a connection between the ghost and the curse."

Lou sat down in the second chair, cradling his coffee cup. "Didn't you plan to investigate a ghost haunting an excavation site? It seems improbable the same ghost has been troubling the depot workers for decades and then switch to another site."

"That's the bummer here. I have no explanation, except that we might deal with two different and perhaps unrelated ghosts."

Lou set down his cup, picked up a cookie and looked at it as if it held the answer to the secrets of the universe. "Seems too much of a coincidence, somehow."

Guillaume's eyes gleamed, fixed on the cookie in Lou's hand, the ghosts forgotten for the moment. "Are they good?"

Lou bit off half the pastry and pushed the plate into the knight's direction. "The best. Try them. It's a special recipe by San's Caribbean grandma."

"Only if you promise you'll not complain when you have to pick the crumbs from the upholstery." Despite his words, Sir Guillaume reached for the plate. "They smell delicious."

Unfortunately, his see-through fingertips closed through the cookie he was about to pick up. While I observed his futile attempt, an idea formed in my head. "So, as a ghost, you can smell but not touch the things from the physical world, right? Same as your shoes don't scratch the floorboards or the tabletop, even if you do a tap dance on it."

"Ah, there's an idea—tap dancing on Master Lou's coffee table." Mischief glinted in Guillaume's eyes, but his grin faded fast. "Hearing and smelling are fine, but tasting and touching things is beyond our capability, which is a shame, as I would love to taste your cookies." He made another futile attempt to pick one up and pulled his bearded lips into an exaggerated pout.

"If you tell me how to bake ghost-appropriate cookies, I'll give my best. Can you think of any circumstances where a spectre can touch or move solid objects?"

"Oh yes, I can. If a ghost has a powerful motivation, he or she might be susceptible to certain elements from the world of the living."

Lou chuckled. "Like you and the bubbles in our whirlpool?"

Sir Guillaume's eyes shot daggers at my friend. "That's something altogether different, of course."

I had a hard time imagining that only two months ago, Guillaume had called Lou a clown and Lou spoke of the knight as a monster. In the meantime, the first and last owner of Corbières had become fast friends—if this expression could apply to a seven-hundred-year-old ghost and a human.

With raised hands, I interrupted the amicable banter. "Of course, that's vastly different, and Lou would never dare to keep you from the kingdom of scented bubbles. Yet this information might be crucial. You say a ghost with a powerful motivation or perhaps with open business from his lifetime could pick up this cookie?"

The medieval knight knitted his bushy eyebrows. "It's possible, but unlikely. I can't see a ghost having a specific connection to something as volatile as a cookie—or a bubble in a pool. The connection would usually be to a personal object, something related to his or her death, a murder weapon, for example."

"That's what I thought. Thank you for confirming. It means the piece of the oil lamp Vic found on the floor might be an important piece of our puzzle."

"It might, but you said yourself the police could have dropped it." Lou shrugged and reached for another cookie.

I picked up one myself, and, with an apologetic nod at Sir Guillaume, bit into it. "That was Vic's theory. But I can't imagine the police digging through boxes of finds. I bet they just checked for obvious signs of disturbances, questioned the employees, and lost interest when they were told that nothing went missing."

Lou nodded and swallowed his cookie. "True. That's how they proceeded when we had a break in two years ago. Chances are the case will end in the drawer with the other unsolved ones."

"It might, but that's not my greatest worry here." I rubbed my temples. "No, I believe someone else dropped the shard, someone who has trouble picking up things and was clumsy or surprised, perhaps by the burglar."

"You assume the ghost dropped it?" Sir Guillaume wrinkled his nose. "If this is the case, we can consider a connection between the ghost and this specific object as a given."

"That's what I suspect, and I'm going to verify it tonight. I just hope the White Lady appears." In my brief career as a ghost guard, I had already been disappointed by ghosts who didn't behave as expected several times. Sir Guillaume was a perfect example.

In the case on hand, he was of the same opinion. "Good luck, but don't count on it. We inhabitants of another realm seldom play to the rules you living folks count on. Where would be the fun?"

The knight stood up and walked straight into the door, stopped halfway through, and turned around to thrust his head and shoulders back into the room. "Also, in my experience, most ghosts are more afraid of the living than the other way round."

Lou and I exchanged glances. "Why that?"

"Because it is the living who are unpredictable, not the ghosts." Sir Guillaume held up a finger. "But now, enough philosophical talk. I'm going to check if the whirlpool is free. You made me crave a few almost-bodily pleasures with the enticing smell of your cookies."