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“—who I throw around easier than a professional wrestler kicking a newbie’s ass in the ring—”

“It wasn’t like that!”

“—and then crack ‘em open and suck ‘em dry like—what’s that stuff in the silver pouches?”he snapped his fingers at us.The little part-ghost and I looked back at him blankly.“You know,” he said impatiently.“The foil ones?”Still blank.“You pop a straw in and drink ‘em with lunch.They’re fruit juice, or they’re supposed to be fruit juice; God knows what’s really in there—”

“Juice boxes?”Hansen offered, making me jump because I hadn’t known he could talk.

“No, they’re pouches,” Billy insisted, “but whatever.You drain gods like they’re juice boxes,” he told me.“And yet, poor you, you can’t handle all thispressure—”

“Stop it!”

He didn’t stop it.

“I think it’s habit at this point,” he said accusingly.“You know you can handle this; I know you can handle this; everybody else knows you can handle this, but we gotta do this stupid ceremony anyway.It’s like that boxer with his rituals before going in the ring—”

“What boxer?”Hansen asked.

“Any boxer; they’re all superstitious as shit.But specifically, this one guy I knew in Philly.You remember,” Billy said to me.“One of Tony’s guys.Big, ugly bruiser, with a nose that had migrated two-thirds of the way across his face ‘cause it had been broken so many times—”

“Eddie,” I said.“And he has nothing to do with—”

“He has everything to do with this,” he said, warming to the topic.“He was a legend on the local circuit,” he told the little ghost.“Maybe could have even hit the big time if he hadn’t sold his soul to Tony the Bastard to get out of some gambling debts, and if he hadn’t been a little past his prime.Anyway, he had this ritual before every fight, where he had to have exactly three drinks at this certain bar and play this one song on the jukebox—”

“What song?”Hansen asked breathlessly, seemingly hanging on Billy’s every word like some kind of ghost groupie.

“It doesn’t matter what song,” I said, but nobody was listening.

“Eye of the Tiger,” Billy told him.“You know, fromRocky?It got him all pumped up before the fight, and the drinks probably helped, too, even though he wasn’t supposed to have ‘em.But they’re kinda lax on the local circuits, and anyway, even if his opponents knew, they wouldn’t have cared.I mean, better for them if he was a bit tipsy, you know?”

What do you think you’re doing?Bodil’s voice demanded in my head, suddenly enough to make me flinch.

“Oh, much better,” the little ghost said, nodding.

Nothing, I thought back, as hard as I could, which was apparently too hard because she screeched slightly and went silent.

Shit.

“But one day,” Billy said, “Eddie rocks up to get his usual on the eve of a big fight, and you know what the owner had done?He’d had the jukebox removed!”

Hansen gasped.

“Yeah,” Billy nodded.“It was old, a relic of another time, and had finally given up the ghost—so to speak.So he’d had it trucked off, and when good old Eddie heard, he freaked out.I mean, what was he gonna do?It was bad enough he was facing a real bastard in that fight, one he wasn’t sure he could beat, and now his go-to song wasn’t available, either?”

What just happened?Bodil demanded, coming back into hearing range and sounding furious.

“What happened?”the little ghost echoed.

“Well, I’ll tell you,” Billy said.

Sorry, I mentally whispered.

“The barkeep tried to play the song for Eddie on his Walkman ‘cause the guy was like a walking mountain of muscle, and he probably thought his days were numbered otherwise.But it wasn’t the same.Rituals gotta be observed exactly, you know?Thatsong had to be played onthatjukebox while Eddie drank exactly three gin and tonics inthatbar.And now the whole thing was ruined.

Who is Eddie?Bodil asked.I guessed she could hear Billy because I could, and she was in my head, but it still weirded me out.

It’s a long story, I told her.And it was gettingverylong.“Billy—”

“But you remember what happened, right?”Billy asked me.“Cause that’s the moral of the story.”