The head glanced around pleasantly, unaware of its airy isolation. It gazed admiringly down the length of the lean body beneath it. "Rather a nice job," it said proudly. "No foggy spots. Everything very flesh-and-bloody looking, I think." "Bloody is right!" Marc croaked. "It all but drips with gore. For heaven sake complement that head with a neck before I scream." George flushed prettily, closed his eyes and obliged. The missing neck sprang cooperatively into place. To Marc the spectacle was almost as repulsive as the disconnected head. "Don't ever do that again," he breathed. "I'd never live through it." "I'll try to be more careful in the future," George agreed. Marc turned a quizzical eye on the ghost. He was being far too agreeable ... almost sickeningly so. In his face there was a sort of determined pleasantness that looked ill at ease in such unfamiliar surroundings. A suspicion stirred vaguely in the back of Marc's mind. "If you think you're going to kill me with kindness, you back-stabber, just forget it. It won't work." "How can you think such things?" George asked woundedly. "It just came to me, all of a sudden, looking at your smirking face." "You do me a terrible injustice," George replied. "You cut me to the quick." "Believe me," Marc said relentlessly, "I'd make it deeper if I could." "You're going to be ashamed you've spoken to me like this," George said. "I've come here to do you a favor." "Then do me one. Go away. I've enough trouble as it is." "Trouble?" George asked with sudden interest. "What kind of trouble?" "Everything serious," Marc said. "Especially now that you're here." George smiled thoughtfully. "Conditions seem about perfect for my mission," he murmured. "Mission?" Marc looked on the spirit with open consternation. "It's the High Council," George explained. "The big brass in the spirit world. They're making me do penance for the way I behaved the last time I was here." A shame-faced expression swept over his features. "They threw the book at me. They say I've set Spirit-Mortal relations back five hundred years and knocked their good neighbor policy into a cocked hat. Anyway, the upshot of the thing is that they've ordered me back here to haunt you until I've done you a good turn to make up for last time. And if I don't...." Here his voice broke with emotion and he shuddered. "They've only given me thirty-six hours to make good." He waved an unhappy hand at his materialized body. "And I can't stay like this too long, either. They only gave me an emergency issue of ectoplasm, so I have to use it sparingly." He looked at Marc pleadingly. "Though the idea thoroughly repels me, you've just got to let me do something nice for you. What can I do?" "Off hand," Marc said unpleasantly, "I can think of any number of things for you to do. Without exception they are fatal and extremely messy." "You don't like me very well, do you?"