Buffy Summers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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strangetrip2018-02-09 09:07 pm
st_accato) wrote in strangetrip2018-02-09 09:07 pm
[Log] Bonesville: The Case of the Phantom Racer - Buffy, Carlos, Sam, Butters
The Scoobies can't resist a mystery in Bonesville
As soon as word around the Inn mentioned a glowy door again, Buffy was all over it. It didn’t matter if it didn’t go to Sunnydale, all that mattered was that there was a possibility, and hope, always hope. When she walked toward the door and heard the sound of waves, Buffy felt like she was home. It wasn’t until she actually walked through the door and stepped foot on the beach that she knew it wasn’t California. The coastline was different, but familiar enough that it could be on an Earth like place.
On one of her walks around the area, Buffy began to hear different people talking about a Phantom Racer and missing cars. First, she thought it was someone just trying to add spookiness to an already ‘deserted’ town but after overhearing or being told directly by the fourth person, Buffy decided to investigate it. It wasn’t vampires or werewolves, but it was something and she needed to do something. A ghost or phantom would fill that void nicely. She thought it might do the same for Sam and Carlos. So, after learning that the racer was a grand prix driver that disappeared in the fog over a cliff with his body never being discovered, He was supposedly getting revenge by going after other drivers. She didn’t know if this was an ‘urban legend’ but she, Sam and Carlos knew that there was always a grain of truth in an urban legend.
It might not turn into anything but it would be worth looking into, which was why she’d sent a message to both Sam and Carlos with the details of what she knew and to meet her at the diner on the edge of town. She told them to pass the word to anyone else that might be interested in what was going on.
Buffy was hungry for anything not chicken and luckily the diner provided that. She sat in a booth with a lovely greasy burger, fries and a milkshake enjoying the flavors and aroma. Lucky for her, she had Slayer metabolism.
Buffy's message caught Sam brooding, which was hardly surprising. Brooding took up a lot of his time now that he didn't have a girlfriend, a brother, a grandfather or much of a job. Feeding Caroline just didn't take that much time. So he was actually glad for the distraction of chasing down some kind of urban legend. Whether it was a ghost or someone using it as cover didn't matter. It was something worth doing.
He packed up his hunting kit, such as he'd managed to create between things in the hotel and Songrun, and set out into the coastal town. The fog and the surf made it ripe for spooky hauntings, which unsurprisingly made wish Dean was around. Still, Buffy was a good choice for hunting, and Butters would be helpful in figuring out what was going on. He didn't know the other guy, Carlos, very well, but if Buffy thought he could handle himself, he could.
He arrived at the diner shortly after Buffy, and in honor of Dean, ordered a burger, fries, a shake, and a slice of pie. "Hey, B. I invited a guy, Waldo Butters. Much cooler than his name. He's smart and has medical training. I figure we can't go wrong with another nerd and more field medicine."
Butters waved awkwardly and slid into the booth next to Sam. "Field forensic medicine, primarily," he clarified, and scanned down the menu. "I can do basic first aid, but if we run into trouble that requires more complicated treatment than I can do with a needle and thread or some splints, we're getting that person back to the inn and the magic healer people. That said, if we run into a dead guy I can make you an educated guess about how they died."
Carlos began to slide into the seat next to Buffy, stopping awkwardly half way to stare at Butters. "Butters?" Harry's friend was the last person he expected to see here, but he shouldn't really be surprised, should he? It had been a long time since he'd seen him, and there were Halloween oddities involved, but he was learning that the one thing about this hotel that was always true was that he shouldn't be surprised. "Been a long time since the dinosaur, man." Lots had happened since then. He gave Buffy a small smile, and nodded at Sam. He didn't know him well, other than he was a familiar face around the hotel, but it was a good starting point.
There was a little twinge of jealousy that Carlos and Butters were from the same world, but that got pushed aside. She also wondered if Carlos had dinosaurs in his world like the last place had when she'd stepped through a door and entered not a room. But, that got pushed aside, too. That would be for another conversation. "Oh good you guys know each other. That makes it nice." She smiled at Butters who reminded her of Willow when they first met. "And don't worry about needing a doctor. I don't think this is anything that will do that." Buffy made a face, "oh man I bet I just jinxed us. Sorry everyone. This is probably nothing, but ghosts usually come with their own issues." She looked at Sam because she knew that he knew, then she looked at Butters. "Hopefully we will be able to find the body, I know that sounds weird but that's always good when you're dealing with a ghost. If that's what we're really dealing with." Finally, she looked at Carlos and sure her gaze may have lingered a bit, but who could blame her? "Hopefully this will be a bit more exciting than dealing with the ghosts in the Inn."
"If not the bones, then anything the person was attached to," Sam added and tried not to think how much he sounded like the hunters he and Dean knew. "I mean anything. From a cigarette lighter to a steering wheel." He glanced at Buffy and then back at the others. "How long ago did this ghost go over the cliff?"
"If it's anything like the last time Warden Ramirez and I worked together on Halloween... well, hopefully it won't be." Butters shook his head and decided on, yeah, might as well, another burger. What he really wanted was a deep-dish, but he didn't trust this place to have decent pizza. "Though that was really him and Harry's show, I just sat in the back and kept the zombie T-rex moving." He shuddered slightly. "There better not be a necromancer running this show, I don't know if I can deal with it if there's another necromancer."
Carlos winced slightly at the use of his official title before not holding back with his order, ordering a large pizza, a burger, fries and a side of chicken wings. At the look the waitress gave him he smiled and simply said "large appetite". He had a feeling he need it by the end of this. "They'll end up the same way as the others did," he pointed out. "Less help from the T-Rex, though." He glanced at Buffy. "So what exactly are we facing here? Or are we figuring it out as we go along?" Nothing new there, if that was the case.
"There wasn't a lot of information on the racer before being a ghost. I mean most of the stuff I have is recent stuff of what they've been doing. A body was never found so there aren't bones. Well maybe there are, we just don't know where they'd be. But from all accounts, he disappeared a year and a half ago. Everything started happened about six months ago. I think the anniversary of his death." She smiled slightly at everyone. "and yeah I'm kind of making it up as I go along. Sorry, that's usually how I work." Even with Giles and Willow doing research, Buffy was always spontaneous with the actual battles.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Buffy hadn’t just heard about a disappearance this time, she’d seen it. Well to be technical, she saw the Phantom Racer and she was determined to follow him. He was so not a ghost. Buffy had seen enough ghosts – well supernatural beings not a lot of ghosts – to know when there wasn’t one. Luck was also on her side because the others had been close by when it happened. They’d followed the ‘phantom’ to an abandoned building, but he had disappeared, or at least it seemed like it. Buffy had turned on a light switch to see better and let out a yelp simultaneously when the floor disappeared out from under her.
“I’m okay!” She’d called up and took a look around her. It felt like a vampire lair but she was pretty sure it wasn’t it. “Guys, I think I found out where big bad went.” Man she wished that she’d had a flashlight with her, but luckily her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
Once everyone was down into the dark and dank cavern, they began to explore. There weren’t tracks to find on the wet stone ground, but there were only a few directions that he could have gone. Buffy mentally flipped a coin and went left when the tunnel came to a fork. Later, she would say it was Slayer Tingles but to be honest, she’d just got lucky when she heard ‘the phantom’ laughing and a male voice yell for help..
Everyone’s pace picked up but Buffy’s Slayer speed got her there faster than the others, but not by much. “Hey!” She yelled at the guy that was bricking up his victim in a small crawl space.
The Phantom turned in surprise to hear another voice. He had been so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t heard the others approach until it was too late. He used the voice modulator to make his voice ‘spookier and deeper’. “You’ve caused trouble for the last time!”
Buffy just rolled her eyes at that. “Seriously?” Instead of throwing the intended punch, Buffy dropped and rolled as she picked up a sledge hammer at the same time. Once standing, she put all of her strength into the swing and knocked down enough of the bricks that hadn’t had time to set. Hopefully, it would be enough to get the poor guy loose.
At the instant of the tumbling bricks, the cavern got ice cold and Buffy’s breath came out in steam. “Oh crap, that can’t be good.” That was always the first sign of a ghost. Always. Accompanying the bricks that fell were a couple of bones. It seemed that Buffy had disturbed a grave and not just one in the making.
The Phantom used Buffy’s momentarily distraction to try to get away. He knew exactly whose bones they were and he wasn’t about to stick around to die. He only got a few steps before , Buffy noticed and yelled out, “Carlos, stop him!”
Carlos was moving almost before Buffy had called out to him. Seriously? He could punch him out, he could shoot him, but there was a little part of Carlos that wanted to show off. His magic wasn't as flashy as Harry's was, he tended to describe it as a lot more precise. He murmured a low word in Latin, making a gesture and waited. At first it seemed that nothing was happening, but it gradually became more obvious that the Phantom wasn't getting anywhere. The ground in front of him had turned to sand, the moisture in it being drawn out by Carlos' spell, making it hard for him to catch his footing. Carlos gave Buffy a grin. "That do?" he asked.
Under different circumstances, Sam might've rolled his eyes at using a sand-trap when a punch to the head would've been more decisive. At the moment, he was too busy being wreathed by the grave-chill fingers of an actual ghost. Its spectral hands wrapped (literally) around Sam's throat and stroked menacingly, stealing his breath. His gaze snagged on the tumble-down pile of bricks and bones, and Sam responded by pulling a lighter from his pocket and flicking it with equal menace. "Get the bones," he half-croaked in Butters' general direction.
"Bones! Right!" Butters half-yelped. He was not, in fact, entirely over the post-traumatic stress from having the ghost of a necromancer evict him from his own body and leave him standing there in nothing but his soul. He hadn't figured he was, but it was good to know. Where 'good' meant 'existentially terrifying.' But he scrambled across the floor and collected bones anyway, because the thing about being Harry Dresden's friend was that you learned in a hurry that existential terror did not actually have to stop you from doing what you needed to do.
While Buffy was a more immediate punch them type of person, she did admire Carlos' spell and the results. Unfortunately, her decision of what action to take was torn between interrogating the bad guy and helping Sam with the ghost. Trusting that he'd been in worse situations and if he needed more than Butter's help he'd ask for it, Buffy turned her attention to The Phantom and without preamble went up to the stuck man and punched him in the jaw. "That was for trying to wall that guy in and this." Buffy hit him in the stomach, "is for clearly know what's going on and trying to leave."
"I don' t know what you mean." The Phantom tried with bravado but his gaze kept going over to the bones and ghost, ignoring Carlos, Buffy and the man who would have been his latest victim. He had to get out of there before Doug Riven realized his killer was standing nearby.
"Dude, we saw you." Buffy scowled then pointed toward Carlos, "maybe he can convince you to talk." She flashed Carlos a grin, "how's this quicksand thingy work? Like normal?"
It didn't quite work like quicksand did, but hey, this guy didn't need to know that. He flashed a grin back at Buffy. "Yeah, pretty much." He began taking more moisture out of the area under The Phantom, letting him sink ever so slightly lower. He wasn't sure how much he'd have to play with, but it should be enough to scare the crap out of the guy.
The ghost had more corporeality than the usual run of spirit, fortunately, so Sam could get his hand around the ghost's to pry one away from his throat. "Lighter," he called to Butters and tossed it toward him. Then he turned his attention to the ghost again, gripping the other 'wrist'. "I'm not the one you want." The ghost seemed to be considering it, since the pressure started to release. "I'm not worth getting torched. Show us who did this and we'll help."
Sam's words were getting through to the ghost. His gaze moved from Sam over to Butters where he stood over his body. For an instant, he seemed to consider moving toward him but before that thought could materialize further, a sound caught his ears and he focused in on his true hatred. His killer. The man he had trusted in life. The ghost pointed at the man that was slowly sinking into the earth, releasing Sam completely.
"He'll go down for it," Butters promised. "I don't know how it works for you, if knowing that's enough to get you where you need to go or if you need a nudge--" He waved the lighter, unlit, vaguely at the collected bones, which he did not actually want to burn if he didn't have to, because, y'know, evidence. "But we've gotten this far, and we'll see it the rest of the way. You'll have your justice." He squinted owlishly around the rest of the building. "I mean, dude dressed up as a ghost to try to scare people away from the car theft ring he was running out of the abandoned building where he killed a guy, prosecutors love that level of criminal masterminding."
Buffy watched as panic started to rise in the man's eyes as the ground slowly moved up his body. It wasn't until she realized the air around her had got chillier that she turned her head to see the ghost point at him. That was the reason for the fear. Buffy could live with that. She caught sight of the other man that had been the victim, he seemed to be mentally recovering from almost being walled in so she gave him focus. "Hey, go call the cops. We'll take care of this guy." She glanced over at the ghost with a chipper smile and then back to the victim. "He'll definitely not get away before they get here."
Her attention returned to the man in the ground when the other man left and then over to Carlos. "What do you think? I'm all for letting justice happen, both with the cops...." She turned back again for a quick look at the ghost, "and that guy getting a good hit in. Uh, if he can hit. Or at least put the fear in him."
Butters was definitely more confident that the last time Carlos had seen him back in Chicago, though to be fair whenever he saw the man, it involved trying to stop the end of the world, doing the heroic thing and being caught in Harry Dresden's wake. But it was good to know that he could trust him. Carlos folded his arm as he looked at the guy, then at the ghost. "Justice is justice," he pointed out. "If he manages to get a hit in before we call the cops, so be it." It wouldn't be the way he'd deal with it, calling the cops, but he was used to delivering his own form of wizardly justice. "I can look the other way."
The ghost looked to Sam, as much as a ghost could look. It seemed to beseech him, as though he were the last arbiter, and Butters would put the lighter down if Sam told him to. Or maybe Sam imagined that. But either way, he shrugged the best he could while massaging his throat (why things always tried to choke him was a mystery for another day). "I can't let you kill him, even if he deserves it," he said, voice a little hoarse still. "But I'm not going to stop you from giving him a taste of his own medicine. Just promise you're going to move on when you're done."
It seemed the spirit debated Sam's words before he gave a quick nod of agreement. He would move on after his killer got justice. Between the nod and the next breath, the ghost moved from Sam and Butters to closer to Buffy and Carlos. Buffy felt the air around them get icy cold, her breath mostly mist, but it wasn't directed at them, it was directed at the killer. There was a slash of an inhuman smile across his features as it bent down to whisper something in the man's ear. Buffy watched as terror filled the other's man's face but she didn't move to stop it, it was deserved.
The ghost turned in satisfaction to look at Sam and as sirens sounded in the distance, it faded from existence.
Butters nearly deflated with relief as the ghost vanished, and tossed Sam his lighter back. "Okay," he said, and straightened up again, looking over to Carlos. "Can you dig the guy out real fast, or are we telling the cops something about the unstable foundations in these old buildings, especially when there's a gas leak?" Because it was always a gas leak. People would believe just about anything if you told them it was a gas leak.
Carlos looked at the guy, at where he was buried in the ground. "Tempting as it is to leave him there, I can get him out as fast as we need to." Though he had to laugh. Gas leak. Seriously. How many times had he had to use that? "Up to you guys."
As much as gas leak was always a good fall back, Buffy thought it would probably be better if they got the bad guy out of the ‘quicksand’ at least when the cops came. That is if they were anything like Sunnydale’s finest. “Gas leak is good, but we should probably get him out.” She grinned at Carlos, “feel free to leave his feet stuck and they have to really, really pull him out.” It hadn’t taken long to get the “Phantom” free which was a good thing as they could hear the police sirens approaching.
True to Buffy’s wishes, it had taken the police a good ten minutes to get him out of the ‘cracked foundation’ and into handcuffs. It was another ten minutes to walk everyone out into the night. Her hand came up to shield her eyes from the TV camera lights.
“Ben Rogers? Wasn’t he one of the victims?” The first reporter asked incredulously.
“He faked his own disappearance to steal the cars and sell them. He covered up his scheme by using the Legend of the Phantom Racer.” Buffy made a face at the others, when one of the cops took the question like he’d been the one to capture him and figure out what was going on. It was definitely just like Sunnydale’s finest.
“He could have made a fortune.”
“And I would have succeeded, too if it hadn’t been for those nosy people.” Rogers jerked his chin in Buffy, Carlos, Sam and Butters direction.
Buffy just grinned, “you’re welcome.” Before she could add more, bones were brought out in a clear forensic box and the reporters tripped over each other to ask questions and get a close up of the bones. She was sure that the Legend of the Phantom Racer would finally be put to rest and he would get his justice.
As soon as word around the Inn mentioned a glowy door again, Buffy was all over it. It didn’t matter if it didn’t go to Sunnydale, all that mattered was that there was a possibility, and hope, always hope. When she walked toward the door and heard the sound of waves, Buffy felt like she was home. It wasn’t until she actually walked through the door and stepped foot on the beach that she knew it wasn’t California. The coastline was different, but familiar enough that it could be on an Earth like place.
On one of her walks around the area, Buffy began to hear different people talking about a Phantom Racer and missing cars. First, she thought it was someone just trying to add spookiness to an already ‘deserted’ town but after overhearing or being told directly by the fourth person, Buffy decided to investigate it. It wasn’t vampires or werewolves, but it was something and she needed to do something. A ghost or phantom would fill that void nicely. She thought it might do the same for Sam and Carlos. So, after learning that the racer was a grand prix driver that disappeared in the fog over a cliff with his body never being discovered, He was supposedly getting revenge by going after other drivers. She didn’t know if this was an ‘urban legend’ but she, Sam and Carlos knew that there was always a grain of truth in an urban legend.
It might not turn into anything but it would be worth looking into, which was why she’d sent a message to both Sam and Carlos with the details of what she knew and to meet her at the diner on the edge of town. She told them to pass the word to anyone else that might be interested in what was going on.
Buffy was hungry for anything not chicken and luckily the diner provided that. She sat in a booth with a lovely greasy burger, fries and a milkshake enjoying the flavors and aroma. Lucky for her, she had Slayer metabolism.
Buffy's message caught Sam brooding, which was hardly surprising. Brooding took up a lot of his time now that he didn't have a girlfriend, a brother, a grandfather or much of a job. Feeding Caroline just didn't take that much time. So he was actually glad for the distraction of chasing down some kind of urban legend. Whether it was a ghost or someone using it as cover didn't matter. It was something worth doing.
He packed up his hunting kit, such as he'd managed to create between things in the hotel and Songrun, and set out into the coastal town. The fog and the surf made it ripe for spooky hauntings, which unsurprisingly made wish Dean was around. Still, Buffy was a good choice for hunting, and Butters would be helpful in figuring out what was going on. He didn't know the other guy, Carlos, very well, but if Buffy thought he could handle himself, he could.
He arrived at the diner shortly after Buffy, and in honor of Dean, ordered a burger, fries, a shake, and a slice of pie. "Hey, B. I invited a guy, Waldo Butters. Much cooler than his name. He's smart and has medical training. I figure we can't go wrong with another nerd and more field medicine."
Butters waved awkwardly and slid into the booth next to Sam. "Field forensic medicine, primarily," he clarified, and scanned down the menu. "I can do basic first aid, but if we run into trouble that requires more complicated treatment than I can do with a needle and thread or some splints, we're getting that person back to the inn and the magic healer people. That said, if we run into a dead guy I can make you an educated guess about how they died."
Carlos began to slide into the seat next to Buffy, stopping awkwardly half way to stare at Butters. "Butters?" Harry's friend was the last person he expected to see here, but he shouldn't really be surprised, should he? It had been a long time since he'd seen him, and there were Halloween oddities involved, but he was learning that the one thing about this hotel that was always true was that he shouldn't be surprised. "Been a long time since the dinosaur, man." Lots had happened since then. He gave Buffy a small smile, and nodded at Sam. He didn't know him well, other than he was a familiar face around the hotel, but it was a good starting point.
There was a little twinge of jealousy that Carlos and Butters were from the same world, but that got pushed aside. She also wondered if Carlos had dinosaurs in his world like the last place had when she'd stepped through a door and entered not a room. But, that got pushed aside, too. That would be for another conversation. "Oh good you guys know each other. That makes it nice." She smiled at Butters who reminded her of Willow when they first met. "And don't worry about needing a doctor. I don't think this is anything that will do that." Buffy made a face, "oh man I bet I just jinxed us. Sorry everyone. This is probably nothing, but ghosts usually come with their own issues." She looked at Sam because she knew that he knew, then she looked at Butters. "Hopefully we will be able to find the body, I know that sounds weird but that's always good when you're dealing with a ghost. If that's what we're really dealing with." Finally, she looked at Carlos and sure her gaze may have lingered a bit, but who could blame her? "Hopefully this will be a bit more exciting than dealing with the ghosts in the Inn."
"If not the bones, then anything the person was attached to," Sam added and tried not to think how much he sounded like the hunters he and Dean knew. "I mean anything. From a cigarette lighter to a steering wheel." He glanced at Buffy and then back at the others. "How long ago did this ghost go over the cliff?"
"If it's anything like the last time Warden Ramirez and I worked together on Halloween... well, hopefully it won't be." Butters shook his head and decided on, yeah, might as well, another burger. What he really wanted was a deep-dish, but he didn't trust this place to have decent pizza. "Though that was really him and Harry's show, I just sat in the back and kept the zombie T-rex moving." He shuddered slightly. "There better not be a necromancer running this show, I don't know if I can deal with it if there's another necromancer."
Carlos winced slightly at the use of his official title before not holding back with his order, ordering a large pizza, a burger, fries and a side of chicken wings. At the look the waitress gave him he smiled and simply said "large appetite". He had a feeling he need it by the end of this. "They'll end up the same way as the others did," he pointed out. "Less help from the T-Rex, though." He glanced at Buffy. "So what exactly are we facing here? Or are we figuring it out as we go along?" Nothing new there, if that was the case.
"There wasn't a lot of information on the racer before being a ghost. I mean most of the stuff I have is recent stuff of what they've been doing. A body was never found so there aren't bones. Well maybe there are, we just don't know where they'd be. But from all accounts, he disappeared a year and a half ago. Everything started happened about six months ago. I think the anniversary of his death." She smiled slightly at everyone. "and yeah I'm kind of making it up as I go along. Sorry, that's usually how I work." Even with Giles and Willow doing research, Buffy was always spontaneous with the actual battles.
~*~ ~*~ ~*~
Buffy hadn’t just heard about a disappearance this time, she’d seen it. Well to be technical, she saw the Phantom Racer and she was determined to follow him. He was so not a ghost. Buffy had seen enough ghosts – well supernatural beings not a lot of ghosts – to know when there wasn’t one. Luck was also on her side because the others had been close by when it happened. They’d followed the ‘phantom’ to an abandoned building, but he had disappeared, or at least it seemed like it. Buffy had turned on a light switch to see better and let out a yelp simultaneously when the floor disappeared out from under her.
“I’m okay!” She’d called up and took a look around her. It felt like a vampire lair but she was pretty sure it wasn’t it. “Guys, I think I found out where big bad went.” Man she wished that she’d had a flashlight with her, but luckily her eyes adjusted to the gloom.
Once everyone was down into the dark and dank cavern, they began to explore. There weren’t tracks to find on the wet stone ground, but there were only a few directions that he could have gone. Buffy mentally flipped a coin and went left when the tunnel came to a fork. Later, she would say it was Slayer Tingles but to be honest, she’d just got lucky when she heard ‘the phantom’ laughing and a male voice yell for help..
Everyone’s pace picked up but Buffy’s Slayer speed got her there faster than the others, but not by much. “Hey!” She yelled at the guy that was bricking up his victim in a small crawl space.
The Phantom turned in surprise to hear another voice. He had been so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t heard the others approach until it was too late. He used the voice modulator to make his voice ‘spookier and deeper’. “You’ve caused trouble for the last time!”
Buffy just rolled her eyes at that. “Seriously?” Instead of throwing the intended punch, Buffy dropped and rolled as she picked up a sledge hammer at the same time. Once standing, she put all of her strength into the swing and knocked down enough of the bricks that hadn’t had time to set. Hopefully, it would be enough to get the poor guy loose.
At the instant of the tumbling bricks, the cavern got ice cold and Buffy’s breath came out in steam. “Oh crap, that can’t be good.” That was always the first sign of a ghost. Always. Accompanying the bricks that fell were a couple of bones. It seemed that Buffy had disturbed a grave and not just one in the making.
The Phantom used Buffy’s momentarily distraction to try to get away. He knew exactly whose bones they were and he wasn’t about to stick around to die. He only got a few steps before , Buffy noticed and yelled out, “Carlos, stop him!”
Carlos was moving almost before Buffy had called out to him. Seriously? He could punch him out, he could shoot him, but there was a little part of Carlos that wanted to show off. His magic wasn't as flashy as Harry's was, he tended to describe it as a lot more precise. He murmured a low word in Latin, making a gesture and waited. At first it seemed that nothing was happening, but it gradually became more obvious that the Phantom wasn't getting anywhere. The ground in front of him had turned to sand, the moisture in it being drawn out by Carlos' spell, making it hard for him to catch his footing. Carlos gave Buffy a grin. "That do?" he asked.
Under different circumstances, Sam might've rolled his eyes at using a sand-trap when a punch to the head would've been more decisive. At the moment, he was too busy being wreathed by the grave-chill fingers of an actual ghost. Its spectral hands wrapped (literally) around Sam's throat and stroked menacingly, stealing his breath. His gaze snagged on the tumble-down pile of bricks and bones, and Sam responded by pulling a lighter from his pocket and flicking it with equal menace. "Get the bones," he half-croaked in Butters' general direction.
"Bones! Right!" Butters half-yelped. He was not, in fact, entirely over the post-traumatic stress from having the ghost of a necromancer evict him from his own body and leave him standing there in nothing but his soul. He hadn't figured he was, but it was good to know. Where 'good' meant 'existentially terrifying.' But he scrambled across the floor and collected bones anyway, because the thing about being Harry Dresden's friend was that you learned in a hurry that existential terror did not actually have to stop you from doing what you needed to do.
While Buffy was a more immediate punch them type of person, she did admire Carlos' spell and the results. Unfortunately, her decision of what action to take was torn between interrogating the bad guy and helping Sam with the ghost. Trusting that he'd been in worse situations and if he needed more than Butter's help he'd ask for it, Buffy turned her attention to The Phantom and without preamble went up to the stuck man and punched him in the jaw. "That was for trying to wall that guy in and this." Buffy hit him in the stomach, "is for clearly know what's going on and trying to leave."
"I don' t know what you mean." The Phantom tried with bravado but his gaze kept going over to the bones and ghost, ignoring Carlos, Buffy and the man who would have been his latest victim. He had to get out of there before Doug Riven realized his killer was standing nearby.
"Dude, we saw you." Buffy scowled then pointed toward Carlos, "maybe he can convince you to talk." She flashed Carlos a grin, "how's this quicksand thingy work? Like normal?"
It didn't quite work like quicksand did, but hey, this guy didn't need to know that. He flashed a grin back at Buffy. "Yeah, pretty much." He began taking more moisture out of the area under The Phantom, letting him sink ever so slightly lower. He wasn't sure how much he'd have to play with, but it should be enough to scare the crap out of the guy.
The ghost had more corporeality than the usual run of spirit, fortunately, so Sam could get his hand around the ghost's to pry one away from his throat. "Lighter," he called to Butters and tossed it toward him. Then he turned his attention to the ghost again, gripping the other 'wrist'. "I'm not the one you want." The ghost seemed to be considering it, since the pressure started to release. "I'm not worth getting torched. Show us who did this and we'll help."
Sam's words were getting through to the ghost. His gaze moved from Sam over to Butters where he stood over his body. For an instant, he seemed to consider moving toward him but before that thought could materialize further, a sound caught his ears and he focused in on his true hatred. His killer. The man he had trusted in life. The ghost pointed at the man that was slowly sinking into the earth, releasing Sam completely.
"He'll go down for it," Butters promised. "I don't know how it works for you, if knowing that's enough to get you where you need to go or if you need a nudge--" He waved the lighter, unlit, vaguely at the collected bones, which he did not actually want to burn if he didn't have to, because, y'know, evidence. "But we've gotten this far, and we'll see it the rest of the way. You'll have your justice." He squinted owlishly around the rest of the building. "I mean, dude dressed up as a ghost to try to scare people away from the car theft ring he was running out of the abandoned building where he killed a guy, prosecutors love that level of criminal masterminding."
Buffy watched as panic started to rise in the man's eyes as the ground slowly moved up his body. It wasn't until she realized the air around her had got chillier that she turned her head to see the ghost point at him. That was the reason for the fear. Buffy could live with that. She caught sight of the other man that had been the victim, he seemed to be mentally recovering from almost being walled in so she gave him focus. "Hey, go call the cops. We'll take care of this guy." She glanced over at the ghost with a chipper smile and then back to the victim. "He'll definitely not get away before they get here."
Her attention returned to the man in the ground when the other man left and then over to Carlos. "What do you think? I'm all for letting justice happen, both with the cops...." She turned back again for a quick look at the ghost, "and that guy getting a good hit in. Uh, if he can hit. Or at least put the fear in him."
Butters was definitely more confident that the last time Carlos had seen him back in Chicago, though to be fair whenever he saw the man, it involved trying to stop the end of the world, doing the heroic thing and being caught in Harry Dresden's wake. But it was good to know that he could trust him. Carlos folded his arm as he looked at the guy, then at the ghost. "Justice is justice," he pointed out. "If he manages to get a hit in before we call the cops, so be it." It wouldn't be the way he'd deal with it, calling the cops, but he was used to delivering his own form of wizardly justice. "I can look the other way."
The ghost looked to Sam, as much as a ghost could look. It seemed to beseech him, as though he were the last arbiter, and Butters would put the lighter down if Sam told him to. Or maybe Sam imagined that. But either way, he shrugged the best he could while massaging his throat (why things always tried to choke him was a mystery for another day). "I can't let you kill him, even if he deserves it," he said, voice a little hoarse still. "But I'm not going to stop you from giving him a taste of his own medicine. Just promise you're going to move on when you're done."
It seemed the spirit debated Sam's words before he gave a quick nod of agreement. He would move on after his killer got justice. Between the nod and the next breath, the ghost moved from Sam and Butters to closer to Buffy and Carlos. Buffy felt the air around them get icy cold, her breath mostly mist, but it wasn't directed at them, it was directed at the killer. There was a slash of an inhuman smile across his features as it bent down to whisper something in the man's ear. Buffy watched as terror filled the other's man's face but she didn't move to stop it, it was deserved.
The ghost turned in satisfaction to look at Sam and as sirens sounded in the distance, it faded from existence.
Butters nearly deflated with relief as the ghost vanished, and tossed Sam his lighter back. "Okay," he said, and straightened up again, looking over to Carlos. "Can you dig the guy out real fast, or are we telling the cops something about the unstable foundations in these old buildings, especially when there's a gas leak?" Because it was always a gas leak. People would believe just about anything if you told them it was a gas leak.
Carlos looked at the guy, at where he was buried in the ground. "Tempting as it is to leave him there, I can get him out as fast as we need to." Though he had to laugh. Gas leak. Seriously. How many times had he had to use that? "Up to you guys."
As much as gas leak was always a good fall back, Buffy thought it would probably be better if they got the bad guy out of the ‘quicksand’ at least when the cops came. That is if they were anything like Sunnydale’s finest. “Gas leak is good, but we should probably get him out.” She grinned at Carlos, “feel free to leave his feet stuck and they have to really, really pull him out.” It hadn’t taken long to get the “Phantom” free which was a good thing as they could hear the police sirens approaching.
True to Buffy’s wishes, it had taken the police a good ten minutes to get him out of the ‘cracked foundation’ and into handcuffs. It was another ten minutes to walk everyone out into the night. Her hand came up to shield her eyes from the TV camera lights.
“Ben Rogers? Wasn’t he one of the victims?” The first reporter asked incredulously.
“He faked his own disappearance to steal the cars and sell them. He covered up his scheme by using the Legend of the Phantom Racer.” Buffy made a face at the others, when one of the cops took the question like he’d been the one to capture him and figure out what was going on. It was definitely just like Sunnydale’s finest.
“He could have made a fortune.”
“And I would have succeeded, too if it hadn’t been for those nosy people.” Rogers jerked his chin in Buffy, Carlos, Sam and Butters direction.
Buffy just grinned, “you’re welcome.” Before she could add more, bones were brought out in a clear forensic box and the reporters tripped over each other to ask questions and get a close up of the bones. She was sure that the Legend of the Phantom Racer would finally be put to rest and he would get his justice.