01_-_The_Alchemyst

the dead—particularly the old dead—it was that they were extraordinarily
rude, popping up at the most inopportune and inappropriate moments. The
dead particularly liked bathrooms—it was a perfect location for them: quiet
and still, with lots of reflective surfaces. Perenelle recalled a time she’d
been brushing her teeth when the ghost of an American president had
appeared in the mirror in front of her. She’d almost swallowed the
toothbrush.
Perenelle had quickly come to understand that ghosts could not see
certain colors—blues and greens and some tints of yellow—and so she
deliberately encouraged those colors into her aura, carefully creating a shield
that rendered her invisible in the particular Shadowrealm where the shades
of the dead gathered.
Opening her eyes wide, Perenelle concentrated on her own aura. Her
natural aura was a pale ice white, which acted like a beacon for the dead,
drawing them to her. But over it, like layers of paint, she had created auras of
bright blue, emerald green, and primrose yellow. Now, one by one, Perenelle
shut off the colors—yellow first, then green, then the final blue defense.
The ghosts came then, drawn to her ice white aura like moths to a flame.
They flickered into existence around her: men, women and children, wearing
clothes from across the decades. Perenelle moved her green eyes over the
glistening images, not entirely sure what she was looking for. She dismissed
women and girls in the flowing skirts of the eighteenth century and men in the
boots and gun belts of the nineteenth and concentrated on those ghosts
wearing the clothing of the twentieth century. She finally picked out an
elderly man wearing a modern-looking security guard’s uniform. Gently
easing the other shades aside, she called the figure closer.
Perenelle understood that people—particularly in modern, sophisticated
societies—were frightened of ghosts. But she knew that there was no reason
to fear them: a ghost was nothing more than the remnants of a person’s aura
that remained attached to a particular place.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” The shade’s voice was strong, with a touch of
the East Coast in it: Boston perhaps. Standing tall and straight, like an old
soldier, the ghost looked about sixty, though he could have been older.