Chapter 18 Ghosts Under Bathhouse Row
Saturday night, December 21, 2026**
The bloodstone wakes me at 2:13 am. with a tug so hard it feels like someone hooked a finger through my ribcage and pulled.
**Dacia (urgent, almost excited):**
*Down. Now. Beneath the old bathhouses.
Your grandmother's friends are restless.*
I'm already lacing my light-pink Vans before I'm fully awake.
I text the group chat on silent:
me:
meet me central ave & fountain st
bring fire and bad decisions
crown business
Remy is waiting on his bike before I even reach the street.
Seras drops from the shadows like she never sleeps.
Noah and Brittany are "on a date" (translation: making out in his truck) and roll up five minutes later.
We park two blocks from Bathhouse Row and walk the rest.
The air under the city smells different tonight: sulfur, old gin, and gunpowder.
**Remy (nose wrinkling):**
"Smells like a speakeasy exploded."
**Celeste (quiet):**
"That's exactly what happened."
We slip through a service gate that definitely should be locked.
The bloodstone guides me like a compass: down rusted stairs, past condemned signs, into tunnels the tourists never see.
The walls down here are tiled in 1920s art-deco patterns, cracked and dripping mineral water.
Old brass pipes hiss overhead.
Then the ghosts appear.
Not wispy Hollywood ghosts.
These are sharp: pinstripe suits, fedoras, tommy guns made of condensed cigar smoke and moonlight.
The tallest one tips his hat.
Italian-American, Chicago accent thick as tiramisu.
**Ghost (grinning around an unlit cigar):**
"Celeste Valentina Morau.
You grew up gorgeous, kid.
Your grandma said you would."
My jaw drops.
**Celeste:**
"You knew Elowene?"
**Ghost (laughing):**
"Knew her? Dollface ran poker night in the basement of the Ohio Club every Thursday in '27.
Mae Capone introduced us.
Name's Frankie Yale.
Formerly breathing, currently permanent resident."
Another ghost (this one shorter, scar across his cheek) steps forward.
**Frankie:**
"We've been keeping an eye on the tunnels since Prohibition.
Old agreements.
Morau blood walks these thermal veins, we don't let nobody mess with it."
Seras's flames flicker nervously.
**Seras:**
"So… ghost gangsters are real?"
**Frankie (winking):**
"Only the classy ones."
The temperature drops twenty degrees.
Black-glass cracks spiderweb across the far wall.
A Severed Circle Revenant steps through, eight feet tall, seven slashes glowing like molten hate.
Frankie's cigar drops ash that never hits the ground.
**Frankie (voice suddenly ice):**
"They weren't supposed to wake up for another century.
Looks like playtime's over."
Every ghost racks the slide on weapons that shouldn't exist anymore.
**Frankie (to me):**
"Listen close, Morau kid.
Your grandma made a deal with Big Al himself:
'If anything older than the country ever comes for the crown heir in these tunnels, the boys handle it.'
Tonight we collect."
The Revenant lunges.
What follows is the weirdest fight of my life.
Tommy guns made of moonlight shred black-glass armor.
My blood-lightning ricochets off brass knuckles the size of hubcaps.
Seras's fire turns green when it mixes with ghost gin.
Remy shifts mid-air and tackles the Revenant with spectral mobsters riding his back like it's a 1920s gangster pile-on.
Frankie floats beside me, directing traffic like a conductor.
**Frankie:**
"Left flank, sweetheart! Give it the Chicago typewriter!"
I slam my katana into the Revenant's core at the exact second six ghostly tommy guns unload.
The Revenant screams in a language that hurts to hear and shatters into a thousand shards that dissolve before they hit the water.
Silence.
Frankie tips his hat again.
**Frankie:**
"Debt paid for now.
But there's six more of those bastards coming.
When you need us, bleed a drop in any hot-spring pipe and call 'Ohio Club.'
We'll come running."
He and the boys fade into cigar smoke and jazz.
The bloodstone pulses once (warm, almost grateful).
**Dacia (soft, fond):**
*Elowene always did keep the best company.*
We climb back to street level at 4:07 a.m., soaked, singed, and grinning like idiots.
Remy slings an arm around my shoulders.
**Remy:**
"So… your grandma was besties with Al Capone's wife?"
**Celeste (laughing so hard I cry):**
"Apparently the 1920s were wild."
Sera high-fives the air where Frankie was.
**Seras:**
"I officially love this town."
Under Bathhouse Row, the ghosts light cigars that will never burn down and toast to the Morau kid who finally came home.
Six Revenants left.
Thirty-eight treasures left.
And now the deadliest city in 1920s America has my back.
Hot Springs just got a lot harder to kill me in.
Treasure #10 & The Big Man Himself**
Saturday, December 21, 2025 Winter Solstice
The cedar compass is burning a hole in my pocket, pointing straight down into the oldest part of the thermal caves beneath Central Avenue.
Remy, Seras, and I are moving fast, no boards, just quiet boots and held breath, following the tenth petal that's been glowing since sunrise.
We're two hundred yards under Bathhouse Row when the tunnel opens into a cavern I've never seen on any map.
Brass pipes overhead drip mineral water like slow rain.
1920s jazz drifts through the steam (faint, scratchy, real).
And there he is.
Al Capone himself, leaning against a crate of pre-Prohibition whiskey, suit pristine, scars glowing faintly silver, cigar smoke curling into the shape of a tommy gun before it vanishes.
He looks exactly like every photo I've ever seen, except his eyes are too sharp, too alive.
**Al (voice smooth Chicago gravel):**
"Celeste Valentina Morau.
Elowene said you'd show up eventually.
Took you long enough, kid."
I freeze.
Remy's hand finds the hellebore dagger.
Seras's flames turn ghost-green.
**Al (raising both hands, grinning):**
"Relax. I'm on the clock for your grandma.
She still owes me a poker debt from '29."
He gestures to the far wall.
A small alcove glows with the same crimson light as my bloodstone.
Inside: a fist-sized ruby carved into a wolf's head, eyes made of condensed geothermal fire.
Treasure #10: **The Heart of the Thermal Wolf**.
The compass petal flares and dies, satisfied.
But before I can step forward, my phone buzzes like a hornet.
**Noah:**
Yo we lost track of time at the quarry
Where are you guys
kinda dark
**Brittany:**
Celeste, please don't be mad
We were filming night lines and the car battery died
We're stuck out here
I curse under my breath and fire back:
**me:**
sit TIGHT
do NOT move
Too dangerous tonight
on our way
Al watches me, amused.
**Al:**
"Friends in trouble?"
**Celeste (already moving):**
"Always."
**Al (calling after us):**
"Tell the skater kids the Ohio Club's got their backs.
And tell your invisible babysitter to quit hiding in my steam.
I can smell Shambhala from a mile away."
Remy and Seras both stop dead.
Somewhere in the haze above us, the pressure shifts, like the cavern itself just exhaled.
Rowan Vale doesn't speak, doesn't reveal himself, but I feel the weight of ancient eyes pretending they weren't caught.
Al tips his fedora.
**Al:**
"Grab the wolf heart, kid.
Clock's ticking.
The Circle's already sniffing around that quarry."
I snatch the ruby wolf.
The second it touches my skin, the crown flares behind my eyes:
**Crown HUD:**
```
Tenth Piece Acquired: Heart of the Thermal Wolf
Crown Integrity: 10 / 47
New Passive: "Hellfire Veins" – geothermal energy within 500 m can be converted to blood-lightning fuel
```
We run.
Up rusted ladders, through service tunnels, out into the freezing December night.
Al's voice follows us like jazz on the wind.
**Al:**
"Tell Elowene the Big Man still collects, sweetheart!"
We pile into Remy's truck and peel out toward the quarry, tires screaming.
Ten pieces down.
Thirty-seven to go.
And somewhere behind us, invisible in the steam, Elder Rowan Vale is realizing the ghosts of Hot Springs answer to a sixteen-year-old girl in pink Vans.
Good.
Let him take notes.
The storm's got mobster backup now.