12 NO SOLIDS ALLOWED

CHAPTER 12 NO SOLIDS ALLOWED I'm Kaz. Who are you?" "Howard," the other ghost replied. He looked older than Mom and Pops, but not as old as Grandmom and Grandpop. "I want to show you how much light comes through those squares in the ceiling," Wendy told the tour group. "Does anyone mind if I turn out the lights? No one here is afraid of ghosts?" "WOOOOOOO!" several college students said from the back of the group. Howard rolled his eyes. Wendy went around a corner and flipped a switch. The light went out, but the tunnel was still

as light as it was before Wendy flipped the switch. "Huh. Look at that." The solid people looked around in amazement. Wendy turned the light back on, then launched into another story about old Seattle. How many stories does she have, anyway? Kaz wondered.

"Where'd you come from, Kaz?" Howard asked. "I don't think I've seen you down here before." "I came with her." Kaz pointed to Claire, who nodded slightly at Howard. "You came with a solid girl," Howard said. "Can she see us?" "Yes," Kaz replied. Howard peered at Claire with suspicion. "Is she a ghost hunter?" "More like a ghost helper," Kaz said. "Her name's Claire. She's my friend." Kaz gave Howard a brief history of his relationship with Claire. Then, as the tour group moved to a new part of the tunnel, he told him how Little John had gotten lost when they followed a sad ghost boy through the floor in the library parking garage. "You haven't, by any chance, seen my brother, have you?" Kaz asked. "Or the other ghost?" "Not in the last day or two. I haven't seen any ghost kids who were on their own since last week.

Well, except for you," Howard said, his chains rattling as he drifted beside Kaz. But Kaz wasn't really on his own. He had Claire. Kaz took a closer look at the chains in Howard's hands. "Hey, why do you have those chains?" he asked. Howard grinned. "I like to mess with the tour groups that come down here. Watch this." He waited for most of the group to walk past them. Maddie stayed with the group, but Claire hung back by the ghosts. "What?" Kaz asked Howard. "What are you going to do?" Howard swam up behind some college students at the back of the line. "Look... behind... you...," he wailed softly. When two of them turned to look, Howard glowed. He made the chains glow, too, as he rattled them.

"AAAHHHHHHH!" one of the students shrieked. Claire covered her mouth. Howard quickly stopped glowing before Maddie and a bunch of other people turned around. "Did you see that? What was that? I don't know!" The college students talked over one another. "I warned you about the ghosts," Wendy said from the front of the group. "Let's keep moving, please." Maddie let the rest of the group walk past her while she waited for Claire to catch up. "Have you ever done that in the Seattle Public Library?" Kaz asked Howard as they followed Claire. He remembered the light-haired boy who said he'd seen a ghost with chains. "Sometimes," Howard admitted. "You mean you can get to the library from here?" Kaz said. "Through the tunnels?"

"Of course," Howard said. He seemed surprised that Kaz didn't know that. "What's happening?" Maddie asked Claire. Claire put her finger to her lips. "How? The librarian told us there aren't any tunnels under the library," Kaz said to Howard. Howard laughed. "The librarian is wrong," he said. "There are all kinds of tunnels under the city. The solid people know about some of those tunnels, but not all of them. There are a lot of tunnels that only the underground ghosts know about." So maybe Little John and that other ghost are somewhere in this underground tunnel system, Kaz thought. "Can you show Claire and me how to get to the library?" he asked. Maybe they'd find Little John along the way. Howard turned and looked behind him. "Well... I don't want to miss the next tour group," he said. "But I'll tell you how to get there. First, go back to that last room. Find the door that