"Do you want a real answer or a flippant one?" Waver asked, making it clear he was giving this actual thought. "Because I could go back over the history books and probably make some rough calculations. Which may in fact be useful to have, but I expect would get me branded total pessimist please ignore only to be validated later. I don't fancy being Cassandra on this enterprise."

That was a reference Waver was sure he'd need to explain, but that was just fine.

"It's funny. We actually have a specific designation for the type of ghosts that fling stuff around but never actually show themselves. There's an entire genre of story dedicated to it."