Chapter Text
Danny didn’t come out of his room the rest of the evening. She had wanted to check on him, especially as dinner came and went without a word, but Vlad had advised against it.
“I’ll bring him something to eat and check on him, but I think he might need some time to calm himself,” Vlad had said. “I’m sure he’ll be feeling quite foolish in the morning.”
After a dinner that, while pleasant, had a tense discomfort, she and Vlad made their way upstairs, Vlad carrying a plate of dinner with him. At the top of the steps, she glanced towards Danny's room. It was quiet as ever.
The phone in her pocket felt denser, desperation to understand weighing heavy on her mind.
Vlad laid a hand gently on her shoulder. "I've got him, Maddie," he assured.
She plastered a stiff smile to her lips, standing there feeling foolish and helpless as she watched him cross the hall to Danny's room.
She waited for a bit, but Vlad didn't come back out straight away. She hoped that was a good sign; maybe Danny was opening up to him...
The thought hurt her more than she thought it should.
Unable to bear the anxiety anymore, she retreated down the opposite hall, hand reaching into her pocket to clutch the phone.
She hadn’t wanted to snoop. She really hadn’t; but once in the solitude of her room, she had barely shut the door before she had pulled the phone from her pocket.
A message to Sam appeared at the top, just above Jazz, who she realized with some guilt she had not reached out to since yesterday. She skipped it for now, opening up Danny's message.
Danny: Hey it’s Danny. My mom let me use her phone. Mine's busted. I’ll IM later. I miss you guys
Sam: Don’t worry we won’t miss it. We miss you. We’ll see you in no time, ok?
Guilt washed over her so suddenly that she almost threw the phone. She managed to catch herself before her nerves got the best of her and instead quickly clicked out of the message and turned the phone off, setting it down on her dresser as far as possible
She went to her laptop to distract herself, intending to do some research for getting Danny a new phone, but a notification on her desktop gave her pause.
It was an alert.
She stared at it for a moment before clicking the notification to see which scanner had picked up the activity.
While she didn't have quite enough to scan Vlad's mansion in its entirety, the scanners she had covered a large portion of it.
Vlad had initially been resistant to the notion of really any ghost hunting equipment in his home, but she had insisted, reminding him of what had happened the last time they visited him. She wasn't sure if he had decided that her concern was reasonable or if his desire to host them had out-weighed his discomfort, but once he'd changed his mind, he had truly changed his mind, even offering assistance to install them.
She could have been more thorough in her coverage if she had not wasted putting so many of them in the Great Hall. Even she knew the oversaturation of scanners in that area was irrational, but the reunion had admittedly made her a little paranoid.
"You did check the mansion after the incident," Vlad had reminded her as he helped assist in setting up the scanners. "It evaporated, didn't it?"
"That ghost--the Wisconsin Ghost--did, but... I just want to make sure it's gone," she'd replied.
Vlad hadn't asked any more about it since that first day. He had, however, made recommendations for where to place the rest and assisted in arranging them all over the mansion.
"These look quite sophisticated. How discerning are they?" he had asked her.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean would it be able to tell the difference if there was multiple spectral entities in the vicinity?"
She had been excited to see him show an interest in their old shared hobby and was happy to encourage it. "Yes, they can tell if there are multiple specters in the area and can distinguish the difference between signatures. I had a short range scanner in my watch that I used as a prototype."
"Impressive!" He'd admired. "It seems your research has come quite a long way."
"It had..."
Ghost hunting, her research, had felt like a meaningless distraction.
Staring at the notification now, with echoes of the altercation with her son still fresh on her mind, the frustration of being helpless to help poisoning her thoughts, research felt like an escape.
She opened the notification and checked the time-stamp, eyes going wide as she noted it occurred less than twenty minutes ago.
In the theater...
She hadn't noticed anything, so it had to have been invisible.
A familiar rush of alert excitement hit her, and she immediately logged the signature. She didn't see any other pings, which was a relief, but this one was enough of a mystery on its own.
While it wasn't impossible there was a second ghost around, it seemed clear to her that Phantom had come into the mansion. Why and how were the most pressing of questions. According to the scanner, he seemed to have appeared in the middle of the room out of nowhere, lingered for less than a minute, and then appeared to vanish again.
She cataloged the incident in her research, making special note of the appearance and disappearance. How he could have vanished into and out of the mansion without another of the scanners marking his arrival or departure was both fascinating and worrying.
Not only was he somehow able to briefly bypass her scanners, but Phantom was also still in Wisconsin.
Seeing him for single night was one thing, but why was he lingering.
A knock startled her, then left her with an anxiety that was foreign to her. She shut the laptop and quickly crossed the room, trying to remind herself to be calm and accept whatever came...
Vlad stood on the other side of the door.
Her anxiety seeped out of her shoulders, replaced with a deep sense of regret and relief.
"Have I interrupted something?" he asked.
She shook her head, the omission of her findings hardly registering to her.
Vlad nodded, looked down at the floor like he was stalling. "I thought you should know that I gave Daniel dinner."
"Yes... I did see you do that," she said uncertainly.
"Yes," he said, bouncing on his feet. "He... It seems he might need the evening..."
She swallowed, nodding in understanding. "Was he rude to you again?"
Vlad waved his hand and shook his head. "Not at all. At worst, he was dismissive, but that's to be expected, given how the evening ended. I think he may be feeling some shame for his behavior. I imagine he should be more approachable tomorrow. "
"You're very patient, Vlad. I appreciate it."
He smiled at her, but it faded shortly after as he seemed to mull on a thought. "Maddie... I feel Daniel might need an... an outlet, of some sort while he's here. Something to get him outside and active."
She nodded, inhaling deeply and leaning on the door frame. "I agree. He's cooped up too much. I just..."
"Perhaps you and I could come up with a few options for him," Vlad suggested.
"I'll give it some thought," she agreed, though she noted the way her own voice sounded dimmed.
Vlad seemed to as well, lips thinning sympathetically. "If you need any recommendations, I have a few ideas that I think he would benefit from."
She nodded stiffly, hesitating on a thought she didn't want to give voice to, but she could tell Vlad had noticed and was waiting for it, so she sighed deeply and admitted. "I'm worried he won't want to do it."
Vlad chuckled. "Well, of course he won't."
She tried to smile, but it wouldn't come, blocked by the lump in her throat. She muttered, "I don't want to be the bad guy..."
Vlad watched her face, wincing at her sympathetically. "... He may not understand now, Maddie. He may resent you for a brief time and he will undoubtedly resist your efforts at every step, but I assure you he will be grateful in the end," he told her. "Give him some time."
She unconsciously rubbed her own arms, nodding softly.
"And I'll be here to support you however you need."
She smiled, but it felt hollow on her lips, her eyes unwilling to match it.
Vlad caught it, but didn't bring speak on it, simply gave her a warm smile and offered, "Would you like to join me in the study? I mean to get some work done before the end of the day, but I would certainly appreciate the company."
"I appreciate the offer, Vlad, but," her mind wandered to the notification on her laptop. "I think I might benefit from some solitude as well."
He sighed deeply, but nodded in understanding and winked his eyes at her. "Of course. If you should change your mind, I should be in the study until nine. Feel free to join me at any time."
She nodded gratefully, waited until he had turned and started heading down the stairs before shutting the door firmly and resuming her research.
She spent an hour or two reviewing the information she had gathered from Phantom the previous night and attempted to build a an ecto-signature out of the blip the scanners had caught, but the scanners just weren't sophisticated enough, not to mention how brief Phantom had been there. Eventually, she gave up on it and decided to see if he had left any kind of trace behind from the roof.
She scoured the duffel bag she had filled up with both items she didn’t want to be without and also didn’t want left unattended until she had located a small, handheld device; a proper scanner. It was supposed to be a translator initially, but the function had proven both faulty and turns out useless after they had captured their first ghost and discovered they were perfectly capable and willing to speak to them. It was, however, able to store ecto-signatures, and also functioned like an EMF. It made ghost hunting and tagging simpler and allowed them to categorize them by type, capability, and potential hazard.
She cringed at the memory of having used the faulty translator function as a basis for believing Jazz to be possessed, but quickly banished the thought to the farthest recesses of her mind.
Ensuring everything was calibrated properly, she hooked the scanner to her belt, slung the thermos over her shoulder, and stepped out onto the balcony. She climbed back up onto the roof as she had the night before and headed off to where she’d last spotted Phantom.
She didn't hold out a lot of hope of being able to get a complete ecto-signature, but it was worth a try, especially if she wanted to try and fix whatever was keeping the scanners from spotting him. A fresh sample would be best, but she doubted that would get the opportunity to get that close to Phantom again.
She wandered the rooftop, scanning various areas she recalled him touching. There was some residual ecto residue, but it was extremely faint, only barely registering on the device as tiny blips. Sighing in frustration, she looked out onto the estate, felt the breeze brush her hair out of her face, the clear sky twinkling with stars.
It was as she was scanning the sky that she just spotted it; a flash of green beyond the crest of the side of rooftop she occupied. Her hand grasped the thermos as she knelt down, quietly making her way to the other side of the roof. She climbed to the crest of her section, hoping not to let her presence be known too soon.
She peaked past the rooftop until she could see where Phantom was hovering, moving only to get a better angle to understand what exactly it was he was doing. From this distance, it looked like he was making it snow.
He also seemed to be cursing, throwing what she now realized were wads of paper into the air and blasting them angrily before going over to a little pile he had collected, grabbing up another sheet of paper, crumpling it up, and then throwing it as hard as he could into the air and firing at it. Having apparently run out of individual papers, he picked up a spiral notebook, ripped out a chunk of pages and growled as he tossed them, firing at them with only fractional success.
Or at least she'd thought he had missed, but as she watched him frustratedly look at his own hands, she thought maybe he had briefly, for whatever reason, been unable to fire. Mesmerized, she stared as he attempted to make green orbs grow in his hands, wincing as the orbs fluctuated between growing too big to nearly disappearing altogether, swelling and bubbling unstably. The spectre's distressed eyes glowed a fierce green in tandem, brightening and pulsing with the orbs.
She watched in awed fascination, but she tempered her excitement as the potential seriousness of the situation settled on her. While curiosity made her want to continue observing and studying, it didn’t really matter what exactly had upset the ghost boy so much--or even how or why a ghost wouldn't have or even lost full control of their abilities--as long as he posed a risk to the mansion.
She raised the thermos, but stopped when Phantom let out a shout and tossed the first of the orbs off into the sky, followed quickly by the second. Both vanished in a streak of green before dissipating into the blue. When they were gone, Phantom dropped into a crouch and pulled his legs up to his chest.
When he didn’t move for a bit, she decided it was time to make her presence known, returning the thermos to her belt and standing to carefully but casually make her way down the slope towards him.
Phantom heard her coming, once again whirling around with wide, wary eyes. It was... worrying. It wasn't just that he was alert; he seemed ready to be afraid.
Once his green eyes met hers, however, the fear vanished and Phantom settled back.
“You’re back…?” he asked in surprise.
“Well, I’m living here,” she reminded him.
He huffed a little laugh. “Right… uh… come up to stargaze again?”
Her fingers brushed the scanner on her belt, but reminded herself to be patient. Whatever the reason, Phantom was being cooperative again. She might as well kill two birds with one stone.
“I thought I might… assuming you don’t mind the company?”
He looked at her with a deep expression she couldn’t identify. He didn’t seem nervous about her asking, as she thought he might be, but almost looked regretful. It puzzled her, but even more so when he smiled.
“Yeah, company sounds nice.”
She sat down a little ways from him, flicking away a crisped shred of paper as it blew at her knee.
His eyes caught the movement and it seemed to just occur to him the mess he had been making. His cheeks flushed a light green embarrassedly and he stretched over to what remained--just the spiral notebook--and more securely pushed it against the edge of the chimney he had it sitting against.
She watched with an amused smirk and considered questioning him about it, but to her surprise, he started trying to explain himself . “I-uh… I found those. I promise they don’t belong to anybody.”
She found that perfectly unbelievable, but wasn't as concerned with what the notebook was or where it came from. If anything, it was the most harmless thing he could be destroying. She had other, more pressing questions nagging at the forefront of her mind and she was tempted to begin interrogating him, but tempered herself.
“You know… no bias?”
She didn't want to waste the truce they had reached, not unless he pushed her to it. It could be more productive to continue the cooperative relationship they had reached, even if there was the potential it was a ruse.
“Rough night?” she asked lightly, deciding on a more vague acknowledgement of the mess he had been making to put him at ease.
“You could say that,” he replied with a humorless chuckle. “I guess it was for you, too, huh?”
She tilted her head at him. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugged. “That’s why you were up here last time.”
More or less, but she was glad to see he was attempting to relate to her. That should make the evening easier for her.
“What… um. Do you mind if I ask what happened?” he asked.
The politeness took her slightly off guard and the sincerity in his face as he turned to look at her further left her feeling more vulnerable than if he had been attacking her. She was once again left at a crossroads of directions she could take the conversation. It seemed odd he would ask her what happened if he had been witness to it already, but maybe he hadn't seen everything. Was it curiosity on his part? Some kind of ploy? She wasn't sure, but she was sure he didn't know she knew he had been in the theater; maybe she could leverage the conversation for answers.
Maybe it was possibly to make him feel pity for her.
With a resigned sigh, she crossed her legs and leaned forward onto her knees.
“I went out with my son and friend today. We went for a picnic. It seemed like everyone was having a good time, but when we got back… I don’t know. I still don’t know what to make of it.”
Phantom’s gaze fell for a moment, then leaned a little closer, waiting for her to continue.
That was as detailed as she was willing to go, so she looked at him. “And you? What sealed the fate of those poor papers?”
He looked a little disappointed when she shifted the conversation, but the joke did garner a little smile.
“It's… kind of hard to explain,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I messed up really bad and… I keep making it worse trying to fix it.”
Despite the vagueness of the answer, she was struck with a pang of sympathy as her worries bubbled back up to the forefront of her thoughts.
“Can I ask you what happened after the picnic?”
She looked at him guardedly, surprised at how quickly he had not only accepted her presence here with him, but how interested he seemed to be in talking to her. Whatever the cause, whatever of her theories were correct, he was taking the truce seriously.
At her hesitance, perhaps taking it as rejecting the question outright, he pressed his lips together in a sort of wince and adjusted where he was sitting to face her more openly. “I know it’s not really fair for me to ask you and then not really answer your questions but… If I promise to answer honestly anything I can… would that be fair?”
Her brows rose in surprise at the offer and it made her even more suspicious of why he seemed to want to know so badly. She narrowed her eyes at him. “And how do I know you won’t lie?”
“The… spirit of starting over?” he ventured, but when she gave him a dull look in reply, he added, “I can’t make you believe me. I’m just asking you to.”
She blinked a few times at him. This entire interaction was going much differently than she thought it might go. He was behaving even odder than the night before and she truly didn’t know what to make of it. However, while bizarre, the opportunity was still present, perhaps even more so.
She turned toward him a little more, using the movement to mask her turning the scanner on him.
“Without going into too much background detail you don’t need to know, my son got angry with me,” she replied.
“Why?”
“I have no idea," she said, shrugging helplessly. "We were watching a movie he suggested and he fell asleep. I thought he was angry we watched without him, but he said he didn’t care about the movie.”
“We? Like…” his eyes swiveled downward, “You mean the rest of your family?”
“My friend and I,” she supplied, although she once again suspected he already knew that.
“And your friend is the old guy who owns this place, right?”
She scrunched her face at him. “He’s the same age as me.”
He opened his mouth on an inhale, delayed in his response only for a fraction of a second before recovering. “In number, sure, but I mean…” he looked at her dryly, a mischievous little smirk at the corner of his mouth. “Come on. That guy acts like he was born in ye olden times. As a duke.”
The joke caught her so off-guard she nearly laughed, both surprised by the jab to her college friend from a ghost, and also by the accuracy of it. She nearly attempted to mask it, but Phantom had immediately brightened at her at her response, and she decided to lean into it; surmising he might be more cooperative if he thought she was opening up to him.
It didn't have to mean anything that she did feel more relaxed.
Phantom gave her a cheeky grin. “So you and the Duke of Cheesetown were watching a movie and your son was mad he fell asleep...”
“Stop that,” she insisted, a small smile on the corner of her lips. “He’s a very good person. And this is serious.”
Phantom shrugged compliantly, but the grin remained.
“Why do you want to know, anyway?” she asked.
“I dunno. I thought maybe… a different perspective might be… helpful?” he said tentatively.
“You want to help me,” she said, more accusatory than she had necessarily meant to say it, and she quickly asked why as nicely as she could to try to smooth over the misstep.
“I like to help,” he replied simply.
She stared at him, once again struck by the sincerity with which he said it.
He rubbed the back of his neck as he added, “I’m not always great at it, but… if you want a ghost’s opinion…”
She couldn’t help but perk a little.
“It doesn’t really sound like he was mad at you or anything.”
The vulnerable side of her wanted to accept that answer, but the rest of her shunned it away and she shook her head. “You can’t tell that just by what I said.”
“Well… did he give you any reason why he was mad?”
“No.”
“Then it didn’t have anything to do with you.”
She looked at him skeptically.
“He’s a teenager, right? Aren’t teens supposed to blame their parents for everything? If he didn’t… then it probably wasn’t you.”
Her shoulders slumped a little and she shook her head. “That’s… nice, Phantom, but… you don’t know everything." This time, she let her voice harden, accusing, "Despite what you saw.”
Phantom blinked at first, then his brows pressed together in confusion. "What?"
"I know you were there," she told him. "My scanners caught you in the theater. Were you spying on me?"
His eyes grew wide, but to her surprise, he still just looked confused. She wasn't sure if he was just a good actor, but it truly seemed like he was fully bewildered by the accusation. Maybe he thought whatever he had used to bypass her scanners initially had worked the entire time.
"In... in the... like when you were watching the movie?" he asked.
"Before we left, my scanners caught you, Phantom," she reiterated. "Why were you there?"
He blinked again, the perplexed expression unwavering as he looked away from her and let his eyes wander with his thoughts. "Um..."
"You said you'd tell me the truth," she reminded him, letting her voice soften a little.
He looked up at her then, distressed, then sighed sharply. "Uh... I was... I was worried."
It was her turn to blink in confusion. "What?"
"You were upset... last time we talked and I was just..."
"You were worried about me."
The skepticism in her tone was colder than she intended and he obviously noticed, wincing at her as he tried to explain. "Last night you said you made a mistake and you seemed upset and I didn't ask about it and I felt bad I didn't ask about it so I thought... I'd check on you, yeah."
She stared at him for a long while, stuck as she tried to decide how to handle that response. He withered under her stare, nervousness evident in the way he pulled his knees in close, in the way he wouldn't quite look at her fully.
And for some reason, it hurt her.
Almost unconsciously, she made up her mind, calming her tone and stating factually, "Phantom, it’s obvious that your being here in Wisconsin at the same time as I am is evidence that it has something to do with me, which I can only justify as being for one of two reasons; you have some ulterior motive towards me, or you’re haunting something I brought.” Her eyes caught on the anxious swallow from the now even more nervous ghost. “But even if the latter were the case, you should still be able to go more or less wherever you like; it’s never stopped you before, except for this time. I have never found you so easy to find as I have since we got here.”
He stared at her with a grimace, opened his mouth to answer, stopped himself, and repeated the attempt twice more before rubbing his hands over his face in frustration.
Interesting.
“So my latter theory is correct?” she pressed.
He huffed. “Not… exactly …”
She frowned at him. “You’re going back on your promise?”
“No!” he insisted, his face contorting with desperate confliction. “It’s not that. I said I’d answer honestly if I could, and I mean it, I do, but I can’t always answer…”
She gazed at him intensely, not allowing him to back down from at the very least responding.
“I’m sorry, I–I can’t answer that one.”
She frowned again, both disappointed and, to her own surprise, hurt again, but really, she had seen this coming. It wouldn’t matter that he hadn’t answered her, though. She was confident the scanner would solve that problem for her.
Plus, she reminded herself, it did seem he was interested in not outright lying to her. Omission was frustrating, certainly, but not as much as trying to sort out fact from fiction if he had chosen that route.
Her eyes trailed off to the notebook.
“Can you explain that, then?”
He hesitated again and she thought he was about to dodge another question, but instead, he seemed to get smaller. “I got in a fight.”
She tilted her head at him. "Don't you often?"
He grit his teeth. "Not like this."
She stared at him, pressing with her eyes to continue.
He sighed tightly. "There's this ghost... he's way stronger than me. And he likes to... to mess with me."
There it was again. He had nearly buried it in this look of anger, but she could just see it; Phantom was afraid. She leaned forward on her knees, leaned in close to assure him she was listening and was very, very interested. "What do you mean mess with you?"
“He’s got… he’s… he’s kind of obsessed with me,” Phantom said, teeth gritting. “I pissed him off earlier and he… I shouldn’t have pissed him off. That–” he gestured at the papers– “is letting off some steam.”
She shook her head confusedly. “Do you know why this ghost is obsessed with you?”
Phantom snorted. “Yeah, I know, but I don't get it.”
“What's the reason?"
Phantom scoffed a breathy laugh, humorless and pain-filled as he answered hesitantly, "He wants me to be his family."
Maddie's brow rose. Now that was strange. A ghost obsessed with another ghost was odd enough, but that kind of obsession was far too nuanced for most ghosts. Obsessions were something simple and usually was one of only two variations; protect their territory or acquire more ecto-energy. Sometimes it was both. For a ghost to want a family, and from another ghost, was very strange and it didn't seem to fall into either of the two categories.
“Where is this ghost now?” Maddie asked.
Phantom winced, a tiny flash of fear crossing the features of his face as he shook his head. “You won’t find him. And you shouldn’t,” he stressed severely. “He’s dangerous.”
She watched him rise and scratch his head thoughtfully. After a moment, he looked down at her.
“I’ve got to go…. But um… if you want company again… I’ll be back up here tomorrow night if… you know… If you want…”
She blinked her surprise away. She was once again tempted to make him stay, to coerce the answers she needed from him. He had all but confirmed her suspicions that his presence had to do with her, but she had gotten nothing definitive from him and now he was adding questions to her list. She needed those answers.
He stared at her, waiting for a response, his expression tense with nervousness, sadness, but he was obviously willing to wait for her; to agree to meet again, to trust his word, trusting her to let him go.
She accepted the offer with a nod.
He smiled, relieved and... optimistic.
“Cool. I’ll… see you tomorrow, then.”
“See you then, Phantom,” she replied, watching him disappear before her eyes.
She waited for a time, wanting to be more or less sure he had flown off rather than simply remaining there invisibly. After a few minutes had passed, she picked herself up and started heading back down to her room. Once inside, she checked the scanner, relieved at the icon blinking to signal it had locked onto Phantom's ecto signature.
Phantom could be elusive if he wanted, but she didn't need him to explain everything to get the answers she needed; she was perfectly capable of doing it on her own.
With a triumphant smile, she started methodically scanning items in her room. Most items received no reaction from the tool, but some, she was surprised to find, gave only minute little spikes. The only items that resonated with Phantom's signature were items she either had on her person or had actually used in the past to hunt him.
It was an excellent sign that the scanner was functioning as intended and that she should be able to locate the item he was haunting. The bad news was that nothing in her room reacted with anything higher than fifteen percent.
That only left one option.
And it terrified her.
Phantom must be haunting something of Danny's.
Danny was distant with her as it was; he wouldn’t be understanding of her going through his things to ghost hunt. Moreover, she wasn’t sure what his opinion on Phantom was, and if it was positive, that could further complicate the issue. Jazz certainly was, so it wasn’t a stretch to believe Danny might be, too.
She could always lie about why she needed to go through his things, but saying it was a different ghost wasn’t much better and there wasn’t much else she could think of that would warrant her invading his privacy. And simply telling him that she was going to and not giving him a reason why was out of the question. If he had been distant before, that was sure to push him right out of her reach.
Her only real option was to do it without him knowing. She had to get him out of the room for a while, which would be a difficult task in and of itself, but also ensure she could potentially remove items without him noticing.
While she didn’t have a solution to the latter, an idea struck her for the first problem.
Vlad had been right; Danny needed an outdoor activity.