Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Valerie had never been so terrified to enter a school building in her life.

She stood outside the front gate, trying to breathe deep and even as other students dashed past her, backpacks bouncing on their shoulders.

You're alive, she told herself. You look fine. You can do this.

She didn't look fine. She knew that. Her face was haggard and exhausted, and she hadn't had the energy to do anything with her appearance. She'd just thrown on the first set of clean clothes she could lay her hands on and run a cursory brush through her hair. And, of course, her curls had reacted to being brushed by frizzing up into a terrific cloud around her head, because curly hair did that if you didn't take proper care of it.

Valerie couldn't bring herself to care.

She stood there, telling herself that she was going to be late if she didn't get a move on. But her feet stayed where they were. Oh god, she wanted to go home.

"Val?" said a voice behind her. She looked, and there was Danny, flanked by Sam and Tucker. Before she knew it, they had formed a little protective bubble around her, their faces full of concern.

She didn't even have to ask if he'd told them. She could see it in their faces. Her insides curdled briefly at being pitied, but then that feeling gave way to sheer relief at not having to pretend to be fine.

"C'mon," said Danny, giving her a gentle nudge. "We'll stick with you. It'll be okay."

Valerie swallowed, nodded, and allowed them to guide her to class.

All four of them had first period together, English with Mr. Lancer. Valerie usually sat somewhere towards the back, but this time Danny led her to the desk in the back corner. He took the desk beside her, while Tucker settled himself at the one in front of her and Sam took the one diagonally.

Without a word between them, they'd set themselves up in a neat little semi-circle between her and the rest of the class. It made the urge to cry fight to escape the bottle Valerie had shoved it into that morning.

No. No, she could do this. She could do this.

A great swell of noise in the hall was the only warning she got before the rest of the class started pouring in, Mr. Lancer herding them and telling them not to loiter in the hallways. The usual daily chatter seemed unbearably loud, pressing in on Valerie, and she fought to keep her shoulders straight and not sink down into her chair.

As the students started to settle, Mr. Lancer ran an eye over the classroom. He paused for just a moment as he noticed Valerie's changed seating arrangement, one eyebrow ticking up, but he said nothing and soon called the class to order.

Valerie took a deep, steadying breath and told herself to Just Get Through It.

***

As the class dragged on, Valerie was aware of Danny keeping a subtle sideways eye on her from the desk beside her. It made the back of her neck prickle unpleasantly, and she would have snapped at him if she hadn't been so terrified to draw attention to herself.

But then her pencil somehow slipped out of her fingers, and she tried to pick it up again only to find that her arms had gone slightly transparent and her hands went straight through anything she tried to touch. They went right through her pencil and into the surface of her desk, and she could feel things inside her fingers. She jerked them back out and tried very hard not to panic.

Danny looked over at her, clocked her arms at once, and quickly scribbled something on a bit of paper. He carefully tilted up the paper so she could see it.

Focus on touching the desk. Try to feel the wood grain.

Taking deep, steadying breaths, Valerie laid her transparent hands on the surface of the desk and tried to feel it. The vague sense of something under her hands wasn't enough; she needed to touch it. She shut her eyes and imagined the feel of wood grain under her fingertips, running her finger along a groove…

Her hand knocked into her pencil, and she snatched it reflexively.

She opened her eyes. Her arms were clear and solid, the pencil held firmly between her fingers. Danny grinned approvingly at her and gave her a thumbs-up under his desk.

Valerie's shoulders slumped, and she took back all her earlier annoyance at him keeping an eye on her. She was really glad he was there.

***

They made it through the rest of English class without further incident, right up until they were packing up their stuff to go. As Valerie stood, she tried to push herself up with her hand, which passed straight through her desk.

Her stomach swooped and she staggered forward, her hips and stomach passing right through the desk — and she could feel it inside her, this weird, uncomfortable pressure dragging at her guts.

She jerked up straight and away from the desk, looking around wildly, throat constricted with terror that someone had seen. But Danny, Sam, and Tucker were arrayed around her, casually screening her from view with their bodies and backpacks.

Danny touched her arm — his touch felt strange, cold instead of warm, and she noticed that his hand was slightly transparent. Reaching into the ether to be able to touch her. "Feel the ground under your feet," he whispered. "Breathe. Be present in the world."

Valerie did. She breathed, and her body came suddenly into sharper focus. And not just visually; her physical sensations sharpened as well, and it was only then that she realised that they had been dulled.

She checked her hands. Solid and normal. She blew out a heavy sigh of silent thank god, and then quickly grabbed her pack and binder to get the hell out of that classroom.

Out in the hall, she muttered, "Thanks," to all three of them.

Danny gave her a crooked smile, and Tucker shrugged and said, "Hey, no problem. We've been covering for Danny since forever."

Danny gave a little huff of wry laughter and said, "Yeah, no kidding. I never would have got through those first weeks undiscovered without these two looking out for me."

"We know the drill," said Sam, her mouth crimped with an ironic smile. "We have protocols for this crap, from oops-I-made-my-head-invisible to Intangible Pants Syndrome."

Danny squeezed his eyes shut and groaned. "I lost my pants once."

"Uh, twice, dude," said Tucker. He waved his phone. "I have photographic evidence."

Danny swatted at him and waved a finger in his face. "The second time was entirely the Box Ghost's fault and does not count."

"I need to worry about losing my clothes?" said Valerie in horror, clutching at her jeans. Great, just what she needed! To destroy the badass, untouchable reputation she'd built to replace her lost popularity! The cherry on top to make her miserable high school experience even more perfect!

Danny rushed to reassure her. "No, no, like I said, it only happened once," here he shot a fierce glare at Tucker before turning back to Valerie and lowering his voice, "and it can only happen if you're thinking of your clothes as something separate from you, rather than part of you. And it's a natural instinct for ghosts to include their clothes in their self-image and concept of themselves — so they're, like, part of you. Just remember that and you'll be fine."

Yeah, fine, except now Valerie was going to be worrying about the existential nature of her clothes for the rest of the goddamn day.

"We better split if we're going to make it to class on time," said Sam, checking the time on her phone. "Val, you've got chem with me, right?"

Valerie scrambled through her schedule in her mind. The chaos in her head made normal, day-to-day things weirdly slippery and hard to hold onto. "Uh, yeah." She looked at Danny in sudden panic. "You don't?"

"Nah, I have history, and Tuck has math," said Danny. He saw the look on her face and grabbed her shoulder and squeezed gently. "Hey, don't worry; Sam will cover for you. She's awesome at it."

"You've given me more than enough practice," Sam said dryly. Then she met Valerie's eye. The two girls had never got on that well, due partly to each being preoccupied with hiding her own secrets and partly to their early rivalry over Danny. But they'd always respected each other, and Valerie had long felt that, if they could just find a way past the barriers between them, they could be friends.

"Just stick with me," said Sam. "I got you."

Valerie felt like some understanding had passed between them. She nodded and mumbled, "Thanks."

***

Chem class wasn't as bad as Valerie had feared. She and Sam managed to get partnered together for the lab, and Danny's advice was helping her get a better hold on her tangibility. She had no further full-body incidents, though her hands still slid out of phase a few times.

"Damn it," she whispered as she once again lost her grip on her pencil while trying to record the measurements Sam was making. Valerie bared her teeth in frustration. "I thought I was getting it."

"Danny says the extremities are hardest to hold onto," said Sam, casually shifting sideways to block Valerie's hand from the view of as many people as possible. "He had loads of trouble with his feet. Tucker and I kept having to grab him to keep him from sinking into the floor."

Valerie flashed Sam a horrified look. "Oh, great," she said weakly. "More things that can go wrong."

Sam gave her a wry little grin. "Maybe keep an eye on your feet, 'cause the whole sinking-through-the-floor thing is hard to cover for. Though if it happens, our cover story is that you've got an inner ear problem that's messing with your balance, and I'm sticking close in case it acts up."

"Noted," said Valerie, reassured and a little amazed at just how good these three were at cover stories. She wondered if they just always had a few in their back pockets, in case Danny had to take off or, like, just spontaneously evaporated or something.

They probably did. They had two years of experience hiding ghostly mishaps, after all. Like Sam had said, they had protocols for this madness.

With all that in mind, she asked, "Got any other advice?"

Sam thought for barely a second. "Don't pick up the beakers. That's how Danny got his general ban on handling breakables."

Wow, yeah, good point. "Also noted."

After that, they worked mostly in silence, snatching little glances at each other and trying to pretend that there wasn't a tension lurking beneath the surface.

Valerie, for her part, now totally got why Sam had had a problem with her before. Valerie had been a threat, and not just to Sam's relationship with the boy she liked, but to the boy himself. Valerie had been very literally out to get him.

But now all of that had changed. Valerie's whole world had done such an abrupt about-face that she felt like her stomach was missing. She was no longer any kind of threat to Danny. And as for Sam and Danny's relationship…

Sam and Danny had finally got over themselves and started going out just at the end of the last school year. Their relationship looked warm, deep, and solid, and Valerie had no desire to get in the middle of it and screw up the only good friendships she had.

And her feelings about Danny were way too confused anyway. He was her friend, she liked him, wanted to support him, but… The old anger and resentment for Phantom were still there, burning sluggishly even as she tried to put them out. He didn't deserve them; she needed to get past them. And she was trying, but years of feelings unfortunately do not vanish overnight, no matter how much you might want them to.

She'd spent so long thinking he was evil … thinking ghosts were evil … thinking their minds were twisted and limited to nothing but violence and hate, and now she was one and…

Valerie grabbed that line of thought and strangled it before it made her cry in chemistry class.

Sam, who apparently had ninja powers of sensing repressed internal turmoil (of course she did; her best friend was Danny), looked up sharply and muttered, "You okay?"

Valerie nodded to buy herself enough time to make sure her voice would be steady when she spoke. "Yeah, okay."

She even almost sounded like she meant it.

***

Valerie managed to hang on until the end of class, then she very definitely did not run to the nearest bathroom. She just walked very quickly.

She burst through the bathroom door and made a quick, cursory check that no one was in any of the stalls. Then she let her body go as transparent as it wanted as she slumped over one of the sinks and shook, swallowing the sobs as they crawled up her throat.

Sam's image appeared in the mirror, hovering over Valerie's transparent shoulder, her face tight with concern and anxiety.

Suddenly, the words burning behind Valerie's teeth came tumbling out.

"I died last night," she said, even though just thinking it made the world dizzy and surreal around her. "I died, and now everything's different."

"Death can do that," Sam said softly, compassion mixed with caution in her eyes.

"I need to start over," said Val. "Figure things out from scratch. And…" she sent a little nervous, quick glance up to meet Sam's eyes in the mirror. "I think I'm gonna need help."

Compassion won out over caution, and Sam smiled. "You got it."

Valerie shut her eyes and nodded, and then decided she needed to say everything else that was lurking in the wings. The air between her and Sam Manson needed to be cleared.

"I'm not going to get between you and Danny," she said. "What you've got is good, and I don't want to screw that up. And…" She took a shuddering breath. "He's the sweetest guy I know, and I hated to break up with him, but … I don't think our relationship ever could have worked. Especially not now."

(Actually, their relationship probably could have worked, if things had been different, if circumstance and Valerie's own flaws hadn't turned her against ghosts in general and him in particular. But there was no point dwelling on that, so Valerie very carefully didn't.)

Some of the tension went out of Sam's shoulders, and she gave Valerie a sad, sympathetic smile. "I think he probably got you better than anyone else, even before—" she gestured vaguely to Valerie's transparent body, "—this."

Valerie thought about that, a bubble of realisation popping in her mind. Of course, they actually had a similar story, didn't they? Life upended by a ghost-related catastrophe, and then taking it upon themselves to protect their hometown. No wonder Phantom had always insisted he understood what she was doing, regardless of how she scorned him.

"Yeah," she agreed hoarsely. "He's a good friend."

"The best," said Sam, smiling.

Valerie took a deep breath and turned to face Sam. "I'm not going to pretend that I don't still have issues with … well, him being Phantom. I'm trying really, really hard not to; I know … I know the sort of person he really is, now. I know I was … wrong," and didn't it make her feel sick to realise it, "and he doesn't deserve any of it. He deserves so much better. But…"

"But it's been less than a day and adjusting your thinking is going to take some time," said Sam, tilting her head and smiling with gentle, painful understanding.

"Yeah," said Valerie in a voice that felt small and inadequate.

"That's okay," said Sam. "You're trying, you're going in the right direction, and that's what really counts."

Valerie smiled shyly. "Thanks."

Then she opened her mouth to ask Sam a question about Danny's coping strategies, but then something cold detonated in her lungs and rolled up her throat, and instead of words, a burst of mist came out of her mouth.

Valerie clapped her hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Sam stared back, and behind her, the door flew open and other girls came chattering into the room.

Sam reacted immediately, sweeping an arm around Valerie's shoulders and guiding her with swift, deliberate steps through the other girls and out the door before Valerie even had time to think about whether or not she was still transparent.

(She wasn't, fortunately. Just smoking out the mouth like she'd been vaping and oh god she was in trouble if someone saw that…)

"What the hell is this?" Valerie asked Sam in a frantic whisper, wisps of mist escaping with every word.

"It's your ghost sense," Sam whispered back, mouth mere inches from Valerie's ear. "It means a ghost is near."

Valerie missed a step, her heart leaping into her throat. But her suit's ghost detector hadn't gone off…

…Oh right. Her suit was fried. Shit.

Sam kept her upright and moving, guiding her straight to a broom closet. With a practiced professionalism, Sam checked for witnesses without looking like that was what she was doing, then opened the door and led Valerie in with the air of someone who had every right to be there.

"What do we do?" Valerie demanded the second the door was closed. "My suit's fried. I can't—" Except … it wasn't fried in her ghost form, was it? It still worked like normal…

"Danny will take care of it," said Sam with the confidence of someone who had seen this a thousand times. Which, of course, she had. Valerie couldn't believe she'd missed the pattern of Danny excusing himself every time a ghost attacked for two freaking years. Apparently, she'd been too damn busy worrying about her own excuses to notice anyone else's.

Tunnel vision. Sloppy. A hunter needed to pay better attention.

Sam was still talking. "He's probably out there already; the range of his ghost sense has seriously expanded over the last year, so it's probably bigger than yours." She looked at Valerie like she'd been struck with a sudden thought. "Hey, we're going to have to get you your own thermos."

A distant roar vibrated the mops and buckets around them. Someone shouted out in the hall, calling others to look. The fight was definitely on.

"I should help," Valerie muttered, to herself rather than Sam. And then, without her making any conscious decision to do so, her core released a pulse of energy that rolled through her. Instead of assembling itself around her, her suit was just suddenly there, materialising over her skin. The pulse of her heart stopped, and gravity fell away, leaving her feeling feather-light.

"Whoa," said Sam, leaning back. Then, when she saw Valerie starting to float up off the floor, her helmeted head looking up at the ceiling, Sam reached out a hand and said, "Uh, I wouldn't if I were you. It took Danny weeks to get a solid hold on changing forms. He kept randomly switching at awkward moments, and he turned back to human in the middle of a fight twice. Tucker and I had to save his ass."

That took the wind out of Valerie's sails. She didn't dare risk herself or her identity like that. She dropped back to the floor and retracted her helmet so she could give Sam an incredulous look. "How the hell did he not get found out?!"

"Pure dumb luck," said Sam, deadpan. She cocked her head and looked Valerie over, eyes lingering on the great poof of frizzy white hair, which, freed from the helmet, was now floating around Valerie's head like she was underwater. "Like the new look, by the way. I mean, usually I'm into black, but white and green is cool, and suitably ghostly."

Keeping an ear out for the distant sounds of the fight (it sounded vaguely like a very large ghostly monster was getting its ass handed to it), Valerie slumped back against the shelves with a groan, gratified when she didn't just pass right through them. "Not sold on it, personally. Makes me look too much like a candy-cane."

Sam raised an eyebrow and frowned. "I dunno, I think you need some red in there to really get a candy-cane vibe."

Valerie gave her a flat glare and lit up her right fist with red ectoplasm.

Sam's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh." Her face lit up with humour, which she then swiftly and tactfully grabbed and stuffed under the surface, pressing her lips together hard even as her eyes twinkled.

Valerie rolled her eyes. "Now you get it. Maybe I can get my head around being a ghost. But being the Candy-Cane Huntress is a step too far." She sank down the shelves to sit dejectedly on the floor, trying not to worry about her new form, her stupid colouring, when her dad would find out, whether Danny was all right out there…

…All right, time to strangle all those thoughts, before she started crying in a broom cupboard in front of Sam Manson.

Sam flopped companionably down beside her and gave her suit another look-over. "Ghosts' forms are based partly on their self-image, aren't they?" she said. "Maybe if you just, like, wish it red hard enough, it'll change?"

Valerie leaned her head back against the hard edge of a shelf, considering. "Worth a try," she decided with a shrug.

…Hell, actually, if she could wish it back to its old colours, maybe she could stop anybody else even realising that something had happened to the Red Huntress. Maybe she could stop her dad realising.

Definitely worth a try. Though maybe not in a broom cupboard when she was struggling not to fall apart into approximately three and a half million pieces.

Sam's phone chimed, and she pulled it out. "Danny got the ghost," she reported, which took a weight off Valerie's shoulders. "He wants to know if everything's okay with you."

Valerie snorted. "I'm not the one who just fought some giant, roaring ghostly monster. But … I'm good. I mean, hiding in a closet in my—" her voice wobbled, "—my ghost form, but yeah. Fine."

Sam gave Valerie a quick, sharp look before tapping out her reply to Danny. "He's headed our way," she said. "He can track you in your ghost form, by the way, just so you know. And in your human form too, if he's close enough. You should be able to track him too once you get a bit more experience."

That … was equal parts creepy and useful. Being able to track Danny would be good, though. And being able to track other ghosts, even better. She made a mental note to prioritise that ability.

"We should get out of here if we want to actually get some lunch," said Sam. "Do you think you can safely hang on to your human form? I can bring you food here, if you can't."

Valerie stood, finding the motion weirdly effortless, like she weighed nothing. "I've managed okay so far," she said, and then changed back.

A sudden heaviness pressed down on her, her solid human body weighing her down. It was weird, disorienting, made her feel like moving should be harder than it actually was.

She made herself shake it off and followed Sam out of the closet. On their way out the door, Sam bumped her with her shoulder and, with a little sideways smile, said, "Glad you're on our side now, Val."

A bubble of warmth went off in Valerie's chest, and she found herself smiling. "Yeah. Me too."

…It sounded kinda nice, actually, to be part of a team instead of always going it alone.

***

Danny turned up none the worse after his battle with what he described as a giant goop monster from the Black Lagoon. It hadn't even managed to slime him, though the windows on the west wall of the school hadn't been so lucky. Nobody on that side of the building was going to be able to see out until somebody found some window-cleaners who could deal with ecto-contaminated swamp slime.

Which wouldn't be long. This was Amity Park. Half their cleaners specialised in ectoplasmic slime.

Danny brushed off all concern for himself and instead asked after Valerie. Then he and his friends spent most of the lunch hour giving her pointers and trying to cheer her up by telling ridiculous stories about their many, many ghostly shenanigans.

("You got stuck in your own thermos," Valerie said flatly, raising one eyebrow.

"Jazz has terrible aim, okay? Seriously, never give her the thermos when you're in the middle of a ghost fight.")

("There's a hugging ghost?"

"Yeah. Klemper, the ice guy. How did you not know he has a thing for hugs?"

"I shoot them before they get close enough to hug me.")

("You got kidnapped to be the mortal bride of a dead medieval prince who can turn into a dragon, and instead convinced his sister to overthrow him, modernise their society, and bring in equal rights for women, and all before Danny and Tucker managed to get there to rescue you?"

Sam leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, and grinned the grin of a cat who still had canary feathers clinging to its whiskers. "Yep."

"…Holy shit. Sister, you got game."

They fist-bumped.)

The stories buoyed Valerie, giving her the energy to face the rest of the school day.

Which was a good thing, because they still had two classes to get through before they could escape.

Those two classes dragged on for Valerie. It was quite possibly the longest school day she had ever endured. But Sam, Danny, and Tucker stuck to her all through it. And when she had one of those classes alone with Tucker, he surprised her by not trying to tease or flirt with her once. He just sat beside her, a quiet, reassuring presence, nudging her to call her attention back whenever her mind started to wander back into dangerous spirals.

It was good to have friends. Valerie was sure she wouldn't have got through the day without them.

When it was all over and the bell rang, they all took off like it had signalled the start of a race. As soon as they were out of the building, Valerie felt like some oppressive shadow had been lifted off her shoulders, like she could finally breathe. The sun was shining, the breeze was warm, and dear god she was out of there, finally.

Danny bounced out ahead of them and beckoned. "C'mon," he said. "Let's go to the park."

The allure of the quiet solitude to be found among the trees of the park was more than any of them could resist — they had so many things to talk about, and all of them required being away from people. So they took off running, Danny in the lead, and they didn't stop until they were hidden amongst the cool shadows of the trees, safely screened from the view of prying eyes.

Valerie dropped to the ground under a tree with a loud groan and buried her face in the grass. "This has been the most exhausting day of my entire life."

Tucker dropped beside her and patted her shoulder. "Hey, look at the bright side."

Valerie raised her head just enough to glare at him with one eye. "There's a bright side?"

He grinned a wicked grin. "At least you didn't lose your pants."

Chapter Text

Damon Gray was worried about his daughter.

…Admittedly, that statement was true pretty much every day of the year, given her dangerous choice of extracurricular activities. After several attempts to talk her out of it and even flat out forbid her from ghost-hunting, Damon had finally given in and tried to learn to live with a constant level of background worry. The only thing that made it tolerable was that he had got Valerie’s promise to never again lie to him about it, and to keep him informed of her activities.

Which was exactly why, today, Damon was more worried than usual. Because Valerie, keeping her promise, had left two texts on his phone last night, announcing her departure and return from a ghost hunt. That in itself wasn't unusual. Valerie often got an alert and slipped out after he was asleep, leaving him texts for when he woke. She was rarely gone longer than half an hour.

But this time, the timestamps on the messages told him that she had been out for more than four hours, not returning until well after midnight. And on a school night, besides.

That was not like Valerie. She treasured a full night's sleep.

So Damon's background-worry level had already ticked up a notch. It increased again when he realised that he had to get out of the house now to get to work — they had a huge project on today, completely restructuring the security systems and installing new equipment. Damon needed to be there early, and in all likelihood would be kept there late, to make sure everything was working before he left for the night.

Which all meant that he had no time to check in with Valerie and make sure she was all right — no time to do anything but stick his head into her room and see that she was there, sprawled in bed and sleeping the sleep of the truly exhausted.

Not surprising, considering how late she'd been up. Damon just hoped her alarm woke her in enough time to be ready for school. He didn't have the heart to disturb her this early just for his own peace of mind.

So he rushed off to work. He got stuck into engineering problems and logistics, his worry pushed to the back of his mind until one of his co-workers mentioned "that whopper of a ghost fight last night."

Damon's head jerked up, his fingers dropping the pencil he was using to make notes on the blueprint in front of him. "What?"

His co-worker, Jim, turned to include Damon in the conversation, swirling his coffee in his cup. "Yeah, out at the edge of town, fortunately, by that old, abandoned factory. Levelled one of the warehouses, apparently. Must have been a hell of a dangerous ghost."

Damon straightened and turned to Jim, trying not to sound too urgent when he asked, "What happened?"

Jim shrugged. "Phantom won, I guess, since the other guy isn't still wreaking havoc. 'Least they kept it out of the populated areas this time. I think that warehouse was even slated for demolition anyway, so in a weird way, they maybe even kinda did someone a favour. All's well that ends well, I guess."

Damon nodded and mumbled agreement with everyone else in the room, his heart twisting in his chest. Dear god, Valerie, what did you get into this time…

On his next break, he looked up the news reports. The Amity Park news station maintained a page especially for ghost attacks, and sure enough, it had what he was looking for.

The battle had been a big one. The news reports didn't have a whole lot of information, as apparently there hadn't been much to see, what with the combatants being mostly invisible or obscured by storm clouds. But the property damage had been extensive.

Fortunately, as Jim had said, the fight had taken place out on the edge of town, in the derelict remains of what had once been Amity Park's manufacturing district, before the factories had shut down and the town's industries had shifted. The damaged buildings had all been disused, some condemned.

A handful of witnesses and some pretty poor cell phone footage reported that the combatants were Phantom, an unknown and alarmingly powerful weather ghost, and also possibly the Red Huntress, though the witness admitted he hadn't got a good enough look to be sure.

Phantom had apparently emerged victorious once again, as he had been briefly spotted at some point after the fight, but, as Jim had said, an old, abandoned warehouse had been completely levelled.

That … sounded like exactly the sort of scrap Damon didn't want his girl anywhere near. The thought that she had been there made icy fingers run over his skin and his stomach twist itself into a queasy ball.

He had to resist the urge to call her straight away. She would be in school. And anyway, she had clearly made it back okay, because he'd seen her, and she'd texted him. He was so glad he'd insisted on that rule.

Tonight. He would talk to her tonight, if he wasn't home so late that she'd already gone to bed. And since that was entirely too long to wait, he'd text her once school was out.

He kept an eye on the clock, and as soon as he could after school let out, he texted Valerie: Everything ok last night? Looks like it was a big one.

It was a couple of anxious minutes before his phone pinged with a reply. Ugh. Didn't get much sleep, she said, then followed it up with: Feel like crap. School sucks.

Damon smiled to himself, his background worry dropping a few notches. He considered suggesting that she not stay out so late next time, if that's how she felt, but then decided that it would only get Valerie's back up. Instead, he texted: Early night tonight, then? 😊

Prbly not a bad idea, she replied, and he sighed in relief that she was taking advice. You working late tonight?

Looks like, he replied. Some of these idiots couldn't find their own ass if you gave them a map. Dunno when I'll get home.

Might be in bed when you get back, she replied. Don't worry if I am.

He wanted to say, I always worry, but that wouldn't please Valerie. So instead, he just said, Ok. Hope you have a better night tonight.

Me too, she replied. And then, unexpectedly, Love you.

His eyebrows shot up. He knew she did, but Valerie didn't often say it. It made mixed feelings swirl in his chest. On the one hand, it always warmed his heart to hear it. But … what had made her say it?

Instinct told him that something the night before had given Valerie a bad scare. He really wanted to ask what. Instead, he said, Love you too, sweetie <3

When he could, he'd talk to her about it. Tonight or tomorrow. Until then … he'd put it out of his mind. Or try to.

***

Valerie sat at her desk in her room, staring at her hands as they faded in and out from transparency to solidity.

An afternoon of practicing with Danny had made her much more aware of the subtle sensations that went along with invisibility and intangibility — a slight tingling, a coolness in her flesh. And knowing what it felt like had helped her a lot with getting control … or at least noticing when it was getting out of control.

Of course, she thought grimly, all it would take was a good distraction, something that took her mind completely off herself, and she'd go and disappear in the middle of English class. She had so far to go in getting a handle on all this.

For the thirty-sixth time since last night, she wondered how the hell Danny had survived this ridiculous learning curve with his secret intact.

Looking up at the mirror that hung over her desk, she tugged on the cold spot in her chest. The transformation washed over her, covering her with the new white-and-green version of her suit. Her helmet immediately felt restrictive — reminded her of being trapped under the debris of the warehouse — and she jabbed the button to retract it.

And then she made the mistake of trying to suck in a reassuring breath of free air, only to be forcibly reminded that this form didn't breathe.

She put her head down on her desk until the bubble of panic in her chest eased. This was fine … this was okay … she was okay.

Just maybe a little traumatised. But she could deal with it. She could.

But man, she hoped the helmet thing wasn't going to become a long-term problem. Because maintaining a secret identity made things like masks and helmets kind of important.

(Never mind that Danny had apparently managed completely mask-less for two years, because Danny, as previously noted, was stupidly lucky.)

Pulling herself together, she sat up and glared at her reflection. A great poof of frizzy, drifting white hair; ethereal, honey-gold skin; and glowing red eyes that were frankly more than a little freaky. Valerie had seen a whole spectrum of colour in ghost eyes, but red had always felt the most malevolent.

She really, really could have done without it as her own colour. It looked like the eyes of a demon peering out through the face of an angel. Why couldn't she have had gold? Or maybe green, like Danny?

She shut her eyes and shook her head. It was her suit that she needed to worry about now. The rest could come later.

Right. Time to try this.

When she'd asked Danny about changing the appearance of your ghost form, he had been uncertain.

"I mean, I've never done it," he had said. "But I've never tried. And Vlad obviously did it, because there's no way he died dressed like a vampire in a freaking cape. So liminal spirits must be able to do it … I just, uh, don't really know how."

Their best guess was that maybe some kind of deep visualisation exercise might work. So Valerie squeezed her eyes tight shut and remembered her suit's previous colours. She pictured them as strongly as she could and told herself that that was her, that was what she looked like. Black with red. Her colours were black with red.

Just look like you did before, she tried to tell her suit. C'mon, please.

She opened her eyes.

She clapped a hand over her mouth to hold in a screech. Her whole body had turned absolute pitch, empty black — like a person-shaped hole in the universe, utterly featureless except for two flat red eyes that glowed like burning coals.

Valerie threw herself back away from the mirror. She passed straight through her chair and lost her orientation with the floor, her room spinning dizzyingly around her. She grabbed for the foot of her bed and tugged desperately on the point of warmth in her chest.

The transformation washed over her, gravity finding her again and wrapping its fingers around her, and she immediately face-planted into the foot of her bed.

She sat there for a minute, clutching the edge of her mattress in a death grip, face buried in the covers. Then she dared to raise her head and look.

Her arms and legs looked normal.

Tentatively, she returned to the mirror. Black hair, brown skin — normal Valerie. She took a deep, shuddering breath and told her heart to slow down.

It took her a few minutes of standing there staring at herself to get her nerve up to tug on that point of coldness in her chest again. She shut her eyes as the transformation pulsed through her, too afraid of what she might see.

She flexed her hands. Definitely wearing the suit. She hit the button to retract the helmet and opened her eyes to meet her reflection.

Several emotions rushed through her. The first was staggering relief to not see a black demon staring back at her. The second was a little stab of annoyance to see once again that damn white-and-green suit. And the third … the third was confusion slowly dawning into horror as she realised that her skin and hair had again changed colour.

Her skin had turned a dull, demonic, reddish colour, and her hair was blacker than black, a black hole of black. And her eyes were still gleaming, glowing red.

She moaned, staring at the mirror. What was this? What the hell was this?

Was this her true colours showing through? Had the angelic appearance she'd started with just been one last attempt to hide from herself — a thin veneer of self-delusion over a rotten core?

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no," she mumbled, shying away from the mirror and stumbling unseeing straight through her chair.

Within herself, she reached out for her human form, grabbed it, and turned herself back. Then she staggered over and dropped onto her bed, hugging herself.

She lay there for maybe half an hour, mind chasing itself in frightened circles, before she finally rolled over, reached out an arm, and groped on her bedside table for her charging phone.

She pulled her phone close and curled around it, typing out a text to Danny.

Can we talk?

And then, deciding after a moment's anxious indecision that it was too vague, added, Now?

His reply came within seconds: 2 min.

Valerie, her hands clenched and cold around her phone, counted out one minute and thirty-seven seconds before it lit up with Danny's call — which somehow made her jerk with surprise even though her entire being had been bent around waiting for it. She answered it.

"Val? What's wrong?" Danny's voice asked urgently, its eerie, echoing quality telling her he was currently Phantom.

"My ghost form turned into a demon," she blurted.

A pause. "…Say what?"

"My ghost form. I tried to change it, like we talked about. And it went all demonic and horrible and evil." She had to stop there, because all her bottled emotion was escaping and trying to claw its way up her throat, making her voice start to wobble.

"Oh… That's … uh … huh." From the baffled, off-balance tone of Danny's voice, Valerie guessed that this was very much not the sort of problem he had been expecting.

(She was right; Danny had been expecting the sort of problem you could punch.)

"So … this is like a self-image thing," he said slowly.

"Self-image?!" Valerie yelped at him. "I'm losing control! I'm turning evil! Like Masters!"

"Whoa, no!" said Danny, alarmed. "I don't think that's what's going on at all. Look, last night you turned into something that you have hated and fought against for years, something you always thought was evil. And then you found out that thing isn't actually evil and maybe you were wrong to be hating it so much. That's got to be messing with your head, like, big time.

"And for ghosts, our appearance is based on self-image, yeah, but subconscious self-image. It's about how you see yourself deep down, I think — not, like, on the surface. Which…" the tone of his voice turned thoughtful and unfocused, "probably says something important about Vlad, now I think of it. Huh. I should talk to Jazz about that."

His voice strengthened and refocused. "Actually, you should talk to Jazz about this. She's big into psychology and psychiatry and all that, and she's taken a special interest in the psyche of ghosts — for, uh, obvious reasons. She's been doing a kind of unofficial counselling sessions with a few of my ghost friends; they help her understand how ghosts' minds work while she helps them through their issues. So, y'know, if anyone could help you figure out what's going on with you…"

Valerie didn't respond immediately because she was a little busy being floored by this new piece of information. "Your sister does counselling sessions with ghosts," she said flatly.

"Uh, yeah."

A pause. "Wow. Okay." She thought that over. The Fenton parents DEFINITELY did not know. "I would say your parents would freak, but that feels like a pathetic understatement."

"Oh, they would explode," said Danny, sounding far too cheerful at the prospect. "And then salivate maniacally over all her data. And then we would watch them be all conflicted over whether to be upset with her for taking risks or delighted that she's finally taking an interest in their passion. I think we could eventually talk them into being happy about it, though, because she is good, and she knows what she's doing.

"So will you talk to her?" Danny asked, a note of worried hope in his voice.

Valerie took a long, slow breath and made her decision. She'd always liked Jazz, in the few chances she'd got to meet her. "All right. I'll talk to her."

***

That night, Valerie didn't think she could possibly sleep. Her heart felt tight and tense in her chest, her insides wound into knots. But when she heard her father come home sometime around ten, she quickly turned out her lights and jumped into bed.

She found, as soon as the lights were out, that they made very little difference to how well she could see. The darkness should have been impenetrable, but instead, a dim, colourless version of her room surrounded her. She could clearly make out every object, despite the almost total lack of light sources.

Great, now even her normal form had supernatural vision. The fact made her feel even less human.

She heard her father putting away his coat and keys and come into the hallway. He was headed this way. She dived under the covers and did a creditable job of pretending to be asleep when the handle of her door quietly turned and a strip of light fell briefly across her room.

Her father poked his nose in just far enough to be sure that she was there, safely tucked up in bed, and then withdrew.

When he was gone, Valerie fisted her hands in her blankets and buried her face in her pillow, hiding from her freakish night-vision. She would have to face her dad sooner or later, but not yet … not yet.

Damn it, she couldn't take this. She couldn't do this. She was so exhausted. She'd only slept about four hours the night before, and that was after last night — the deadly battle and the greatest emotional trauma of her entire life. And then today had been probably the longest and most stressful day she'd ever had, even including the day her mother died.

To put it bluntly, even when you're way too wound up to sleep, there's a point where total and complete exhaustion shoves it all out of the way and just takes over. And Valerie had just passed that point.

She slept till dawn.

***

The next day was, thank all things holy, Saturday. No school.

Valerie slipped out of the house before her father was up, leaving him a note on the kitchen counter that she was meeting up with a friend. Which was very nearly the truth. She and Jazz didn't really know each other well enough to call each other "friend," but, well … close enough.

Danny had texted her the night before with Jazz's number and a time and place for Valerie to meet her: by the fountain in the park, 10:00. Getting out of the house before her dad was up made Valerie seriously early, but she just settled herself on a bench, bundled up in a scarf and heavy jacket against the autumn morning chill, and slowly worked her way through the energy bar that was serving as her breakfast.

It wasn't a great breakfast. But she hadn't dared stop to eat on the way out of the house, so.

Interestingly, she'd noticed that she didn't seem to have any troubles staying solid and visible while she was eating. Maybe it was because eating was a strictly "living" activity, it helped keep her on that side of the coin.

Whatever the reason, it was useful. She made her energy bar last as long as she could, so she didn't have to worry. Not that there was anyone around yet, but … still. She was out in the open.

Once the energy bar was gone, she shut her eyes and tried to meditate, focusing on the things Danny had told her to keep control. He was pretty good at giving advice and instructions, she thought in a sudden, abstracted moment. He'd probably make a good teacher.

She was still meditating when Jazz showed up, nearly half an hour early herself.

"I had a feeling you might already be here," said Jazz with a smile. She too was bundled up — she wore gloves and a puffy blue jacket with a fluffy hood. Her bright red hair was pulled into a braid on one side of her head.

Valerie responded with what was probably a pretty strained smile of her own. "Uh, yeah. Wanted to get out of the house."

"Before your dad woke up," Jazz said knowingly, sitting on the bench beside her. "Yeah, I get it. That's not a conversation I'd want to have either."

Valerie curled in on herself, hugging herself. "How long have you known about Danny?" she asked quietly, not looking directly at Jazz.

Jazz smiled. "Since just a couple months after it happened. He didn't actually realise I knew for a few months after that; I wanted to let him tell me himself, when he was ready, but…" Her smile turned wry. "Well, circumstances ended up forcing our hands."

Valerie tried to swallow her nerves and misgivings before making herself ask her next question. "How do you … feel about it?"

Jazz gave her a shrewd look. "About him being what he is? …Well, honestly, I was kinda freaked out at first. I thought my little brother was dead, and using some shapeshifting power to pretend to still be alive. This was during the whole Spectra-as-school-counselor mess, if you remember," she added as an aside. "So I had just found out that ghosts pretending to be living people was a totally possible thing."

Wearing a thoughtful frown, Jazz leaned her head back to stare up at the sky. "The idea scared me a lot, but I didn't know what to think. And I didn't know how he'd react if I confronted him about it. So I decided to conduct a clandestine investigation."

She canted a sideways grin at Valerie. "And by 'clandestine investigation,' I mean I ambushed him with hugs. Which he did not like, or at least pretended not to because he's a teenaged boy. But it was enough to prove that he was solid, warm, and had a pulse. And he obviously still ate and slept. So I concluded that he was at least kinda alive … but somehow was also a ghost."

Jazz sank lower on the bench, still looking up. "I considered confronting him again then, but I was still afraid of how he would react, that he might panic and take off — because of Mom and Dad, you know — and I still wasn't sure exactly what was going on with him and how deeply it was affecting him. So I decided to keep watching a while longer, while at the same time secretly covering for him with Mom and Dad."

She shrugged. "By the time the truth finally came out between us, I had reassured myself that Danny was still Danny. I was still worried about some things, but now that we've confirmed that he's still growing and maturing as normal, and that being a liminal spirit isn't going to rob him of his chance to grow up and find out who he really is…" she turned a gentle smile on Valerie, "…I'm fine with it. It's just another way my little brother is special."

Valerie said nothing. She was chewing over Jazz's words and wondering whether her father would react the same way. It seemed too much to hope for. Her dad was protective of her, and this was … well, not exactly the sort of thing that he had always been afraid her ghost-hunting would lead to, but … close enough.

"You're scared of how your dad will take it," said Jazz, as if reading Valerie's mind.

Valerie made a harsh noise comprised of buried fear and frustration brushing the surface. "Of course I am. So is Danny. It's been two years, and he still hasn't told your parents."

Jazz winced. "Well, no, but our parents are … our parents. " And she made a wide gesture that somehow encompassed alarming ghost-centred obsessions, underground mad scientist labs, and lunatic portals to another dimension unwisely placed under their own house.

"I may not approve of his decision not to tell them, but I completely understand it. But your dad is a lot more, uh…" she grimaced. "Let's call it reliable."

Valerie shook her head — not to disagree that her dad was reliable, because he was, but just in general objection. "He will freak. He's been afraid all along that my ghost hunting would get me killed. And now it … kind of has." She paused to swallow hard, made sure her voice would stay steady. "And I can't just keep it secret like Danny has, because I promised him I wouldn't lie to him anymore."

That made Jazz sit up straight. "You did? Promised?"

Slouching forward with her elbows on her knees and staring disconsolately at the gravel path, Valerie nodded.

"Oh," said Jazz in a serious voice. "That … pretty much settles it, then. 'Cause breaking trust like that, when it's been broken once before … that's bad. That's … really hard to fix."

"I know," said Valerie, voice harsh with her own stress and fear.

Neither of them said anything for a minute. Then Jazz asked, "What have you told him so far?"

Valerie shrugged. "We haven't actually talked since it happened. He's been working crazy hours on a big project, and I've … been avoiding him. We've only texted. He knows I was in a big fight and that it was pretty bad, but…" her voice wobbled, "he thinks I'm okay."

Jazz said nothing for a moment, biting her lip anxiously. But then her face hardened with determination, and she placed a warm hand on Valerie's knee. "You will be okay, Valerie. I promise you that. It's going to take time, and you're going to have a lot to work through, but eventually you will find a new normal, and things will be okay." She squeezed gently. "And Danny and I will be here for you every step of the way. Whatever you need."

Valerie took a few deep breaths, pushing the hot, roiling emotion back down her throat and into its box. She made herself believe Jazz was right. Because she had to. She had to get through this, figure things out, make everything okay again. There was no other option.

"Thanks," she said thickly, and Jazz smiled at her and released her knee. The absence of her hand made Valerie feel chilled.

In a more business-like tone, Jazz said, "So we're agreed you need to tell your dad ASAP?"

Valerie swallowed, her hands clenching and unclenching as a sick feeling twisted her stomach. "Yeah. Just … how the hell do I tell him?"

"Tell him what happened," Jazz said simply. "Start with the fight and go from there. But, uh, skip the part where you and Danny thought you were all dead for a while. Just jump straight to the part where he recognised you for what you really are. And…" she hesitated a moment, looking awkward, "if you could maybe avoid mentioning Phantom's true identity?" she said, then added in a rush, "Just until we know for sure your dad won't tell anyone."

Valerie blinked up at her in confusion. "Who would he tell?"

Jazz grimaced and said dryly, "Well, I could see him calling our parents for advice, for one. Which would be several kinds of not-good."

"Oh." Yes, Valerie could see that getting complicated fast. Crap. She was going to need to play this carefully, yet with enough confidence that her father wouldn't feel like he needed to go and seek a second opinion.

She would need to sound like she knew what she was talking about. And she really wasn't sure she did.

"How do I convince him?" she asked, a little desperately. "How can I prove to him that I'm really … liminal and not just dead or … or crazy?"

Jazz bit her lip, frowning. "Well, ghosts can't fake a pulse — or at least none we've met can — so there's your proof that you're alive. For the other half of it … you'll probably have to show him."

Valerie shook her head violently. "I can't let him see my ghost form! It looks like a monster!"

Jazz winced. "Ah. Right. Danny mentioned you were having a little problem with that."

"A little problem?!" A lump of hysteria in her throat made her voice rise, and Valerie clamped down on it to keep from attracting the attention of the jogger and two dog-walkers in the vicinity.

Jazz glanced at them too and leaned in close. "Valerie, it's okay, really," she said, eyes big and earnest. "From what I've learned from other ghosts, an appearance crisis is a pretty normal thing for a young ghost to go through. Usually not quite this early, I think, but … it's common. I've been half-expecting Danny to get hit with one sooner or later, but so far his ghost form hasn't proven very malleable appearance-wise. He might grow into it later."

Valerie stared at her. "What are you saying, this is some kind of standard ghostly identity crisis?"

Jazz nodded. "Not quite standard, but pretty common. See, a ghost's outward appearance is based mainly on their self-perception. And when you change from a human into something else … well, your self-perception can go through a pretty radical change. You can end up looking completely different from how you did in life, which, when you're already going through the shock of death, can be a hard thing to take. So … yeah, freaking out about it is pretty common for new ghosts."

She leaned over to look Valerie straight in the eye. "But you're still you, Valerie. This is just your appearance changing, not you." She poked Valerie in the chest, right over her heart. "Valerie Gray is still Valerie Gray, and she is not going to suddenly stop knowing the difference between right and wrong just because she has ectoplasm in her veins. Got it?"

Valerie swallowed and nodded. "Got it," she said weakly.

Jazz sat back. "And I think remembering that is going to be the secret behind getting your appearance back under control, too. Focusing on that, immersing yourself in it … well, it should help you get your ghost form back to default, anyway."

Valerie clenched her fists, the familiar old staunch determination raising its head in her chest. "Okay. Okay, I can try that."

There was a pause while Valerie glanced around and remembered they were in a park with people around and trying it here and now would probably be a bad idea.

She bounced to her feet, hands twitching with nervous energy. Jazz stood up beside her and scanned the area. They weren't far from the trees.

"The woods?" she suggested.

"The woods," Valerie agreed.

***

Once they were safely out of sight of nosey passers-by, Jazz led Valerie in a meditation exercise, centring herself and getting her to focus on her identity and sense of self. Then, she triggered the transformation.

Her insides tied in a knot of anxiety, Valerie retracted her suit.

"Wow," said Jazz. "You look … pretty cool, actually."

Valerie dared to open her eyes and look down. She saw just what she'd seen that first night: blue and purple clothes and honey-gold skin. She whipped a hand back to grab some hair — in her fingers, it felt almost as much like a cloud as it felt like hair, cool and not quite substantial. She pulled it forward.

It was white.

Her shoulders slumped with heavy, numbing relief. Which quickly turned surreal when she realised that she was relieved that her hair was white.

"It worked, then?" said Jazz, examining Valerie with bright fascination.

"Yeah," said Valerie. "I look—" She broke off with no idea how to finish that sentence. Because it wasn't "normal," and it wasn't "right," but … it was sure as hell better than she'd looked last night.

Nothing like being presented with something worse to suddenly make you feel not quite so badly about what you've got.

Jazz clapped her hands together. "Awesome! That means you're getting a handle on it!" She cocked her head, thoughtful. "I think you definitely have more shapeshifting talent than Danny. It'll be interesting to see what you can do with it, once it's developed."

Valerie's shoulders hunched at the thought. The idea of changing her appearance again was scary. She felt like her body might run entirely out of her control and turn into all kinds of monsters. "Um, yeah," she mumbled. "Don't think I'm ready for that."

Jazz's eyes widened as she realised her misstep. "Oh, of course not yet! No, no, you need to adjust first. And…" She hesitated, as if not sure if she should say what she wanted to say. Then her brow furrowed, and she went for it. "I think … that what's really standing in your way is that you need to accept yourself, to know who and what you really are, before you'll have real control of this ability."

Valerie's first reaction was a burst of hot rage that made her teeth and fists clench. 

"I don't want to accept it!" she spat. "I don't— I don't want this!" She waved her fists in the air, trying to keep the scream of frustration trapped in her throat, where it couldn't cause any harm.

Jazz flinched, but then caught herself and steadied. She took a step towards Valerie, her face grave. "Would you rather be dead?"

The question caught Valerie like a punch to gut. "I—" am dead, that's the problem, she wanted to say. But she wasn't, not really.

"Because that was the other option," Jazz continued. "You could have been a full ghost, unable to ever go home. Or you could have just been … gone, forever, leaving your father to grieve. Would that have been better?"

"You know it wouldn't," Valerie snapped, staring down at her clenched fists. "I know it could have been worse, okay?! I know. But…" She gritted her teeth and fought to hold back tears. "This isn't what I wanted."

Jazz's voice went soft and emotional, wobbling just slightly. "I know. Believe me, I know." And Valerie looked up into her eyes and saw tears there.

And the next thing Valerie knew, Jazz had scooped her up into a hug. Valerie was so startled that at first she didn't react. Then, slowly, she raised her arms, running them up Jazz's back, her attention caught by the strange sensations it caused in her ghostly limbs. The contact caused a sort of buzz in her skin, as if Jazz were thrumming with … something.

Life, probably.

The tears spilled over, and Valerie hugged Jazz back. "I didn't want this," she whispered.

"I know," Jazz murmured back. "It isn't what any of us wanted. But … it's better than the alternative."

Moments slipped past while they stood there, and Valerie felt like she should probably be pulling away. But physical comfort was apparently something she'd been in absolutely desperate need of, because she'd never been more reluctant to pull out of a hug in her life.

"All I wanted was to turn my suit colours back," she mumbled, voice shivering, "so people wouldn't know."

Jazz squeezed her. "I know. It was a good idea. But you might not be ready to make it work."

They stayed there a few more seconds, and then Valerie finally made herself pull away. "What am I gonna do?" she asked.

"Tell your dad," Jazz said simply. "That's definitely step one."

Damnit, Valerie was not looking forward to that conversation. She grimaced. "But what's step two?"

Jazz heaved a sigh and fiddled with her braid, looking off into space. "Step two is figuring out what the hell to do about Vlad. Because he is the one who is going to find you out. Even if you do pull off the suit colour change, there will be other signs, and he is going to see through you sooner rather than later."

A chill went up Valerie's spine. Her former employer's name was getting more frightening every time Danny and the others brought it up. "What will he do?"

Jazz grimaced. "Nothing good. Try to win, threaten, or coerce you over to his side, probably. Try to play you and Danny off each other in new and interesting ways. But he won't try to expose you. He'll lose more than you will if that happens."

Cold comfort. Valerie could already think of way too many possibilities for "coerce." Most of them involved her dad.

"But Val, when that time comes, you won't have to face him alone."

Valerie looked up at Jazz to find the other girl giving her an intense, earnest look that reminded Valerie suddenly and disconcertingly of Danny.

"You have backup now," Jazz told her. "Vlad can't take on any one of us without taking on all of us. And we've proved more than a match for him before."

Valerie's throat constricted. That was actually more reassuring than she would have thought. "That's … really good to know," she mumbled, unable to put better words to the confusing mass of emotions inside her. Then she looked at her watch and tried to pull herself together. "I should go. My dad will worry if I'm gone too long."

Jazz nodded. "I know you don't wanna hear this again, but … tell him. The longer you leave it, the worse it gets."

Valerie groaned and dragged her hands over her face. "I know, I know. I'll do it as soon as I get home." And if she took a little detour before she got there, nobody had to know.

"If you need backup or moral support, just call," said Jazz. "Danny and I will be hanging out with our phones, and he can get us to your place fast. We want to know how it goes."

Valerie nodded, glad to have that to resort to if things went bad. "Okay, I will." And then, awkward but sincere, "Thanks Jazz, really."

The smile Jazz gave her was warm. "No problem. You need someone to talk to, you call me anytime. Day or night."

They both turned to go, and then Jazz exclaimed, "Oh, hey, I almost forgot!" She took her bag off her shoulder and dug through it, producing a silvery thermos that she tossed to Valerie. "Danny asked me to bring you this. Your very own Fenton Thermos!"

Valerie caught it, recognising the weird soup-thermos ghost-catching capsule that Phantom always carried. Figured it was a Fenton design.

"Just take off the lid, point it at a ghost, and press the button," said Jazz.

With a nice, familiar piece of ghost-hunting equipment back in her hands, Valerie found herself beginning to smile. This, now, this was her speed. "Thanks," she said.

"No problem!" said Jazz, turning to head home. Then, over her shoulder, she tossed, "Just be careful you don't catch yourself!" And she ran off.

Valerie rolled her eyes. As if she'd be that clumsy.

Then it occurred to her that she could absolutely see Danny being that clumsy. And therefore Jazz might have given her that warning for a reason.

Hmm. Danny would never tell her. She'd have to ask Sam.

Chapter Text

Valerie should have been heading home. But because she was a coward, she was detouring to the nearest café, telling herself that she needed something to warm her up on the walk home.

She would tell her dad. She just first needed to fortify herself with a sugary coffee concoction topped with a miniature Everest of whipped cream.

Danny had forgotten to warn her, though, that the lives — well, half-lives — of liminal spirits are ruled by Murphy's Law. And her little delay gave Murphy an opportunity that was too good to miss.

Her phone dinged as she approached the café. She pulled it out, looked at it, and thought, 'Oh crap.'

She had three messages from an unknown number — as, she imagined, did every other phone in the town, because those messages read:

AHAHAHAHA! FEAR, MORTALS, FOR I HAVE COME!

BOW DOWN BEFORE TECHNUS, MASTER OF ALL THINGS ELECTRONIC AND BEEPING!

I SHALL RULE YOUR CELLULAR TELEPHONIC DEVICES

"Hell," she muttered, and fired off a message.

Valerie: Danny? You seeing this?

Danny: What?

Danny: CRAP

Danny: I GOT IT

Valerie scanned the skyline, trying to guess where the fight would happen. Was Technus in a cell tower? Or was he just working from a phone? The urge to jump on her hoverboard and do a scan was overwhelming.

And then scanning was unnecessary, because she heard maniacal laughter echoing from a couple of streets over, and the cold explosion of her ghost sense rolled up her throat and out her mouth.

She really should have gone home, or at least the opposite direction. She really should have. But once a ghost-hunter…

She somehow found herself tucked into an alley, watching the transparent forms of Phantom and Technus tangle out on the street. Phantom had driven Technus out of whatever computer system he had been possessing. Technus shouted a few flamboyant declarations and dived into the system of a passing electric car. Danny dived in after him.

The car swerved. Its lights turned an eerie, creepy green and started flashing. It jerked left, right, and then Technus and Phantom came flying out again, Phantom pushing Technus ahead of him. The car ran half up onto the sidewalk, the door flew open, and the driver staggered out, grabbed a lamppost, and threw up.

"YOU SHALL NOT DEFEAT ME!" cried Technus in defiance of two years of consistent evidence. And then Danny tackled him out of the air … right into Valerie's alley.

They whizzed past her, and she went transparent on pure, uncontrolled instinct.

Phantom and Technus weren't solid enough to hit the ground. Their misty forms shot right into it and then popped back out, Technus having escaped Danny's grasp.

"HA HA!" crowed Technus, spotting Valerie. "BEWARE, GHOST CHILD, FOR NOW YOU HAVE TWO ADVERSA—"

He broke off mid-overdramatic shout. He was staring at Valerie.

She realised her body was still see-through.

Faintly, at the edge of hearing, she heard Danny say, "Oh, shit."

Valerie made herself solid again, far too late to hide the truth. She cursed herself and her inability to leave a ghost-attack alone. Of course, of course she ended up blowing her cover on her second day.

Technus's eyes filled with an alarming amount of enthusiasm. He threw his arms open wide and cried, "ANOTHER GHOST CHI—" And then Danny cut him off by tackling him out of the air.

"Shut up!" Danny hissed frantically. "Shut up, shut up, no one can know!"

Technus, weirdly, did not fight back. He just writhed out of Danny's grip, looking back and forth between them with puzzlement. "What?" he said at something approaching a normal volume.

"No one can know," Danny repeated fiercely. "Valerie has only just— She needs time to get her feet under her. Are you gonna be the asshole who attacks a brand-new ghost?"

Valerie had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that there was some sort of etiquette about the treatment of new ghosts. Another nail in the coffin of the "Unfeeling Monsters" narrative.

Technus was looking Valerie over with an intensity that was making her edgy. His face lit with realisation. "She is another liminal, like you!"

Danny and Valerie both flinched as Technus just said their dread secret out loud, where anyone daring enough to stick their nose into a ghost fight might hear — which today, fortunately, was nobody, because the residents of Amity Park were well trained and knew which direction was AWAY, thank you very much.

"Yes, fine," hissed Danny. "And we need you to not tell anybody because—"

"This is your fault," snarled Valerie, her over-strained emotions coming to a boil. She charged forward, pointing an accusing finger at Technus. "You were the one who made that suit, bonded it with my body. That's why this happened."

She ignored the little voice that reminded her that, if he hadn't, she would have been just dead instead.

Technus looked like a man who had just been told he had a twin brother no one had ever thought to tell him about. "You mean … I am responsible…?" He looked at Danny for confirmation.

Danny pulled a face and rubbed his ear. "I mean … from a kinda sideways direction?" He watched Technus with the worried grimace of someone hoping they weren't about to witness an explosion.

"But then…" said Technus, staring into the middle distance. And just when Valerie thought she was going to witness actual remorse from a ghost, he burst out, "I AM A GODFATHER!"

"…You're what?" said Valerie, having just instinctively grabbed for a gun that was no longer there. She looked at Danny.

Danny said, "Uh-oh."

This was not reassuring.

"Never fear!" said Technus, who was suddenly much closer to Valerie and looking manically excited again. "I shall take my responsibilities with the UTMOST seriousness!"

Oh no. Valerie was 95% sure that, whatever that meant, it was something she didn't even want to get her pinky toe involved with. "What responsibilities?"

But neither of them replied. Danny, instead, darted in close to Technus and said, desperately, earnestly, "Technus, listen, you can't tell anyone. If Plasmius finds out, he'll try to claim her for himself. And you know how terrible he is."

Technus's manic enthusiasm dimmed into a scowl. "Hmph. Plasmius. He is a good fighter, but he has no respect. Horning in on other people's haunts. Fine, I will keep your secret." Then the manic gleam returned. "I have godfathering to do! Ha-HA!"

And he vanished.

***

"Wait, back up," Valerie said desperately. A headache started to throb behind her temple. "Why does he think he's my godfather?"

She and Danny, in human form, were as deep in the alley as they could get, tucked against the wall both to keep out of sight and also out of the bursts of cold, stinging wind that kept finding their way in off the street.

"It's a ghost-culture thing," said Danny, shoving his hands deep in his hoodie pockets and glancing up and down the alley. "When one ghost contributes to another person becoming a ghost — not to their death, mind, but to their having access to enough ectoplasm to manifest themselves and become a proper ghost — then the older ghost is, by tradition, responsible for the younger ghost, and they often take the title of godparent."

He grinned, laughter in his eyes. "Which, all in all, means that Technus is now your godfather and considers it his bounden duty to educate you in the ways of ghosts."

Valerie gave serious consideration to finding the nearest plane to Tahiti and sneaking aboard.

"He what." She slumped against the wall, buried her face in her hands, and let out a long, hoarse, infuriated growl.

"Look at the bright side," said Danny, who was clearly enjoying this, the bastard. "You've given him something new and exciting to focus on. Maybe we'll get a break from all the world-domination attempts."

Valerie turned her face just enough to glare balefully over her fingers. "Can't we just tell him that you're teaching me, and his input isn't required?"

"Sure," said Danny, leaning his shoulder against the wall beside her. "It makes sense for me to be your main teacher, since we're both liminal and all. But when it comes to ghost culture and how society works in the Infinite Realms…" He grinned and shrugged. "I can't deny he knows way more than I do."

"You think this is funny," she accused.

He didn't deny it. "Hey, I can't help enjoying that the crazy is happening to someone other than me for a change. I should introduce you to my own ghost godfather sometime. I will be frankly surprised if Technus's teaching methods are weirder than his."

She raised her head, curious. "Who's your ghost godfather?"

"Nobody you've come across — he rarely comes to the Living World. His name is Clockwork, and he has some strange ideas about the best way to educate a half-dead teenager."

Valerie made a mental note to go after that story later — along with the story of how he got himself arrested, and the story of how he got sucked into the Fenton Thermos… She had thought the last two years of her life had been a complete gamut of crazy, but she was realising now that she had nothing on Danny.

Her phone beeped, just with some miscellaneous message from her provider — "Refer friends and family and get a cut rate!" — but it reminded her of the time. She groaned. "I have to get home. I still haven't told my dad."

Danny's face twisted with sympathy. "Oh. Yeah. Probably better you get on that, before Technus…" He raised his hands in a gesture that could illustrate 'surprise!' or 'boo!' or 'yahaha, I'm here to conquer the world!', which pretty much summed up Technus, really.

The image of Technus popping up in her house and scaring a few decades of life off her father was enough to push Valerie past her reluctance. "Wish me luck," she said to Danny.

"All the luck," he said fervently, and grabbed her shoulder. "You got this. And we're all here for you if you need it."

She took a deep, bracing breath. "Thanks."

***

There was a gift basket on her front porch.

Valerie froze mid-step when she saw it, then approached with all the caution of a security guard investigating unattended baggage in the middle of a popular terrorist target.

It was a large, wicker basket of the sort that Victorian ladies might have used for collecting flowers, and it was bedecked with ribbons and bows. A white-and-red bouquet of lilies, poppies, and chrysanthemums — flowers which, Valerie was pretty sure, were all popular at funerals — stuck out of the pile of objects within.

Getting closer, she could see two ecto-blasters, several circuit-board-y things that were probably the vital organs of something electronic, a large tablet with a bunch of buttons and dials down the side, and a glass bottle of greenish liquid that Valerie thought might be glowing faintly.

The bottle had a large, printed label on the side. Valerie bent down to read it.

Dr. Bloodwell's Ectoplasmic Nutritional Supplement
For new and developing ghosts, or anyone who is feeling a little transparent around the edges

Each Bottle Contains: 23 oz distilled ectoplasm (750 ml)
Non-Medicinal Ingredients: None
Recommended Adult-Spirit Dosage: 2 tsp daily (10 ml)
Recommended Dosage for Spirits under 2 Years: 3 tsp daily (15 ml)
Do not consume if seal is broken. For freshness, store in a cool, dry place.

What the hell, thought Valerie, gaping at it. Was this actual ghost medicine? That was a thing? A thing with regulations of ingredient disclosure and recommended dosages? Or was the ghost that made it just aping the labelling on human medications?

Then she noticed the card.

It was tucked into the flowers and looked like a standard, store-bought greeting card. With trepidation curling through her gut, she plucked it out.

The front depicted a colourful image of a large baseball, apparently rushing towards a vague, faceless figure brandishing a bat. In curly, slanted writing, the legend read: Sometimes life throws you a curve ball.

She opened the card. Inside, the rest of the team had gathered around the batter and were all making supportive gestures. Just remember, you've got the rest of the team to back you up!

The card was unsigned, but just after 'the rest of the team,' someone with old-fashioned, calligraphic handwriting had inserted the words 'and your Godfather, Master of All Things Electronic and Beeping!!'

Valerie stared at it, her sense of surrealness climbing to new heights. Technus had left her a gift basket. With a greeting card. Which he presumably must have stolen, along with the flowers, in the half-hour it had taken her to walk home. And he hadn't just grabbed the first ones he had seen, either; he had taken the time to find ones that fit.

It would have been touching if it didn't freak her out so much.

The rest of it was stuff that he might conceivably have just had lying around, but no way had he had time to go back to his lair in the Ghost Zone to get it. He must have a stash in town.

The slam of a car door made Valerie jump so badly she nearly face-planted straight into the basket. She jerked up and glanced up and down the street, suddenly terrified of what her neighbours might have witnessed. Might still witness. Was Technus still around? She hadn't felt that telltale rush of cold air up her throat…

She grabbed the basket — she needed to get this and herself out of sight. She had to lean awkwardly around the basket to get the door open. She sidled in, kicked the door shut behind her, and froze as her eyes met her dad's. He was standing in the kitchen, drying dishes, but he stopped at the sight of her.

"Val sweetie? What's that?"

Oh god, Valerie did not want to explain her new 'godfather' to her dad. "Gift basket. Long story," she grunted, her mind running furiously through options. She latched onto one. "Could you get a vase for the flowers? I'm gonna go put this somewhere safe, and then I … need to talk to you about something."

He looked at her sharply, and she hoped the conversation would distract him from the damn gift basket until she could figure out how much she wanted to tell him. "Sure," he said, already bending to search a cupboard. "Whatever you need."

Valerie made a hasty escape to her room. She stuffed the basket in her closet, hid the card under her mattress, and then grabbed the bouquet and went back out.

Her dad already had a vase of water ready on their dining table. "Nice flowers," he said, regarding them like their implications worried him. Valerie remembered it was a funeral bouquet and took a moment to be very, very glad that her father's ability to identify flowers was limited to roses and sunflowers and there was no way he knew the symbolism of white lilies, never mind the rest of it. Which meant his thoughts were running along different lines.

"There a boy I should know about?" he asked, and Valerie realised that oh yeah, that was really the more sensible conclusion.

"No," she said firmly. "Nothing like that." She placed the bouquet gently, carefully into the vase, and, as she did, wondered why she cared, why these flowers suddenly mattered to her.

Maybe because she had kinda sorta died, and this was the only funeral bouquet she was going to get.

God, this was messed up.

She dropped into the chair nearest the flowers and, staring at them, said, "I have something I need to tell you."

Her dad sat around the corner of the table from her, dropping his dishtowel on the table and watching her with concern. He didn't prompt her, just patiently waited for her to come out with it.

Valerie's tongue felt like lead. She couldn't tell him what had really happened, couldn't tell him that she had died — she couldn't do that to him. But … she had to give him some idea of how much everything had changed. Had to … ease him into it, somehow.

"I'm taking a break from ghost-hunting," she said, realising as she said it that it was true. "Maybe — I can't give it up completely, but … I can't keep doing what I've been doing." Her hands curled into fists on the table, and she stared at them, not looking at her father's reaction.

He was quiet for a long moment, then said, "That fight Thursday night. It was worse than you said."

She nodded. "I took a hit. A bad hit. I'm okay," she added quickly when her dad started to lean forward. "Not a mark on me. But…" She swallowed hard. She had promised her father no more lies, and she wanted to keep that promise. But getting through this next part without lying, while also not telling the outright truth…

"What happened?" asked her father, worry clear in his eyes and the way his hand clutched the edge of the table.

"Phantom," Valerie choked out, because that was the only direction that she could think of taking this conversation that would explain her change of heart without using the phrase 'I died.' "He— I was wrong about him. I was so wrong."

Her dad looked bewildered, as well he might. If there had been one constant in the life of Valerie Gray over the past two years, one thing upon which she had been set and immovable, it was her opinion of Phantom.

Her dad had tried to talk her down, to convince her that holding grudges like that wasn't healthy, never mind whether the target deserved them or not. Valerie had refused to be moved. But now…

To her father, it must be as if he had spent years trying to get through a mountain, chipping away at the problem … and then woken up one morning to find that the mountain had got up and walked away.

At first glance, it was a good thing, but then you remembered that something must have happened to make that mountain walk away. And it became scary.

"What?" asked her dad. "What did you get wrong?"

"Everything." Tears gathered in her eyes, and it was suddenly crucial to Valerie that her dad understand what she now did about Danny and the sort of person he really was. Because although it hadn't been as bad as hers, her dad had held a grudge too, and Danny didn't deserve that either.

Stumblingly, she tried to explain. "I thought he was out to get me. I thought he was just pretending to be nice as a ruse. I thought he was trying to trick people into thinking he was good. I thought he—" Her voice broke there, and she had to pull it back together. "I thought he didn't have emotions, I thought he didn't feel."

Her dad's eyebrows were slowly rising up his forehead. "…You're saying you were wrong?"

She nodded, unable to look him in the eye, shame burning in her throat.

"What … what brought this on?" he asked faintly.

"When I got hit," she mumbled, knuckling tears from her eyes, "he came back for me. He finished off the ghost, and then he came back for me. And he shouldn't have — the Fentons were after him. He was putting his whole existence at risk, but he didn't leave until he found me, made sure I was okay, and then…"

If she told her dad there had been any weird aftereffects from what had happened to her, he would insist that she see a doctor. Or the Fentons. And Valerie was honestly not sure which would be worse. She couldn't risk it, not yet.

So instead, she told her dad about Phantom. "He carried me out of there, even though we were being shot at. And then he hung around to … to help me figure out what was wrong with my suit — it got pretty messed up in the fight — and how to fix it. And then he insisted on escorting me home to make sure I was safe."

"…Okay," said her dad slowly, a worried crinkle in his brow. "And that made you change your mind about him?"

His confusion was warranted, since Phantom had done things like that before, and Valerie had always dismissed it as a trick, as him messing with her head.

"It … helped," she said, ducking her head to hide something that felt like shame. God, why did she have to be so hard-headed… "It helped me listen to him. And there was some stuff that sorta … came out because of the fight, and he … he had to tell me who he really is … and was."

She gave that a moment to sink in.

Her dad sat up straight. "You mean before he died?"

She nodded. "And … who he still is now." She leant across the table and grabbed her dad's hand. "You can't tell anybody this next bit. This — I see his reasons for keeping this stuff secret, and I agree with them. Bad things would happen if this got out." She grimaced. "Especially if the GIW found out."

When it came to matters of ghosts in general and Phantom in particular, the residents of Amity Park were divided. But on the subject of the GIW, they were fiercely united: the GIW were the most obnoxious pack of morons to ever come throw their weight around where it wasn't wanted, and the residents would have dearly loved to chuck them out and lock the proverbial door behind them.

And after all the times the white-suited dolts had endangered his daughter, Damon Gray would be at the head of the people doing the throwing.

"Okay," he said, worried but firm. "Those bastards won't get it from me, sweetie, never fear."

Valerie smiled. Her dad didn't usually swear, so it never stopped being funny to her that he insisted on referring to the GIW as 'those bastards.' She squeezed his hand. "Thanks."

He squeezed back. "You got it. Now … what did you mean when you said 'who he still is now'? I thought ghosts didn't remember who they were in life."

She grimaced. "Some do, some don't. He does. But that's not what I really meant. What I meant was … he's still living a human life."

Her dad sat back in his chair, staring. "He's still… You mean he's pretending to be human? To be alive?"

Valerie winced and shook her head. "If he were just a ghost playing at being alive, he would still set off ghost detectors. My equipment would pick him up. It doesn't. This is more complicated than that."

Valerie scrambled to get her thoughts in order. She had to introduce her dad to the idea of liminal spirits without giving away who Danny really was, and also leave herself a door open to later ease him into the idea that this was what she was now.

She swallowed hard. "Turns out there's another kind of ghost out there, one that … isn't entirely a ghost. They're called liminal spirits, and their whole deal is that they're neither dead nor alive — they're both human and ghost at the same time, and can pass for either when they want. And that's what Phantom is."

She peered anxiously up at her dad. He looked baffled, like his processors were whirring at full power and still not spitting out anything that made sense.

"You mean Phantom is a Ringwraith?"

Valerie opened her mouth, closed it, and reminded herself that her dad spiced up his love for action and spy thrillers by being a total Lord of the Rings nut. "No. Daaaaad. Not like that."

"Then like what?"

Valerie thought about it. "It's more like … a human with ghost powers? Except, no, he does have a ghostly Obsession, and he admits to being territorial about his Haunt." She threw up her hands. "He's like a human who can turn into a ghost and a ghost that can turn into a human, with a mind that's somewhere between the two."

Like me. Now.

"Okay," her dad said slowly, frowning. "Does that make him … part evil?"

Valerie slumped against the table. "Adding to the list of things that I was wrong about, ghosts are not actually creatures of unfeeling malice. I mean, obviously they're dangerous, but they have emotions, they care about people, they have empathy. We just see a really bad side of them here, because Amity Park is an access point between their world and ours, which makes it a desirable piece of territory to fight over. We pretty much just see the conquering, power-hungry types and the ones with grudges against the living. Which doesn't give a great impression."

"No," her dad said slowly, staring at nothing and thinking hard. She stared at him in apprehension, wondering what conclusion he was coming to, when suddenly he burst out, "That makes so much more sense!"

She started. "What does?" she asked, baffled.

He waved a hand excitedly. "The access point between worlds — of course people would want to control that, just like countries fight over control of canals, river crossings, bottlenecks that give you power. That makes so much more sense than just mindless creatures attacking us because it's all they know how to do."

Valerie nodded, relieved. "Yeah, it does. And it's Phantom's job — his duty — to guard the access point and keep either side from messing with the other." Not that the humans had actually figured out that the access went both ways, yet, but she was sure that, if and when they did, Danny would have Opinions about it.

"Because he's, what's it, liminal?" asked her dad. "In between the Living and the Dead in more ways than one?"

That made Valerie pause. Was it? They were getting dangerously close to his Obsession and cause of death, here, which she was sure he wouldn't want her talking about.

Danny had died in the awakening portal, had died to open it, in a way. So, he considered it his duty to deal with what came through it. And being liminal definitely made him uniquely qualified to hold that line.

"I guess so," she said. "I don't know exactly how it works. Phantom says there are other liminals out there — not many, but a few — but it didn't sound like they're gatekeepers the way he is."

She wondered whether she would become like that, whether her new instincts would drive her to be a gatekeeper rather than a ghost hunter, to guard the portal both ways.

"So…" her dad said slowly, cautiously, like he was afraid of spooking her off, "you're backing off hunting?"

It was what he desperately wanted, and what she had always refused to do, and that tension had sometimes made being in the house with him unbearable. And now she was reversing course.

It felt … a little like giving in. But it was something she had to do.

"Yeah," she said hoarsely. "For Phantom, completely. I never should have gone after him in the first place, but…" she hung her head, "…I was just so … angry, I saw him through blinders. I was so determined to make him my enemy that I only saw what I wanted to see, and ignored everything that didn't fit my picture."

Her dad leant over to put a big, warm hand on her shoulder. "I don't think you're the only one to do that, sweetie. A lot of the town sees him the same way you did. The Fentons, for example."

Valerie couldn't help an explosive snort — her opinion of the Fenton parents had changed a lot since she had discovered that they were unknowingly hunting their own son. "Yeah, well. They're nobody's idea of objective observers."

Then she shook herself, because her dad was raising an eyebrow, and going down that path would lead them to things she shouldn't say.

"Anyway, yeah. I'm taking a break. And … not just from Phantom." She scrubbed at her face. "That last fight gave me … a bit of a lesson about my limits. There are things out there I shouldn't go up against, especially not alone. I can't give this up," she added forcefully, before her dad got his hopes too high. "It's too important. This town needs all the ghost hunters it can get, and I'm the best, bar Phantom himself. But…" She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "I need to be more careful, and I need better backup."

She could see her dad trying to contain his reaction, trying not to appear too happy, in case it made her go back on some part of her decision. "That's … that's real good to hear, sweetie. You know how I worry. And I know how important this is to you," he added quickly, "and really, I agree — the stuff you do, it really is something this town needs. And I'm proud of you for doing it. I just…" He sighed, his hand squeezing her shoulder. "I want you to be safer."

She put her hand on top of his and squeezed back. "Well, the good news there is that it turns out that Phantom has a support network of both humans and ghosts who help him and look out for him, and they're happy to loop me in. So, I'll have a list of people to call to back me up or get me out of trouble."

She already had one, really — Sam, Jazz, and Tucker were all in her contacts list … and she had a nasty little feeling that Technus might be about to put himself on that list whether she liked it or not.

"And," she added as a brighter thought occurred to her, "if we can work out some sort of shift schedule, that could mean less missed school and sleep." For both herself and Danny. They could take turns for who was on duty, maybe trade off who was on day and night shift. Sharing the workload could cut it by half.

"That sounds great," said her dad with clear relief. And then, throwing caution to the wind, he swept her up into one of his all-encompassing bear hugs that always made her feel like a little kid again. "I'm so proud of you, sweetie," he murmured into her ear. "I'm proud of how hard you work, how many things you balance … I'm proud of how you stepped up and shared the load when we lost nearly everything." He took a shuddering breath. "And I'm proud of how brave you are, how tough, how you take things into your hands and do what needs doing, even though it scares the pants off me to see it."

By this point in the recitation of her virtues, Valerie's eyes had filled with tears and her throat was burning. She tried to make it work to say something, but her dad wasn't done. "But I am also so proud — so proud — of you for changing your mind. For admitting you were wrong. Because that is one of the hardest things a human ever has to do, and I have known a lot of people who could never cope with doing it."

He loosened his grip on the hug, but Valerie clutched him tight, because god knew she couldn't look him in the face after he said all that to her. Her eyes were streaming now, and she didn't think she could stop them. A sob broke free, and she realised that she was in this for the long haul, that the tears were just going to keep coming until they were done.

Her father held her all through it, murmuring soft comforts like he had when she had been small. And she just buried her face in his shoulder and his safe, familiar smell and cried it all out — all the stress and fear of the last few days. She cried as she hadn't cried since her mother had died. And as he had been then, her father was her rock, her safe port in the storm, and she clung to him.

When at last the storm had passed, she croaked, "I'm sorry for worrying you. I'll try my best to do it less."

He stroked her head. "That's all I ask."

At last they broke apart, and Damon gave Valerie some time to clean herself up while he made her hot chocolate.

It was while he was adding marshmallows that he looked up and frowned. "Wait, where did the gift basket come into all this?"

Valerie dropped her head onto the table and groaned. She was half a second from telling him to please not ask when she remembered that Technus was definitely going to pop up at some horrendously inconvenient moment, and her dad needed to be warned. "So I may have inadvertently befriended the lunatic technology ghost…"

Chapter Text

Valerie spent the rest of her weekend expecting Technus to come flying out at her at any moment. She kept jumping at small noises and scanning her environment for lurking technology-obsessed lunatics.

After her talk with her dad, she didn't leave the house again for the rest of Saturday. It didn't feel right, after that conversation, to go straight back out and do ghost stuff, even if it wasn't hunting. So, she stayed home and tried to plough through the week's accumulated homework while her dad watched Jason Bourne movies in the background.

She was pretty sure her work was even more subpar than usual. But she had died on Thursday, so she was giving herself a pass. Her teachers were lucky they were getting anything.

After dinner, she and Danny did a video call, and he spent about an hour coaching her on her control. It reminded Valerie of when she had first got her period and had to learn to notice and recognise the tiny, subtle sensations that were her only warning that the blood was coming. It had taken her about two years to get tuned in enough to actually feel it, to know it was coming and notice when the blood started to flow.

A ghost's invisibility and intangibility were like that. They were a part of the very fabric and function of the body, what it did naturally, and they could creep up on you without your noticing if you weren't tuned in. Unlike her period, though, these functions were actually controllable. But that control was mainly by subconscious instinct. And Valerie knew from her martial arts training that getting the better of subconscious instinct took time, practice, and patience.

In this case, lots and LOTS of patience.

She was making progress, Danny assured her, really good progress. But they had to give up when Valerie's headache overcame her ability to cope with learning curves. She said goodnight to her dad and collapsed into bed.

Well, at least Technus hadn't shown up yet.

As soon as she thought it, she cursed herself. She'd jinxed it now. He would probably burst into their house at ungodly o' clock in the morning and possess their kitchen appliances. And then she wouldn't be able to make coffee.

…Screw that. Reformed ghost-hunter or not, if her new wannabe godfather destroyed her ability to make coffee, she was gonna end him.

***

As it happened, Technus did not possess any part of the Gray Family kitchen during the night. Or, indeed, any other electronic they owned. This fact did not, however, prevent Valerie from waking up at two in the morning from an anxiety dream about accidentally phasing her way right out of her clothes while making a presentation at school.

She awoke from this dream floating about a foot and a half above her bed. The moment she noticed, gravity reasserted itself and she fell with a great flumph back down into the pile of her covers

Curse Sam and Tucker for telling her about Danny phasing out of his pants.

It took her an hour of meditating on her control before she could get back to sleep.

When she emerged the next morning, she glanced cautiously all around the house, looking for any sign of spectral incursion during the night. She even checked the porch for gift baskets. But everything was as it should be, and her dad was making coffee with a delightfully unpossessed coffee maker.

Valerie took a cup and grimly added a handful of chocolate chips, which she stirred until they melted, and then a pile of whipped cream. It seemed like that sort of day.

Over breakfast, she told her dad that she was hoping to spend the day reconnecting with friends and rebuilding some relationships — which was true, and also an excellent cover for working on ghost stuff with Danny and co. Her dad's face brightened, then darkened again.

"Not the ones who turned their backs on you once you weren't rich anymore?"

Her dad had a low opinion of Paulina and her crowd. They had abandoned his baby girl, right when she needed them most, and a father remembered a thing like that — or a good father did, anyway. And Valerie's dad still held it against them, which she didn't mind because, much as she had tried to let it all go and move on, she had never entirely forgiven them either.

"No, not them. Danny, Sam, and Tucker. They're…" She struggled for words. It was suddenly crucial to her that she sell her dad on them as good friends, people he would want her spending time with. "They're real in a way almost no one else is in my year. They don't hide what they like to fit in, or put up a front, or sacrifice the bits of themselves that other people think aren't cool. And…" She leaned her elbows on the table and pressed her fingers into her temples. "I've been keeping them at arm's length for a long time. But I've come to realise how supportive they are, if you let them. And I think maybe it's time I let them."

She looked up at her dad for his reaction. Her spending more time with friends, finding supportive relationships, that was definitely the kind of news he wanted to hear. And he didn't even know Danny was an ex-boyfriend — the relationship had never got far enough for her to tell him.

He was looking thoughtful. "Isn't Danny a bit of a troublemaker?"

Valerie shrugged because, well, in a way… "He went through a rough patch a couple of years ago, figuring out how he fit into life with his parents being, y' know." She waved a hand in gesture wide enough to encompass the expanse of wacky eccentricity which the Fentons inhabited.

Her dad knew them better than most, having consulted with them on security issues. He grimaced. "Oh god. Yeah, no way that wouldn't be hard on the kid."

Valerie nodded, because he had no idea. "He's got his head on pretty well straight now. Still dealing with a few issues with his parents, but I think getting together with Sam has been good for him."

"Sam's the rebellious one," said her dad.

"Yeah, kinda. She's all about being true to yourself and good to the environment, that kind of stuff. Gets her in trouble sometimes, but she means well."

"And Tucker's the kid who's always glued to his phone."

"He's a big computer guy," said Valerie. "Writes his own apps and programs, even. I used to think he was annoying, but, well, I guess he's grown up a lot. He was super supportive the other day when I was having some trouble in calc class."

Her dad nodded thoughtfully, stirring milk into his coffee. "Well, if they're supportive to you, sweetie, then I'm all for it." He smiled at her and squeezed her shoulder. "And have some fun, hey? You work too hard."

Valerie smiled back at him despite the sudden lump in her throat. "I'll do my best."

***

She spent pretty much all of Sunday with Danny, Sam, and Tucker, and they did have some fun, as it happened. Tucker and Sam had been helping Danny to train and improve his skills from the beginning, and they had long since made a game of it, things like skeet shooting and obstacle courses and dodgeball. All of which were way more fun when you were playing them with friends instead of in gym class.

And they had fun outside of training, too. Valerie didn't yet have the stamina to work on her powers the whole time, so in between practice sessions they talked, did their homework together, and at one point headed back to Sam's place and watched a movie in her family's home theatre.

Which was the point that Valerie realised that Sam's family was loaded. Valerie had known for a long time that Sam was pretty well off, but nothing on this scale. This was … this was high society.

"Why have you never told anyone at school?" Valerie asked, still dizzy from the sheer amount of wealth arrayed before her. "You could be queen of the castle."

Sam smiled wryly. "Exactly."

It took Valerie's dizzy mind a few seconds to put it together. "Oh," she said. Of course Sam wouldn't want that. She was all about being real and honest and bonding with people for who they were rather than who they pretended to be. And nothing would surround her with fake pretenders faster than revealing she was this kind of rich.

"I'll admit that knocking Paulina off her pretty little perch has been tempting," said Sam as they went in through a pair of grand French doors into a room of vaulted ceilings, stained glass, and horrifyingly expensive Armenian rugs. "But in the long run, it just wouldn't be worth it."

Valerie had respected Sam before, respected her quite a bit. She respected her more now.

"So I'd appreciate it if you could keep this to yourself," said Sam, looking her in the eye.

Valerie snorted softly. "Are you kidding? Not only do I totally respect you for keeping this secret, but the last thing I want to do right now is draw attention to any of us."

Sam grinned at her. "See, you get it."

The movie was fun. Watching it with a group of friends was better. Valerie had thought she hated people talking during movies, but Sam, Tucker, and Danny seemed to have a tradition of wry commentary that made her laugh way more often than the movie did. It wasn't at all like the snooty, catty comments Paulina always made … and it occurred to Valerie that maybe it had been the catty comments she had hated and not the talking.

As she giggled helplessly into her popcorn at a crack made by Tucker about the hero's failure to identify the villain by his very obvious Evil Goatee™, Valerie reflected once again that it was good to have friends.

***

"Oh hell no," said Valerie on Monday morning when she opened her school locker.

Tucker leaned over her shoulder and said, "Whoa."

Her locker was full of things she had definitely never put in it. Several technological doo-dads of dubious purpose, a disordered pile of what looked like maps and scrolls, and a stack of books with titles like Absolute: Monarchy in the Infinite Realms and Why It Toppled, or Haunting Etiquette — How to Claim and Defend your Space, or An Argument of Nations: Socio-Political Relations between the Realms of the Dead, or Legends of the Ancients: Tales of the Most Powerful Ghosts to Ever Haunt. And propped against the stack of books was a note in old-fashioned, loopy handwriting, which said, 'Remember to take your supplements!'

"How did he know which locker was mine?" Valerie hissed frantically, half-closing the door and glancing around anxiously at the other students drifting around the hall.

"Do you keep ghost-hunting equipment in it?" Sam answered dryly.

Everyone knew the answer to that question.

"Are you taking the supplement?" asked Danny, not seeming nearly concerned enough by this.

"No!"

"You maybe should. It's a good brand, and it would help you build your strength up quicker."

Valerie could not believe she was having this conversation. "Technus has been in my locker," she hissed at him.

Danny shrugged. "The school isn't a private residence, so it isn't rude for him to come in here and poke around."

Valerie emphatically disagreed on that point.

The bell rang. With a groan, she opened her locker again, trying to shield its contents with her body, and grabbed out the books she needed — none of which were Legends of the Ancients — and the four of them hurried to class.

Their morning classes went relatively smoothly — at no point did Valerie become invisible, sink into the floor, or lose her pants. She did continue to struggle with dropping things (Sam handled all the glass beakers for her in chem, bless her), and at one point her backpack went right through her shoulder and spilled half its contents across the floor, but Danny and Tucker grabbed most of it before it even stopped moving, and little, bespectacled Mikey shyly scooped up the rest and handed it to her.

Valerie, suddenly finding kindness to be a precious thing, made sure to thank them all properly.

It all went smoothly enough until partway through lunch, when Valerie and Danny both choked on mist coming up meeting food going down — or coffee, in Danny's case.

("Your coffee addiction is becoming a problem," Tucker had said when Danny had produced it, in a thermos worryingly similar to the ones he used to suck up ghosts. "You're going to vibrate yourself right off this bench if you don't watch it."

"Excuse you," said Danny. "The not-exactly-dead drink whatever they want.")

Danny made a noise of exasperation through his coughing. "If I have to miss another lunch because of these idiots…" he croaked.

The day was cold but clear and sunny, so they had been eating at a picnic table outside to give Valerie a break from being surrounded by the continuous threat of someone noticing something. No one else was outside, at least on this side of the building. The only risk of witnesses was someone happening to look out a window.

Danny didn't even bother to tell the others to cover him, trusting them to do it automatically. He just ducked under the picnic table, Sam and Tucker both moving, totally casually, to screen him from view. The shadow under the table was just barely enough to show the little pulse of light that accompanied Danny's transformation. Valerie could suddenly feel him in a way she had never noticed before: a chill up the back of her throat, an icy pinprick in her perception of the world around her.

Beneath the table, Danny faded to nothing, but that didn't stop Valerie feeling his presence. The cold spot drifted straight up through the table, then took off upwards. Her ability to pinpoint its location faded rapidly with distance, but she could still tell its general direction.

It was every bit as effective as her ghost trackers, only better because she didn't have to look at it — she just knew, like she just knew what she was hearing and seeing and smelling.

This bit, she thought, she could get used to. Sitting out ghost attacks, on the other hand…

Shutting her eyes, she examined her new sense, sorting through all the information it was giving her. She picked up another cold pinprick, farther away than Danny. She couldn't tell whether it was bigger or brighter than him or not.

She opened her eyes with an inarticulate noise of frustration. "I don't know how much longer I can take just sitting back and watching while Danny fights."

"Welcome to our world," Sam said dryly with an undercurrent of sympathy.

"We're backup in case things go south," said Tucker.

Valerie was not used to being backup in case things went south. She was used to being the vanguard, the hero, first to throw herself into the fray (well, not counting Phantom, which she hadn't been until … until that night).

She was just deciding how bad it would really be if she followed Danny's example of transforming under the table and chased him into whatever disaster was about to explode — no one had recognised Danny as Phantom, so how likely were they really to recognise her ghost self without the suit? — when she heard an unpleasantly familiar voice shouting imperiously in the distance.

"Stand down, ghost child! I am here to visit my goddaughter!"

Sam and Tucker both sat up rather straighter. "Uh-oh," said Tucker, wearing a strange expression that seemed to mingle dread with amused anticipation.

Valerie placed her forehead on the cold cement of the picnic table and emitted a long and truly heartfelt groan.

"He's seriously taking on the responsibility of being your godfather?" asked Sam, amazed.

Valerie raised her head to glare at Sam, because the correct question was 'He seriously thinks he's your godfather?' There was no responsibility to be taken here, dammit.

Tucker leaned over to both of them. "Uh, maybe we better get out of here and take this someplace where dramatic shouting—" he waved his fingers, "—won't attract unwanted attention?"

"Good idea," said Sam, already gathering up everyone's lunches. "Let's run for the bleachers."

***

Valerie, Sam, and Tucker reached the bleachers before Technus managed to track them down, but they could hear him and Danny shouting at each other somewhere up above. Valerie couldn't make out much: just something about whether or not it was in fact appropriate for Technus to just show up and interrupt their lunch. Technus's stance was that it wasn't as if he had interrupted their classes; Danny's stance was that living people needed to eat.

Valerie glanced around nervously for anyone who might be overhearing this. The only person she saw was way down the other end of the football field, which she very much hoped was too far away to make out anything the invisible ghosts above were yelling.

The three of them ducked into the shadows under the bleachers, and Valerie immediately transformed, and then, after a moment's hesitation, also retracted her battle suit. Even if Technus was only here to see her, he was still the Kryptonite of all subtlety, subterfuge, surreptitiousness, and other sneaky words starting with S. He existed to attract attention. And if anyone's attention was attracted, Valerie entirely preferred that the person seen talking to Technus to be some mysterious, unknown ghost girl.

Life was complicated enough without either the Red Huntress or Valerie Grey having to face awkward questions.

And then Technus exploded out of thin air with a cry of, "Greetings, goddaughter!" that was only about 65% of his usual deafening volume.

Valerie, with a masterful exercise of iron self-control, refrained from shooting an ecto-blast into his face. "Why are you here?"

Technus, as ever, proved immune — or perhaps just oblivious — to the attitudes of others. "I, Technus, am fulfilling my responsibilities as Godfather!" He said the word 'godfather' with the same emphasis and enthusiasm as he usually said 'Master of All Things Electronic and Beeping.'

Valerie considered running away to New Zealand.

Technus was still talking — or rather, grandly announcing. "And as Godfather, it is my bounden responsibility to see to the education and well-being of my godchild!" And then, whiplash fast, his manner switched from grandiloquence to almost childish eagerness. "Did you find the books I left you?"

…Valerie couldn't bring herself to shoot down that eagerness, and she hated it. "Yes," she said stiffly, and then, with a certain amount of internal pain: "They look interesting."

Which they did. The titles had been chasing each other around the back of her mind, and the more she thought about them, the more they sounded like a fascinating, vital insight into a society she hadn't even realised existed four days ago. They could be very useful. It still hurt to admit it.

Technus clapped his hands, delighted. "Excellent! Let me know when you are finished with them, and I will bring you more!"

"Geez," Danny muttered, sounding amused, "nobody brought me books after I died."

Technus rounded on him and cried, "Do you mean no one instructed you on the ways of the dead?!"

Danny was caught flat-footed. "Er, no? I was alone, pretty much had to figure it all out myself."

Technus frowned at him. "Hmm. This explains much." He pointed at Danny with his usual dramatic flair. "You should read these books also. Perhaps then you will have better relations with your fellow ghosts, and do better at setting the boundaries of your haunt."

Valerie noticed that Technus easily counted Danny a 'fellow ghost,' despite his liminal status. It made her feel weird.

Danny gaped at him, baffled. "Uh, that sounds … nice?" Behind him, Tucker snickered and, apparently deciding this wasn't turning into a fight anytime soon, went back to eating his lunch.

"It sounds awesome," corrected Sam. "You should definitely read them, both of you. Or you can give them to me, and I'll read them and give you the Cliff's Notes." Judging by the glint in Sam's eye, Valerie guessed Sam would be reading those books one way or another, even if she had to bribe her way into getting her hands on them.

Technus nodded approval of this plan. "All of you should learn. You are not all ghosts yet, but you may yet become so." He spread his arms wide. "And education is important! Education is how you become master of, for example—"

"All Things Electronic and Beeping," Sam, Tucker, and Danny all finished in unison.

Valerie expected Technus to be annoyed, but instead he was pleased. "Exactly!" he cried, jabbing one finger into the air. He surveyed them all with more benevolence than any of them had ever dreamed him capable.

Valerie gave in, shoulders slumping. "Okay, I'll read the books. Possibly with Sam's help, because I don't have a lotta time for reading." Both Sam and Technus looked delighted.

"Excellent!" cried Technus. He rounded on Danny again. "And you! You are teaching her the basics?"

"Uh, yeah," said Danny. "She's picking up the beginner powers really well. And it'll be a while before anything else develops."

Technus's eyes brightened with manic enthusiasm. "Ah, the first development of specialised powers! The emergence of Obsession! A momentous time in the existence of any new ghost." He clasped his hands before his chest and said breathlessly, "I shall have to start a photo album."

Valerie reconsidered whether New Zealand was far enough away.

"And then," said Technus, sparking with excitement — literally, there were little sparks flashing in his wild, poofy white hair, "when you are ready, I will teach you about my own specialties! The wonders of technology, and the ART of MONOLOGUING!"

Danny choked on what was probably a guffaw. Tucker snorted a tiny fragment of sandwich up the wrong pipe and began coughing violently. Sam covered her mouth, but Valerie could see the laughter in her eyes.

"Great," said Valerie, trying not to sound like she was contemplating how ineffectual throwing herself off a cliff would be. She failed.

"We have so much to look forward to!" crowed Technus with delight. "I will return soon! And in the meantime…" He jabbed a finger in the air. "Take your supplements!"

And he vanished in a puff of mist. For about three seconds, they all just stared at the spot he had previously occupied, Valerie and Danny feeling his presence rapidly recede and disappear.

"Oh god," said Sam in a voice strangled by mingled horror and laughter.

"This is amazing," Tucker said hoarsely, recovering from his fit.

"I hate you all," said Valerie, meaning none of it.

Chapter Text

The addition of Technus into her life (half-life? existence?) was a complication that Valerie could really have done without.

She had a hard enough time just getting through her day with the constant worry of her powers getting out of control. A surge of anger or irritation could make her eyes flash red. And though she was getting better at keeping herself both visible and solid, every now and then some part of her body decided it just didn't want to be there.

On Tuesday, Valerie happened to look down and saw that that her left foot had disappeared. And though it had been supporting her weight just fine until that moment, as soon as she noticed, it started to slip down into the floor. She would have toppled onto her face in the school hallway if Sam hadn't been there. She had rescued the situation with astonishing aplomb, not only catching Valerie, but also managing to casually dangle her jacket from her hand to screen Valerie's foot — or rather the absence of Valerie's foot — from sight without it looking like she was doing so. And she stayed like that until Valerie could make her foot come back.

So. Yeah. She had more than enough on her plate without her self-styled godfather checking in on her every other day—

("GODDAUGHTER!" shouted her pocket on her way home from school, nearly giving her a heart-attack. Valerie pulled out her phone to see Technus's face grinning up at her from its screen. "HOW DO YOU FARE THIS BEAUTEOUS DAY?"

"Fine," she said, strained. "Really, I'm good. Can you please just text me?"

"BUT THERE IS A CHARACTER LIMIT."

"Exactly.")

—Or having to worry about what might be lurking in her locker or backpack every time she left them unattended.

After Phys Ed on Wednesday, she went to pick up her backpack and nearly dislocated her arm when it stuck to the ground as if it had been nailed there. And when she pulled it open, half-expecting to find that Dash had filled it with bricks or something, she instead found a book. An absolutely massive book, bigger than any dictionary Valerie had ever seen, leatherbound and ancient, and graced with the ponderous title of A Discoverie of Spirites, Being a Full and Compleat Listing of the Dead, the Neverborne, and the Elementals of Nature.

("Oh my god, you could use that thing as a wrecking ball," said Tucker in awe, eying the book that, in Valerie's opinion, looked like it might eat anyone foolish enough to try to read it.

"It's an encyclopedia!" hissed Sam, eyes shining as she flipped through its yellowed, crackling pages. The smell that came off it was strange, somewhere between must and spices. "An encyclopedia of ghosts! Look at everything they've got in here, there's even—" She caught her breath and lowered her voice to a whisper, despite there being no one near. "There's even an entry for liminals."

Danny regarded the book with weary amusement. "Well I know what you're doing for the next, like, year."

"I hereby volunteer to absolutely not help," said Tucker.

"Wuss," said Sam, hugging the massive book to her chest the way normal people held puppies.)

And then on Friday, Valerie came home to discover a mechanical monstrosity lurking by the TV in her living room. It looked like it might once have been an electric lawnmower, before someone had taken out the blades from underneath and remounted them on top, and also inserted, into the middle of the red lawnmower, a completely different silver machine that, when she got close enough to read the writing on it, Valerie realised was a combined DVD and Blu-Ray player.

"Because your DVD player couldn't play Blu-Ray," Technus explained from Valerie's TV screen five minutes later, where he had appeared when she had tried to unplug the cable connecting the TV to the Frankensteinian lawnmower. "And it was old and cheap. You needed a new one!"

True, but. "So you brought me one with knives?"

He beamed. "My combined DVD player and home defence system! Plays DVDs, Blu-Ray, and 4K-HD, and should your home be invaded…" Two green lights in the front lit up like eyes, and the lawnmower blades flipped forwards and began to spin, flashing wickedly as they caught the light. It ejected the cable attaching it to the TV and began to roll forward, blades first. Technus's face got downright soppy. "I call him Rover."

No, nope, no, this couldn't be happening. Valerie was ready to send in her resignation letter, if she could just figure out who to send it to. She took several deep breaths and tried to swallow down a dry throat. "Look, I appreciate it. It's … sweet of you to try to look after me." Oh god what was she saying. "But I can't let my dad see this. He will freak." She clasped her hands. "Please. I can't have anything in here that doesn't look normal."

Technus considered that while Valerie waited in acute anxiety. "Ah, the secret identity," he said at last, nodding to himself. "Very well, child!" And he poured out of TV in the form of green smoke, reformed into himself, and grabbed the Frankensteinian lawnmower. "I shall think of more subtle ways to keep my goddaughter safe!" And then, to the lawnmower, "Don't worry, Rover. You'll have your role."

And with a few deft movements, he removed the DVD player from the lawnmower, presented it to her with a massive grin, and vanished.

Valerie collapsed into the couch with a sigh. Another bullet dodged, for now. Until of course he substituted Rover for their actual lawnmower, and it attacked the first person to trespass on their lawn.

She was so screwed.

***

All in all, it looked like Technus had given up world domination in favour of being a constant, well-meaning thorn in Valerie's side. She and Danny disagreed fundamentally on whether or not this was a good thing. They disagreed even more fundamentally on whether it was funny.

"No, no, this is great," said Danny, eyes sparkling with suppressed mirth. "I'm pretty sure the whole world-domination thing came from having a lack of purpose in his afterlife. But now, ghost psychology about duty and stuff being what it is, he has a new focus!"

"Yippee for you," said Valerie darkly. "But sooner or later, he's going to blow my secret sky-high."

That did make Danny wince. "Well, he is actually doing really well at not yelling 'ghost child' all over the place at either of us, but yeah, we could do without people finding out that a ghost considers himself your godfather. Maybe you should have a talk with him about that? He seems to listen to you."

Valerie's shoulders slumped. "Yeah."

It was a while before she saw him again, though. And in the meantime, she and Danny had more than enough distractions. Their teachers had started piling on all the subjects they wanted to get through before the Christmas holidays, Danny and Valerie were still slipping off to train in what precious little free time they had, and of course there were ghost attacks. Since Valerie's … change in vital status, there hadn't been anything major — nothing Danny, or rather Phantom, couldn't easily handle himself. But Valerie had heard kids at school talking about how the Red Huntress hadn't been seen in a while, and it was making anxiety crawl around in her stomach.

If they had noticed, Vlad Masters would notice. Sooner or later, he would notice. And what then?

She needed a way to disguise herself as how she used to be.

So, when Technus finally did pop up again — as a three-inch-tall figure on the screen of her laptop, busy picking up the desktop icons to all her programs and tidying them out of their haphazard mess and into neat, alphabetical rows — Valerie had some burning questions for him.

He waved at her, and his voice came through her computer speakers. "Greetings, child!" He squinted at the icon in his hands. "This is just an image file. Is there some reason you saved it to your desktop instead of the pictures folder?"

"So I could find it again quickly." And yup, there was that weird sense of unreality again. How was this her life? "It was for a school project. And then I just never got around to deleting it."

Technus brightened. "Shall I get rid of it, then?"

"Knock yourself out."

He grabbed her Recycle Bin icon, tugged it into a real recycle bin at his … well, more of a drifting ghostly tail than feet, and he dumped it in.

Valerie felt she probably should have been annoyed at the intrusion into her personal files, but … the fact was that she's always meant to organise them properly herself but had never cared quite enough to get around to it. If Technus wanted to do it for her, fine. She had approximately five thousand more important things to worry about. For example…

"Can you make my suit look like it used to?" she blurted out. "Or … or make me a new one, or something?"

Technus stopped in the act of picking up two more icons to give her a baffled frown. "What?"

"I need to look like I used to," Valerie rushed to explain before he could misinterpret what she was after and do something weird. "Or at least like I just got a new suit. I need to be able to go out there and fight like I'm still the Red Huntress and I never…" Her voice wobbled and gave out before she could say 'died.'

Technus peered at her over his glasses. "You wish to maintain the illusion of life in both your identities? Why?"

Valerie threw up her hands, because so many reasons. "Well, my dad — he knows I'm the Red Huntress, but he doesn't know that I'm…" Again, she couldn't say it. "And then … Vlad Masters. Vlad Plasmius." She had to swallow. It didn't want to go down. "He knows who I am. He gave me my first suit; he's used me as a weapon against Danny. He thinks I'm his pawn. What's he gonna do when he finds out that … that I'm like him now?"

Technus's eyes narrowed. "You fear him?"

It took her a moment to admit it, but then she nodded. "Doesn't everyone?" That was very much the impression she had of the Wisconsin Ghost.

"Not everyone," said Technus darkly. "He's not as great as he thinks he is." He thought for a moment, and Valerie, watching him, realised that this was the calmest and most calculated she had ever seen Technus. Did that say something about the threat they were up against, or just how seriously he was taking it?

"I cannot simply make you a new suit as I did before," Technus said slowly. "That one was bonded to your living body, and when you died, it became a part of you, a part of your ghost side. If I tried to layer another suit on top of that…" He grimaced and shook his head. "The two would clash. Your body would treat it as an invasion and try to fight it."

Disappointment formed into a solid weight in Valerie's stomach. "What if it wasn't bonded to my body? What if it was more like my first one, the one Plasmius made?"

Technus shrugged. "It would still be an ectoplasmic construct made by a different ghost that you were trying to use as if it were a part of your body. You might be able to use it as long as you never shifted forms in it, but…"

Valerie didn't need him to finish. She got the picture. She had a ghostly immune system now, and it was going to object to another ghost's ectoplasm the same way a human body would reject another human's organs — that was why people with transplants had to go on all those immuno-suppressants. The disappointment got heavier and plunged into the bottom of her stomach.

"What about my ghost form, then?" she asked desperately. "It still has the suit you gave me. Can you change what that looks like?"

"No," he said decisively. "But you can."

Valerie shook her head hard. "No. I already tried that. It did not go well."

He considered her shrewdly over the top of his glasses. "Were you just trying to change its colours, or were you trying to make it look like it did before?"

What kind of question was that? "Like it did before, of course, so no one would realise what had happened."

"Hmm." Technus reformed his tail into legs and sat down on top of the icon of Valerie's word processor. He crossed his legs and waved a sweeping arm. "Well there's your problem, then." At her clear lack of comprehension, he explained, "A ghost's form is an outward expression of their self-image. It's who you are. Are you still the same person you were before all this happened to you?"

Valerie thought of the anger, the hatred, and the endless, burning drive for vengeance that had haunted her for years, and she really hoped she wasn't. "No," she whispered.

"Then why are you trying to turn yourself back into her?" Technus spread his arms wide. "You need to be who you are, not who you used to be."

His words hit her almost like a physical blow, pushing the air from her lungs. Valerie sat back hard in her chair, staring into space. And then, in a breathless little voice, she asked, "How long does that take?"

Technus shrugged. "As long as it takes to figure out who you are." And he leapt off the icon to float on her screen, surveying her neatly organised desktop with a huge grin. "And that's my godfatherly wisdom for the day. I'll check back in soon. Toodle-oo!" And he vanished with a flash.

Valerie stared at her tidy, ghost-free desktop and belatedly realised that she'd never asked him to please keep the godfather thing a little more on the down-low.

Oh well. Apparently there would be many, many more chances.

***

"Look at this," said Sam, spreading out on her bedroom table one of scrolls Technus had left in Valerie's locker. She and Danny weighted down the corners with books to keep it from rolling back up, and Tucker and Valerie leant in to look.

"It's a map," said Tucker, peering at what looked like an archipelago of islands, each island labeled in a language and alphabet that Valerie didn't know but thought might be Greek.

"It's a Ghost Zone map," said Danny, leaning closer. He pointed. "Look, there's Skulker's island. And…" He squinted, then laid his finger on one little string of symbols and said with surprise, "They even have the portal marked."

"You can read it?" asked Valerie incredulously.

Danny shrugged. "Nearly everything written in the Infinite Realms is in dead languages, probably not surprisingly. I've done my best to pick up a few. This one is Ancient Greek, so this map probably comes from Pandora's people in Elysium. They're the nearest Greek-speakers."

"But it's an old map, look at it," said Tucker. "This thing's on, like, vellum or parchment or something. How can it have the portal on it? Did someone come back and add it?"

"I don't think so," said Sam. "Here, look." She pulled a ruler out of a drawer and laid it on the map, measuring the distance between the portal and one of the islands. "Watch it for a minute."

They all leant in and bumped each other's heads trying to see. It took a little while to notice, and Valerie's mind wandered, as it had been all day, back to what Technus had said about needing to figure out who she was now, rather than who she used to be. But then she saw what Sam meant, and all other thoughts flew out of her head. "It is moving?"

"Yup," said Sam.

It was. The lines of the map were, at something less than a snail's pace, crawling across the parchment. It was nearly impossible to see without a reference point, like trying to see what direction the clouds were moving relative to a particular tree.

"Do you mean it's matching what the real islands are doing?" asked Danny in rising excitement. "It moves as they move?"

"Sure looks like it," said Sam. "I took a picture last night — here, look." She brought it up on her phone and handed it to Danny. Tucker and Valerie crowded over his shoulders to look. It looked almost like a different map — the islands had moved the equivalent of real-world miles. "I haven't figured out yet whether they're just randomly drifting or in some sort of orbit, but since we know from experience that they're usually in the same general area, I'm betting on orbit."

"This is going to be so useful," said Danny, running his hands across the map. "I can't believe I never thought to ask for something like this before. I just sorta assumed the Zone was unmappable, unless you count dangerously powerful artifacts like the Infi-Map. This is so cool."

"What's in the rest of the scrolls?" asked Tucker, eying the pile on Sam's bed.

Sam waved at them. "Several more maps, and what I think are basically public announcements of ghost law — 'Thou shalt not interfere with another ghost's core,' that kind of thing. Not all of them are in English, so we should probably get together for a translation party sometime soon."

"There are laws?" said Valerie, feeling simultaneously like she should have known that and also like the rug was being pulled out from under her all over again.

"Sure," said Danny. "And courts and judges — the works." He paused. "The police force kinda went rogue and got corrupted, though. Or, well, the local police force for this area. Remember I told you about how I got arrested?"

Valerie nodded numbly.

Danny smiled wryly. "Yeah. The guy who runs it, Walker, is a screwball. He has a rules-based Obsession, which you would think would make him ideal, but he's from Prohibition- and Mafia-era Chicago, a time when parts of the police force were so corrupt that they were basically just another arm of the Mob, and rumour has it that, when he was alive, Walker was more interested in enforcing the Mob's rules than the law." Danny grimaced. "I dunno if it's true — and speculating about another ghost's life and death is pretty rude — but it would explain a lot."

Danny leant back over the map. "Look, here's Walker's prison." He pointed out a small and oddly rectangular island. "Avoid the hell out of it. Walker will absolutely invent a bullshit reason to lock you up just to teach you to be scared of him."

"Why doesn't anybody do anything about him?" asked Valerie, an old and familiar pulse of anger going off in the back of her throat at the age-old reality of police brutality.

Danny shrugged. "The judicial branch of government is planning to, but they're still consolidating power after the overthrow of the monarchy and the chaos that followed it. They're not ready to move yet. And Walker does actually still do his job, at least some of the time — he locks people up for legitimate reasons too, including a bunch of the ghosts who have attacked the town." Danny sighed. "I'm sure someone will deal with him eventually, but the Ghost Zone in general is still pretty Wild West right now. The power vacuum after the king was toppled caused a lot of factional struggles and the breakup of the kingdom into a lot of smaller nation-states under local rulers. The rule of law broke down pretty far, and these days it depends a lot on which region you happen to be in, and who rules it." He pulled a humourless smile. "And this region has Walker as its lawman in chief."

"Which explains a lot about why we get so many ghost attacks," said Sam dryly.

"That and the fact that the portal is a super desirable beachhead into the Mortal Realm, yeah," agreed Danny.

Sam grabbed a couple of the books weighting down the map, which immediately rolled up again. Mostly to Valerie, she said, "If you want to know more about this stuff, both these books cover it pretty well." She held up Absolute, whose cover featured the image of a crown decorated with a golden skull motif at the front and dripping with ectoplasm. "This one is more about the monarchy and why it failed, but it has some stuff at the end about the fallout and how the remains of the old central government are trying to re-establish some control."

Then she held up An Argument of Nations, whose cover featured an image of what looked like some kind of ghostly parliament with several figures standing out from the rest to argue with each other. "And this one gets in depth with all the individual nation-states and how they relate to each other and what remains of the central government." To Danny and Tucker, she added, "It's got chapters on Elysium, the Far Frozen, and on Mattingly, though the Mattingly one is out of date since Dora ousted her brother and all."

Valerie took Absolute and leafed through to the final chapters, wondering if she could fit in reading them. It sounded like useful info.

"What about that doorstop encyclopedia?" asked Tucker. "Did you read its section about liminals?"

"Oh, yeah." Sam turned, found the book, and heaved it up onto the table. She patted it fondly. "Most of it we already know, and it confirms some of our suspicions — like that liminals have to live near portals and spend time on either side, in both the Mortal World and the Infinite Realms, to be really healthy. And that they do age and die like normal people, and then they're pretty sure to become full ghosts, unless they choose to move on."

Danny breathed what looked like a sigh of relief. "Oh good."

"What?" asked Valerie, wondering what part of that was a relief to him.

Danny shrugged. "We didn't know whether I was going to age normally. Vlad seems to have, but my situation is a little different than his — mine was a sudden and complete change, while his was more gradual — so we weren't sure. And being stuck as a teenager forever would suh-uck." He tilted his head. "Having the option to move on is also good. I mean, I dunno if I'll want to, but it's nice to be able to."

"It also confirms that there were liminals before you and Vlad," said Sam, leafing through the stiff, crinkling pages to find the right one. "There used to be more of you, though never a large number."

"How could there be, though, before my parents started building portals?" asked Danny.

"We've seen that there are other ways besides technology to make portals," said Sam. "And it turns out that getting caught in the birth of a new portal isn't an uncommon way to create a liminal. It also says that liminals created that way often become obsessed with guarding the portal they died in and become basically gatekeepers." They all glanced at Danny, who pulled a face, and they mutually decided not to comment. "But, as we've seen with Valerie, any sufficiently large quantity of electricity and ectoplasm will do.  And also, similar to Vlad, if you get a large enough exposure to even just ectoplasm, it can start you off on a more gradual change."

She turned another page, tracing the words with her fingertip. "That seems to have been the most common origin of liminals in the past: people who went to the 'Spirit Realms,' as they're calling it here, and spent enough time there to build up enough ectoplasm exposure."

Danny's hands clenched on the edge of the table. "How long does it take?" he asked, eyes darting from Sam to Tucker and back, and Valerie knew he was trying to calculate how much time the two of them had spent in the 'Spirit Realms.'

"Quite a while," said Sam. "It sounds like most of these people spent a lot of their time there for months or years. Although it can happen in way less time if you eat ghost food, which is basically just ingesting ectoplasm directly." She shrugged. "Affects you way faster, apparently. Which makes sense."

Tucker bit his lip and shot Sam a look. "Sam … you didn't eat anything while Aragon had you, did you?"

"Nope," she said with certainty. "Did you during the whole … Duul Aman mess?"

Tucker grimaced. "I dunno. A lot of it is pretty fuzzy."

There was an uncomfortable silence while they all digested the possible implications. Then Valerie said, "With all the ectoplasm the ghosts throw around, surely everyone in Amity Park has some exposure."

Danny snorted and rubbed his face with his hands. "And no one more than my family. Our house is full of the stuff, and I know it gets into the food now and then."

"Yeah, but contamination isn't the same as being made of it," said Sam. "The concentration might not be high enough." She drummed her fingers on the table and chewed her lip. "I agree, though, that no one in town has more exposure than than your family. Your parents more than Jazz, probably, except that they do wear those protective suits."

Tucker snorted. "Hazmat suits aren't going to make much difference if they're eating it."

Danny groaned and buried his face in his hands. "Oh god, this is all I need."

Sam poked his shoulder. "Hey, don't freak out yet. They aren't showing any signs at this point, and neither are we. It's just something that could happen in the future, and we should be keeping an eye out for it. And it can take a long time to develop even after it's started."

"Yeah," said Tucker, "it could be developing right now, under the surface, and we just aren't seeing signs yet."

Valerie and Sam both swatted him and glared. Danny groaned into his hands. "I'm doomed."

***

It was on their way home from Sam's that night that the next problem started. Valerie, Danny, and Tucker were walking through crisp air and rapidly gathering darkness of the winter evening, their breath coming in plumes of fog.

"This is all I need," Danny was complaining. "Can you imagine how bad it will be if my parents start developi—" He broke off and froze mid-step, a shiver running across his shoulders, eyes unfocused.

"Ghost?" asked Tucker, on guard and scanning the street and the sky.

"Yeah," said Danny, "thattaway, ish." He pointed at an adjoining street.

"I can't feel anything," complained Valerie, wondering if it was out of her range or if she just couldn't pick it out because the air in her lungs was already so cold.

"It's not that close," said Danny. "Feels big, though." He looked around uneasily. They were totally exposed on the sidewalk, fully visible to about half a dozen houses, and the darkness would make the light of his transformation way more obvious.

Tucker looked around and noticed the same thing. "You could just wait until it actually starts making trouble," he suggested. "Or until we can get to better cover."

But Danny shook his head and started making for a large rhododendron in a nearby garden. "I don't want to risk losing it. And even if it doesn't mean any harm, I need to be sure."

He paused to scan all visible windows. Valerie and Tucker looked too. Valerie couldn't see anyone looking out, but if they were standing back from the window in a dark room, they'd be as good as invisible. But Danny decided to take the risk and dived into the rhododendron.

The pulse of light seemed way too bright in the darkness. Valerie blinked against it and squinted to see Danny's hunched form in the bush. And then he vanished.

"You guys head home," his whispery, echoing voice came out of thin air. "I'll let you know if I have any trouble."

"You better," Valerie said warningly, anxiety fluttering around her stomach and wedging itself in her throat.

She wished she could go with him.

She needed to figure herself out, so she could go with him.

***

After Valerie got home, Danny texted their group chat — which included Jazz — that he hadn't been able to find the ghost. It had caught the edges of his senses several times but was always gone before he could track it down. He was sure it was a big one, but he just couldn't find it, and it worried him.

The big ones weren't usually subtle.

Everyone keep an eye out, he warned.

The next day was Saturday, and they spent it together again, this time with Jazz tagging along for part of it. Valerie had decided she liked Jazz, even though she could be a bit overbearing with Danny and didn't always notice when other people weren't interested in what she wanted to talk about. But Valerie enjoyed her enthusiasm, even when it was about things Valerie herself didn't understand, and she really appreciated Jazz's unflagging efforts to be supportive.

They were all half-expecting whatever ghost had been lurking last night to come bursting out at any moment, but the day passed peacefully. Jazz headed home to work on a paper, and the rest of them ended up back at Sam's place again, being fed cookies and hot chocolate by Sam's cheerful and loving grandma, whom Valerie rapidly discovered was the actual and literal best.

"See, you get it," said Sam, pleased, when Valerie said so. "The Manson family coolness skipped a generation."

"It did," agreed Sam's grandma, rubbing an affectionate hand through Sam's hair. She winked at them all. "But fortunately, the uncool members of the family are out for the night, so there's no one to object to us all having some fun!"

It turned out that her idea of "having fun" was luring four teenagers into a ridiculous game of poker played with a deck of children's cards that featured dogs and cats and bunny rabbits instead of the usual aces and spades, and with a bag of toffees and chocolates to use as chips. Tucker won the first round with a hand comprised entirely of cats — which he declared a "fluffy flush" — but then Sam's grandma ("Call me Ida, dear!") revealed herself as a card shark and proceeded to fleece them all out of all their toffees. She let them keep the chocolates.

Valerie only won one hand, when she was lucky enough to get a two-pair of bunny rabbits, but it was the most fun she'd had in ages.

Ida eventually retired after finding she had glued her false teeth together with the toffees. She popped them out, rinsed them in hot water, and headed up, calling back to them, still toothless, "Don't shtay up pasht midnight, kidsh!"

"We won't!" Sam called back, grinning.

During the game, it had become clear to Valerie that Sam's grandma was overtly Jewish, which put another entry in the list of Really Important Things Valerie Had Not Known About Sam.

"I feel kinda weirdly like I owe you an apology," Valerie told her. "I thought you were white as white could be."

"Naw," said Tucker, grinning. "That's Danny."

"Excuse you," said Danny. "I am a member of a very small and persecuted population."

"Yeah," said Sam. "Ghost hunters." And she laughed as Danny flicked a tiny marshmallow at her and bounced it off her nose.

Valerie smiled at them. She really did like this group of friends better than she had any friends she'd had before.

They stayed chatting and laughing and playing Go Fish at Sam's kitchen table for nearly an hour longer. Tucker, having just got a three of ducklings off Danny, turned to Sam and asked, "Got any little fuzzy critters with crowns on?"

"Kings or queens?" asked Sam, going through her cards.

Tucker's response was cut off by a sudden chorus of dinging lighting up all their phones.

Valerie's stomach gave a little swoop. She could think of only one thing other than Technus that would be on all their phones, and honestly she was kind of hoping for Technus.

Tucker got to his first and confirmed her fears. "It's Ghost Watch," he said, referring to social media network that Amity Part had set up on all the large platforms, but especially Twitter. Nearly everyone in the town was on it, and they used it to report sightings or find out what areas of town they might want to avoid in the immediate future. "There's been a reported sighting out in the suburbs, on Elm Street."

"Anyone we know?" asked Danny, already reaching for his bag and the thermos in it.

Tucker shrugged. "Guy on horseback who appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared again." He bit his lip. "Fright Knight, maybe?"

Valerie's stomach swooped farther — the Fright Knight was bad news — but Sam was shaking her head. "The Fright Knight is distinctive, even if they hadn't seen him before, don't you think they'd have noticed if the horse had wings, not to mention a mane and tail made of green fire?" asked Sam, also looking at the post on her phone. "And the Fright Knight rivals Technus for bombastic flair. I feel like he wouldn't just disappear without making a few dramatic declarations about his upcoming conquest, or something."

"Wait, wait, someone is replying," said Valerie, hunching over her own phone.

The reply popped up — I got a pic — and then came the image. They all peered into their phones to see.

"Oh great," said Tucker. "That's a headless horseman."

Chapter Text

"I'm coming with you," said Valerie.

"What?" said Danny, taken off guard.

"I'm coming," she repeated, giving him her most stubborn glare. "You've got to search the whole town for this thing — well, the search will go faster with two."

"Three," added Tucker, pulling a gizmo out of his bag. "I've got that ghost detector we got off your parents."

Valerie wondered whether 'got off' translated as 'were given' or 'stole from.' She put a little private money on 'stole.'

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Danny asked her, his eyes full of worry.

"I haven't transformed by accident at all this week," Valerie pointed out. "And I can hold my ghost form for more than half an hour now. I might not be ready for the big leagues, but I've got to start somewhere. And you were already fighting by the time you'd been doing this two weeks."

Danny winced. "I feel compelled to remind you that the grace of dumb luck and Sam and Tucker were pretty much the only reasons I survived those first fights, but…" He sighed. "You're right, you've got to start somewhere. Are you ready to be seen, though?"

In response, Valerie reached into herself and triggered that cold point in her chest. The transformation washed over her, and then she retracted her suit. Her white hair began to float up around her head as if she were underwater. Her skin glowed honey-gold. She gestured at herself. "Who's going to recognise me like this?"

Danny bit his lip. "Vlad might."

Sam made a derisive little noise. "If he actually pays enough attention. Vlad's greatest weakness is dismissing basically everyone but Danny as unimportant and not paying attention to them. The Red Huntress he would probably notice, because he got her started and probably kinda sees her as his, but Valerie herself is just a pawn to him. There's a preeeetty good chance he won't know her when he sees her."

"Great," said Valerie, even as a part of her burned with hateful fire for being 'just a pawn.' She'd make him pay for that later, when she was ready. "Then I'm going."

***

Valerie flew through the sky, not on a rocket sled, but for the first time in her half-life, floating — and invisible — under her own power. It was a bizarre and disconcerting experience. Ghosts moved more by thought than locomotion, especially in the sky. She didn't do anything physically to move; she just looked ahead and wanted to go there, reached forward with something inside herself. And her body, a weightless bundle of energy, glided ahead.

She and Danny had practiced this, of course. But they had been severely limited by trying to keep safely out of sight in the woods. Valerie had got enough experience to have a sense of how it worked, but doing it out in the wide open expanse of the night sky, with enough space to build up some real speed … that was different.

Twice she scared herself by going too fast, so fast the houses and trees below her started to blur. She stopped herself out of a panicky sense of danger, afraid that she was getting out of control and might crash.

Then she remembered that running into solid objects wasn't really a concern for her anymore. But still, she was supposed to be following a search pattern. Zooming around like a mad thing wouldn't help her there.

She took a moment to calm herself down — getting freaked out in her ghost form was weird, since she didn't have the cues of her heart and breathing to watch, but she was learning to recognise the jumpy, sparky feeling in her core, and learning how to calm it down. She hummed at it, and it echoed the resonance back at her, its wild vibrations slowing and easing. She waited until it calmed to a low hum, and she double-checked that she was still invisible.

She could see the faint, shimmery form of her arms in the air, but Danny had assured her that no one else could. You could kinda see yourself because you knew you were there, but to everyone else, you were invisible. Which was good, because unlikely as it was that anyone would recognise her, Valerie was of the opinion that there was no need to go and wave a red rag at the bull of fate.

Holding invisibility for so long was starting to give her something that, even in her ghost form, felt like the beginnings of a stress headache, but she wasn't about to release it yet. She floated higher, got her bearings, and set off again.

"Anything?" came Tucker's voice through the earpiece he had given her before they set out.

She touched the button on it. "Nothing so far here."

"Nothing out this way either," said Danny, the usual echo in the voice of his ghost form made about three times creepier through the comm system.

Valerie wondered if she sounded similar, decided she must, and then decided not to think about it.

"What's this guy's game?" demanded Sam's voice. "Why's he just appearing and vanishing like this and not doing anything?"

"Maybe he's looking for something?" suggested Tucker.

Danny made an unhappy noise. "Whatever he's doing, he's up to something and smart enough to be subtle about it. Subtle ghosts make me nervous."

Valerie's headache was starting to throb. She couldn't keep this up much longer. She glanced around — she was over downtown by this point, and near the ten-storey hotel that was the tallest building in Amity Park. She lowered herself onto its roof, flopped down in an area with minimal bird poop, and, with relief, dropped her invisibility.

Even though keeping her weightless form in the air took virtually no energy, she still felt better lying down on something solid. It was more familiar and felt safer, less vulnerable to being blown away by the wind. She shut her eyes and spent a minute focusing on the soft hum of her core, calming it into a lower frequency.

She should tell Danny and the others that she was hitting her limits. That was what a responsible team member should do. She should tell them and pull out, head off home. But she hated to leave them to deal with this without her, hated not to help, and hated to be left out. Maybe if she just rested for a bit…

"I'm taking five on the roof of the Amity Inn," she made herself tell them. "I have discovered how long I can stay invisible before it gives me a headache."

"You've been keeping invisible all this time?" said Danny, instantly anxious. "Wow. That is … a lot for a beginner. How are you feeling? Does your ghost form feel shaky at all?"

Valerie looked at her hands and conjured a little ectoplasm. It came easily. Other than the headache, which had dulled into the background now that she wasn't invisible, she felt fairly okay. "No," she said. "It feels fine, and I've got ectoplasm ready to go. I think I just used up all my concentration." Though now that she said it, the tiredness began to set in. She didn't feel like she needed to go back to human form, but she did feel like she needed to sleep.

Sam made a concerned noise. "Maybe we should call it on the hunt for now. It's getting late; we're gonna break curfew if we stay out here much longer."

"Yeah," Danny agreed reluctantly. "Guess we should."

Valerie sat up, relief flowing happily through her. She didn't like leaving this headless horseman ghost wandering around any more than Danny did, but she really wanted her bed. "Okay by me. I don't wanna have to lie to my dad."

She pushed herself to her feet and had a disorienting moment where she floated upward way more easily than she expected — damn it, was she never going to get used to that? And then a chill detonated in her lungs and surged out through her mouth and nose. She slammed her hand onto the comm button, looking around wildly for the ghost, her core sparking and crackling in her chest. "Wait, I've got something—"

"SMIIIIIIILE."

Flash — click.

A flare of light eclipsed her whole vision. Valerie flinched away and blinked the spots frantically out of her vision until she could finally see past them.

Before her stood Technus, beaming and holding a camera.

Relief and fury crashed into each other in Valerie's chest. "What are you doing?" she demanded.

Technus held up the camera. "I am starting a photo album!"

…That's it, she was gonna end him.

But before she could, Technus took one look at her face — and the red ectoplasm that had burst into flame around her fists — and said, "Uh-oh," and vanished.

Valerie almost went after him. Her core was burning with fury; she wanted to wring his scrawny neck. But there were anxious voices in her ear, wanting to know if she was okay, and there was another little voice in the back of her head reminding her that she had promised herself, sworn to herself, to never again be ruled by rage.

She stopped herself. And then vented her feelings in an inarticulate noise of anger and frustration and a little explosion of ectoplasm that danced and sparked in their air around her.

She put a shaky hand to the button on her comm. "False alarm, guys. It was just Technus."

"What did he want?" asked Tucker.

Valerie answered that with another strangled noise of pure emotion.

"Uh, Val?" said Danny.

She shut her eyes and told herself to calm down. "He's following through with his threat."

"…Which threat?"

Calm. Calm. "The photo album."

There was a crackling silence over the comms for a long moment before Danny said, "Oh," with a note in his voice that told her that they were once again about to disagree on whether or not this was funny.

"Are you telling me Technus is after you with a camera now?" asked Tucker, and Valerie could tell that she would also be disagreeing with him about whether this was funny.

"Only until I blow it into twelve thousand pieces," growled Valerie, ectoplasm starting to flicker around her hands again. No, wait, she was being calm. Calm. Very calm. No sane human being would go on a vengeful rampage over a photograph, and whatever else Valerie was now, she absolutely had to remain a sane human being.

She pressed the button on her comm again. "Think I'm going to have to walk home. I'm all out of invisibility. How late is it?" Her watch in her ghost form refused to display any time except the exact moment she had died — 9:12pm Nov 18. As if she needed help remembering.

"It's … getting close to eleven," said Sam. "We should definitely get home."

"Val, I can get you home invisible, if you want," said Danny.

Valerie grimaced. She didn't like needing to be escorted, but … it would be faster. "Yeah, okay. It'll save me from more photo ambushes."

***

Sunday passed without anything ghostly happening all day — well, unless you counted Valerie and Danny themselves, and also the fact that Valerie woke up to discover a note on her laptop telling her that its graphics card and processors had been upgraded to models that made Tucker drool when she showed them to him. She wasn't sure how Technus had managed to sneak in and do that without setting off her ghost sense but was betting he had done it while she was out ghost-hunting the previous night, probably before he had ambushed her with the camera, and she had just been too tired to notice when she got home.

She was kind of scared to use her laptop now. She watched it carefully all day, not letting it out of her sight even while she was out with her friends, but so far it showed no supernatural or world-domination tendencies.

So far.

She couldn't spend the whole day with her friends again this time, though. She had drawn the short straw at work and got the Sunday evening shift, so she had to head into the Nasty Burger and spend four hours being solid and visible and polite to even the rudest of customers.

Her laptop defied all her expectations by at no point escaping from her bag and taking over the restaurant. Maybe Technus really had just done a few perfectly normal, non-supernatural upgrades.

She resented the fact that she lived a life where supernatural computer upgrades were a worry.

But everything went smoothly — well, except for the customer who accidentally dumped his drink all over another customer and tried to demand the other customer buy him a new one, but Valerie just called in the manager and let her deal with it while Valerie hid in the break room and tried to calm down both her emotions and the powers attached to them.

She was relieved to get out of there at closing time and head home. She bundled herself up against the bitter wind, even though the chill in the air was now a thing she only felt distantly and it took a long time for it to get to her. (Unlike Danny, who, being an ice core, didn't feel it at all and had to be reminded to wear warm clothes in winter so he didn't draw attention.) One upside of her new condition, she thought to herself, was that the cold, dark walk home didn't bother her half as much.

The downside of the windy, gusty low temperatures, though, was that it disguised the chill of her ghost sense. It disguised so well that it wasn't until the ghost was almost on top of her that Valerie realised that the cold was coming from inside her as well as out.

She stopped dead and looked wildly around. She was at the edge of town, where the businesses gave way to suburbs, and there was no visible sign of any ghost. She backed up a few steps towards the last alley, thinking of ducking in to transform — but what if that was where the ghost was? She shut her eyes and tried to pinpoint it they way she had Technus at the school.

Was it up the street? She didn't think it was in the alley. She backed into the alley, trying to look every direction at once.

As soon as she was out of sight, she transformed. The familiar protection of her suit closed around her, and she felt better for the few seconds it took her to remember that she couldn't let her suit be seen.

Great. Crap. Should she take it off? Would that be stupid? Would it make her more vulnerable? Or, since the suit was a part of her anyway, would it make any difference at all? Did it even protect her anymore?

You idiot, she thought to herself, you need backup. She had to take off the suit to get to her phone — she fumbled it out of her pocket and sent three hasty texts to the group chat.

Ghost

Backup

Elm St

She shoved it away. It dinged with a reply, but she didn't look because something huge had moved into the mouth of the alley, blocking the light of the streetlamp.

A massive horse stomped its hoof, gouts of steam pouring from its nostrils. Its eyes were empty black pits with a dim orange light flickering as if there were a fire somewhere deep within. And on its back was a great hulking mass.

It wore a thick, long, old-fashioned coat, like something out of the Civil War. Its boots were leather and big enough that Valerie might have been able to fit both her legs into one of them. And on its shoulders was an empty space where a head should be.

The horse snorted and opened its mouth, tonguing at the bit and breathing out something that was almost flame. The reins jingled as the rider passed them into one hand. His free hand rested on the hilt of a long, curved sword.

And then, in a hoarse, hollow voice that seemed to come from his chest rather than the empty space above his shoulders, he said, "I … want … a HEAD."

He started to draw the saber. Valerie knew instantly, instinctively, that she was outmatched. That this was a powerful, old ghost, and she was a two-week-old infant. A firework of panic exploded in her head, and she catapulted herself off into the sky. Behind her, the horse made a sound between a neigh and a roar.

Fear drove her faster and higher. The last time she had been outmatched, the ghost had killed her.

So, she shot off into the sky, fled until she registered the lack of any sign of pursuit. Then she slowed and looked over her shoulder. She was the only one in the sky. The great, dark mass of the ghost was still down in the shadow of the alley.

As she watched, the horse and rider turned and emerged into the light of the street. The eerie, hollow whisper of its voice floated up to her on the wind.

"I … want … a head…"

It started off down the street, the horse's hooves unnaturally silent on the pavement. Valerie's eyes darted ahead down his route.

There were people — coming and going from shops and stores, walking out to their cars. A homeless man sat at the edge of the sidewalk, wrapped in a sleeping bag, a cardboard sign and a cup of change at his feet.

None of them had yet seen the horseman. And as he moved with uncanny silence, none of them heard him.

Valerie moaned. Desperation clawed up her throat. She had to, she had to. But she couldn't be seen…

Hoping she wasn't making her life's (existence's?) most stupid mistake, she lit her hands with ectoplasm and dived.

***

Valerie was worse than outmatched. Her blasts of ectoplasm barely made the hulking figure twitch. But they did attract the attention of the living people in the street, who first pointed up at her and then, belatedly, spotted the darker, less flashy shape down on the street. They started to move away, but not nearly fast enough.

She swooped in their direction and yelled, "Get out of here, you're in danger, run!" And then she blasted the rider again.

He scattered her blasts with a swipe of something long and thin that made a loud crack. When the wisps of her ectoplasm faded, she saw that it was a whip, decorated along its length with white knobs that … yes, definitely looked like a human spine.

He swung the whip again, and it stretched out towards her, tripling and quadrupling in length. Valerie dived wildly. A sharp, painful yank on her scalp almost made her vision white out for an instant, but her cloudy white hair was insubstantial even to ghosts, and the whip slipped through it.

She was mere feet above the street now, beside a parked car. Her peripheral vision told her the people were following her advice and getting the hell out of the line of fire, running away down the street. A car across the road roared to life and fled with a screeching of tires.

And then Valerie saw the massive shadow bearing down on her and realised what a stupid mistake it had been to dodge downwards.

She shot away and upwards with a fleeting, panicky thought about where to aim herself — the sky, into a building, underground? Would any of those even offer protection against a pursuer who was a ghost? Energy pooled in her hands, so much that she could feel it popping and fizzing in her fingers. Maybe a big enough blast would cover her escape.

She flung it all at him at once. And dimly, distantly, beyond her frantic, immediate directive of survive, survive, survive, she registered that it didn't come out as red ectoplasm. Instead, a shining ball of pure lightning whizzed through the air and hit the Headless Horseman with a boom and a rippling crackle.

The demon horse staggered, and the rider was thrown back in the saddle. He nearly came loose, but maintained his one-handed grip on the reins, even as his massive torso teetered out over space. But in doing so, he jerked the horse's head so far back that it reared onto its hind legs with a furious, screaming neigh.

The horse towered on its hind legs in the middle of the street, its hooves slashing the air, fire flashing in its empty eyes. Had the rider been flesh and blood, he would have been thrown. But he was not. He clung to the horse's back, and when it came back down onto all fours, he set himself back into the saddle and swung his human-spine whip out again. It zoomed up towards the fleeing Valerie.

If she had been a few feet closer, it would have wrapped around her middle and dragged her back down to the Headless Horseman. If she had been a few feet farther away, with would have missed her entirely. But as it was, she was just on the very edge of its range, and the tip of the whip hit her centre mass at the same moment it broke the sound barrier.

It hit too hard and fast for her to even feel the impact. The world just suddenly spun out of control around her, the earth and sky swapping places in a ridiculous, dizzying dance. She didn't even realise the building was zooming closer until it smashed into her.

As a ghost, Valerie had almost no physical mass. The impact was like nothing so much as a water balloon hitting a stone wall.

Valerie entirely lost her grip on her form. It was like being winded, but a hundred times worse. She couldn't see, she couldn't hear, she couldn't feel her limbs or her head or anything, she couldn't tell which way was up. She couldn't tell if she even still had a body anymore.

She could feel her core, though. It was crackling and buzzing with panic, and she thought it might be all that was left of her.

She centred herself on her core and tried to pull herself together — and then realised she had to pull herself together literally. Her body had lost form and scattered into some kind of ectoplasmic mist. It was still her, she could still kind of sense things through it — she could tell there were two solid surfaces near her, at right angles to each other — the ground and a wall? She was in the corner between them, and she had no idea of anything in the world beyond that.

She pictured her body and tried to make it come back. The misty ectoplasm began to pull back together and reform. She had a head, a torso, then arms, and finally legs.

She was Valerie again.

And then she promptly lost her ghost form, went solid and human, and collapsed against the wall of the building, gasping and shaking, her cheek and hands pressed into the cold, damp concrete.

Still alive. Sorta.

And then she remembered the Headless Horseman and whipped around to put her back to the wall. The world tilted dangerously at the sudden movement — she doubted she could stand up, was sure she couldn't run. What was she going to—

The street was empty.

She stared from one end of it to the other. There was no giant horse and rider to be seen — not that that necessarily meant anything, with ghosts, but why would it bother to hide from her? She shut her eyes and tried to reach out with her ghost sense.

A bright, cold pinprick stuck out behind and above her. She jolted up, using the wall to get to her feet on a ground that felt only just stable enough to stand on. She reached inside herself for her ghost form, wondering if she even had it in her to go invisible.

She could feel her core, strained and stuttering in her chest. She tugged on it, and it seized, shooting spasms of ice through her chest. She sagged against the wall, wheezing, and didn't realise she had sunk down to the ground until she felt cold dampness soaking through the seat of her pants.

She opened her eyes — when had she closed them? Her whole body was flickering around her, like an old TV set with bad reception. She could feel it vacillating between visibility and invisibility, solidity and intangibility, and she couldn't control it.

Panic choked off her throat. She was screwed, she was screwed, if the ghost came back if anyone saw her what if the ghost wanted her head—

"GODDAUGHTER!" yelled a voice, and Valerie jolted as if with an electric shock. She slammed her back into the wall and raised her hands in a warding gesture, whether to fend off attack or try to fire ectoplasm she didn't have, even she wasn't sure. And then, through the haze of panic, she recognised the shape looming over her.

Long black coat, unnecessary sunglasses, long white hair, and greenish skin. "Oh," she mumbled, dazed. "'S you." Valerie hadn't thought it was actually possible for her to be this relieved to see Technus. The part of her that was still a terrified sixteen-year-old girl wanted to burst into tears. But the part of her that was a tough, experienced fighter wouldn't let it.

Before she could pull herself together, Technus cast a quick glance around the street — still deserted — and then stooped and scooped Valerie right up off the ground. With one arm around her shoulders and another under her knees, he cradled her to his chest, and she was too stunned to object or even really comprehend. His arms and his body were cold, of course, though actually not as cold as Danny's. She could feel the buzz and crackle of the electricity that ran through Technus like blood.

In a voice more soft and gentle than she had thought him capable, he said, "Don't worry, I got you. I'll take you home." And then he cloaked them both with his own invisibility and took them into the sky.