Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Always, it seems, on the most mundane of days does one’s life change irrevocably and dramatically, in the most wonderfully unprecedented of ways.

The afterlife isn’t so bad, Scratch recalled thinking absently to himself on one such day.

He couldn’t quite remember anything prior to it, but he had few complaints. He kicked a stray pebble on the sidewalk, ambling down the liveliest street of the Ghost World. There were tacos, and scaring the pants off of people, and…no, no, that was it. That was enough, though. So what if it was lonely? Scratch liked being alone. He didn’t need anybody else. Who needed people—er, ghouls—who claimed he was the worst of the worst anyway?

He shoveled one more taco in his mouth and chewed as loudly as he pleased, without care for the ghostly citizens who wrinkled their noses and turned away, whispering to one another some undeniably unsavory things about him. Yes, Scratch the ghost’s afterlife was exactly as he liked it, and nothing nor no one else could convince him otherwise. There was nobody to hurt you when you spent all of your time in solitude, after all. That was the mantra he had a feeling he adopted even in his past life.

That was precisely when it happened.

Something yellow and bright frantically sped past his vision—something bright that caused him to instinctively squint and shy away. Bright things didn’t often come by this plane of existence, he found. No ghost’s mind nor eyes were used to them, and he was no exception.

A variety of vibrant flora in colors he’d never seen before sprang to life in the thing’s wake and covered every nearby surface imaginable. Several ghosts groaned and shook their fists, others making every effort to shake sparkling petals from their cutie-bits, as if they burned like acid on skin.

The entire street around him erupted into commotion as one, two, three notably less-bright blurs whizzed by in pursuit. “Get it!” some ghost or other yelled, eyes blazing. Scratch furrowed his brow, mouth still full with half-chewed food.

Get what-now?

He happened to glance skyward, eyes finding a billboard with a big, bold, red “WANTED” splattered across the top. At the bottom, a yellow…something or other. The depiction was too blurry to tell.

Right. That’d been there for a short while, hadn’t it?

Scratch’s attention returned to the street when a chorus of several other disgruntled mumbles sounded. “Ugh, the worst,” grumbled one bystander still picking buds out of their ectoplasm.

The worst, echoed a strange voice in Scratch’s mind. He looked down the path, the one all other civilians were backing away from with disgust written all over their faces, as if it were a foul poison that might infect them all should they get too close.

A strange invigoration filled him, however. Joy. His goal was to eliminate joy. Get it, they’d said, hoping someone might spring into action. Who said that couldn’t be him? He had to do his civic duty; he’d find it, and he’d eliminate it. Then, he’d no longer be the worst.

Never mind the fact he’d always been apathetic toward such a goal prior to this very moment.

With only one beat’s more hesitation, Scratch raced in pursuit, spitting stray flowers from his mouth as he barreled down the path built from the very essence of that which all ghosts detested. He’d no longer be the worst. He’d show them. He’d find that little bundle of joy, and then…then, he wasn’t quite sure. One or two more steps he’d figure out when he got there, but after that, oh, after that, he’d show all of them. And the entirety of the Ghost World would hoist him on their shoulders and sing his praises and everything in his afterlife would be just dandy.

Scratch belted down the trail faster and found himself pleasantly surprised at his own speed. Sure, clearly, his past bones had been a little, well, old, but perhaps it was the sheer determination that held him back none as he went.

The members of ghostly law-enforcement were nowhere to be seen. Was he on the wrong path, perhaps? The flowers and the brightness were quickly fading, making it nearly impossible to tell what kind of twists and turns the Joy-Spreader had taken, but Scratch simply followed his instincts, whipping down side streets and backways wherever his body—or lack thereof—willed him to.

He was beginning to think that perhaps this hadn’t been his brightest idea after all when he caught it: a glimpse of some warm light bouncing off the brick of a winding alleyway, gleaming so unashamedly bright it was impossible to miss. In an instant, Scratch took off after it.

Blue pursued yellow as the ghost’s own ectoplasmic glow stained the immediate vicinity behind the Joy-Spreader. His blue got closer and closer with each bend Scratch rounded, nearly swallowing the now-weakening yellow light. The blasted thing flickered, small and yet so quick, but in its panicked frenzy, one wrong turn was all it took.

Scratch came upon a dead end, but that meant so had the Thing. He screeched to a halt. He had it cornered.

His chest heaved with breath he didn’t need in unison with the Joy-Spreader’s, two sets of gasping the only sounds preventing total silence. In the brief moment of respite where no one said or did anything, Scratch took in the sight of the…he wasn’t sure what.

It—no, she?—looked like a ghost. In fact, a little too much like one for comfort. Except, she was yellow—did ghosts even come in that color?—and, eugh, she reeked of joy. He had the urge to recoil, to blanch, to something, but all he found himself doing was staring back into wide, fearful eyes.

Scratch shook his head, to hopefully extract himself from his stupor. Just turn the blasted thing in, he nearly said out loud, moving to do just that. When she—no, he had to stop doing that, it—flinched the moment he reached for her, for whatever reason, he stalled.

Well, maybe I’ll just leave it instead, he tried, but he didn’t budge. It wasn’t his business anyway, and Scratch was just fine the way he was—no need nor desire for foul joy, or yellow things who happened to look suspiciously like his own kind.

Scratch dared to lock eyes with her, and wasn’t comforted by what he saw.

She was not only yellow, she was also…small. So small. And so scared. He could deny it no longer—he’d thought this was an it, but no, she was quite real, and strangely more alive than anyone else in this forsaken plane of existence. In her wide eyes, he saw a tiny piece of himself—a small, scared child that resided inside of him from a time in his life he no longer remembered.

The worst, said the voice in his mind again.

“What in the hey are you?” is the thing that Scratch finally found himself saying, and he intended for it to come out a little more intimidating or accusatory, but instead, he ended up sounding almost soft.

“I don’t know,” the tiny yellow ghost replied back, looking just as, if not more bewildered than he.

Suddenly, from behind him, voices; authoritative, ghostly law-enforcement voices, looking for—her. It hit him then: he had a decision before him; one that might alter his afterlife far, far more than he ever thought a day such as this one might.

He wasn’t sure whether the yellow ghost heard the voices or sensed the tension in the air and in his mind. In response to either, she instinctively surged forward, latching onto whatever parts of him her shaking hands could reach, and when she came into contact with him, he didn’t spontaneously burst into flames, or start rotting from the inside out, or turn into a useless puppy dog with a wagging tail. He simply felt…warmer.

The voices grew louder, and her grip tighter, as if she knew that, yes, this was her only option, but also…

She looked up, gazing into his eyes; they were lost, confused, but Scratch wasn’t sure that anyone had ever looked at him with so much complete, total, and utter trust before—not in this lifetime, nor the last one. He’d never been so needed.

It was now or never: take her in his arms, or throw her away.

”Hey! What’s that, down there?”

A few desperate moments passed. Her hunters were dangerously close now. Scratch’s gaze hardened.

When he tightened his hold on her and sped away, even as several other ghosts immediately came hot on the blossoming trail behind him with shrieked demands to stop, he did not. He knew his decision had been made; nothing would ever be the same again.

Scratch was never one for change, but his facing it head-on was one of the many happening to him in this very moment, he supposed.

“I guess we’ll find out, then,” he told the fragile being in his arms, heading straight for his home in the Ghost World at a pace that was, without a doubt, the fastest he’d ever flown. When he felt the smallest of hands grip tight onto his ectoplasm in response, something profound shifted inside of him. “In the meantime, no one’ll get to ya,” said Scratch, meaning it. “Promise.”

The bundle of Joy buried her face in his shoulder, and from then on, for all eternity, she was intrinsically his, and he was intrinsically hers.

Chapter Text

“Now, what in ghoul’s name do I call you?”

It had been several days of addressing the little golden spirit as “you there” and “hey kid,” and frankly, it was growing confusing.

The kid in question turned from her spot in Scratch’s makeshift living room. Maybe, in the midst of navigating all this, he felt a little bad; he never quite used his home in the Ghost World all that much, so it was looking more like a shack, but bringing her to the land of the living—the one he tended to frequent more often, if he was frank—was out of the question. There was no telling what might happen. So, tiny accommodations or no, he supposed they’d both be spending a lot more time in this dimension.

Scratch floated a little closer to eye-level, noting recently that that tended to make her more talkative. “Still don’t remember your name, huh?” he prompted, not for the first time.

She shook her head, solemn. “I don’t remember anything at all.”

“Alright, well, ‘you’ is gettin’ a little old.”

She giggled; a bubbly, joyful sound that always made Scratch feel as though it had no place here.

Joyful. She was, indeed, some kind of…Joy spirit incarnated, not as though he’d ever seen or heard of one, but it was the only answer that made some lick of sense to him. He might have been a stranger to joy up until this point, but he knew for certain, whenever she was around, that was what all who knew her were bound to feel.

“Joy, then,” he decided, at which he watched her smile grow. Suddenly, he rubbed the back of his neck and put on a grumpy look. “Just…’cause it’s easier,” he mumbled.

Joy tackled him in a hug—boy, had he been getting a lot of those lately. Scratch expected to feel disgust, but how could he when that was precisely what she was: Joy in a place where there wasn’t any.

After a few moments, he hugged her back—a little strangely, but she didn’t seem to mind. He patted an awkward hand on her back and sighed into the embrace, thinking this would be far from the last time he'd be doing so.

This was the start of a new normal.

* * *

Scratch was not a parent in his past life. No, no, scratch that—Scratch was definitely not a parent in his past life.

“Scraaatch, I’m bored.”

The ghost paused in the living room, processing this for a second. “You’re…bored?” he clarified.

Joy nodded.

He scratched his head. “I’m…not too sure what to do about that.”

Over the ensuing two weeks, he’d fallen into a new routine alongside the other being he was learning to be responsible for. He was constantly struck by the feeling of holding a tiny baby bird in his big, hulking hands, and it was a never-ending quest to not drop her or crush her with the parts of himself that simply didn’t feel manufactured for child—er, ghost?—care.

Regardless, every day he ventured out into the Living World to haunt the sleepy old town of Brighton, completing his three daily scares with all haste before rushing home to finish the report at his ghostly abode, Joy excitedly greeting him upon his return and clinging to his every limb. She was given strict instructions to remain inside, which, to his knowledge, she adhered to, though not without the odd complaint. Still, this worked—this was safe. This was…manageable. On some level. Neither of them had been caught, his scare reports were in at the end of the day, and all was well.

Except, he’d forgotten the vital detail that children tended to need some kind of entertainment.

After Joy deflated before his eyes, he’d had no choice but to promise to her some solution within the next day, at which she was immediately reinvigorated with her seemingly endless supply of energy, and all was well.

The next morning, upon making his daily journey to the Living World, he temporarily put off his scares to observe some of the human families of Brighton—a harrowing task, to be certain. He was forced to watch many a gross, slimy human child read in libraries, paint on canvases, and slave away at homework. By the end of the day and three hasty scares later, though he found the human children detestable, he was somewhat surprised when he looked forward to returning home to his own…responsibility.

“Hey, uh, here, look. I brought you somethin’.”

The table rattled as Scratch deposited a massive tome on the actively deteriorating wood, Joy jumping a little in her surprise.

“Ooh!” she whistled, zipping about the room in her excitement, as though it were overflowing out of her. “What is it, what is it?” She returned to the ground to lean over the cover, eyes scanning the words with slight difficulty.

When she processed the title, the look on her face changed.

“It’s Principles of Mathematics. Stole it from the public library.” He put a hand on his hip. “Thought you might like it, since them other kids were readin’ it. They were a little—okay, a lot—bigger than you, but, y’know…”

He watched as Joy turned the book several different ways, attempted to flip the page and comprehend the first two sentences, failed, then finally, held it in her hands, backwards and upside-down.

Scratch started to sweat. When did he start caring about what this kid thought of him? “M–maybe it’s a little advanced. No sweat, I’ll just go and, and grab something a little more—”

Joy dropped the book and latched onto him in a crushing hug.

“I love it,” she said, with all the truthfulness in the world.

Scratch hugged her back, and started to think maybe this taking care of another being thing wasn’t so bad after all.

* * *

“Can I go play with my friends? Pleaaase, Scratch?”

Joy bounced up and down in front of him, hands clasped together, eyes wide and shining. Scratch sighed, taking a look out the window.

A new group of younger ghosts had happened by their humble abode not long ago. Luckily, they’d seemed to have no predispositions towards Joy spirits, playful as they were, making them the only suitable company for Joy—besides himself.

Still, Scratch couldn’t help the persistent, nagging worry in the back of his mind. What if they suddenly changed their minds? What if she got lost? What if someone were to see her?

But when she stuck out her bottom lip, it was over for him.

“Alright,” he conceded, and immediately, she brightened even further, her glow nearly blinding him. Rays were probably shooting out the window by this point. “Go, shoo. But stay close!”

“Yay! Thanks, Scratch!”

Joy nearly bowled him over in a hug, her grip strength and arm length both seeming to be markedly larger. “Whoa, there,” Scratch wheezed, “am I crazy, or are you gettin’ bigger?”

“Notimegottagothanksagainloveyoubye!”

And out she dashed, Scratch finding himself fondly shaking his head as she went.

“Love you, too,” he said, thinking that maybe that was the first time they both had.

* * *

That didn’t go well.

Scratch made an effort not to let the door creak as he sneaked inside. A sigh filled with the day's trials and turmoils escaped him, but just then, around the corner came the reason for his struggle.

“Scratch!” called an ecstatic Joy, barreling down the short hall to leap into his arms. As it was impossible to fight by this point, a smile found its way onto his face.

“Hey, kiddo.” Scratch ran a tired hand through her eternally tied back cutie-bit, at which she made a series of contented noises. “Sorry it took a while. Got…held up in the land of the living.”

Held up—that’s what he was choosing to tell her. Truthfully?

She was making him soft.

He could no longer scare quite so well. No longer was pent up fury from days and months and years spent in solitude aiding him in his cursing and haunting; instead, a wonderful little nuisance had sapped a heap of the fright from him. While he still took pleasure in haunting the living when he could, ever-present in the back of his mind was the thought of Joy, continuously dispelling much of the negativity in his mind he drew upon to scare.

Still, he couldn’t help but hold her a little tighter. That was a problem for another day—and certainly not one for her to hear.

Joy was silent for longer than usual, however. Concerned, he tilted his head downwards to look at her. Finally, before he had the nerve to ask her what could be wrong, she looked back up at him herself.

“Scratch, what’s out there?”

“What’s out in where-now, J?”

“The Living World.” She toyed with the hem of her ectoplasmic jacket—had it gone up a size lately? She was almost bashful. “Can you tell me what it’s like? Please? Just a little?”

Oh.

Truthfully, Scratch had always had the vaguest sensation that the Ghost World was not the world in which Joy was meant to be. It was too dark for the light she gave off; too hopeless for the dreams she had. But Joy was a ghost. Ferrying her between Worlds surely had some kind of risk Scratch couldn’t fathom—at least, not now.

But when he looked into her wide, pleading eyes, what else could he say? There was no harm in telling her—just a little.

“Alright,” he relented after a beat, and she immediately broke from his arms to do several loops in the air. He let loose a low chuckle before taking a seat on the couch, rusted springs creaking in protest. He patted the seat beside him. “Get comfortable, you. This one’s gonna take a while.”

It did, and yet, Joy listened for as long as he spoke. At some point, Scratch expected her to nod off or grow bored, but if anything, her face lit up a thousand watts brighter every extra minute he went on.

For whatever reason, though, he felt strange when he finally tucked her into bed that night.

* * *

With each day that slipped through his fingers, Scratch noticed something alarming: Joy was growing older.

She never stayed quite so tiny; she grew, like living, breathing children did—except, she wasn’t living, nor breathing. Ghosts didn’t age; they were dead, doomed to eternally remain some kind of ectoplasmic interpretation of who they were at the moment of their worldly demise.

Except, not Joy. As hard as Scratch thought, as far as he reached and as thoroughly as he researched, he could not find a reason for why she was so inexplicably different from every other soul.

It was not only he who noticed; what little friends she had also faded away with her youth. As she went through phases and grew several sizes larger, so, too, did she outgrow the ghosts forever entrapped in the prison of their young age. It was back to him as her only company.

It was clear to him that this didn’t elude her, but she surprised him—as she often tended to do—by never mentioning it. She was always grateful; always upbeat. Her glow never dimmed—both to his relief, and his dismay.

“Get down!” he hissed, more harshly than he’d intended, but perhaps it was a blessing in disguise, as she obeyed all the more quickly.

Searchlights belonging to none other than the Chairman’s lackeys swept across the floor, their white beams cutting against the decaying bluish wood of the floor. Joy shied away, hands instinctively moving to cover her eyes. As she shivered with fear, the golden light almost constantly emanating from her being finally—thankfully—grew faint, flickering weakly in time with the trembles still wracking her ectoplasm. Scratch longed to tell her it was going to be okay, that this was no big deal, but he couldn’t—not only because moving was a double-death wish, but because he would be lying.

Still, he tried to tell her with his eyes instead. He wasn’t sure if she saw.

Finally, after too long, the voices disappeared, and darkness once again fell over the shack—comforting, in an odd way. Joy’s glow returned, though perhaps a shade weaker.

Across the room, she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again.

Scratch sighed, sitting up for the first time in…he wasn’t sure how long. “Sorry,” he mumbled, voice hoarser than he thought it might be. “I didn’t mean to yell. I was just—”

Before he could say anything more, Joy rushed forward to cling to him in a hug; like a burr to cotton; like glue to paper; like daughter to father.

Without hesitation, he embraced her in return. She was a secret that was getting harder and harder to keep, but Scratch had to. He just had to.

For her.

* * *

“I’m gonna show you, I’ve got spice! You just wait and see!”

Scratch chuckled dryly, arms crossed. “We’ll see about that, kid.”

“Hey!” Joy pouted, eyes narrowed, though it didn’t look awfully menacing. “I can do it! I’m a ghost!” she insisted.

“Whatever you say, Sparkletoes.”

“Double hey!”

“Well,” Scratch wrung his hands together, a wicked smile curving his lips, “you’re a big ghost now, J. Time to learn to scare…from the master.” He struck a pose.

She erupted into giggles, then seemed to remember herself and cleared her throat. She planted a straight face on. “Yes. Of course, Professor Scratch. Spice.” He watched her successfully fight another bout of laughter—just barely.

His eyes narrowed. “Riiight. Enough chit-chattin’ about paprika and whatnot. Show me what’cha got—scare me!”

Scratch put his arms out in invitation, and Joy nodded, determined. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, braced herself, and did a few ridiculous-looking stretches. He wondered what she might be thinking about to channel her true ghostly form—for himself, it was easy, as the simple desire to scare seemed to fuel him well enough, but this was Joy. Scratch was fairly sure she’d never had the desire to even raise her voice, let alone scare the candy from a baby.

Ah, he recalled. That was a good day.

Finally, her eyes snapped open. Joy raised her arms to the sky, willing herself to stretch from floor to ceiling; for her mouth to open wide as a chasm; for her eyes to bulge and her tongue to loll…

But none of those things happened. Instead, the deep blue ground beneath her bursted into color, a forest’s worth of buds and flowers springing to life.

Immediately, Scratch surged forward to stop her, alternating between flicking away and crushing petals beneath his ectoplasm. “Okay, alright, that’s enough,” he said quickly, whipping his head around. The coast was clear; nobody had seen the outburst of joy energy.

Ironically, Joy’s glow dimmed. “Aw, man,” she mumbled, allowing Scratch to shepherd her back inside the shack.

He shut the door behind her and began sweeping the last of her petals from the foyer with all haste, sighing with relief once all traces of her magic had been erased. When he looked over his shoulder, Joy was on the couch, face glum and light flickering.

Scratch hovered over to take a seat beside her. “So, maybe scaring’s not your thing,” he offered, with an awkward hand lingering over her back. No matter how long he cared for her, he never got better at all this feelings stuff.

“I’m not a very good ghost, am I?”

He froze. He wanted to tell her something to the dissent, but he sighed again. “Well, no. No, you’re not.”

She hugged her bottom half to her chest, cutie-bit hanging low.

“But you’re not meant to be a good ghost, I don’t think,” murmured Scratch, like a confession. He’d never voiced his thoughts on the matter out loud to her before.

Joy raised her head, quizzical.

“I think you’re just meant to be a good…you,” he said finally, resting his hands in his lap. “Maybe you can’t scare, and maybe you’re more inclined toward the other end of the misery spectrum.” He paused to chuckle a little to himself—that was an understatement. “But you taught me…that’s not so bad, is it?”

Good ghost, what had she done to him?

Her eyes shone. She let go of her lower half to pull him into a hug, as was to be expected—she always gave them out so freely. He wrapped his arms around her a couple times extra, for good measure.

“Thanks, Scratch,” said Joy, quietly and a little muffled.

“Any time, kid. Any time.”

But one doubt was pervasive as he held her close: if she wasn’t a good ghost, how much longer could he keep her in a world meant for them?

* * *

“One of them dogs with the long legs. Err, wait, hunchback wizard. Pony with a tumor! No—unicorn!”

“Yes!”

Joy pumped a fist, Scratch rising to take her place at the center of the living room. “I think you’re getting better at Charades,” he remarked, shuffling Joy’s homemade cards for a word. This was one of her favorite activities, and he did owe her some quality time after being out late scaring for who knew how long.

“I know, I know, I’ve always been a little uncoordinated,” admitted Joy, taking the seat previously occupied by him, “and I couldn’t make all those crazy shapes with my ectoplasm like you can. But I think I’m finally getting the hang of it!” She flexed her fingers in wonderment, then turned her attention to him again, a big grin on her face. Her golden glow gleamed a little brighter. “All right! Your turn!”

Putting down his card—house—Scratch opened his mouth to reply when a harsh pounding on the door caused them both to glance in the sound’s direction. Brow furrowing, he put a finger up. “One sec, kiddo.”

She watched him from behind the back of the couch as he hovered to the front door and turned the knob.

What he was met with made him want to shut it all over again.

A group of ghosts who were undeniably some of the Chairman’s lackeys stood imposingly outside, armed with Sobgoblins on flimsy-looking leashes, cages with fortified metal barring, and a device’s loud, persistent beeping underscoring the entire conversation.

“Heeeey, there,” was likely the inappropriate thing to say, but it was still what ended up coming out of Scratch’s mouth as he leaned up against the door frame, sweat beading on his forehead. “What’s—what’s up with you guys? What brings—” he had to clear his throat, voice cracking, “—brings you here?” He finished the entire miserable display with a nervous chuckle.

The green-tinted ghost in front blinked. “We’ve detected unusually high joy readings coming from your area,” he said, eyes shiftily scanning the area. One behind him tried to peer over Scratch’s shoulder, directly at the couch, and he stretched himself to take up the entire door frame.

“Joy? Pffft!” He waved an arm, speaking especially loudly. “There’s no Joy at all in here! What’s the Chairman feedin’ ya up there, eh? You’ve got it all wrong, you crazy kids, you!”

On cue, the couch rattled, he guessed in Joy’s haste to hide, though he couldn’t risk looking. At the sound, however, several officers’ eyes narrowed. The Sobgoblins grew restless, chomping at their bounds.

“Is that so?” a pink ghost in the back said, one brow raised.

Scratch nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes! I’m miserable!”

The beeping began to quiet, and Scratch had to fight an audible sigh of relief; a combination of somewhere to hide and Joy’s fear must have been diluting her energy—not that these officers knew how it worked.

The ghost in front looked between his device, Scratch, and his lackeys several times. Finally, he grunted with a sense of finality; the Sobgoblins, seeming to sense this, screeched in protest. “Alright,” he conceded, though not without a suspicious look on his face. “We’ll check elsewhere. Have a terrible day.”

“Oh, same to you, officers. All the worst.”

They nodded gruffly and turned around, floating away down the street, though their Sobgoblins continued to chomp in his general direction until they could see him no more.

The moment they were out of his own sight, Scratch slammed the door shut, nearly melting with relief—though, it was short-lived. “Joy?” he called, racing through the house. He lifted the couch—nothing. Panic began to fill him, his search growing more frantic. “Joy?!”

Finally, he came to his room to find her still cowering under the bed, hands over her head, glow dimmer than he’d ever seen it. “Joy,” Scratch nearly cried out in relief, scooping her into his arms and out from underneath the rusted springs.

She sank into his embrace, a part of her flickering back to life. “Scratch,” she echoed, clinging to him just as she had all those years ago—good ghost, had it really been so long?

Scratch knew they were both thinking it, so neither said it aloud: that was the closest they’d ever gotten to being caught.

He also knew, in that moment, that this was not only unsustainable, but this was wrong: it was no longer true that the Ghost World was the safest place for Joy to live. Scratch peered down at the bundle in his arms, a sensation so visceral striking him that it was almost as though he were slapped across the face with it. He felt the very same feeling as that day he’d cornered her in the alley; when he’d been just as imposing to her as those officers had been to him, for virtually the same reasons.

Only now, it was him and Joy versus the entirety of the Ghost World.

“Kiddo, I don’t think we should stay here anymore,” he said, the words pulling themselves from him. Joy looked up, and it was only then did he realize her eyes were shining with tears.

“Really?” she asked. “Then, where—”

“The Living World,” said Scratch. The old house he used to haunt had been empty for as long as he could remember, and so long as she stayed there and didn’t cause commotion in the human world, perhaps it was the right place for her.

Suddenly, her face shifted from worry to wonder, and it was then that he knew he was making the right choice.

“Tomorrow,” Scratch decided, holding out a pinkie for a promise like she so loved to do. She took it, shaking it with her own. “Tomorrow, we’ll move to the Living World, and you and me’ll haunt it together.”

Her pinkie’s grip loosened, one eyebrow raised.

“Well,” Scratch amended, “maybe I’ll haunt it, and you’ll just…exist in it. Since you’re not awfully good at all the haunting business.”

Joy giggled, wrapping her arms around him for one last hug, her glow now warm and steady. “Okay,” she agreed, cheek resting against his shoulder. “As long as we’re together.”

He nodded, a hand resting securely on her back. “Forever and always, kid. No matter which dimension.”

That was the only thing he was sure of.