Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I know you’re there, Danny,” said Tucker, after the nurse had left.  The room appeared empty, but Tucker knew better.  He’d only woken up from surgery a little bit ago – apparently, the break had been bad, and with the ‘unknown pathogen’ floating around town, the doctors wanted to keep him longer than usual.  It was nowhere near time for him to have visitors.  Even his parents had only been in for a little bit. 

But Danny tended to get overprotective whenever he or Sam were hurt, and he wasn’t the kind of person to be dissuaded by rules, hospital security, or common sense. 

For a moment, there was no response, and Tucker wondered if he was wrong, if Danny’s clinginess only kicked in when a ghost caused the injury.  Then, the space over the cabinet shimmered like a mirage and Danny was there.  Barely.  Tucker (after groping for his glasses and putting them on, nearly putting out one of his eyes in the process) could see the texture of the ugly, off-white hospital paint behind him.  If that wasn’t enough, Danny was in a position no human of similar size could have managed, curled up tightly upon himself. 

Of course, the tail – vaporous, lashing – added to that impression. 

Danny’s eyes, green and bright like polished coins, shone at Tucker.  There was a sort of pulsing not-quite noise hanging in the air. 

Danny didn’t usually look like this.  He didn’t usually sound like this.  Most of the time he looked like, well, himself .  Black-haired, blue-eyed, thin, and pale as a human, white-haired, green-eyed, eerily tan, and larger than life as a ghost, yes, but with the same facial features, the same body shape.  Danny only managed to look like this when he was upset. 

Tucker didn’t know which version of Danny was the real one.  He didn’t think Danny did, either.  Unlike Danny, though, Tucker didn’t care.  All versions of Danny were his friend.

“Come down here and stop acting like a sleep paralysis demon,” Tucker said.  “You’re giving me a headache.”

There was a moment of hesitation, then the shadow slunk over the side of the cabinet and oozed to the floor.  Tucker couldn’t see the floor well from his position on the bed, but he was very aware of the moment when Danny took up residence underneath it. 

“Sorry,” whispered Danny, soft enough that his voice blended into the ambient noises of the hospital, but clear enough that the word couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. 

“It’s not your fault,” said Tucker, settling more deeply into the mattress and pillows. 

“Isn’t it?” asked Danny. 

“My leg?  No.  What were you supposed to do, know that Sam had managed to get above me when you were halfway across the hospital?  Rush all the way to us in half a minute so you could catch her?”

Danny hummed. 

“Come on, man, some things are physically impossible even for you.”

“Maybe,” said Danny.  Then he sighed.  “I’m not a very good friend, am I, making you cheer me up?”  White-gloved fingers curled around the railing of the bed.  “I wish—I want,” he corrected himself.  “No, that wouldn’t make any sense.  I don’t like it when you and Sam get hurt.  I feel—I think—If there was something else I could get you that could stop stuff like this—”

“You’re already teaching us how to use all your parents’ weapons,” Tucker reminded him.  “It’s not like you can make us a suit like Valerie’s or give us ghost powers.”

“Desiree was able to,” said Danny. 

“Her magic wishing powers also made me evil and were going to kill me.  So.”

“That’s part of the problem.”

“You aren’t going to try to convince me to quit again, are you?” asked Tucker, suspiciously.  “Because it’s not going to work, just eff-why-eye.”

“Ew,” said Danny, incredulous and almost laughing, “don’t spell out text abbreviations.”

“You can’t stop me, el-oh-el.  And you can’t stop me from fighting ghosts.”  He shot finger guns at the ceiling.  He knew Danny would see them.  “And—And you can’t say we aren’t getting better with practice.”

“Practice,” repeated Danny. 

“Yeah, makes things perfect.  Or in my case, too fine .”

Danny was silent for a long moment. 

“Oh, come on, you’ve said lamer.  Admit it.”

“Dubious,” said Danny.  There was a thoughtful pause.  “If there was a way to give you ghost powers without killing you or turning you evil, would you take it?”

“I don’t know,” said Tucker.  “Maybe?  It’d depend on the circumstances, I guess.  Why?  Do you have a way to do that?”

“No,” said Danny.  “Just… thinking.”

Tucker opened his mouth to reply, but the banter (and it was going to be great banter, maybe even too fine banter) turned into a yawn halfway up.  He blinked tiredly at the ceiling. 

“Hey, Danny?”

“Yes?” said Danny.  He peered over the edge of the bed, and his face was almost back to normal. 

“Thanks for visiting.  It’s…  The hospital isn’t…”  Tucker sighed.  “I really hate hospitals.  You’ll, uh, you’ll stick around until I go to sleep?”

“Yeah.  Of course.”

.

“What are you reading?”

Sam jumped and almost fumbled the book.  “I thought you were asleep,” she said.  

Danny shrugged and tilted his head so that he could read the cover better.  His eyes caught the sunlight streaming in through the kitchen window.  Too bright.  Almost too pretty.  

He’d been leaning into his more charismatic side, today, convincing the other kids to fight.  The force of his personality, usually hidden away when he was in human form, had streamed through him like light through a stained-glass window.  It had affected him strangely, making him seem lighter, more delicate, more ethereal, but also vibrant, magnetic, like a beacon.  

It wasn’t like when he was upset and shadowy, and, at least in human form, it was much less obvious, but Sam was pretty sure it was a related effect.  She had to wonder what he’d look like as Phantom, right now.  Things like this were always more obvious in ghost form.  

“Isn’t that the book that had Fright Knight in it?” he asked.  

“Not quite,” said Sam, making a face.  “That one was shredded, remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck.  A bit of solidity came back to him.  “Whoops.”

Sam closed the book and put it on the table next to her.  “Is something wrong, though?”

“Nope.  It just feels weird to sleep this early in the day on purpose.”  Danny made a face, wrinkling his nose.  “And I’m worried about Tucker.”

“Mhm, yeah,” said Sam.  Their plan was pretty simple, on a surface level.  They’d use the Ops Center as their platform, using the built-in weapons and scratching discs (why that worked, Sam couldn’t say - maybe it was just that warped enough music repelled Ember?) for their artillery, with a few people up top shooting blasters.  Then, once they were close enough, Danny and the other Casper High students would board the ship with grapplers.  Meanwhile, Tucker would dress up as an old man, get kidnapped, and sabotage the ship from the inside.  

Sam didn’t like it.  

Partially because it meant that she’d have to stay behind while everyone else fought hand to hand - she was the only one other than Tucker and Danny who could reliably operate the Ops Center - and partially because Tucker had only just gotten his cast off.  Tucker claimed that his slight limp would help him sell being old better, and he’d have a walker with him if he really needed it, but Sam had her doubts.  What if the ghosts decided they didn’t want someone with a limp and threw him overboard?

(It was her fault his leg had gotten broken in the first place.)

“I’m worried about everyone, honestly,” continued Danny, voice wavering.  “Like, Mom and Dad try to make their tech easy to use, but a lot of these guys have never held a weapon before.”

“Well, we’ve got numbers on our side?” said Sam.  The ghost ship, as far as Sam had seen, only had a couple dozen crew members, plus Ember’s band.  At most.  Meanwhile, the number of Casper High students who were willing to fight to get their parents back was closer to fifty.  

“Which also means more people who could get hurt.”  Danny sighed.  “There’s just not another solution.  I can’t get through the ghost shield on my own.  At this point, I’m just hoping that no one falls off the boat.”

“You’ll catch them if they do,” offered Sam.  

“Sure,” said Danny.  “As long as there’s only one of them, and I don’t mind blowing my secret, and I’m close enough to notice.  Yeah, I know that’s why Tucker’s sabotaging the ghost shield, but he’s going to be alone in there until we start attacking.  There’s just–  There’s a lot that could go wrong.  So, I’m worrying.  Why are you awake?”

“Also worrying,” admitted Sam.  “And, well, you’re going to have to promise not to laugh.”

“I can’t promise not to laugh,” said Danny.  “That’s, like, an involuntary reaction.”

Sam rolled her eyes.  “Sure it is.”

“It is!  I can promise not to make fun, that’s different.”

“Uh huh,” said Sam.  “Well, I was wondering if Youngblood might show up in here, even though he doesn’t look that old.  If he had some kind of weakness we could use.”

“Like Fright Knight?”

“Yeah,” said Sam.  

“Why would I laugh about that?” asked Danny, a little crease between his eyebrows.  He was almost back to normal, now.  

“I don’t know,” said Sam.  “It’s kind of, you know, magic, isn’t it?  That kind of thing.  Your parents are scientists, and you and Jazz didn’t believe in ghosts until they started showing up.”

“Sam, we’ve fought an evil genie and you were turned into a dragon by a cursed amulet.  Plus, Fright Knight.”  He shrugged.  “Maybe it can all be explained with science, but it looks like magic, so, maybe other magic stuff will also work.  Did you find anything?”

“No, not really.  Some stuff about salt and sage and crystals, but you’ve never had any trouble following me into the Skulk and Lurk, and I feel like we’d have noticed if you were repelled by salt.”

Danny sighed.  “Well, I guess it’d be too convenient if you found a way to turn everyone into wizards overnight.”

Sam snorted.  “I think that everyone would be a wizard if it was that convenient.”

“Yep,” said Danny.  His eyes strayed over to the book.  “But, um.  There’s obviously something, isn’t there?  I mean, you were able to use that necklace without being a ghost, and, um.  Well.  Freakshow’s staff.  That worked on ghosts, but Freakshow was just– He was just a guy, right?  So…  Maybe there’s other stuff out there.  Or other, I don’t know, rituals?  Like, maybe ghosts can’t go onto hallowed ground or something.”

“Danny, you’ve seen ghosts in graveyards before.  You’ve fought them in graveyards.”

“But not churches.  Or synagogues,” Danny added, quickly.  He was solidly back in human territory.  Awkward human territory.  

“Way to cover up that slip,” said Sam.  “By the way, if churches somehow work and synagogues don’t, I’m lodging a complaint.”

“With who?” asked Danny.  

“God,” said Sam.  “Obviously.”

“Right, obviously.”  He ran a hand through his hair.  “I just…  I don’t…  You’ll keep an eye out, right?  For stuff we can test?  I mean, maybe we’d need a special kind of salt or something?  Not for today - I’ve got half the school camping in the living room, and we’re going to attack a flying evil pirate ship with a ghost band on it tomorrow - but, you know, later.”

Sam nodded, then paused.  “Is the pirate ship itself evil?  Speaking of magic stuff, it’d be cool to have a flying pirate ship.”

“Johnny’s Shadow is evil, so there’s precedent,” said Danny.  “But even if there wasn’t, where would we put a flying pirate ship?  What would we do with it?”

“It flies.  We can park it anywhere,” said Sam.  

“What if it needs fuel?  I don’t think that they need all our parents - and Jazz - just for the ghost shield.”

“Hey, don’t forget that they’re also doing it because they hate adults,” said Sam.  

“Which they’re defining only as people over thirty for some reason.  That’s weird, right?  That’s weird.”

“It is a little weird.  But all of this is weird to begin with, so…”  Sam shrugged.  “Maybe Ember’s twenty-nine and she’s in denial.”

Danny laughed.  “That’d be hilarious.”  He straightened and took a couple steps into the middle of the kitchen, stretching.  “I’m going to try to go to sleep again.  If you’re having trouble with all of, well, those guys out in the living room, you could probably take Jazz’s room.”  He sighed, heavily.  

Sam didn’t blame him.  Dash and the rest of the football team had more or less forced their way into his bedroom, and she was sure Danny had snuck back into his room invisibly to hide some of his more fragile belongings in the walls.  

“I don’t think she’d mind you taking her room, either,” Sam pointed out.  

“You think?” asked Danny, wistfully.  “I think there are still some Fenton sleeping bags in the closet, maybe I’ll take the floor…  If you’re okay with that.”

“Let’s grab Tucker, too,” said Sam.  “We can make it a sleepover.”

.

Danny frowned at Skulker across the fake campfire.  “Okay,” he said, “I have some questions.”

Skulker sighed heavily.  

The campfire flickered.  Danny was pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to do that.

“Quit that,” said Danny.  “I know you don’t have lungs in there.”  Not in his suit, not in his tiny green jellybean body.  Not when his existence sat evenly with reality, and not when the steel of his suit reflected light like fifty thousand years of knives, spear points, and arrows, and the fire of his hair roared like a lion.  

“I have designed my armor to express myself accurately,” said Skulker.  “What is your question?”

“ Questions,” emphasised Danny.  The trailing ‘s’ hissed and echoed around the camping store against his will.  He bit his lip, but continued.  “First off, these ancient ghosts, where are they now?  It’d be useful to have them here, wouldn’t it?”

“No one knows,” said Skulker, shrugging.  

“How did they get him into the Sarcophagus of Forever Sleep or whatever it was called?”

“No one knows,” said Skulker.  Then he groaned and added, “I assume they beat him half to life and stuffed him in.”

“Cool.  Great.  That’s really helpful.”  Danny looked around the group, his eyes briefly landing on the dragon ghost’s necklace before returning to Skulker.  “So, uh, magic.  Is that real?”

Sulker sighed more heavily.  The electric fire flickered, the bulb letting out a faint whine.

“Look, it’s a legitimate question,” said Danny.  One that he had been trying to find the answer to for the last few weeks.  Ever since the thing with Ember and Youngblood, anyway.  

(Okay, Sam was the one doing most of the actual research, but Danny was being the test dummy, at least for the ghost stuff.)

“We just told you a story about a king with a ring and crown that give the wearer unimaginable power and who was until recently sealed in a sarcophagus that was intended to make him sleep for all eternity.  A king of ghosts. ”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means the Ghost Zone is screwed and so is this whole town,” said Ember.  The blue fire laced through her hair threw no light and cast no shadows except on her face.  Her makeup made her face look skeletal.  

“Come on,” said Danny.  “Magic.  Is it real?  Or is it just themed ghost powers?”

Desiree laughed, coiling, barely contained smoke, sickly and green.  “You have sitting in front of you a woman turned into a dragon with the power of an amulet, a man followed by a thinking shadow, and myself, not to mention that we are all ghosts and spirits, and you wonder if magic is real?”  She leaned forward.  “Better to ask, what would you consider magic if not ghost powers?”

Even dead, even with the spirit at her straining and tearing at the edges of her form out of stress, Desiree was beautiful, and Danny couldn’t help but feel flustered.  He hid it with a scowl.   

“Ghost powers can be explained scientifically.”

“Oh?  Explain them, then.”

“I mean, in general.  Not by me.  My parents punched a hole through reality with science.”  Danny wasn’t completely ignorant about the science, or at least the science according to his parents, but he didn’t feel like spending who-knew-how-long debating ghosts about it. 

Desiree shrugged.  “My question stands.  What would you consider magic?”

“If humans could do it, too,” said Danny.  He knew that wasn’t the actual definition of magic, and that humans being able to do it didn’t mean that it couldn’t be explained scientifically, but it did mean that it would be distinct from ghost powers.  And more importantly–

“Oh, I see,” said Desiree, looking pointedly at Sam and Tucker, sitting beside Danny, their knees pressed against his.  “You want it for your friends.  Perhaps I could even help you, in exchange for, say, a wish…?”

“No,” said Danny, Sam, Tucker, and, surprisingly, the rest of the ghosts all together.  

“Well, you can’t fault a girl for trying,” said Desiree, putting on an exaggerated pout.  “Next time.”

“But that means that humans can do magic?” asked Danny.  

“I didn’t say that.”

“Enough,” said Skulker, baring his metal teeth in a grimace of annoyance.  “Whether you’d call it magic or not, there are ways humans can use ghost-like powers.  None of which your humans will be able to learn or hunt down before Pariah Dark.  Does that answer your questions, whelp?”

“Yeah, I guess,” said Danny.  He flew up from the fake log he was sitting on.  “From what you’ve said, we can’t let Pariah Dark have the ring.  We’ll have to fight, all together, no matter what he throws at us.  Then, we’ll have to get the key from Vlad - still can’t believe the Fruitloop let him out– oh wait I can! - and push Pariah back to the sarcophagus so we can seal him away.  Somehow.”  He looked up at the assembled ghosts.  “I’ll need your help.  We’ll have to battle against impossible odds, face everything that Pariah Dark can throw at us - and I bet he can throw a lot at us, being the ghost king and all.  Danger, doom, destruction, no guarantee of coming back–  Who’s with me?”

There was a moment when he thought some of the ghosts might actually say yes.  Maybe Poindexter.  Or Skulker, even.  But then they laughed and they all left, flying up through the ceiling.  

It was Danny’s turn to sigh.  This time, the lightbulb illuminating the fake campfire popped, leaving the room dark except for Danny’s own glow.  

“That was just about the worst pep talk I’ve ever heard,” said Tucker, pushing up his glasses so they reflected Danny’s glow back at him, “and one time Dash shut me in one of the gym lockers so he’d have a captive audience while he practiced his speech to the team before the big game.”

“Yikes.  That’s got to violate the Geneva Convention somehow,” said Sam.  

“Was it really that bad?” asked Danny.  “Mine, not Dash’s.”

“You basically told them that they were going to die if they worked with you, so, yeah,” said Tucker.  “It really was.”

.

“Phantom, I want to talk to you,” said Desiree.  

Danny, who had charged his fist with ecto-energy in preparation for blasting Desiree in the face, paused skeptically.  “You do?  Why?”

Desiree, looking much more solid and settled than she had back when Pariah was invading, rolled her eyes.  “So dubious.  Really, child, have you ever known me to just approach you?  In the open like this?”

“Uh,” said Danny.  Now that she mentioned it, that was kind of weird.  She usually made some kind of minion (sorry, Tucker) to come after him.  “If you’re here to talk, then talk.”

Desiree raised an eyebrow at Danny’s still-charged fist.  Danny, in turn, narrowed his eyes at her, looking for anything that would indicate that she was going to attack him.  Not finding anything, he lowered his fist, reabsorbing the energy, and backed away from her, crossing his arms.  “Happy?”

“Thrilled,” said Desiree, dryly. Her long tail twisted in the wind, like smoke without a fire, her hair fluttering like a curtain.  “Your mother must be so proud of your manners.”

Danny was pretty sure that he had the second-best manners in his family, after Jazz.  He didn't work on ghost hunting equipment during meals or randomly blast people with the Fenton Foamer, after all.  

He wasn't going to say that to Desiree, though.

“Because it's so polite to turn someone into a giant green rage monster?”

“He asked for it. Quite literally.  And you were asking some interesting questions yourself, when we last met.”

“So?” asked Danny, defensively.  Had she come to make fun of him about that?  Again?

“So, you want to know more about magic.   You want it for your little friends.  To protect them.  To keep them alive.  I,” she placed her hand ostentatiously on her chest, “am an expert in magic.”

“I feel the need to bring up the green rage monster thing again.”  Despite that, he couldn't help but lean forward, curious. 

“Yes, yes, I know, you don't trust me.  And I have better things to do than shepherd a group of children who will likely insist on doing things wrong on purpose through the rudiments of magic.  Which is why I have brought this.”  She snapped her fingers, and a piece of paper appeared in front of Danny.  Reflexively, he grabbed it. 

It looked like a map.  A map of the Ghost Zone, specifically.  Danny could recognize the Fenton portal and other landmarks, like Walker's prison and Skulker's island. 

“Height is always difficult to do on flat paper, not to mention movement,” Desiree said.  “But I think that will be good enough to navigate by for the next month or so. I have written the names of some people and places you can visit.”

Danny flipped over the paper and saw that there was a short list there.  He didn't recognize any of the names.  Frostbite of the Far Frozen, Elysium, Ghost Writer of the Unwritten Library, the Unwritten Library itself.

“And these people will teach me magic?  And my friends?” 

Desiree shrugged.  “They may .  I’m not entirely sure what the Far Frozen know about magic, if anything, but they are quite enamored by you.”

Danny blinked.  “They’re what?”

“They are aware of your fight with Pariah Dark, and they’re impressed by it,” said Desiree, more clearly.  “They were preparing to fight him themselves, you see, but we beat them to it.”

“They were?” asked Danny, taken aback.  Although he knew that there were ghosts other than the ones that harassed him all the time, he hadn’t considered that they would also be affected by Pariah Dark, or that they might try to do something about him.

Desiree nodded.  “Many were, but they wanted to have an actual strategy, so…”

Danny blushed.  “My strategy worked.”   Mainly because he had the power of desperation and mad science on his side, but that wasn’t important.  

“Yes, and believe me, I'm as shocked as anyone.”

Danny made a face at her, but looked back at the list.  “Who are the rest of these people?”

Desiree rolled her eyes.  “Even you know what a library is.”

“Yeah, but what about Elysium?”

“One of the great cities of the Ghost Zone.  I would have put the University of Ys down, too, but I don't know how often you need to breathe.”

“Uh, pretty much constantly?”  At least, that's what he assumed.  He'd never actually tested that.  

“It would have been difficult to fit on the map, regardless.”  Desiree backed away, her edges going vague.  “Consider any debt I owe you repaid.”

Danny sighed.  “This was just because you can’t stand owing a guy anything, wasn’t it?”

“It’s amusing that you know me better than the sultan ever did,” said Desiree, smiling indulgently and flashing sharp, white fangs.  

“... And you’re going to start attacking the city as soon as you leave, aren’t you?”

“Ah, but are you sure enough to attack me first, after I’ve done you a favor?”

.

“Do you think it’s legit?” asked Danny, stretching, then reclining on the decorative frame around and over Sam’s bed.  He hooked his feet into the cobweb-like metalwork, then let them merge into his ghostly tail.  

“I don’t know,” said Sam, from her position lying on top of the covers of the bed.  Her feet were kicked up in the air behind her and she didn’t have her makeup on, which was always a little surreal, like she wasn’t wearing her face.  “She did attack the city right after.”

“Yeah,” said Danny, “but she didn’t have to talk to me at all, and she did.  She could’ve just started granting wishes in Elmerton or something and it probably would have taken me at least a few hours to figure out it was happening.”

“That’s true,” said Sam.  “How does this match up with your maps?”

“Not, like, great,” said Danny.  “But I think that’s mostly because I’m not great at maps, and stuff keeps moving around, rather than she’s trying to trick us that way.”

“Yeah, that’d probably be too easy to check,” agreed Sam.  “You’re worried about the people she’s sending you to being fake or a trap or more hostile than she’s making out.”

“You could even say she could be… making out to fake us out.”

Sam looked up to glare at him.  “I thought we agreed to never speak of that again.”

“Speak of what?” asked Danny, innocently.  

Sam looked back at the map, then casually reached over to her pillows before flinging one at Danny.  He saw it coming, though, and phased through it, cackling.  Stretching his arm like a cartoon character, Danny caught the pillow before it could hit the (unlit) candles on Sam’s dresser.

“That’s one of the reasons I haven’t released her yet,” he said, drumming the fingers of his other hand on the thermos strapped to his waist.  “If we’re going into an ambush, she’s coming with us.”

“Good idea,” said Sam.  “Anyway, I do recognize some of these names.”

“Really?”  Danny shifted, drifting down to peer over her shoulder even as he kept his tail wrapped around the metalwork.  “I don’t remember fighting any of these guys.  Or places.”

“Not from real life.  From mythology and fairytales and stuff like that.  Elysium is the name of a place in Ancient Greek mythology.  It was part of their underworld.”

“And apparently the real underworld, too,” said Danny. 

“I haven’t heard about the others, not as, you know, people, but a ghostwriter is a person who writes a book for someone else, and then that person puts their name on it as the author.”

“Isn’t that just, you know, plagiarism?”

“No, no, ghostwriters are paid.  It’s like, you know James Patterson?  His books are on that shelf right past the checkout at the grocery store.”

“Mhm, yeah?  Didn’t he have that one weird book about people who are half bird?”

“No idea,” said Sam.  “But most of his books are written by other people.  He just does the outlines or something like that.”

“How do you even know this stuff?”

“I don’t know.  My mom complains about it.  She thinks that there should be a higher quality of books at the grocery store, I guess.”

“Do you think that I should go check them out, though?”

“We,” corrected Sam.  “Tucker and I can take the Speeder.”

“But if it’s a trap–”

“I think I can speak for Tucker, too, when I say that if it is a trap, we’re not going to let you walk into it on your own.  We’re the ones who’d have to learn, anyway, right?”

“Okay,” said Danny, recognizing an argument he wasn’t going to win, “but the logistics for that are going to be weird.  Aren’t you grounded for another week?  At least?”

Sam groaned.  “Don’t remind me.  I’ll figure something out.”

There was a sharp knock on the door.  “Sammy?  What is that noise?  Do you have a computer in there?”

Danny jumped lightly into the air.  “I should go,” he whispered, flying towards the window.   

Sam made a face but nodded.

“Sammy?  Don't make me unlock this door!”

.

Tucker followed the fight on foot.  Well, semi-on-foot.  He had his scooter, but he could only use that on relatively level pavement, which ghost fights didn’t always stay above.  When the fight cut through parks, across construction, through damage from past ghost fights, or up- and downstairs, Tucker picked up the scooter and carried it.  How was that for cardio, Sam…

He was incredibly out of breath.  But he had to keep up, had to keep within bluetooth range of the mechanical monstrosity Technus had whipped up for Danny to fight this time.  

Not for the first time, Tucker wished he could do more.  

Yes, Danny could probably beat the thing on his own.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  Danny did need rescues and backup on a regular basis, when dealing with ghosts who could actually think, but it was reassuring to think that he could manage even if Tucker and Sam couldn’t keep up.  Even if, obviously, he couldn’t do as well without them.  

Tucker liked to think that he and Sam were instrumental in preventing millions of dollars of property damage.  It was an ego boost, knowing he was worth a million bucks.

But at the moment, he didn’t feel like a million bucks.  He felt like hell.

He made it out of the park, and back onto beautiful level ground, and slammed his scooter down and pushed off, tapping on his PDA with one hand.  Beautiful Jena, he loved her so…  An older model, but the best at interfacing with Technus’s OS.  

“Guys, I think he’s headed for the- for the freaking- for Radio Shack!” yelled Danny through the Fenton Phones.   

How Radio Shack stayed in business in Amity Park, Tucker didn’t know.  It was raided regularly by ghosts.  

Technus cackled, audible both through the Phones and in the distance.  “EXCELLENT IDEA, GHOST CHILD!”

“Danny, you need to learn to shut up when you’re fighting this guy!” said Sam.  She’d split off from Tucker a while back, trying to head off the fight.  

“I know, I’m sorry!  Hey, Technus, how about you chew on this? ”

Tucker was in sight of the fight, now.  It looked like Danny had knocked good amount of Technus’s stolen tech off his most recent mecha, and Technus was eating cars to make up for the loss.  About half of the electronics he did have were spazzing out - Tucker’s work.  

Danny slammed Technus into the pavement with an overcharged blast, and shrapnel flew out, forcing Tucker to duck.  He spotted Sam at the intersection down from the fight.  She had a double-barreled blaster in her hand, one of the heaviest ecto-guns they were able to just… carry around.

(Contrary to popular opinion, the Fentons did not hand out bazookas, or even the bigger Fenton Foamers like candy, and those weren’t things you could just shove into your school backpack.)

Technus must have spotted her, too, because he swept his hand sideways, robot tentacles spooling off his fingers.  Crap.  Tucker was keeping Technus from infecting other electronics via ghostly wireless, but he couldn’t do anything about that.  

Luckily, Danny got in the way, building a quick shield that shattered and threw him back into Sam, but diverted the metal tentacles.

Danny, half hovering over Sam, made another shield, this one at an angle.  He threw it forward, and it sheared a third of Technus’s body off.  

Brutal, but Danny was mad.  Heck, Tucker was mad.  

Technus started to get up again.  Sam was still down, bleeding from cuts on her face.  

There had to be something he could do, some other way he could help, something he could do with his PDA and the tenuous bluetooth connection he had to Technus’s tech.  

There wasn’t.  He was already doing everything he could do.  Except…

He started to edge around the fight, to where Sam was.  It was rough going, because Technus was still huge, and Danny was furious enough to discard some of the limits he usually stuck to, but he got there.  

“Sam, you okay?”

“Mm?  I’m fine,” she said.  “I’m fine.”  She pushed herself up.  “Just– Ow.”

“Concussion?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.  “Just stunned for a second.  Ow.”

“Are you sure?” asked Tucker.  

“Save the concussion check for later,” she said, looking around at the ground.  She snatched up the double-barreled blaster and aimed it at the fight.  The gun wavered.  “Crap, you take it.  You have better aim than me, anyway.”

Tucker wasn’t entirely sure that was true, but he wasn’t a terrible shot, so he took it, and - jeez, ghost fights were fast - and fired.  The blast was bright and wide, and knocked off the head of Technus’s construct.  

Which he reconstructed fairly quickly.  Crud.  

But the delay in Technus’s reaction let Danny apart enough of his body to dive in and fight Technus overshadow to overshadow, and when he pushed Technus out, he sucked him into the thermos in short order.  

At least Tucker had helped a little.  Probably.  

“Sam!” exclaimed Danny.  “Sam, are you okay?”  He landed right next to them and immediately started running through the abbreviated concussion check they’d cribbed from the football team.  

“Hey,” said Tucker, when Sam had passed enough of the tests to start snapping.  “You know how I was dubious about Desiree’s whole mystery list thing?  Maybe… maybe we should check it out.  Even if it’s just to get allies or whatever.”

Danny and Sam immediately brightened and gave each other high-fives.  “So you do want to be a wizard!” she said.

“I didn’t say that,” said Tucker.  

“Installation wizard,” said Danny.  

“Technomage,” said Sam.  

“I regret giving you my old game handles.  Fryer Tuck is way better.”

.

“Testing, testing, one, two, three, Techno Geek over.”

“Clueless one, checking in, over,” said Danny, floating outside the cabin of the Speeder.  “Why am I Clueless One again?  Is it because of the zombie skeletons?  Because no one got hurt and that really wasn’t predictable.”

Tucker looked at Sam and covered his microphone.  “He really doesn’t know, does he?”

“I can see you talking,” said Danny.  The light from his eyes refracted and scattered when it passed through the ecto-proofed windshield of the Speeder, making it look like his eyes were shining like tiny suns or like his whole face was covered with eyes, depending on the angle he was viewed at.  

“Yep, and we can hear you, Danny,” said Sam.  She adjusted the map where it sat on the dashboard.  They’d debated just giving it to Danny, but Danny was a klutz, and neither Sam nor Danny had trusted the wonderful scan he’d taken of the map with Janice.  

Rude.  Janice was a beautiful PDA with lots of memory and great camera resolution, even better than Jena’s!  But Tucker could understand their point.  Janice didn’t have great battery life, and electronics and ghosts didn’t always agree with one another, Technus and Skulker being the exceptions.  

“Tuck, you’re navigating, since I’m driving and Danny’s point,” said Sam. 

“Got it,” said Tucker, looking at the map.  “We’re still checking out this Frostbite guy first?”

“That’s why we brought the snow suits,” said Danny.  “Ghost Names usually fit pretty well.  Desiree grants wishes, Skulker is a stalker, and Ember is on fire.  So, ‘Frostbite’ and ‘Far Frozen,’ that’s going to be cold.”  

“What about ‘Far,’ though?” asked Sam.  “It isn’t particularly far away from here, anyway.”

“I don’t know.  It isn’t like this is the only place in the Ghost Zone.  It isn’t even much of a place.”  Danny gestured at the mostly-empty space around the portal.  “Not without the portal here, anyway.”

“Okay,” said Tucker.  “Just go, uh.”  There wasn’t a good system of coordinates in the Ghost Zone.  At least, not that Tucker knew about.  “See that little island out that way?  With the scrappy purple grass on it?  Go that way, for now.”

“Gotcha,” said Danny, flying off.  Sam pressed on the accelerator, following in his wake. 

Tucker made note of the next few landmarks on the way to the Far Frozen, but that didn’t take very long.  “Do you think this guy really knows magic?  Real magic?” he asked.  Danny and Sam had been so enthusiastic about planning this trip that Tucker hadn’t had the time to ask, after finally putting his stamp of approval on going in the first place.  

“Even if they don’t,” said Sam, “it’d be good if we had a ghost that was actually a friend.”  Sam paused.  “And wasn’t a dog.”

“The Dairy King was friendly,” said Danny.  

“Or in Wisconsin,” added Sam.  “It’s going to be a lot faster to get to the Far Frozen than it would be to get to Wisconsin, and here we don’t have to worry about breaking into Vlad’s house or dodging traffic cops.”

“I mean, there’s Walker.  He’s sort of like a traffic cop.  Or a meter maid.”

The image of Walker driving around in a tiny meter maid car and uniform popped into Tucker’s head and he laughed.  “But, seriously, magic?”

Tucker wasn’t sure he believed in magic.  He was on board with getting superpowers, or ghost power, that wasn’t the issue. 

Like, yes, Desiree existed.  Freakshow existed.  Dragons, apparently, existed.  Tucker had seen those things.  He wasn’t denying them.  But Danny’s parents had made the portal with science.  They invented stuff that worked on ghosts, which kind of indicated that ghosts themselves and all their powers, no matter how weird, had a scientific explanation.  

“It’s not that out there,” said Danny.  “I’m half dead.”

“Debatable,” said Tucker.  “But, your parents look at ghost stuff with science, right?  Wouldn’t magic existing sort of undercut all that?”

“No, no, I’ve been thinking about this.” said Danny.   “Just because magic exists doesn’t mean the science doesn’t work.  It’s Clark’s law.  Or the inverse of Clark’s first law or something.  Sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic.  So are poorly understood natural processes.  It’s, like, sufficiently un-advanced science makes everything else indistinguishable from magic?”

“I’m ninety-nine percent sure it’s Clark’s third law and that it’s about technology.”

“Same difference.  But it’s also, like, how are we defining magic?  Is it just magic because we don’t understand it?  Is it magic because no one understands it?  Or is it just magic if it involves supernatural stuff, in which case we’re all doing magic right now, no matter how sciency it looks, because ghosts are supernatural.”

“But would ghosts still be considered supernatural if everyone knew about this?”  Tucker waved his hand at the Ghost Zone.  “Or would they just be nature we don’t under–”  Tucker broke off, realizing he was arguing Danny’s point about un-advanced science.  “I don’t like that.”

“Neither do I,” said Sam.  “But judging by what Desiree said, or what Danny said Desiree said, there’s something called magic, and it’s a real discipline we can learn.  Maybe it fits with science, maybe it doesn’t.  Maybe we’ll get there and it’ll turn out ghosts like Technus or whatever have been studying it for centuries and they’ve figured out how to mesh it completely with quantum mechanics.”

“Not likely,” said Danny.  “People can’t even get quantum mechanics to mesh with general relativity.”  He stopped, then twisted in midair to look back at the Speeder.  “Except, they’re probably not taking the Ghost Zone into account, huh?  I wonder if that’d do anything.”

“My point is, how much does it matter to us if it’s really magic or science if it exists and we can do it?  If it looks like magic, we might as well call it that.” said Sam.  “Isn’t that what you were saying when we talked about this the first time, Danny?”

“Uh, was it?  I guess it was, sort of.”

“Okay, so, you think that there’s magic, or something that the ghosts are calling magic,” said Tucker, picking his way back through the conversation, “but it can be explained scientifically?”  

Ahead of them, Danny turned slow circles in the air as the Speeder grew closer.  “If it has rules that are consistent, then, yeah.  Since science is basically just figuring out how the world works by testing stuff.  And if you’re going to learn something, it needs to have rules.  Like, physical rules, at least.”

“Hey, Danny, we’re getting pretty close, you want to keep going?” said Sam.  

“Whoops.  Yeah.  Tucker, same direction, still?”

“Uh,” said Tucker, doing a quick check of the map.  “No, actually.  You’ll want to turn here, towards the thing that looks like a giant mouth.”

“Towards the giant mouth?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said.”

“... How close to the giant mouth are we going to get?”

“Not that far, we’re going to turn again as soon as you start seeing doors.”

.

When they reached the first floating iceberg (was that redundant?  All icebergs floated, just on water rather than in the air) Danny stopped.  “Okay, I think you guys should wait here while I check things out.  For the dramatic rescue,” he added, before they could protest.  “I’ll call you in if I think it’s safe.  Or if it turns out not to be safe.  For the dramatic rescue.  Which I won’t need, probably.”

“Do you think this is close enough?” asked Sam.  She was looking at Tucker when she asked it.  

“Probably,” said Tucker.  “We can go pretty fast, since we don’t have to dodge stuff.”

“Hey, please dodge stuff,” said Danny.  “You guys give me a heart attack every time you phase through something in the Speeder.”

“You don’t even have a heartbeat in ghost form half the time, Danny,” said Sam.  

“Because you’re giving me heart attacks half the time.”

“That’s a bit hypocritical,” said Tucker, “given that you don’t dodge nearly enough.”

“I can phase through things on my own!”  Meanwhile, humans phasing through things in the Ghost Zone relied on there being no real world objects for them to run into, which wasn’t a guarantee at all.  

Maybe there was a type of magic out there that’d tell them whether something was ectoplasmic all the way through or not.  That’d be nice.  

“But do you?”

Danny frowned at her, then sighed.  “I’m going.”

He flew forward, dodging the icebergs.  The Fenton Phones got a little crackly as he got farther and farther away, but still worked.  

Danny took the opportunity to speed up and stretch out.  He tended to fly more slowly when he was escorting the Specter Speeder, but it was often more comfortable to fly faster.  Plus, the faster he got to the ‘Far Frozen,’ the faster he could report back to Sam and Tucker, the faster they could find out if magic was real and if it’d be useful.

His tail unfurled into an undulating line and Danny shed a little more substance than he usually did, pushing it off to one side, unneeded.  It was different than when he was too emotional to hold onto his reality, becoming more of an idea than a fact, but it was similar, just more… controlled.

It was easier in the Ghost Zone, where everything was like this, not just Danny and whatever ghosts had decided to wreak havoc on Amity Park.  

In fact, it was so easy, and he was going so fast, that he didn’t see the ghost until he’d run into them.

Danny, lacking substance and therefore mass, bounced off the ghost, tumbling head over heels before coming to an instinctive stop.  He stared up at the ghost.  The fluffy yeti ghost stared down at Danny, blankly.

Maybe part of the reason he hadn’t seen them was because they blended in so well to the white ice islands all around them.  They even had an arm made of ice!

“Sorry,” said Danny, backing away a little more, cautiously, holding up his hands.  He’d come here to make allies, not to start fights.  He tried to pull himself back together, but knew he wasn’t getting it quite right.  “Didn’t mean to run into you.”

This got a bigger reaction from the ghost.  Namely, a massive roar and a swipe of icy claws.  

“Heck,” said Danny, tapping the Fenton Phones.  “Getting into a fight, I’ll check in when I’m– Yikes!”

Sam and Tucker didn’t press for details.  They’d done this before, and unless they had pertinent information, they knew not to interrupt.  Now, anyway.  Not so much when they’d been starting, though… 

Not important.  What was important was that Danny had just been thrown into one of the floating icebergs.  He snarled back at the yeti and felt himself going shadowy, vanishing, bright– He broke back into visibility behind the yeti and–

Paused.  

There was a large icicle wedged into the yeti’s back, right below their shoulder.  Unlike the icy arm, it didn’t look like it belonged.  

Danny’s initial thought had, of course, been that Desiree had lied to them, that this had been a trap all along.  But what if it wasn’t?

Removing the icicle only took a single ectoblast, well-aimed.  

The yeti ghost gasped - not unusual, ghosts often mimicked breathing, even though they didn’t happen - then said, “The pain!  It’s gone!”  He patted his shoulder and back.  “Who do I have to thank for–”  As he turned, he spotted Danny, who waved.  “You– You? The savior of the Infinite Realms!”

“Savior?”  Danny blinked, then shook his head.  “Sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else.”  Probably.  Desiree had said the Far Frozen were ‘enamored’ with him for defeating Pariah Dark, but calling him a savior was a little much.  

“You are Phantom, are you not?  The defeater of Pariah Dark!  The Great One!”

“Um,” said Danny.  “Yes?”

The ghost brightened, their aura shining like sunlight on snow.  “Remarkable!  What brings you to the Far Frozen?  How can I help you?”

Danny blinked again.  This was apparently going to be way easier than he’d thought it would be.  He smiled.

“I was told that you might be able to help me learn about magic?  I really don’t know anything about it.”

“Certainly, certainly!  We don’t use it as much as some communities might, but we can inform you of the basics.  Come, let us proceed to the village.”

“Right!  But, um, first, I’ve got to tell my friends that I haven’t been murdered.”

.

The ghost, Danny learned, was named Frostbite, he was the leader of the yetis of the Far Frozen, and he was very friendly.  Danny had never met a ghost as friendly, except, maybe , Cujo, and he was a dog.  He was easy to talk to, personable, and he’d only attacked Danny a little bit!

… Which was a depressingly low bar as far as relationships went, but, hey, Danny’s parents didn’t clear it.  Tucker didn’t clear it.  Sure, mind control had been involved, but still…

He excitedly showed Danny all around the village, showcasing landmarks and places of interest as a bigger and bigger crowd of yetis gathered behind them.  The crowd made Danny a little nervous.  Well, okay, a lot nervous.  He usually didn’t have extended peaceful interactions with ghosts.  Being followed around by so many was nerve wracking, even if they weren’t doing anything hostile.  

Frostbite noticed and shooed the crowd away.  Right before entering a cave filled with carvings of Danny and his fight with Pariah Dark.  It was very flattering, and he did preen about it, but it was also bewildering.  He didn’t know how to feel about it.  

He still didn’t know what to feel about it when the Specter Speeder landed on the Far Frozen’s docks (apparently most often used for a kind of hover sled).  They looked almost as fluffy as the yetis in their layers and layers of winter clothing.  It was cute.  And, when Tucker face planted in a snowbank, funny.  

Danny made introductions.  Then, Frostbite invited them to the village archives while the other yetis worked on preparing a celebratory feast, both for Danny’s visit, and for Frostbite being cured (apparently, none of the other yetis had been able to get close enough to get rid of the icicle).  

Again, Danny didn’t know how to feel about that.  

“So, you were given a list of people to visit, regarding your desire to learn magic?” asked Frostbite.

“Yeah, by a ghost named Desiree.  Do you know her?”

“By reputation only,” said Frostbite.  “She is a hot-cored ghost, whereas we are cold-cored ghosts.  The places I and my people would find comfortable, she would find unpleasant, and vice versa.  But considering that reputation, I’m surprised she didn’t offer to tutor you herself.  She is a notable magician, if a focused one.”

“We… don’t really get along,” said Danny.  

“At one point, she gave me ghost powers but also made me crazy,” offered Tucker.  “She just gave Danny that list because she felt like she owed him for Pariah Dark.”

“As do we all, which brings me to my next question.  What did you want to know about magic?” asked Frostbite, smiling, which was less disturbing than it could have been, considering all the fangs.  He was just so positive and friendly.  

“Can humans use it?” asked Sam, cutting straight to the point.  

“Without the craziness and mind control stuff.”

Frostbite paused, looking between Sam and Tucker.  “Ah, I see!  Yes, it is possible for humans to learn at least some of the things called magic.”

Danny, Sam, and Tucker all exchanged grins.  “How?”

.

“First,” said Frostbite, as they sat down at the feast, “I should say that different groups call different things magic.  It isn’t a unified or universal definition, and it is complicated by definitions of technology, general ghost powers, and cultural and linguistic differences.  If you were to spend much time traveling the Infinite Realms, you would find that one man’s mundane is another’s miracle.”

“Infinite Realms?” asked Sam.  Somehow, the yeti’s had sourced vegetables for her after hearing that she’d sworn off eating meat, but the vegetables were…  Well, Sam ate a lot of weird and unfamiliar stuff, but she wasn’t quite sure she was up to eating otherwise unidentifiable ghost veggies.  They were neon purple and round, otherwise matte surfaces glistening with a thin blue sauce on top of a bed of artfully arranged leaves.  

On the other hand, Danny and Tucker were more than willing to eat otherwise unidentifiable ghost meat.  Although Danny ate much more daintily that Tucker did, she’d give them that much.  

Frostbite gave Sam a confused look.  “The Infinite Realms?  The dimension we all currently reside inside?”

“Oh,” said Danny, a faintly green blush spreading across his cheeks.  “My parents always just called it the Ghost Zone.  I didn’t realize there was another name for it…”

“I see,” said Frostbite, still politely confused.  “We of the Far Frozen have our own definitions of magic, of course, although we share it with our closer allies and research partners.  Generally, we consider magic to be any manipulation of ectoplasm via ritual means.  That is, formulaic actions that have no direct means of bringing about the desired effect, often using stimuli and tools that would not bring about the effects on their own.”

Sam wasn’t sure if that definition was broad or narrow or just practical.  

“So…” said Danny, “stuff that a ghost normally wouldn’t be able to do on their own, with their powers?”

“Often, yes,” said Frostbite, sneaking more food onto Danny’s plate.  “Although not exclusively.  There are magical formulae - spells - even for relatively common ghost powers.”

“And humans can use the same rituals?” asked Sam, eagerly.

Frostbite raised a clawed hand and rocked it back and forth.  “To some degree.  The issue with magic is that it is still reliant on the presence of ectoplasm, and often ectoplasm in very specific configurations and concentration.  For example, creating shapes of ectoplasm while speaking certain words or imbuing the tools and materials used in the ritual.”

“Anything we wanted to do or use, we’d have to get Danny to prepare, then,” said Sam.  

Danny looked over at Sam.  “It wouldn’t be hard for me to do.  I have lots of practice charging the thermos and that stuff.”

Sam nodded, but, internally, she was a little disappointed.  Having more options was good, but the example, at least, didn’t feel all that different from getting Fenton tech from Danny.  

“Yes, most humans who use magic must receive help from ghosts, or use objects that have already been imbued with some effect via magic.”

“Like that amulet that turns people into dragons, or Freakshow’s staff,” said Danny.  

“I am aware of the dragon kingdom, but I am unfamiliar with the other name,” said Frostbite.  

“Freakshow was a human who had this staff that- that could mind control ghosts,” said Danny.  

“He had a bunch of ghosts he’d basically turned into his slaves, and he got Danny for a while,” added Tucker.  

“But we destroyed the staff,” said Sam before Frostbite could get too concerned.  “Smashed it to bits and buried the pieces.”

“Yes, that does sound like magic,” said Frostbite, “although of a particularly unpleasant variety.  However, in terms of help from ghosts, there are options beyond simply receiving imbued tools from the ghosts, ones that allow human magicians to work more nuanced and profound magic, and, in some cases, even make use of limited ghost powers - If Desiree indeed granted you ghost powers, young man, she was using a variety of this method.”

“I do want to remind you that I went crazy that time,” said Tucker, licking his lips.  Incredibly, he’d eaten all of his food.  There had to be a ton of ectoplasm in it, and ectoplasm-contaminated food came to life and did other weird things all the time.  At least at Fentonworks.  “Turbo crazy, even.”

“You’re crazy now,” pointed out Sam.  

“So crazy I started attacking Danny,” clarified Tucker before sticking a faintly purple tongue out at her.  

“Very unfortunate,” said Frostbite.  “But that was likely due to her own adjustments, rather than something fundamental to the method.”

“So, what is the method?” asked Sam, leaning back and crossing her arms.  It was probably unfair, but she felt like Frostbite was talking around the main topic.

“There are rituals that can allow ghosts to channel their ectoplasm to certain humans, regardless of their physical locations, by creating something like a… metaphysical tether.”  Frostbite made a face.  “I am afraid I do not know the details behind the process, but I do know it is a subset of what is called contract magic, and that it comes in two main types, both of which have their advantages and disadvantages.”

Sam felt herself tipping forward again.  She wasn’t the only one.  Danny was half out of his chair, and Tucker wasn’t even paying attention to the food he’d just loaded onto his plate.  

“The first way,” said Frostbite, raising a finger, “is for the ghost to bind itself, or allow itself to be bound, to a human as a servant.  The second way,” he paused to raise another finger, “is for the ghost to become the patron of the humans.”

“So, it’s a familiar or warlock thing?” asked Tucker.  

“Ah, you do know something of it, then?” asked Frostbite.  “Those are the terms used.”

“I mean, video games and tabletop stuff…”  Tucker trailed off.

“Stories,” said Danny, helpfully.  “Not real stuff.”

Frostbite nodded.  “I confess, I do not have much more.  Human magic users have not been common since the days of Pariah Dark.”

“It’s still more than we have,” said Sam, “since your stories are based on fact.”

“At least, I hope so,” said Frostbite, chuckling.  “The familiar arrangement is most often used when the ghost isn’t very powerful and can only sustain a single human magician.  The human is the superior in the relationship, and, often, the ghost is reduced in some way - some familiar rituals require the human to provide an appropriate animal for the ghost to possess in its weakened state.”

“That… doesn’t sound great,” said Danny, wrinkling his nose.  

“I do not think you would have such troubles, Great One,” said Frostbite, “you are quite a powerful ghost.  Which brings me to the other method, that of patronage.  In that method, an especially powerful ghost offers support to one or many humans, in exchange for favors and service.  The ghost is the superior in that relationship.  But…  I am not sure if you are quite powerful enough on your own to manage such a thing.”

“Yeah, I don’t–  Is there any one that doesn’t involve ‘service?’  I mean, these are my friends, we’re friends, not, like, leader and followers or master and servant.  Like, the familiar one, I’ll do that, but…”

“There could be,” said Frostbite, “but if there is, I do not know it.  Now, you said there was a list?  May I see it?”

“Sure,” said Danny, pulling it from… somewhere.  

Whenever Sam or Tucker asked about Danny’s ghost form pocket… situation , he would stare blankly at them and say he was just taking stuff from his pockets.  A pocket dimension, maybe.  Something similar happened to the thermos when it wasn’t hooked to his belt or in his hand.  It just sort of vanished, sublimating into nothing.  

Then again, Danny’s parents could pull enough lasers to equip a small army out of their jumpsuits, so maybe it wasn’t even a ghost thing but a Fenton thing.  Sam wouldn’t be sure until she saw Jazz do it.  

“Desiree said these were people we should talk to about magic,” continued Danny, offering up the list.  “Are they?  Like I said, Desiree and I, we don’t get along at all.  We’re… enemies, usually, honestly.”

“She once made me and Danny forget that Sam existed,” said Tucker, “and also turned Danny into not a half ghost.  It was weird.”

“It was weird,” agreed Danny.  

“It was bad,” said Sam, making a face.  “It felt bad.”

“Well, unless she has done something similar to these people and places, I would say the list is good.  The Unwritten Library allows free entry, assuming you haven’t angered the current Ghost Writer.  Its purpose is recording books that were never written, and allowing them to be read.  It will have books on magic, although you should be cautious about what you use.  Books unwritten are also books unedited, and a book might go unwritten because it is simply wrong .  The map is also currently fairly accurate, it should guide you there well enough.”

“What about Elysium?” asked Sam.

“Actually, I was about to ask if you would like me to take you there,” said Frostbite.  “I know Queen Pandora, and I think you would delight her, much as you have delighted all of us!”

Sam raised her eyebrows.  She wasn’t sure how delightful any of them had been.  They’d just been trailing behind Frostbite and asking him questions, not socializing.  

Then again…  She looked around the room.  The other yetis were watching them rather closely.  

“Queen Pandora?” said Danny.

“I am ruler of my own realm,” said Frostbite, amused.  “I often speak to others.”

“I– Okay, that makes sense.  But isn’t she busy?” asked Danny, before cringing a little.  “The page, it only has ‘Elysium’ on it, so…  I was thinking that maybe it had another library?”

“It does,” said Frostbite.  “And Pandora is busy– But only occasionally.  Having eternity in front of you tends to make things less urgent.  She will welcome you.”

Danny nodded.  “Then… are you okay with that, guys?”

“Yeah,” said Tucker.  “I mean, we were going to go there, eventually, anyway.”

“When would be a good time for you?” asked Sam, already thinking about what a good time to sneak out would be.  

“Why, we could go now!” said Frostbite.  “Assuming, of course, that you have eaten your fill?”  He gave Sam’s plate a pointed, if not concerned, look, and Sam, blushing, speared several of the unidentifiable purple vegetables on her fork and shoved them in her mouth.  

If Tucker wasn’t dead yet, it was probably fine.  

To her surprise, despite their odd appearance, the vegetables tasted like buttery corn and crunched like carrots.  She chewed, thoroughly.  

“Do you mean… Now?” asked Danny.  He glanced at Sam and Tucker again.  “Um, how long will it take to get there?  It’s just… We’re expected back before, erm, dawn.”  

From Danny’s expression, he didn’t know when, exactly, that was.  At this point, Sam wasn’t sure, either.  The Ghost Zone - or the Infinite Realms - made time weird, and not just because there wasn’t a sun.  

“That is no trouble,” said Frostbite.  “The Infi-Map can take you to any place or time you need!”

.

Danny looked at the Infi-Map the same way Tucker looked at tech outside of his price range: with jealousy and more than a little hunger.

“It can take you anywhere?” asked Danny, floating and leaning over Frostbite’s shoulder.  “Really anywhere?  Like, could it take us to the moon?”

The scroll glowed in Frostbite’s hands, and then he and Danny vanished.  

“Um,” said Tucker.  “Should we be worried about that?”

“Do you think that really took them to, you know, the moon?  That’s…  At least they’re both ghosts?”

Frostbite and Danny reappeared in a flash of light.  Frostbite looked ruffled, but was otherwise…  Normal.  Ish.  For a ghost who was also a yeti.  Danny, meanwhile, was a coiling ribbon of night with round, moonlike eyes, wrapped around Frostbite’s shoulders and upper arms and sparkling .  

“Ahem!” said Frostbite.  “Yes!  As I was about to say, if you state a location while holding the map, or touching someone who is, in turn, touching the map, it will take you to that location, and if there is no air in that location, it takes some additional effort to return.  So, I will ask you to refrain, to prevent accidents.”

“Sam, Tucker,” said Danny, glittering, “we went to the m–”

Frostbite gently, but quickly, put his hand over Danny’s mouth.  “Please.  I do not think your friends can survive in space.  They are still human, yes?”

“I know that ,” said Danny, deflating slightly, normal colors and solidity filtering back in along his edges.  “It was really cool, though.  Sorry.  Are we still going?”

“Yes, if you would please take my hand.”

Yeah, Frostbite’s hands were big enough that he and Sam could both hold onto one.  He was big enough that he made Jack Fenton, the largest human being Tucker had ever seen, look like a dwarf.  It was just that he was so friendly that you sort of… forgot.  Kind of like how Tucker sometimes forgot when Danny was being freaky.  

“Okay, as long as Danny doesn’t say anything about space.”

Danny pouted, burying his chin in Frostbite’s fluff.  “I won’t!  This is to make sure you guys don’t get hurt.  What do you think I am?”  He inched closer to normal.  

“I was joking!” said Tucker.  “Mostly.”  But he put his hand on one of Frostbite’s fingers regardless.  So did Sam.  

“Excellent!  Let us go to ELYSIUM!”

.

.

The sensation of rushing, impossible, speed vanished as quickly as it had on the way to the moon and back and Danny shook himself all over before looking up at an Ancient Greek city.  Or, rather, what Danny would imagine an Ancient Greek city would look like, if it were slightly off-color.  

There were picturesque not-quite-white buildings with columns and red tiles on the roofs, cobbled streets, painted statues, and little stalls with cloth awnings.  Not far from where they had landed was a hill, looming high over everything covered with hedges.  At the top of the hill was a huge beautiful temple.

There were also a lot of other ghosts.  Danny had sort of been getting used to the yetis - they were just so fluffy - but, overwhelmingly, his experience with other ghosts consisted of them attacking him or other people.  He won more often than not (or at least often enough that he kept them from overrunning Amity Park), but still…

He tensed and moved away from Frostbite, to hover at Sam and Tucker’s shoulders.  Just in case.  

The ghosts looked at the four of them curiously - especially at Sam and Tucker, probably because they were human - but made no move to intercept them, or even approach them.  

“There we are,” said Frostbite, carefully putting the Infi-Map in a pouch.  “Welcome to Elysium!”

“What’s the hedge maze for?” asked Tucker, pushing up his glasses.  

“It’s the Labyrinth,” said Sam.  “I know you’ve read Greek Mythology stuff.”

“So… there’s a minotaur in there?  I don’t think hedges would help with that.  It could just fly out.”

“The Labyrinth prevents ghosts within it from flying, actually,” said Frostbite.  “However, it is there to prevent people from getting to the temple easily.  Things of great evil are sealed away there, and it would not do for just anyone to be able to access them.”

“Great evil?”

“Yes,” said Frostbite.  “Pandora has spent many ages imprisoning evil beings.  By magic, often enough, though not always.  In any case, that is not where we will find her.  She prefers to be accessible to her citizenry.”

Danny looked around again, making note of how many citizens there were.  “Are you sure it’s okay to bother her?”

“She won’t be bothered, I’m sure,” said Frostbite, beginning to fly into the city.  He flew slowly enough that Sam and Tucker could keep up without difficulty.  “I am sure she will welcome the distraction!”

.

“Magic for humans?” said Pandora, who was a blue-skinned, four-armed woman the height of a three-story building, covered in black and gold armor.  “It used to be far more common, but it’s fallen out of favor, lately.  There aren’t as many natural portals.”

“Do you really think it’s possible for us to do?” asked Danny.  “Learning magic, I mean.”

“You are going to learn with them?” asked Pandora.  

“I…  Want to try?” said Danny, shrugging.  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to, I’m not the best with time management.”

“Oh?”

“School and ghost fighting together take up a lot of time.”

Pandora brightened, standing from her immense marble and gold throne.  “Yes, ghost fighting.  You fight those who trespass on your territory, and imprison them in that device of yours - or whatever comes to hand.”

Danny bobbed his head.  He’d explained as much during his introduction.  

“Quite remarkable…  You release them, of course, so there is room for improvement…”

“I mean, I don’t want to keep them locked up forever,” said Danny, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Most of them aren’t that bad.”

“I suppose, or I would have taken them myself,” said Pandora.  “But you did the same to Pariah Dark, which is a debt that must be addressed.”  She touched one of her four hands to her chin and looked contemplative.  “We should at least have records of human methods of magic.  But whether or not they will be what you want…  That, I couldn’t say.  Many of the ones I know we have are for asking binding tutelaries to the household, under the command of the patriarch.”

“So, a familiar ritual?” asked Sam.  “As opposed to a warlock ritual.”

Pandora nodded.  “We don’t call them that in Greek, of course,” she said, “but it’s as good a framework as any.  Magic has what you might call a categorization problem.  As much as I may like to put things in boxes, I must acknowledge that many things simply do not fit.  I will ask our librarians to find relevant volumes, as I doubt you know what to look for at this point.  Perhaps, they can serve as a starting point for your research, if not an end to it.”

“Just like that?” asked Danny.  “I mean…”  

Pandora raised an eyebrow.  “I could, of course, set a challenge for you.  Some of my advisors would certainly prefer me to, I’m sure.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” said Danny, quickly.

.

“Yeesh,” said Tucker, scrolling through his PDA with his thumb.  “These all really do have a ‘master and servant’ vibe to them.”

“Mhm,” said Danny.  He was looking over Tucker’s shoulder at the pictures he had taken of the scrolls and books Pandora’s librarians had shown them.  “And a contract vibe, too.”

It was true.  Most of the descriptions were all about obligations, commitments, and payment.  Even the ones where the blob ghost was eaten.  The ghost was stabilized and protected, kept safe from other things that might want to eat it, and, in some cases, was impressed with the human’s memories, their appearance, their knowledge…  Some of the documents had said their ‘soul.’  Tucker didn’t know whether or not to take that seriously.  He hoped it wasn’t serious.  The idea of a soul being just…  It was one thing in stories, in real life it was a lot different.

Tucker hadn’t been able to take pictures of everything before Sam dragged both him and Danny away, citing time constraints, but he’d taken a lot.  Enough, he thought, to get the gist of how humans usually got magic.  Probably more than Danny could read before they tried again next week.  

“Any of them look, you know, bearable?” asked Sam.  

“Well,” said Tucker.  “If we’re doing this with Danny–”

“Which we are,” said Danny.  “Unless you’re hanging out with some other friendly ghost?”

“Anyway, since it’s Danny, a lot of stuff that would be pretty bad is… kind of neutral?  Danny’s not, like, ethically pure–”

“Hey!”

“Hey, yourself, I’ve seen you phase into the girl’s locker room–”

“What?!”

Sam jerked the yoke to the side as her head whipped towards Danny, then had to wrestle the Speeder back into going straight.  Danny instantly went transparent, both physically and metaphysically.  Even looking straight at his still-present outline, Tucker had almost asked Sam if they’d somehow left Danny in the Far Frozen.  “No one was in there!” said Danny, raising his hands.  His voice, like his body, was wispy and barely there, vanishing into the sounds the Speeder made as it moved through the Zone.  “It was the middle of the weekend–”

“There’s sports practice on the weekends,” snarled Sam.  “Of all the stupid, misogynistic–”

“No one was there,” repeated Danny, “and I was following ectopusses.  I only mentioned it to Tucker because I thought it was weird, how much less stuff is broken in there, that’s all!”

“And to brag,” said Tucker.  

Danny gave him a look that would have been much more impressive if Danny wasn’t doing the ghostly equivalent of sweating bullets.  “Okay, I was curious, too!  But it’s not like I was just looking and I wasn’t looking at people.   I wouldn’t look at people.”  He paused, obviously still panicking.  “Come on, I bet you’d like to see what the inside of the boy’s locker room is like, just to compare!”

Sam gave Danny such a glare that Tucker was briefly worried that this would be Danny’s second curiosity-related death.  Then, she took a deep breath and let it out.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I know you better than that, I was just surprised.”  She blew a hair out of her face.  

“It’s fine,” said Danny, still vaguely see-through and much more subdued than he had been.  “I mean, chasing a ghost, I probably would have gone in even if there were girls in there, but that’s like- like breaking into someone’s house to rescue them from a fire, or something.”

“Maybe,” said Sam.  

“If you had been there, I would’ve waited for you.”  He paused again.  “Probably.”

There was a long silence.  

“Tucker’s the one who turned your Doomed avatar into a pinup girl,” said Danny.  “Used up all of your appearance-change chips to do it, too.”

Tucker watched in horror as Sam ever-so-slowly turned towards him.  

“I was saving it for just in case I got body snatched and had to prove my identity again, but sometimes revenge is more important.”

“Danny!  The bro code!”

“You broke it first!”

.

In the end, Sam killed neither Tucker nor Danny - although their Doomed characters might not be so lucky.  The incident was, as it turned out, just long enough ago that Sam was more amused than angry.  

Over the next week, the three of them planned their next excursion and examined the pictures Tucker had taken.  Sometimes, this looked like all of them two inches from the screen of his PDA.  Other times, it meant grainy, black and white printouts, or computers.  Frequently, it meant typing things into an online translator or dictionary.  

They were all much more interested now that they knew their goal was actually within the realm of possibility.  And they had been interested enough to seek out ghosts they didn’t know before .

Danny was even taking notes.  That was more than he did for school, most of the time.  

“You know,” said Sam from her position lying on one of Tucker’s bean bags, “we could probably do something with animal ghosts, or blob ghosts.  One of these ones.”  She waved one of the printed pages over her head.  “It’d bypass the problem of, well, one of us being in charge, or of Danny straining himself trying to do something for both of us at once.”

They were at Tucker’s house, as his parents were the least likely to kick them out or use their research material to create some kind of crime against nature and common sense.  

“But it looks like you can only do one of these things,” said Danny, who had decided to inhabit the shadowy mass of wires behind Tucker’s computer setup, “and there are a lot of other benefits if you do it with me, it looks like.  Like being able to tell if you’re in danger.”

The more Danny read, the more he was warming up to the ‘familiar’ arrangement.  Although some of the familiar-type rituals seemed to reduce the ghost to little more than a power source, with a few of them even involving eating the ghost, others let the familiar be much more independent.  A familiar could tell when their ‘master’ was in danger and could easily be ‘summoned’ (another type of ritual) by their ‘master,’ among other things.  Considering the reason they’d started looking into magic in the first place, those benefits were very tempting.  

If only there was a ritual that’d let him be familiar to both Sam and Tucker.  

“Maybe,” said Sam.  “Some of the warlock ones have that, too.”

“Not as automatically,” said Danny.  “At least, it doesn’t seem that way.”

“Warlock patrons look like they’re expected to be more hands-off,” agreed Tucker.  “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Like, for some of the familiar ones, you’ve got to be pretty close together to channel ectoplasm, but for the warlock ones, it looks like it’ll even work between dimensions.”

That was a tempting benefit, too.  If only the amount of strength needed to do these rituals was described in a more concrete way, then maybe they could figure out if they could do the warlock-type rituals.

“Maybe we’ll find more stuff when we go to the library this weekend, or Frostbite and Pandora will have found more in their records next time we can get to them.”  Danny scowled.  “There’s got to be something that’ll work for us.  We can’t be the only people to have ever had this problem.”

“Just because someone else had this problem doesn’t mean they ever solved it, or that they wrote it down,” said Tucker.  “You cannot believe how many forums I’ve looked at when I’m troubleshooting where I find someone with the exact same problem as me, and then the next post is them going ‘never mind, I figured it out.’  I mean, if we figure it out, we probably won’t write it down.”

“Speak for yourself,” said Sam.  “Some of these are so complicated I wouldn’t trust them without notes.  Lots of notes.  For all of us.  And a dress rehearsal.  I can’t imagine that it’d be better for a ritual with three people.”

“What if we don’t find one for three people?” asked Danny.  He folded his arms on top of Tucker’s computer monitor and rested his chin on them.  “Or one that gets rid of the hierarchy stuff.  What do we do then?”

“Animal ghost one, like I said,” said Sam.  “We can get Cujo and grab one of the ones that wander through now and again, and we don’t have to worry about one of us accidentally giving someone else an order, or having ‘obligations’ to a patron, or whatever.”

Danny grumbled.  It was probably the right move, but he didn’t like it.  

“Stop that,” said Tucker.  “You’re going to make my computer spazz out.”

.

The Unwritten Library was built out of books.  Giant ones, arranged to look like a Greek Revival building, stacked up on each other, ivory pages and pale covers simulating the color of marble.  The only real stone, at least on the outside, was in the lion statues flanking the stairs, which were also books.  Each lion was sitting with one paw on a glowing green orb of ectoplasm.  

“So,” started Danny.  

“We’re going in with you,” said Sam.  “The last two places on the list were fine, and both Pandora and Frostbite said that this place was fine, too.”

“As long as we don’t anger the Ghost Writer,” clarified Danny.  “We don’t know what could anger him.  And someone should stay with the car.  The Speeder, I mean.  In case we have to get away in a hurry.”

“Not it!” said Tucker, touching his nose.  

“Come on, this is an unnecessary risk.”  Danny waved at the building.  “It’ll take me probably ten minutes, and then you can come in.”

Sam and Tucker exchanged a look.  Danny both loved and hated when they did that.  

“Well, maybe it’s an unnecessary risk we don’t want you to take by yourself,” said Sam.  

Danny licked his lips.  “Please, you guys don’t have magic yet.  Once you do, then you can come into weird and creepy cool ghost lairs with me.”

“Hey,” said Tucker, “have you considered that leaving us out here where random ghosts can attack us might be more dangerous than going into the lair of a ghost that two other friendly ghosts said was safe?  Food for thought.”

Danny looked at him, exasperated.  “Do you want to give me anxiety?  That’s how you give me anxiety.  I’m anxious, now.”

“Not that anxious.  You’re still mostly human-looking.”

“Plenty of people are anxious and human-looking all the time.  It doesn’t mean anything.”  Nonetheless, Danny resisted the urge to become a little less human-looking, just for spite.  “But, fine.  Find a place to park and we can all go.”

He huffed and looked away, eyes sweeping the area for potential threats.  There…  weren’t actually a lot of places to park.  The library was free floating and, in the Zone, stuff moved, floating all around with little rhyme nor reason.  

Danny wondered if there was a spell for that.  There had to be, to make the Infi-Map work, right?  Maybe he could ask Frostbite to teach him, after they worked out the basics.  

“Maybe… you could park on the roof?” suggested Danny.  

“I feel like that would anger the Ghost Writer,” said Sam.  

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, don’t you think it’d be rude to park on someone’s roof?”

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  “We park the Ops center on the roof, so…”

“Helicopter pads,” said Tucker.  

“You only have that kind of thing on skyscrapers, though,” said Sam.  

Danny shrugged.  “There could be parking around the back?” he suggested.  

“Of a floating building?” asked Sam with a grimace.  Even so, she pulled away from the stairs and then tipped up the nose of the Speeder to fly over it.  

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  “Maybe we could park on the bottom of the building?”

“Would that work?” asked Sam.  

“Maybe?” said Danny.  “We wouldn’t know for sure until we tried.”

The library wasn’t terribly tall, but it was deep, so it took a while to actually get to the back.  

“Welp,” said Tucker.  “Does anyone else feel like they’ve just had some kind of rite of passage?  That we have shared one of the great intangibles of familial life, arguing about parking?”

“Isn’t the family thing arguing about directions?” asked Sam.  

“I feel like arguing about parking is, like, a subset of arguing about directions,” said Danny.  “Since we’re arguing about where to park.”

Tucker threw his head back and pressed the back of his hand into his forehead.  “I feel like I’ve attained a state of oneness with the universe.  Some kind of bickering-fueled Nirvana.”  He paused.  “Actually, d’you think Danny has technically attained Nirvana?  He’s broken the cycle of life and death or whatever.”

“I don’t know enough about Buddhism to answer that,” said Sam.  

“I mean, I’m pretty sure I can still be killed,” said Danny, squinting.  “Pretty sure.  So, I don’t know if I’ve broken any cycles.  Maybe the other ghosts have, though.” 

“Does that mean Skulker is enlightened?” asked Tucker.  

“I really don’t know enough about Buddhism to answer that,” said Sam.  

“I’m one hundred percent certain that Skulker isn’t enlightened.”  Danny frowned.  “Actually, doesn’t the Ghost Zone, you know, existing, mean that most religions are at least sort of wrong about the afterlife?”

The inside of the Speeder went quiet. 

“I don’t know enough about religion to answer that,” said Sam, “or the Ghost Zone.”

“I think,” said Tucker, “I’m going to skip the other time-honored family bonding activity: arguing about religion.  I guess we’ll just have to be homies instead of bros.”

Danny laughed.  “Tucker, you’ve been my bro since forever.”

“Bro,” said Tucker.  

“Bro,” said Danny.  “Sam, you can be an honorary bro.”

Sam glanced over at him, eyebrow raised.  “Bro.”

If Danny wasn’t already dead, he would’ve died laughing.  Tucker came close.  Sam, however, managed with just a smirk.  Although, she was the one driving.  

To the surprise of no one, the back of the library didn’t happen to have a floating parking lot attached.  

“So… the bottom?” asked Danny.  

“The bottom,” agreed Sam, angling the Speeder down.  “We should park near the front, though.  Easier to get to if we have to run.”

“Why did you bring that up?” asked Danny, aggrieved.  “But, yeah.”

They continued flying.  

“Hey,” said Danny.  “Why is it that parking on the bottom feels less rude than parking on the roof?”

Sam shrugged.  “I have no idea.”

.

Underfoot, the books that made up the stairs didn’t feel like books, didn’t feel like cloth and paper and board.  They felt like the stone they mimicked, and Sam bounced on them, testing them.  Danny looked at her, curiously, and she shrugged, stooping to pick up one of the books.  To get faint surprise, it came away easily.

“What is it?” asked Danny.

“‘Evolution of the Aesthetic and Architectural Design of Stairs (working title),’” said Sam.  She flipped it open to reveal glossy pages with photographs and labeled diagrams of staircases. 

“Huh.  I don’t know what I expected,” said Danny.  He darted ahead of them, to the columns.  “This one says ‘The Pillars of Greek Revival.’”  He looked back over his shoulder, turning his head just slightly further than he would have been able to as a human.  “I can appreciate a good pun.  Do you think the Ghost Writer names these, or the people who wanted to write them, originally?”

“No idea,” said Sam.  She followed him up the stairs, Tucker trailing behind.  “You’ll have to ask him.  Or pun at him.”

“Are you sure you’re up to it?” asked Tucker.  “You haven’t been making very many puns lately.  You could be rusty.”

“Gasp,” said Danny, “you dare imply that I am anything but shiny?”  He flared his aura.  “I’m sparkling.” 

“Still not a pun,” said Tucker.  “More like a literal metaphor.”

“Since when do you pay attention to Mr. Lancer?” asked Danny.  

“Since you’ve been paying enough attention to know that I’m paying attention,” said Tucker.  

Sam rolled her eyes fondly.  “Are we going in or what?”

“Yes, onward!” said Danny, dramatically.  “Let’s book it.” 

“No,” said Sam, grabbing his heel and pulling him down to ground level.  “Absolutely not.”

“Come on,” said Danny, “we’re here to check things out.” 

“Is this even a lending library?” asked Tucker.

“Dunno,” said Danny, shrugging.  “Let’s find out.”

.

It was cool and dry underneath the roof of the library, and it smelled like paper and dust.  There was no door into the library proper; instead, the columns smoothly transitioned to stacks and shelves of books.  Golden, floating orbs cast soft light in all directions.  The floor became softer, and all sound was swallowed up into silence.  

Except for one.  

“The bells upon the carriage rang,

“The children gathered to see what he brang–   

“No, no, too forced.  Let’s see…”

Danny, exchanged glances with Sam and Tucker.  Dismayed glances, in Danny’s case.  Was that a Christmas poem?

Still, Danny pressed forward cautiously.  

“When snow laid thick upon the ground,

“All the children gathered round….”  There was the sound of paper ripping, loud and sudden.

In the middle of the broad, central aisle was a large, circular desk.  Floating over its surface was a glowing green keyboard that a gray-skinned ghost was frantically typing on.  Every few seconds, he’d either print something off and rip it up, or hold down the ‘backspace’ key, grumbling all the while.  

“The one thing I’m writing for myself, and I can’t even come up with a rhyme for ‘blizzard!’”

“Lizard?” suggested Sam.  

“Wizard?” tried Tucker.  

“Gizzard?” said Danny.  

A scandalized look took over the ghost’s face, but he stayed bent over his keyboard.  “In a Christmas poem?  Lizards?  Wizards? Gizzards?  I’d be laughed out of the reading!”

Danny rather thought that anyone who’d read a Christmas poem publicly deserved to be laughed out of wherever they were, but he held his tongue.  He wanted to be on this guy’s good side.  

“Are you the Ghost Writer?”

“Yes,” said the ghost, still scowling down at his papers.  “What do you want?  The winds blew rain and snow and sleet, but never was a foot so fleet– No, that’s twee.  Strike that.”

“We’re looking for books on magic,” said Danny.

“Magic for humans,” said Tucker.

“Especially contracts with ghosts,” added Sam.  “If we’re being specific.”

“Yes, exactly,” said Danny.  “Do you have any?”

Ghost Writer finally looked up, taking in Danny, Sam, and Tucker.  His eyebrows went up.  “You’re alive,” he observed.  “The living, looking for magic.”

“Um, yes,” said Danny.  

“How unusual.”  The Ghost Writer pushed back from his desk, towards a cabinet full of tiny drawers.  He pulled one out, then flicked through the cards inside.  After a minute or so, he pulled one out.  “Here.  You should find relevant books on this shelf.  There is a dedicated catalogue at the end of each shelf that you can peruse for specific titles.  In the meantime, unless you can help me imbue the main character of my epic with the holiday spirit without use of overshadowing, please leave me to my work.”

Danny did not make a snarky comment about holiday spirits.  Instead, he took the card, showed it to Sam, and they went away.  

“So,” said Tucker.  

“Even if they’re good with a pun, if someone writes Christmas poems for fun, my first instinct is to run.  I–”  Danny stopped.  

“So instead you decided it was time to try and speak in rhyme?  Wait.”  The smile slid off Sam’s face.  

“Wow, this is great,” said Tucker, “who knew rhyming was a contagious trait.”

“Sometimes,” said Sam, “I hate ghost powers.  When will this wear off?  How many hours?”

“At least it doesn’t have a Christmas theme,” said Danny with a groan.  “If it did, I would have to scream.”

.

Despite their projected and professed distaste for the rhymes, they did experiment on the way to the indicated shelf.  Their words twisted around to force the rhymes, putting them back to front so that even simple directions like ‘go left’ and ‘go right’ rhymed.  It was funny– As long as it wasn’t happening to them.  And, sometimes, even when it was.  Rhyming ‘nation,’ ‘hibernation,’ ‘palpitation,’ and ‘information’ in a single sentence about looking for the card catalogue was a special kind of absurd.  

Luckily, by the time they reached the shelves, the rhyming began to wear off.  Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been able to discuss what they were finding at all.  

“I… think this one is mostly theory,” said Danny, hesitantly.  “Some of the diagrams make my brain itchy and weary.”  He made a face.  The rhyming was lingering with him the most.

“Half of this one is blank,” said Tucker, “and a quarter of it is just the words ‘blah bleh bluh’ over and over again.”

“Is the last quarter useful?” asked Danny.  “Or at least somewhat truthful?”

“Maybe?  It has some stuff that’s similar to Pandora and Frostbite’s stuff and some new stuff, but, you know.  It’s weird.”

“This one is formatted like a Dungeons and Dragons book,” said Sam.  “I think it might be misshelved.”  She dropped it on the long thin table between the shelves, and it made a loud slapping sound, stirring up a cloud of tiny dust motes.  “Can’t be helped.”  She made a face, too.  Shelved and helped were just a little too close to a rhyme.  

Danny gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic smile and not a smirk (he wasn’t sure if he quite succeeded), and put the book of theory down on the long table between the shelves.  It might be useful later, if they wanted to check if some ritual would work, but until then…

He pulled the next book down.  

“Actually,” said Sam, “I think I found the edge of the contract magic section.  This is getting further and further away from what we want.  I think.  Some of it could be useful later.  You know, once we actually can do magic.”

Danny looked back at the book of theory.  Maybe they’d need that sooner than he thought.  They just didn’t know much about the subjects they were trying to research.  Theory could give them some more context.  But Danny didn’t think he had enough context to understand the theory.  

“Oh, this might be something,” said Tucker.  “Must’ve been written before spelling was a thing, though.  ‘Briges Betwixt Matereal and Spirit - a Gud Guid to Morel Magick.’”  

Danny flew over and Sam walked over to peer over Tucker’s shoulders.

“This is about mushrooms,” said Tucker.

“Magic mushrooms, though,” said Sam, reaching over and turning the pages.  “Fairy rings.  Contracts with ghosts made via fairy rings.  This could be useful…  Does this have anything about the power levels of the ghosts…?”  She pulled the book away from Tucker.  

Tucker caught Danny’s eye, and Danny shrugged.  Better Sam than either of them.  He didn’t know anything about mushrooms, except that they weren’t plants - and he’d learned that from Sam.  So, while Sam looked at the poorly-spelled mushroom book, he and Tucker kept searching.  

“Oh, this one is talking about what Desiree did to me that one time.  Forcing contracts based on stray words, and…  Man… ”  Tucker shoved the book back onto the shelf without asking Sam or Danny if they wanted to look.  

“Do you… want to talk about it?” asked Danny, apologetically.  The whole… episode with Desiree had sort of been his fault.  

“Not really.”

Most of the books were largely incomprehensible, either because they were too advanced or because large segments of them were blank or in language they couldn’t understand, although the book Tucker had picked up was the only one that said ‘blah bleh bluh’ in it for pages and pages.  Danny thought the blank parts were probably bits the would-have-been authors couldn’t think of, couldn’t imagine, couldn’t conceptualize.

The parts that did make sense, Danny made note of, writing down the most useful-looking passages.  He found a few more familiar-type rituals that he wouldn’t mind doing, but, again, they were one-human one-ghost deals.  

Maybe, he was being… overprotective, not wanting Sam and Tucker to take animal ghosts as their familiars.  Maybe he was being possessive.  He shivered, but not with cold, not like a human being would shiver.  It was a ripple through his very essence.  

He didn’t want them to be contracted to another ghost.  They were his friends.  If any ghost was going to be linked to them, he wanted it to be him.  

At this point, Danny had floated up, to the higher shelves that Sam and Tucker couldn’t reach.  Most of these books had to do with magic circles and one-off contracts.  Ways to summon a ghost or spirit and make a one-time deal with it, usually some object in exchange for a specific service.  Which would have been useful, if they didn’t require that the person already be able to do other magic.  Although, maybe since Danny was a ghost, he could be the one to do the summoning, and then Sam and Tucker could make the deal…?  It was a little unclear whether the humans in the one-off deals got extra powers or if the ghosts they had a deal with followed them around until the deal was fulfilled or what.  It was always possible that the answer was ‘both, in different circumstances.’

The golden words emblazoned across the cover of the next book made Danny pause.  Magic of the Great Circle: Covens, Societies, and Cooperatives.  

Below the title was a pattern of concentric circles and symbols that seemed vaguely familiar, or at least… somehow… attractive?  Like they wanted to draw him in.  He traced the outer circle with his pinky finger.  It felt vaguely electric, like touching the screen of an old computer monitor.

“Hey, Sam?  What’s a coven?”

“It’s like a group that does magic together,” said Sam.  “Usually witches.”

“Huh,” said Danny.  He drifted down to the table, taking a seat next to the theory book.  He flipped the coven book open and started reading.  Some of it, Danny would have to learn more about magic circles in general to understand, but it seemed like it was indeed about how to do magic as a group.  There were even bits about how to share spells meant for one person between multiple people.  

This… might be useful.  If they could apply some of this to the contract magic stuff, they might just be able to get around some of the limitations they’d found in the other books.  

“This one is about modifying contracts for individual needs,” said Sam.  “It has a bunch of different, like, add-ons.  Kind of a breakdown of how to make them work, too.  They’ve got…  Hmm.  Here, listen to this.  ‘The key thing to remember in these magics is that they are like contracts.  Something is given and something is received.  Although it is possible to strike a leonine or one-sided bargain, such arrangements are inherently unstable, and will result in low-quality magic or rebellious warlocks.  For high-quality rites, it is best to ensure that, at least, all parties agree that the deal is fair.’”

“That has more than anything I’ve found,” said Tucker, crouched near the floor.  “You want me to start taking pictures?”  He held up his PDA.  

“Nah,” said Sam.  “This is a library, remember?  We can just check the books out.”

.

“I never thought I’d watch Danny argue with a ghost in rhyme.”

Sam scoffed, but her whole body was tense, ready for a fight.  “We do stuff we never expect all the time.”

“About a library card.  It shouldn’t be this hard.”

Tucker would have liked it if it wasn’t so hard to look at the argument, too.  The Ghost Writer looked like a smear of words and letters from a broken typewriter, and Danny’s outline seemed to be peeling away from the rest of his body, his aura turning into weaving spirals around a steadily darkening body.  

Both of them were way too upset.  Danny didn’t look like this for most fights.  Then again, when Christmas was involved, he got worked up much more easily.  

“Screw it, I can’t take this anymore.”

“Careful, you don’t want to get in the middle of that war.”

Tucker looked at Sam in confusion, and she shrugged, a dissatisfied expression on her face.  Then, she strode past him to stand between Danny and Ghost Writer.  

Sam always stole the most dramatic moments.  

Tucker hurried to join her, and Danny rocked back in the air, returning to his more normal form.  The Ghost Writer didn’t.  Words strobed across his face.  

HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY POEM?

“Look,” said Danny, “all I said was that for me to read a Christmas poem I’d have to be dead .”  

YOU ARE DEAD, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BRAT!

“Hey,” said Tucker, “he doesn’t mean that, your rhyming power is making him wear a Grinch hat!”

Meanwhile, Sam turned to Danny and hissed, “Why are you talking about his Christmas poem when you wanted to check out the theory tome?”

“He said that before he made me a card he would need,” said Danny, through gritted teeth, “someone who could his stupid poem proofread.”

IT’S NOT STUPID!  IT’S A CLASSIC!

“Maybe he could do something else,” suggested Tucker, “something unlikely to involve… elves?”  He cringed at the forced rhyme.  

“That’s what I said!” exclaimed Danny, plaintively.  “There’s got to be something else to be read–”

THERE IS NOTHING!  GET OUT!  GET OUT!  GET OUT!

.

“So, we’re not going back there,” said Sam as Danny sulked on the roof of the Speeder.  

“It’s not my fault.”

Well, that was a change from the normal course of things, but–

“You couldn’t just deal with reading a Christmas poem for five minutes?” asked Sam.  She was more frustrated than angry, but she was still angry.  At least she’d had the presence of mind to shove her book up the back of her shirt before they got thrown out by what looked for all the world like an angry mess of torn-up newsprint.  Unfortunately, it looked like Danny’s books had been the most useful.  

“I didn’t even say anything bad about it!  I just said I didn’t like Christmas, so I wouldn’t be good at proofreading something like that.  That’s it!  And then he started to yell about how I’d never get a card from him, since I was such a Scrooge and didn’t appreciate literature, and then he started with the threats–”

The thing about Danny was that she could never be angry at him for that long.  And he did usually blame himself.  “What even is it with you and Christmas?  Even I like Christmas better than you, and I’m Jewish.”  At least, she liked the energy of it.  

Danny grumbled, and even the Fenton Phones weren’t quite enough to block the spectral undertones of his voice.  Next to her, Tucker briefly reached over to mute their side of the Fenton Phones.  “His parents have a massive fight every Christmas,” he whispered.

“--am I kidding?  You’re right, no one else acts like this, I am a screw up, I should’ve just sucked it up and said his poem was like paper gold or whatever he wanted to hear–”

Tucker made a face and continued over the sound of Danny spiraling,  “Like, a huge blow out.  So huge, that they don’t notice stuff like the Christmas turkey coming alive or a dog peeing on Danny or a bunch of other stuff like that.  And it’s always over something stupid and Christmas related, like Santa existing or being evil or reindeer being possessed by ghosts and don’t get me started on the holy spirit stuff.”  He sped up as he listed things.  “His parents are banned from like ninety percent of the churches in town.”

“Oh, yikes,” said Sam.  

Then, in the silence, they realized Danny had stopped grumbling and his tone had turned fast and worried.  “-either of you listening to me?  Do you see that?”

Sam hurriedly flipped their microphones back on.  “See what?”

“That!  Right in front of us!”

Sam blinked and slammed on the breaks, making Tucker catch against his seatbelt. 

Shocked, she blinked again, incredulous, unbelieving .  A huge clocktower floated in front of them.  It was made of dark green stone and glass, its internal mechanisms visible, from an immense, spiral pendulum, to countless gears, to a teetering steep staircase.  More gears floated, glowing bright against the suddenly dark skies.  

“What is that?” demanded Sam, despite knowing she wouldn’t get an answer.  

“I don’t know,” said Danny.  He dropped down in front of the Speeder, clearly ready for a fight.  Green light danced up and down his arms, eerie and unformed, waiting to be shaped into ectoblasts, shields, or anything else.  “It wasn’t here before.  Did we get turned around on the way back?”

“Uhhh,” said Tucker, who was technically navigating.  The library had been so close that he… hadn’t really been doing that.  Sam hadn’t thought they needed it.  “I don’t think so?  I didn’t think so.  But… this’d have to be really fast, wouldn’t it?  Otherwise we would’ve seen it, at least, right?”

“I don’t like it,” announced Sam.  “I don’t think it was there, like, a minute ago.”

“You’re right,” said Danny.  “It was like…   But I think…  This feels more like an invitation than a threat.”

“What does that mean?” asked Sam.  

“I don’t know, it’s a ghost thing, maybe, it just…”  He tilted back and forth, clearly frustrated.  

“Let’s go back and go around,” said Sam.  “Tucker, you’re on navigation.”

“Yeah,” said Tucker, bringing up his map on his PDA.  “Yeah, sorry.”

She pulled the yoke around and pushed down on the accelerator, guiding the Speeder away from the mysterious clocktower.  Danny hovered, staring at it for a while longer before flanking the Speeder.  

This time, Sam didn’t blink.  The clocktower was just suddenly there, hovering in front of them.  

“Heck,” said Sam.  

“I second that,” said Danny.  “I don’t think this is going to go away until I check it out.”

That was just like Danny, assuming he’d go in ahead, leaving them to wait for him, again.  Well.  That was probably the smart thing to do.  Despite their research, Sam and Tucker still couldn’t use magic… and, honestly, even if they could, they didn’t know any spells or any techniques they could use to defend themselves.  They were still in the ‘getting it’ phase of things.  

Which meant…

“Ugh,” said Sam.  “Fine.  I get it.  You’re right.  You check it out.  We’ll stay back for the dramatic rescue, and–”

The Clocktower was suddenly much closer.  The ground pushed up into the bottom of the Speeder, too gently to really call it a collision, but firmly enough to ground the vehicle, which tilted sideways on the uneven ground.  Sam managed to catch herself, but Tucker fell into the window on the passenger side.  There was a clatter as his PDA bounced against the glass. 

Danny pulled open the door.  “You guys okay?” he asked.  

“Yeah, I’m fine,” said Sam.  “Tucker?”

“I’m good!  Just, uh, winded.  Janice?  Talk to me, baby.”  He shook his PDA.  “Ah! There we go.”

Danny bit his lip.  “Sorry, if I’d just–”  He broke off, apparently noticing the look on Sam’s face.  “Okay, yeah, there’s nothing I could’ve done in this particular situation.  It’s just…”  He twisted to look up at the clocktower that was now looming above them.  

Sam followed his gaze for a moment, then crawled into the back to open up one of the weapons crates.  Yeah, she was already armed, but she’d like something more than a wrist ray against someone who could throw a whole island at them.  

“I guess we’re all going in after all,” said Tucker.  “Cool.  It’s been a minute since we’ve done something risky and inadvisable.”

“Sorry,” said Danny, again.  “Um.  It seems like whoever is here really wants all of us, so…  Probably not safe for you to stay out here.  Unfortunately.”  He drifted back from the door, slightly, still looking up at the clocktower, frowning. 

“Danny?” prompted Sam.  

“I…  It really feels like we’re being invited.  That’s weird, isn’t it?  That sounds weird.”

“Most ghost stuff is weird,” pointed out Tucker.  He crawled out the door, and Danny gave him a hand to jump down onto the stony ground.  

Sam eyed the jump herself, long guns under both arms.  

“Want a lift?” asked Danny.  

“Go ahead,” said Sam.  He picked her up by the waist and made the short hop to the ground.  Tucker helped steady her, dropping his PDA into one of his pockets and taking the second gun.  

“Okay,” said Danny.  He tilted his head towards the clocktower’s huge doors.  “Ready?”  

“Yeah,” said Tucker as Sam nodded in agreement.

.

The inside of the clocktower was much the same as the outside.  Dark stone, glass, a bewildering array of clocks and clockwork.  Everything ticked, and it ticked all together, perfectly and unnaturally synchronized.  The more distant clocks, at least, should be offset, just because of the speed of sound, but they weren’t.  

But then, ghosts never did play well with the laws of physics, did they?

Danny flexed his fingers, trying to keep a pair of ectoblasts at the ready.  

“Danny Phantom,” intoned a deep voice.  

Sam’s bazooka swept up, and Danny put a hand on the barrel, keeping it from coming to bear on the ghost.  He was clad all in purple robes, and was looking at a large screen that was playing some kind of a movie.  

“How do you know my name?” asked Danny.  It wasn’t the most important question he could have asked, but it was the one that slipped out.

The ghost turned away from the screen to face them.  He was old, with a long beard, and had a scar over his left eye.  “I know many things.”

“Why did you stop us?” Danny asked next.  “What do you want?”

“An alternative,” said the ghost.  Something moved on the screen, catching Danny’s eye.  “There are worse timelines.”

Danny tilted his head, trying to make out what was on the screen behind the ghost.  There were tanks– Some kind of military gathering?  

No, Danny decided as a massive explosion painted the screen, fanning out behind the ghost and outlining him in oranges and reds.  It was a war, or something like it.  Something flew into the screen, and the screen zoomed in, focusing on it.  Something with bluish skin– A ghost?

For a split second as it moved off-screen, Danny saw–  But, no, that couldn’t be right, could it?

The screen winked off, and Danny flinched.  

“Much worse timelines,” said the ghost.  He flew away from the screen and towards a clock that doubled as a small table.  There were books on the table, and, with a jolt, Danny recognized them.  They were the books they’d tried and failed to check out from the Unwritten Library.  “But there are better ones as well.”

Danny blinked at the books, then at the ghost.  “Who are you?”

“I am known as Clockwork, Master of Time, and I rarely interfere.”  He inclined his head.  “Use this gift wisely, Danny Phantom.”  He flew backwards, back to the screen, apparently dismissing the group.  

Danny exchanged a look with Sam and Tucker, then edged over to the books.  He snatched them up and then flew back to Sam and Tucker.  

“Thank you,” he said.  

Clockwork raised a hand, as if to wave, and the three of them were abruptly back in the Speeder, right in front of the portal.  

“Was that god?” asked Tucker.  “That had some god vibes.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Sam, who also looked shaken.

“What–”  Danny cleared his throat.  His voice had cracked, something that hardly ever happened in ghost form.  “What even are god vibes?”

“I don’t know.  Whatever that was?”

They all laughed, although the sound was uncertain.  

“Let’s drop off the Speeder and read these before Ghost Writer figures out we robbed him,” said Danny. 

“You don’t think he’s going to go after that Clockwork guy instead?” asked Tucker.  

“Do I think he’s going to go after god?  No.”

.

“Okay,” said Sam, rubbing her temples, “we can’t do a familiar ritual.  I mean, we could, but it wouldn’t be stable, according to this, because you wouldn’t actually get anything out of it.  And Frostbite’s books aren’t as explicit about it, but they say basically the same thing.”  They’d phrased it in terms of the familiar ‘breaking away’ if they grew strong enough before the warlock died, about ‘renewing rituals,’ and about not trying to bind a familiar that was too strong, but ‘stability’ covered most of those aspects.  

Because all of the books were dense and difficult, and this was something they could only do once, they were going over each one together.  They were working on the modular book first, the one that had things about putting together a custom ritual.  Danny had wanted to the coven one first, but he’d been overruled.  

“You guys having powers is me getting something out of it,” argued Danny.  “That’s all I want out of this whole thing.  I want you to be able to protect yourselves against ghosts because you always get involved in my ghost fights.”

“I mean, not always,” said Tucker, who was at his desk, trying to organize magic circles in a CAD program.  The screen kept glitching out, but Sam wasn’t going to tell him to stop.  “You do get a lot done by yourself.  Just…  You know.  Not anything with the stronger ghosts.  Technus, Skulker, Desiree, Spectra, Vlad…”

“Are you just listing all the ghosts we know by name?” asked Danny, irritably.

Tucker’s screen flickered again, and he swore under his breath before saying, “Not the Box Ghost!  You can beat him by yourself pretty consistently.”  

Danny groaned, throwing himself back onto Tucker’s beanbag.  Tucker moved, too, abandoning his computer for his PDA and sitting on the floor next to Sam.

“That’s nice,” said Sam, trying to sound sincere, because she was, “but I just don’t think it counts, for this stuff.  It needs to be something real.”

“That’s real,” complained Danny.  “But, okay.  If you’re sure.” 

“I’m sure,” said Sam.  “You would’ve only been able to do it with one of us, anyway, and I know that you don’t want us to cheat on you with other ghosts or whatever.”

Danny sat up so hard that he started levitating, even in human form.  “That’s not– I’m not– I know we’re not dating, don’t say it like that!”

“We could be dating,” said Tucker, distracted.  

Sam watched Danny go bright red and start to splutter.  “We’ve still got to figure out the terms of our contract.”

“If we’re getting involved in ghost fights anyway, maybe we should have that be our side,” said Tucker.  “Helping Danny fight ghosts when he can’t take care of them on his own.  It’s what we want to do anyway.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” said Danny, floating and waving his hands in front of Tucker.  “No.  You’ve got to be able to stop, I mean, you guys want to go to college and stuff, right?  If you make a promise like that, you’ll be stuck.”

“Danny,” said Sam, temporarily putting her notes to the side, “this kind of– of arrangement isn’t something we can back out of in the first place.  These are magical contracts.”

Danny stared at her, then collapsed again, making the bean bag rustle.  “I knew that.”  He sighed.  “You probably think I’m being silly.  I’m the one who kind of came up with this - I mean, Sam and I were both thinking about it, but I chased after it, asking the ghosts and Desiree and all this stuff.”  He held his hands up above him and started playing with a spark of ectoplasm, throwing it back and forth.  “I have thought about it.  Is it–  I don’t want to– to pressure you guys into this, into something that’s going to mess up your life forever if we get it wrong.”

“Unlike our grades or student loans or picking a college or anything like that,” said Sam, raising her eyebrows.

“That’s not for a few years, though,” said Danny.  

“Do you really think that the seniors are more mature than we are?” asked Sam.  

“They are taller than we are,” said Danny.  

“And some of them have beards,” said Tucker, as if that settled the whole discussion.

“But what’s the alternative, really?” asked Sam, unwilling to be completely distracted.  She wanted to have the conversation now.  “Never help you with any ghosts ever again?  Try to stay out of things, then not have the ability to help when you need it?  If we’re talking about who pursued this, the answer is all of us.  Heck, I was trying to look it up, independently.”

“I know,” said Danny.  

Tucker fiddled with his PDA, turning it over and over in his hands.  “If you want to back out–”

“No,” said Danny, forcefully.  “I don’t.  I want you to have this, if you want it.”

“Then why the second thoughts?” asked Sam.  

This time, Danny was the thing that flickered.  “Did you…  Did you see the screen that Clockwork ghost was floating in front of?”

“Yeah, it was showing some kind of war thing,” said Tucker.  

Danny shook his head.  “It wasn’t– Or, at least, that’s not…”  He trailed off, then visibly gathered himself.  “It showed me.  Attacking people.  Blowing up cars and tanks and stuff.”

“Well,” said Sam.  “That’s not…  The government is trying to hunt you down, anyway, so you probably–”

Danny shook his head even more vigorously.  “There was a picture of me in, like, my twenties, and my eyes were red and my skin was blue and my hair was all weird and fiery like Ember’s, and I was laughing.  I was hurting people, probably killing them, and laughing about it.”  He took a deep breath.  “I don’t want to be like that, and I don’t want to be like Vlad.”

“Like Vlad?”

“Controlling people.”

“Well,” said Sam.  “You’re not.  And Clockwork, he was talking about this timeline being better, right?  So, whatever you saw, it isn’t going to happen.  We’ll make sure of it.”

“You promise?” asked Danny.  

“Yeah,” said Sam, nodding sharply.  

“We could put it in the contract,” said Tucker.  Sam and Tucker turned to look at him.  “What?  We could.”

“Sure,” said Sam.  “Let’s put that down as an option.”  Then, she poked Danny.  “Hey, switch forms.  The lighting is terrible in here.”

.

.

They had a list of add-ons for their ritual as long as Danny’s arm.  

“It’s not that long,” said Sam, rolling her eyes.  She was reviewing the list while Danny was taking a first look at the coven book.  

“It totally is!”

“And even if it was, these are just options, not necessarily what we’re actually going to do,” continued Sam.  “So that we can find them in the book.”

“We still don’t know what ritual we’re going to actually do,” pointed out Tucker, tapping on his PDA.  For various reasons, they were hiding out in a disused corner of the park instead of any of their houses, but he was still trying to program all the magic circles and rituals into some kind of directory.  The paper books were fine, but they weren’t too fine.  Digital was easier to search, anyway, according to Tucker.  

Based on Tucker’s periodic grunts of dismay, it wasn’t going well.  

Danny, meanwhile, was having a great time.  He was only partway through the introduction, but it sounded more and more like this, the coven stuff, was exactly what they needed.  

It looked like coven magic was a way to spread both the ‘effort’ and ‘effects’ for a ritual between multiple cooperating people, ghost or human, by using special ritual circles.  Nothing yet on whether or not it could be applied to contract magic, but if it could be…  There was something about sharing ‘power’ and ‘strength’ with weaker ‘circle members,’ which looked promising.  Danny wondered if they could use that as a shortcut, if Danny could just share his abilities and ectoplasm as a member of the circle…  Probably, not, that would be too easy, someone else would have figured it out at some point.  

He flipped forward, humming, skimming through examples of magic circles.  Some of them were simple, straightforward geometric shapes, for simple sharing - some of them didn’t even require an actual circle to be drawn, just clasped hands, or walking in circles… although that was noted as ‘advanced.’

Other circles were far more complex, filled with runes and stars and symbols, or even other, smaller circles.  He paused on one page and started to trace one with his finger.  He didn’t know what it was for, but it was fascinating, enthralling…  The ink seemed to glimmer under his touch…

Elsewhere in the park, a child shrieked, happily.  He blinked, pulling himself out of the half-trance he’d fallen into.  His eyes flicked to the top of the page, and he sighed when he realized it wasn’t for anything related to contract magic, at least not closely.  It was a coven-compliant ghost trap, intended to be drawn around a summoning circle for a powerful ghost.  There was a note in it, urging ghosts to be careful when using it, so that they didn’t get trapped themselves.  

But… maybe that was sort of on the right track.  Summoning a ghost was often the first step to making a contract with them, according to some of the other books they’d read.

Danny was probably getting ahead of himself.  He went back to the beginning.    

Oh, to be part of a circle like this, you had to either already have ectoplasm to manipulate, or…  Danny didn’t understand this part, was it…?  It looked like it was saying you had to be doing a spell that didn’t need you to already have ectoplasm to begin with.  Okay.  Okay.  Contract magic was like that, and… was summoning?  It felt like it shouldn’t be…  Not that it mattered.  They didn’t need to summon a ghost.  They had Danny.  

He kept reading.  They definitely had to use this.  If the spell effects were split as described with this type of coven ritual, as opposed to that one, then Danny wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally destabilizing himself by giving away too much of his power.  A serious concern, since most warlock patrons were the next best thing to physical gods and could spare a lot more.  Sam and Tucker wouldn’t get as much power to work with, sure, but if they could ‘renegotiate’ contracts, that wouldn’t matter in the long run.  

He turned the page, read a few lines, then smiled.  “I found it,” he said, beaming up at Sam and Tucker.  “I found it.  I found it.”  He couldn’t keep himself from bouncing, gravity and mass suddenly meaningless.  “We can really do it.”

.

Instead of focusing on the poster they were supposed to be working on, Sam doodled a magic circle on her notes.  Not a complete one - she didn’t know what that would cause - but enough of it to get the general idea.  It was always hard to focus when Danny had to run out to get a ghost.  Maybe, once she and Tucker had powers, they could alternate who went out in the middle of class.  It’d probably help with his grades, at least.  

“So, it’s really happening,” said Tucker.

“Mhm,” said Sam.  “It’s happening.  Unless we get attacked or it all turns out to be a long con or something.”

“Well, even if we get attacked, we’d do it eventually anyway, right?” said Tucker.  He shrugged.  “So… what are you most looking forward to?  I’m personally kind of hoping that I’ll be able to figure out some kind of technomancy kind of stuff.”

“I don’t know,” said Sam.  She frowned down at the partial magic circle on her page.  “Not being left behind.  Never having to…”  She trailed off.  “You remember when Danny went off with the ecto-skeleton?  I don’t want him to do that ever again.”

“Okay,” said Tucker, “yeah, me too.  But I was thinking about more, you know, fun stuff.”

“Oh,” said Sam.  “I think it’d be funny if we could figure out duplication before him.”

“Oh, definitely.”

.

The next step, of course, was to find the materials.  

Some of them were easy.  They could get chalk from literally anywhere, including just picking up bits from school.  A compass was easy to get.  Sam raided the antique jewelry in her attic for silver chains - thankfully, they didn’t need to be pure silver.  The knife was harder, but Sam came through again, there, placing an order with the Skulk and Lurk, although she warned them that it had blown through her saved allowance from the past several months, so they’d better not have any emergencies that needed money.

More difficult was the ‘sacrifice.’  All of them had to give up something with ‘importance’ to symbolize their ‘conviction.’  It was a pain, but, combined with the chain, the compass, and some other components, it was the easiest way to make the bit where they could find each other if they needed help.  

The real problem was the ghostly stuff.  

“Mom and Dad probably have some kind of string that can ‘bind a ghost,’” said Danny.  “If not, I can talk to Frostbite.  Probably could ask him about the rest of this, too…”

“Ink from the black river, paper from the tree of whispers, and wax and honey from the bees who are told,” said Sam with a sigh.  “There is something I found, about this tradition called the ‘telling of the bees,’ but I don’t know if this is just saying we need wax from bees that someone’s done that with, or if they’re specific bees in the Ghost Zone…  And trying to figure out who still does the tradition is going to be…  I’m just hoping it is a Ghost Zone thing.”

“Don’t forget a ‘feather of truth’ and the seals,” said Danny.  

“I can work out the seals,” said Tucker.  “Just give me a symbol and I can get it made in art.  Mrs. Ortega doesn’t pay attention.”  Tucker was the only one of them that was able to take art this year.  It was something both Danny and Sam were absurdly jealous of, but Sam’s parents wanted her to take French and Danny needed the study hall or he’d die.  Again.  

“Okay, so, stuff to ask Frostbite about is the ink, the paper, the wax and honey, and the feathers,” said Danny, making marks on the list so he’d remember.  Sam and Tucker couldn’t come with him this time; their families had plans that weekend, and if they kept getting Danny’s parents out of the house with crank calls, they’d stop falling for them.  

“And don’t forget to get him or his guys to check the ritual over, to make sure it isn’t going to blow up in our faces,” said Sam.  

“Right,” said Danny, making another note on the paper.  “I’ll make sure to ask him.  Anything else?”

Sam and Tucker looked at each other, then shook their heads.  “I think that’s it.”

“But I really wish we could come with you to find this stuff,” said Tucker.  

Danny and Sam reacted immediately, slapping their hands over Tucker’s mouth, but it was too late.  Blue and green fog swirled around them.  

“As you have wished it, so shall it be!”

A portal opened underneath them, but Danny caught his friends’ arms and flew upward, reflexively… right into another portal.  

Danny twisted, intending to fly right back through, but he was too slow.  The portal winked shut.  

“Gosh darn it,” said Danny.  “I knew she was still hanging around.”

“Sorry,” said Tucker.  

“Where are we, anyway?” asked Sam.

Danny readjusted his grip.  They were just above what looked like solid ground, but appearances could be deceiving in the Ghost Zone.  Danny still remembered his earlier forays into the Ghost Zone and the skeletons bursting up out of the ground to try and grab him.  

Although this didn’t look like a cemetery, and there was a good amount of grass on the ground between the hedges.  The… Oddly familiar hedges.  

Hm.  

He flew up, carefully, still holding Sam and Tucker.  When he reached the top of the hedge, however, he hit something like a barrier.  

But that was high enough to see a little bit over the top, and up the hill the hedges were on.  At the top of the hill, there was a Greek style temple.  

“I think we’re at Pandora’s place,” said Danny.  “Elysium.”

“Yeah, it does kind of look like that,” said Sam.  She wriggled until Danny turned around.  “No town, though.”

“I think it’s on the other side of the hill.”

“And… we can’t fly out?” asked Sam.  

“I’m actually, like, ninety percent sure that when I touch down, I won’t be able to take off again.”

“Well,” said Tucker.  “At least mazes are easy.  We just have to make all right turns.”

“Tucker, this is a ghost maze.  It might move or turn inside out or whatever.  The right turns thing only works if the maze is, like, continuous, anyway.  And you’ve got to start from the beginning, I’m pretty sure.”

“It’s a place to start,” said Danny.  He lowered them to the ground but didn’t land himself.  “So…  Any preferences about which way to go?”  He pointed both ways down the maze corridor.  “I’m not immediately spotting any differences between them.”

“Openings?  Forks?”

Danny floated up again to try to see down the curvy paths.  “That one has a path uphill pretty close, and that one has two further down.  Can’t see any downhill ones right now.”

“Okay,” said Sam.  “Then…  Let’s go that way, so that we can go right.”

“I thought you said you didn’t think it’d work,” said Tucker.  

Sam shrugged.  “It might not, but it’s a strategy, for now.  One second.”  She pulled a pocket knife from her pocket and flipped it open before cutting into the ground, making an arrow and a number one.  “In case we wind up going in circles.”

“Good idea,” said Danny, zapping the ground with a quick ectoblast to make the sign more visible.

Tucker sighed.  “You know what would be a cool power to have right now?”

“Duplication, so we could just take every path until one of us got out?” suggested Danny.  

“Well, yeah, but also, like, that stuff Frostbite and his people could do.  The ice stuff.  It’d be easier to see, right?”

“Yeah,” said Danny, shrugging.  “But I don’t have anything like that.”

Tucker examined the blast mark for another second.  “Hey, why aren’t we just going through the hedges?”

“They’re ghost hedges,” said Sam.  

“Which means they might eat us,” explained Danny.  “Plus, this stuff belongs to Pandora, who’s helping us.  I don’t want to get thrown out of Elysium like we got thrown out of the library.”  That’d be embarrassing, hard to explain to Frostbite, and potentially extremely dangerous.  Not to mention, Pandora was cool, and although he wasn’t sure he’d call her a friend, exactly, not yet, he didn’t want to create a lot of extra work for her.  The maze was there to keep people away from the evil stuff she had sealed.  That was important.  

“Ugh,” said Tucker.  “Ghost plants.  Worse than regular plants.”

“Just because you don’t like eating vegetables doesn’t mean they’re evil,” said Sam.  

“These ones could be evil.”

“They belong to Pandora, who is using them to keep evil things in,” said Danny.  

“So?”

.

Danny was actually surprised at how far they got without being attacked, but the trend wasn’t to last.  

There was a minotaur in the maze.  

Typical.  Mazes must have been, like, the natural habitat of minotaurs.  But also: inconvenient.  Potentially dangerous, even.  

It certainly felt dangerous as the Minotaur brought his ax down where Danny had been a moment before.  

He pushed Sam and Tucker back as he leapt away, getting them out of range of the battle.  Sam raised her wrist ray and fired over Danny’s shoulder.  He accelerated forward, punching the Minotaur in its bovine face.  It reeled back for a second, then grabbed Danny by the fabric of his suit, attempting to slam Danny into the ground.  

Danny twisted around, then wrapped his legs around the Minotaur’s muscular bicep.  He let his form waver, soften, so he could hold on better, his legs spiraling into a tail which then snaked its way to the Minotaur’s neck.  With the extra grip, he braced against the empty air and flipped the Minotaur over, head-first, into the ground.  

Unfortunately, ghosts that weren’t Danny usually weren’t dazed by blows to the head.  Still, it put the Minotaur into a worse position to attack Sam and Tucker, and a better position to be shot by them.  

They blasted.  They would have done Danny’s mom proud.  If she had any idea they had the weapons.  Probably.  

The Minotaur bellowed, swiping its axe around, which didn’t do it much good, since Danny was still wrapped around its arm.  

Well.  Whatever.  Danny blasted him in the face a few times and then whipped out his thermos.  He let go of the Minotaur a moment before sucking it in, making sure his tail was well away–  But the Minotaur grabbed it, and although Danny was able to wriggle out of his grip, he didn’t do it fast enough to avoid touching the ground.  

“Ow,” said Danny.  He sucked his tail in and reformed his legs before standing up.  “No more flying, then, I guess.”

“Wow, you have to walk, like the rest of us peons,” said Sam.  

“Hey, you won’t be peons for much longer.  There was a spell for flying I saw earlier.”  He brushed a few stray blades of blue grass off his pants.  “Uh…  This way?  I got a bit turned around.”

“Peons,” said Tucker.  “Peons is just a really funny word, isn’t it?  Peeeeeeee-onnnnns.”

“That’s gross,” said Sam.  

“You said it first.”

.

“This is taking forever,” complained Tucker.  

“Yeah, well,” said Sam, crouched at the corner of the hedge with the compact mirror she used to make sure her makeup was appropriately corpselike, “one gorgon is enough to run into.  You’re lucky you got un-petrified when Danny sucked her into the thermos.”

.

Danny climbed up the hedge to see over it.  

“So, are we getting closer or not?”

“We’re getting closer,” said Danny, “to the top.”

“... Do we want to get closer to the top?” asked Tucker.  “I thought we were trying to get to the town.”

“I mean, it’s not like the strategy we’re using is like that,” said Sam.  “It just lets you find a way out.  Not necessarily the one we want.”

“Well, at least we can see we’re making some kind of progress,” said Danny, jumping down.

.

“Okay, that’s the third one,” said Tucker.  “I think you’ve got to stop trying to ask the monsters for directions, Danny.”

“They are, like, Pandora’s people, though,” said Danny.  “Maybe if we just explain–”

“Three times,” said Sam.  “Seriously, just because some ghosts are friendly, doesn’t mean they all are, suddenly.”

“Ugh, fine,” said Danny.  “You’re right.”

.

“What did we say?” asked Sam.  

“But it’s a puppy!” objected Danny as they fled from the Cerberus lookalike.  

“That makes it less likely to listen to you, not more!”

.

“I think the hedges are moving,” said Tucker.  

“What makes you say that?” asked Danny.  

“This,” said Tucker, showing the screen of his PDA.  There was a grid with a bright green line looping all around it.  

“You’ve been making a map this whole time?  What’ve I been carving stuff into the ground for?”

“I didn’t know if it’d work,” said Tucker, shrugging.  “It still might not be working, honestly, but if it is, then our lines shouldn’t be looping like this without seeing one of your cuts.”

“Well,” said Sam with a sigh.  “We’re still not going to get anywhere by standing still.  Might as well keep moving.”

.

“Was–  What was that?” asked Danny.  “Was that even a Greek mythology monster?”

“A vampire looking girl with two different types of legs?  No idea,” said Sam.  “If she was one, she’s pretty obscure.”

.

“You know,” said Tucker, “we could use this time to workshop an excuse for disappearing for half the day.”

“Considering that Desiree’s running around town, we can probably just say we temporarily poofed ourselves out of existence.”

“Poofed?” 

“Better than the ‘w’ word,” said Danny, “and it’s like that character from that one TV show.  You know, the one with the purple baby fairy.”

“I can’t believe you still watch that,” said Sam.  

“I don’t,” said Danny.  “Dad does.”

.

At long last, they emerged from the maze.  Rather, they emerged from the main, leafy, hedge part of the maze into the large clearing at the top of the hill, with the temples.

They weren’t alone.  On the porch of the nearest temple was a round green garden table, the kind with a glass top, and sitting at the table were Pandora and… the Box Ghost?

Pandora waved them up, to join them at the table, which they did, still a little surprised to see her eating sandwiches with their most annoying enemy.  

“No offense,” said Danny, frowning at the Box Ghost with no little confusion, “but why are you here?”

The Box Ghost sniffed.  “Offense taken!  The GREAT AND POWERFUL Box Ghost can go anywhere he pleases!”

“Oh,” said Pandora.  “I employ him to trim my hedges.  He gives them a delightful boxy shape.  But more importantly, why are you here?  I didn't think you had any interest in my maze or my boxes.” Her eyes narrowed.  “Do you?” 

Danny, Sam, and Tucker hurried to reassure her that, no, they didn't. Then Sam took up the task of explaining how they'd gotten dumped in the maze.

“Could you help us get back?” asked Sam, when she finished.  “Or, at least, out of the maze.”

“I could, certainly,” said Pandora, while the Box Ghost grumbled that Desiree’s trick wasn’t all that great and he could do it, too.  “But you said there were some materials you needed.”

“We don’t really have time,” said Danny.  It had taken them hours to get through the maze, and who knew what Desiree had gotten up to while they were gone.  

“Danny’s stressed about Desiree,” said Sam.  

“She’s very easy to be stressed about.”

“Nonsense,” said Pandora.  “You have plenty of time, I’m sure.  At least tell me what you were looking for.”

Reluctantly, Danny handed over the list.  

“You children are always so organized," chortled Pandora as she peered at the writing.  “Yes, some of these are quite simple, and for the rest we can send for.  In addition to being an excellent gardener, the Box Ghost is a fair hand at delivering packages.  You do have to fight him for them, once he’s there, but nothing is perfect.” 

“We… can?”

“Or I will, on your behalf.”

Danny exchanged a glance with Sam and Tucker.  

“Thank you,” he said, very sincerely.  “But… Why?  Why go through the trouble for us?  You’ve already given us a lot of help.”

“Why not?” asked Pandora.  “It costs me very little time, which is a resource I have an infinite amount of, you have goals that align with my own, and I believe the end results will be interesting.  Besides, it’s something for Frostbite and I to talk about.”

“Oh, well,” said Danny, a little awkwardly.  “Thank you.”

Pandora giggled a little, which was strange to hear from someone as large and imposing as she was.  “If it makes you so uncomfortable, you can owe me a favor.”

Bizarrely, that did make Danny feel better.  

She passed the list back to Danny and stood.  “The black river flows through the basement of this very temple,” said Pandora, retreating into the shadows under the pillars.  “Some of your choices of materials are very interesting, though.  It is my understanding that such rituals usually only require that the contract is written out clearly and in some ectoplasmic medium.”

“The books we had said that this would be better,” said Sam.  At least one of them had, anyway.  Danny didn’t remember which one, off the top of his head.  

“It will certainly be a stronger binding,” said Pandora.  “Although that is not always better.  The black river is also called the River Styx, the River of Oaths.  The feather of truth, meanwhile, cannot write lies.  The bees know secrets, and keep them, so the contract will be kept secret.  The honey helps with that.  It seals mouths as the wax seals the physical contract.  Is that last something you intended?”

“Oh, hell,” said Tucker.  “No.  Crap.”  He fumbled out his PDA, which he, remarkably, had put away.  “I think I screwed something up.”

“Well, that’s not the worst thing,” said Danny.  “Keeping it secret.  We have a lot of secrets.”

“But you want to tell your family about all this stuff eventually, right?  And if I wrote that down wrong, I don’t know what else I did.”

“Actually,” said Sam, looking sheepish, “I think I’m the one that wrote that part.”

“I think we all worked on it,” said Danny.  He worried at his bottom lip.  “Did we talk about all of the, you know, substitutions…?  Maybe we should–”

Pandora put one of her hands on his head.  She actually put one of her hands on all three of their heads.  

“Um,” said Danny.  Sam and Tucker made similar surprised sounds.  

“Perhaps I have a better path,” said Pandora.  “Leave your proposed ritual and contract with me.  I will review it, then send it on to Frostbite, who will send it back to you.  If you need any of the rarer reagents, we will send them with our revisions.” 

“That,” said Tucker.  “Makes sense.”

.

Sam, Tucker, and Danny stepped out of portal into Sam’s room, courtesy of the Box Ghost.  

“You know, it’s really creepy that you can pinpoint my room like that,” said Sam.  She walked a few more feet forward and collapsed face-first onto her bed.

“YES!  I HAVE BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED AS CREEPY!”

“You sure have,” said Danny.  “So, one hour head start before I start hunting you, okay?”

“YOU WILL NOT CAPTURE ME!  BEWARE!”  The Box Ghost vanished.  

“Okay,” said Danny, already sounding significantly more tired than he had a minute ago.  “Is anyone else surprised that he’s able to do that?”

“Not really,” said Sam.  “I mean, he’s got to get past the doors on the portal somehow.”

“Well.  I’m going to go find Desiree.  You guys…”  He sighed.  “You want to start randomly shouting out wishes for her to get lost or whatever?”

“I’m asking the internet for a better way to phrase that,” said Tucker, “but yeah.”

.

.

“Crap,” said Danny, clinging to Tucker’s shoulder.  “Crap, crap crap.”

“Man,” said Tucker.  “Why does your Dad even have a shrink ray?”

“You need to ask?”

“Less talking, more running!  This is why you losers need cardioooooo oooo–!”

“Sam!”  Tucker slid to a stop right before the ditch Sam had fell into.

“I’m okay!” said Sam.  She got to her feet, then stumbled.  “Ow!  My ankle–”

A tiny missile impacted the scaffolding to the right and made the half-constructed building creak.  Tucker whirled and shot at the tinier-than-usual Skulker before another tiny missile came his way.  Danny managed to get a weak, shivery shield up before it hit Tucker in the face, but the explosion threw him back into the ditch as well.  

“Ow,” he wheezed.  

Sam pulled him to the side right before another missile hit him.  

“He’s got to run out soon–”

“Not really,” panted Danny, clinging to Tucker’s earlobe.  “It’s– some kind– of weird– ghost power– thing.  Run!”

Sam and Tucker got up and started running, Sam limping.  

“We’re sitting ducks down here!  Danny, why can’t you soup him?!” demanded Sam.  

“No power!” said Danny.  

“Can’t you charge it?  Like you usually do?”

“With what?  I’m having trouble staying transformed!”

They ducked as another missile whistled overhead.  At least Skulker wasn’t as fast as he normally was, since he was shrunk, too.  

“We– need to– get back–”  Danny deflected another missile, and shimmered, the top of his jumpsuit turning into a black t-shirt.  “Back home!  Dad was going to take the gun up to the Ops Center!”

“Why?” screamed Sam.  

“I don’t know why my parents do anything!  Stop asking me these questions!”

Tucker gave Sam a boost to get out of the ditch and Sam pulled him up– Then dropped him again to shoot at Skulker with her wrist ray.  He swerved and she grabbed Tucker again before hauling him up.  

“Why is he more dangerous when he’s uber tiny?” 

“How are we going to get back to your house?” asked Sam as they ran further into the construction site.  

“Hecking–  I don’t know!  Double back!  Or–”

Tucker risked a glance sideways when Danny fell quiet.  

“Could we,” said Danny, weirdly hesitant, “take a cab?  There’s no way he’ll keep up–”

“I don’t have any money!  I spent it on the stupid knife!”

“I have some!” shouted Tucker.  “How do we get to the road?!”

“Just keep running!”

.

At first, Tucker thought the Fenton Crammer had vaporized Danny.  Certainly, the haze of twinkling black that had exploded from Danny wasn't humanoid by any stretch of the imagination.

But then Skulker swooped through the window, and Danny coalesced out of the mist like iron filings drawn to a magnet, leaping at Skulker’s still-shrunken form with silvered claws and round, burning eyes.  His tail corkscrewed around nothing as he came down on Skulker and crunched through Skulker’s armor.  Still clenching Skulker in his hand, he stood up and transformed.  

“Well!” he said, shaking Skulker slightly.  “At least that’s over, huh?”

He smiled at Sam and Tucker for a moment.  Then, he said, “I need to sit down.”

Tucker’s knees gave way.  It could’ve been the running, but it also could have been the relief.  

If the Fentons were going to start breaking out tech like that, they needed magic just to combat it.  What would have happened if Skulker hadn’t been shrunk, too?  What would have happened if Danny hadn’t blown off ‘studying’ with Dash to look over their work on the ritual again?  

“You need to sit down?” demanded Sam.  “You’re not the one that’s been running all over the city!”

“Hey, staying on someone’s shoulder like that takes effort , okay?”

“As much as running?”

“Well,” said Danny.  

Sam put her hands on her hips.  “Forget Dash.  I’m going to make you pass that stupid test.” 

.

A few days later, the Box Ghost popped out of a portal above Danny’s bed and Danny immediately punched him in the face.  It was a reflex.  One that scattered the bits of paper he’d been about to glue to their poster all over the room.  

“Deli… veryyyyyy…” wheezed the Box Ghost.  

“Oops,” said Danny.  “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” said Sam.  “Pandora said we’d have to fight him for them.”

“Yeah, still.  You okay, there?”

“The GREAT and TERRIBLE Box Ghost is JUST FINE!”

“You can have the empty boxes if you promise not to cause trouble in town,” offered Danny.  

“DEAL!”

.

The contents of the box were, in the end, quite simple.  A sheaf of papers, a silver needle, a pot of ectoplasm-infused ink, and a recommendation not to add anything that would force complete honesty, because things that tended to sow resentment, along with a longer letter of explanation that Sam was reading through, as the one best able to interpret the flowery handwriting of the Frostbite’s magic expert.

“I can’t believe I blew all my allowance on a knife we’re not even going to use,” grumbled Sam.  

“You’ll get more next month,” said Tucker.  

“It does look cool, though,” said Danny, encouragingly.  He was half under the bed, trying to find a missing printed picture.  “You can use it as a decoration.  Or, ooh, do you think you might be able to do other magic with it?”  He found the picture, phased through the bed, and grabbed a gluestick, slathering the picture with a healthy amount of purple glue before slapping it on the poster.  

His eyes were too bright, his teeth too sharp.  He was excited, and showing it.  

“So?  What do you think?  Should we do it?”

“Wait, right now?” asked Tucker.

Sam put the papers back in order and looked up, meeting Danny’s eyes.  Then, she nodded.  “There won’t be a better time.”  Not for weeks.  Their parents had finally objected to them spending so much time out of their houses, Sam’s especially, not to mention the fallout from their disappearance during Desiree’s latest rampage, and demanded family time.  They’d barely begged the time to finish the poster.  

“Yeah,” said Tucker, “I guess so.”

Danny grinned again and started rolling up the carpets on the floor.

“I don’t have the chains with me, though, or my plant.”

“That’s fine,” said Danny.  He pulled a spindle of ecto-line from his bedside table drawer and tossed it to Sam.  Tucker’s hand-eye coordination was fine, it was just that he tended to drop his PDA when he tried to catch other things, and he got very annoyed about stuff like that.  “I’ll go get it!”  He flew straight through the wall.

“Don’t you think we should maybe read it over a little more?” Tucker asked the wall, a little helplessly.  

“This is mostly our own writing, just with corrections,” said Sam, flipping through the pages behind the letter.  “See, it’s even still on lined paper.”

“Yeah,” said Tucker, “but I’m still…  I’ve been really looking through my program, here, and I think that this magic stuff just isn’t compatible with my tech or something.  It’s all messed up.  Things are moving around.”

“What about that ecto-proofing?”

“I don’t know,” said Tucker.  “It’s not working.”  He sighed.  “We’re going to have to set up some kind of, I don’t know, ring binder catalogue or something if we want to keep things organized.”  He took a picture of the chant he’d have to recite with his PDA.

“We’ve only got to do this once, you know,” said Sam.  “We don’t need to have all the stuff we’re not going to use organized, right?”

“I guess not.  I started it though.  Feels weird to not finish it.”

Sam raised an eyebrow and then pointedly looked at the rather slapdash poster propped up against the wall.  

“That’s different,” said Tucker.  “That’s not important at all.”

“I mean, some people would say that our grades are important.”

“Come on, Sam.  Danny’s right about our future.  We’re doing community college or something online.  We’re not leaving unless he is, and he’s not leaving unless the ghosts stop showing up, which isn’t going to happen either.  I mean, look at the Box Ghost.”

“Don’t say that where he can hear,” said Sam.  “He’ll get all heroically upset and self-sacrificing.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Tucker.  “I’m not saying it’s bad.  I’ve been looking at bug hunting for bounties.  White hat stuff.  You?”

“Me?  I’ve got a trust.  I don’t need a job.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” said Tucker.  

“Hey, I’m providing a public service without getting paid.  Basically the only people who can afford to do stuff like that are independently wealthy.”

“I guess so,” said Tucker.  

Sam returned her attention to the letter.  “Huh.”

“Huh what?” asked Danny, phasing up through the floor, eyes bright green stars.  Neither Sam nor Tucker startled.  They were too used to this kind of behavior.  “What is it?”

“Based on our own research, your calculations appear correct, and your conditions seem appropriate, however, the ritual you have constructed is so tailored to your own idiosyncrasies that it is unlikely to function as intended for any other group.   Then a bunch of stuff about how they can’t be sure of anything, because they haven’t actually done any of the rituals and have never seen some of them.  How do they know we don’t need special stuff for the…?  Oh, there it is…”

Danny put down the potted plant and settled a few inches above the floor, cross-legged, playing with the silver chain in his hand.  “Well, yeah.  We made it for us.” he said, responding to the passage of the letter she’d read out loud.  “No one else is going to care about all the stuff we care about.”

“Mhm,” said Sam.  “I think Tucker wants to proofread one more time before we do this, though.”

“Oh, sure,” said Danny.  “That’s a good idea.”  He paused.  “I kind of jumped the gun, didn’t I?  It’s just, um–”

“We’ve all been looking forward to this since the thing with Skulker,” said Sam.  

“I’ve been looking forward to this since we found out it was an option,” said Tucker.  

“Yeah, but it would’ve been really useful if we had it with Skulker.”

Danny smiled wryly, if not a little nervously.  “Yeah, it really would have.  I would’ve loved to see Skulker get bodied by one of you guys.”

“Hey, I’ve bodied him before.”

“I mean, like, non-technologically.  It’s–  We are going to do it, right?  We’re going to do it now?”  He glitched, looking like little more than a shadow, a smudge that could have been a trick of the light.  A terrifying one.  Then, he wrenched himself back into his normal form.  “Sorry!”  His voice echoed.  “Sorry, I just… I’m more–  I don’t– I was really useless with that, the other day.  I don’t want you to get stuck like that again.  If– If we’re doing this, we– I–”

“Yeah,” said Sam.  “We’re doing it now.”

.

Danny did the circle on the floor while Sam wrote the contract out on blank paper with the ink Frostbite had sent them.  

“What do we do if this doesn’t work?” asked Tucker, who was proofreading both of them.  

“Try again with the fancier stuff,” said Sam.  “I’m going to use that stupid knife somehow.”  She looked up and glanced at the clock.  “You sure your parents won’t be back until ten?”

“If then,” said Danny.  “They get really into stuff, you know.  Does this look right, Tuck?”

“Looks good to me,” said Tucker.  “Let’s start the– Yeah.”  He took one end of the silver chain and looped it around the main outer circle.  Then, he started laying the ecto-line around the inner circle.  

Danny flew over to spy on Sam again, didn’t see anything wrong, and got the candle he’d hidden in his dresser.  It turned out they only needed the one, to burn the contract.  He set it on the appropriate part of the magic circle, a smaller circle that was on a ninety-degree line from the other three internal circles.  Danny would sit in the big one in the middle, while Sam and Tucker would be in the smaller ones to either side.  

He nodded, still satisfied that the circle looked right, then finished laying out the other little things, like the compass, and the meteorite sample that was his sacrifice to the ritual.  Sam’s was the potted plant, and Tucker was going to give up one of his PDAs.  

Then, it was just the contract.  It took Sam another two careful minutes, then she passed over to Tucker.  He read it, then passed it to Danny.  He read it, too, making note of the important parts.  

Danny would give Sam and Tucker the ectoplasm they needed to do magic.  He would pledge to help them and protect them if they were in danger.  

Meanwhile, Sam and Tucker would pledge to help him if he was in danger, and assist him in the pursuit of his ‘purposes,’ which was a weird ghost terminology thing that was clarified further elsewhere in the contract.  It came down to helping him with protecting Amity Park and, vaguely embarrassingly, astronomy-related activities.  The contract purposefully didn’t specify how much they had to help, something that Danny had argued with them about more than once, even while they were writing their letter to Frostbite in Pandora’s palace before she sent them home.  Hopefully, that would give them enough wiggle-room to do what they wanted with their lives if they ever changed their minds, even if it meant they’d never be able to get out completely.  

There were other things.  A ‘no becoming evil’ section that had taken a lot of work to both phrase and to balance out in terms of stability.  A few extra lines about how Sam and Tucker didn’t have to follow any ‘orders’ he made.  Details about how finding each other when they were in danger actually worked, mechanically, and how the effect was powered.  A description of ghostly abilities they wanted to share, which was also difficult to balance, incidentally.  A long list of other things Sam and Tucker had to promise to do in order to balance their side of the contract, like offering him food and giving him gifts on his birthday and deathday.  They’d argued about those, too, but, eventually, Danny had to cave to the necessity.  A one-sided contract would just fall apart.  It wouldn’t take.

It would have been so much better if Danny could have just given Sam and Tucker magic, without all these strings attached.  At least most of them were pretty minor, like offering Danny food when they ate together, contacting Frostbite if Danny was sick, and performing additional rituals and magic for Danny under specific circumstances that, hopefully, wouldn’t ever arise.

There was also a section for obligations between the human members of the coven.  Sharing magic, an agreement to do rituals together, how and if to add new people, things like that.  

It wasn’t the arm’s-length list of add-ons he’d been so skeptical of when they were doing their planning, but it wasn’t short, either.    

By the time Danny had gotten through it all, he was practically vibrating.  “We’re ready?” he asked.  “We’re really ready to do this?”

Sam and Tucker nodded, then stepped into their circles, Sam first, then Tucker.  Danny grinned, trying to hide his nerves, and put the contract down in its designated circle, across from the candle.  Then, he hopped over into his circle, careful not to smudge the lines.  He floated, cross-legged, a few inches above the floor.  

He checked to make sure that Sam and Tucker were properly inside their circles, and gave them both one more nod to check that they were ready, that they didn’t want to back out, that they were with him.  

Sam nodded back.  Tucker gave him a thumbs up.

Danny leaned over and pinched the candle’s wick, lighting it with a spark of ectoplasmic fire.  It flared up, higher than he’d intended, and he jerked his hand back.  

“Phantom,” said Sam.  She cleared her throat, slightly.  Tucker looked down at his PDA - Jennifer or Jasmine, Danny thought - and read his lines.  They sounded like gibberish to Danny, but they sparked static in the air.  “Phantom,” repeated Sam.  “This coven petitions you.  We ask that you share your power with the coven.”

It was about a thousand times more formal than Sam usually sounded, but a ritual was a ritual.  It needed to be formal.  Danny’s lines didn’t really sound like him, either, and the chanting definitely wasn’t Tucker’s style.  

It was all a little surreal.  

But then, Danny wasn’t one to talk when mist and shadow were dripping off his shoulders, rolling over his lap, matching the colors of his suit, and lapping at the edges of his circle like water.  

“And what would I receive in turn for my gifts?” asked Danny.  The chalk lines nearest Danny began to glow.  The mist in Danny’s circle had risen to his knees.  He inhaled deeply.  He was too excited.  The mist wasn’t even part of the ritual.  His hands, resting on his knees, flickered.  

“Our services, as written in the contract, if it is amenable to you,” said Sam, “and if you are pleased to abide by it as well.”  The glow had reached her circle.  

“I am amenable, and it pleases me,” said Danny.

“Then let us bind our pledge with blood.”

“Of both body and spirit,” said Danny.  

One by one, the pages of the contract lifted up from the stack.  They swirled, clockwise, around the circle, and as they passed Tucker’s circle, Danny saw it was glowing, too.  A page settled in front of Sam, and she took the silver needle and pressed it against her index finger.  A drop of blood welled up, bright in the oddly dark room.  

When had it gotten so dark?  How was it so dark, in the middle of the day, with the chalk lines glowing and the candle burning so green?

Sam put a bloody fingerprint on the bottom of the page.  As soon as she’d done so, the paper blew away again, tumbling towards Tucker.  Sam gave the needle to Danny, who passed it through the candle flame before handing it to Tucker.  

Tucker stopped chanting, stabbed his own finger, and put his own bloody fingerprint on the page.  He gave the needle back to Danny, and Danny took it out of the fire just in time for the paper to land in front of him, floating on the mist.  

He took off his glove, which dissolved into the same fine mist that Danny was floating just above.  Then, he stabbed his thumb.  The liquid that welled up was marbled green and red, both ectoplasm and blood.  He’d never bled quite like that before.  It was strange, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.  

He pressed his thumb to the page, leaving a marbled fingerprint.  The wind tugged it away from him and back to its own circle, where the other pages joined it.  Tucker started chanting again, and this time Sam joined him.  

“We have agreed.  Now, let us commend our agreement to eternity,” said Danny. 

He picked up the top page of the contract, then held its corner to the candleflame.  It caught quickly, and burned like flash paper.  It made Danny blink and his eyes water.  When he rubbed his eyes, his sleeve came away covered in traces of faintly glowing tears.  

He took the next page and burned that as well, and then the next, and the next.  His sleeves swirled with whorls of glitter and velvet black.  Something strained inside his chest.  The mist around his knees churned, reaching towards Sam and Tucker like water at high tide.  

By the time he reached the last page, tears were pouring down his face and his arms were painted in galaxies, and his spine felt like a live-wire.  The chain and ecto-line were shifting uneasily, the chain links clicking faintly.  

Danny paused, looking at Sam and Tucker.  It was no longer possible to safely stop the ritual, if he understood all of it correctly, but it could still be stopped.  “I love you guys,” said Danny.  He wasn’t sure why he said it, but it felt right.  He touched the paper to the flame.  

Several things happened at once.  

The paper burned, of course, turning a rainbow of strange colors when it hit the blood and ectoplasm.  So did the candle, the wax used up all at once.  It left a strange, sweet and smoky scent in the air.  

The invisible wall that kept the mist contained in Danny’s circle broke and the mist flowed along chalk channels to Sam and Tucker’s circles.  It mingled with the smoke and spiraled up to the ceiling before spreading out and dripping down the walls, blocking out what little light was still coming in the window. 

The ecto-line and silver chain jumped up off the ground and twisted in shapes that looked impossible even to Danny.  Instinctively, he raised his hands to protect his face and felt something wrap around his wrists.  Tucker’s chant cut off with a sharp gasp.  Danny jerked his head to the side, trying to see, but everything was dark, and Danny was pouring himself into the mist, which billowed black with silver linings.  There was hardly anything left in his outline, and what was left was held there by the chain and glowing string around his wrists.  

Right.  Right.  This was part of the ritual, too.  He looked down at the lines of chalk, reorienting himself.  His tongue darted between his lips, wetting them.  They tasted salty.  

Carefully, he lined his hands up with the chalk symbols he’d drawn earlier, and pressed his palms down on them, channeling all the power he could.  After the first second, it felt less like he was pushing the energy out, and more like it was being pulled, like some plug had been pulled and everything was rushing out.  

And then there was nothing left.  

His transformation rings sparked around his waist and he wobbled.  He wasn’t sure what would happen if he returned to being human now.  But there was more blackness around the edges of his vision than just the mist and dark, and as he fought his transformation, that blackness spread.

He didn’t even feel himself hit the floor.  

.

The first thing Tucker noticed when he woke up was that Danny’s room was a mess.  Which, like, teenage boy.  Generally speaking, teenage boys were messy.  Teenagers were messy.  Tucker was self-aware enough to know that his room was a mess, too.  So was Sam’s, but in a different way.  Jazz was, from what he’d observed of Danny’s sister, a bizarre outlier in terms of cleanliness.  

That being said, Danny was an outlier, too.  Tucker had seen him vacuuming his walls.  And ceiling.  More than once.  Without being told.  And he kept his models and space stuff tidy.  Ish.  Especially when he was going to have Tucker sleep over.  

So, yeah, this was a lot messier than usual.  

Then, he saw the shattered remains of Jolene.  No!  She was one of his favorites!  He sat up, recategorizing the situation from ‘sleepover wake up blahs’ to ‘ghost attack aftermath.’  Then, he saw the remnants of the ritual circle and he finally was awake enough to remember what he’d been doing before he’d, apparently, passed out.  

He rubbed his eyes - or tried to.  His glasses got inconveniently in the way.  Yep.  Definitely passed out.  He didn’t go to sleep with his classes on.  He took them off momentarily to clean off the fingerprints and cheek prints.  They were making everything blurry.  

When he put them back on, he was able to identify the arm hooked around his waist as Danny.  Somehow, despite being in human form, Danny had managed to get into a position where he could snuggle both Tucker and Sam at the same time.  Or maybe that was Sam’s fault.  Her dark clothing was covered in white chalk, from where she’d either been pulled or scooted across the lines they’d drawn. 

Why was Tucker the first one up when Sam was the morning person?

He poked Danny.  He had no idea how long they’d been unconscious, how much longer they’d have until Danny’s parents showed up, or how long it’d take for them to clean Danny’s room, but he suspected he wouldn’t like the answers if he asked those questions.  

Danny stirred sluggishly.  A sliver of glowing green appeared between his eyelids.  

That was… interesting.  

Sam moved when Danny did, swiping her hand across her face.  It left a sticky green trail in its wake.  

Also interesting, since he hadn’t seen any ectoplasm on her hand before that. 

Was that a good sign?  A bad one?  Had the ritual worked?  For all they’d talked about doing the ritual and what they’d do once they had magic, they hadn’t really discussed the logistics of testing it.  They hadn’t even learned any other spells… it had seemed presumptuous, when the ritual itself was such a hurdle.  

“Sam,” he croaked.  “Wake up.”

With obvious reluctance, she did.  She stared up at the ceiling.  “Did it… work?”

“No idea,” said Tucker.  “But we need to clean Danny's room before his parents see it or else he'll be turbo grounded forever.”

Sam groaned.  That was fine, Tucker felt like groaning too.  She also started shuffling around in preparation to get up.  

Meanwhile, Tucker got to work poking Danny.  

“Come on, man, you're on a hair trigger when it's ghosts.”  Admittedly, that might have more to do with his ghost sense dropping the equivalent of a bucket of ice water on his insides whenever it went off.  Seriously, it was cold.  Tucker should know, he'd gotten a faceful of it more than once.  

Danny made a muffled humming sound and tried to grab Sam's ankle as she slid away.  Tucker continued to poke.  Danny continued to be asleep.

Tucker had an idea.  “Dude, we need your help.”  It was true.  Superpowers were useful when it came to cleaning, and Tucker wasn't even talking about the vacuuming the walls thing. 

Actually, was there magic for cleaning?  He bet there was.  Not much use in supernatural powers if you couldn’t use them to avoid mundane chores.

Very slowly and blearily, Danny sat up.  Then, he sagged to one side, teetering, until Sam grabbed his shoulder to steady him.  

He… still didn't look awake, honestly.  His eyes were barely open.  

“Hnm?” he said.  

“We need you to help clean,” said Tucker.  “Your room looks like a hurricane went through.”

“Nnh,” said Danny, sitting up.  “Mnn?”  He seemed to be having a hard time opening his eyes.  

“Danny, are you okay, man?” asked Tucker.  He reached out and shook Danny’s shoulder.  

Danny’s eyes opened just a little.  “Wha?”

“Are you okay?”

“Just… tired,” said Danny.  He yawned, then stood up.  He wobbled, and yawned again.  

“We do need help,” said Sam, prying the remains of the candle up off the floor.  

“Okay,” said Danny.  He toddled over to where she was working and then stared.  

“Uh,” said Sam.  “Maybe you could change and get the ash and stuff on the walls?  Or you could get your shelf back the way it’s supposed to be?”

Danny gave a little hum of consent, then wobbled over and stared blankly at the wall.  

Sam cleared her throat.  “Maybe it’ll be easier if you change?”

“Like, my shirt?”

“No, I mean, go ghost.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Danny.  Then he frowned.  “It’s not a silly name, you know.  It’s, like, descriptive.”

“I didn’t say it was,” said Sam.  

“But you didn’t say it,” said Danny, plaintively.  

“You don’t say it, half the time,” pointed out Sam.  

“Danny,” interrupted Tucker, “are you okay?”

“I,” said Danny.  He wobbled again, frowning more deeply.  “I can’t go ghost,” he said.  “I’m.  Out of energy.  I think.”  He sat down, heavily.  He rubbed his eyes.  

“Okay,” said Sam with a little sigh, “I mean, you did just do a lot with the ritual and all.”

“Yeah, you were really the main guy with all of that,” said Tucker.  “I don’t think we realized it’d take this much out of you.  I mean, we were knocked out a bit, too, but we’re fine now.”

Danny nodded slowly.  “You,” he said.  “You were asleep too?”

“Yeah, we were.”

“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Danny.  He tried to wobble back up to his feet, but quickly gave up.

“Yeah, I think we must’ve put a period in the wrong place or something,” said Tucker.  

“Hey,” said Sam, “you proofread it, too.”

“But it looks like everything worked out otherwise,” said Tucker.  

“We haven’t tested anything yet,” said Sam.  

“But we can’t have messed up that badly,” added Tucker.  

“Huh,” said Danny.  “Okay.”

“Why don’t you go back to sleep,” said Sam.  “Tucker and I’ll take care of the mess.”

“Okay,” said Danny again.  He lay down right there without trying to get to his bed, which was a good thing, because it looked like the ectoline had exploded all over it, festooning it with little bits of neon green string.  

“Tuck,” said Sam.  “I’ll handle the cleaning, so can you read back over the stuff we got from Frostbite?  I hate to say it, but maybe I missed something.”

“It could be that they were just wrong, too,” said Tucker, quietly.  “It sounds like no one’s done something like this in a long time, and when they did, it probably wasn’t with a half ghost.”

Sam made a face.  “Maybe we should’ve done more research.”

“We did a lot of research, Sam.”  He sighed.  “Where are the papers?”

“Uh,” said Sam.  “I put them down there.”  She pointed at Danny’s desk, which had gotten all of its contents knocked off.  “Um.  There’s a page?”  It was crumpled and half hidden under Danny’s upturned rolly chair.  

“Alright,” said Tucker, pulling it out.  “I guess I’m helping you clean after all.”

.

They eventually found all of the pages, and Tucker tucked himself in the corner while Sam tried to put Danny’s room back in order.  Part of her would rather have made Tucker clean, but she’d already read both the letter from Frostbite’s magic guy and the copy of the ritual they’d sent back several times.  It wouldn't do them any good to reread it.  Her eyes would just skim over any problems.  

So.  Cleaning. 

She decided to start on the most noticeable stuff and the direct remnants of the ritual.  Danny’s room would probably still look like an explosion had gone off in it when she was done, which she felt badly about, but there wasn’t much she could do about the ash on the walls and all his posters.

However, considering Danny’s parents, she wasn’t sure they’d notice Danny’s room looking like that.  They caused enough explosions on their own, after all.  So, as unpleasant as it might be for Danny, he probably wouldn’t get in trouble.  Maybe they could say that they were checking out an invention and it went off?  But Sam wasn’t sure what invention would be the most plausible for that to happen with, at the moment.  Or, they could always blame it on the security system…  Or ghosts…

But any lie they came up with would have to be run by Danny first.  Both so that their stories lined up, and so that the story would actually be plausible.  For all Sam knew, the security system was offline, or the marks on the walls weren’t compatible with anything the Fentons currently had under development.  

“I’m not seeing anything wrong,” said Tucker.  “No big changes to the circle or the words or… anything, really.”  He sighed.  “Danny said something at the end there, didn’t he?” 

“Just something like ‘I love you,’” said Sam, “and I can’t see how that would change anything.”

“I… don’t think it should,” said Tucker.  “Maybe it is just, you know, that becoming a patron is, like, energy intensive.  We knew that.” 

“We did know that,” said Sam.  “We just didn’t think it’d knock us all out and then keep Danny down.”  Nothing kept Danny down for very long.  Not since the first few months of being a half-ghost.  

“I mean, I think it’s a bit early to say that it’s keeping Danny down…”

“We woke up earlier than him,” Sam pointed out.  

“Still, maybe he just needs to sleep it off.  We can wait until tomorrow before we start freaking out, right?”

“Right?” said Sam.  “But we should maybe come up with a plan for getting him to the Far Frozen before we start freaking out.”

.

Sam didn’t like leaving Danny, even if he sleepily waved for her and Tucker to go.  But they couldn’t stay with him overnight without getting permission from all three sets of parents, and while Danny’s parents were somewhat lax about that kind of thing, and Tucker’s could be convinced, Sam’s were notably more strict, and they hadn’t spent much time at home, lately.  

So, she ate dinner at home and went to bed uneasy.  She didn’t sleep well.  In fact, she hardly slept at all.  She had too much energy.  Instead of sleeping, she looked over some of the easier spells.  It was tempting to use them, to try them now , but…  She knew better.  So she was awake when Danny called.  

“Are you feeling better?” she asked as soon as she picked up.  

There was a beat of silence.  “Good morning, Sam.  Not really.  I, uh.  I’m still drained.  I… can’t go ghost.  At all.  How do you feel?”

“Uh,” said Sam.  She was about to say exhausted, since she had been up all night, but…  She wasn’t really.  “I’m fine.”

“That’s good.  Test anything yet?”

“No,” said Sam, rolling her eyes.  “Not yet.  But if you’re really drained like that…”

“Yeah, I feel like I just went another round with Pariah Dark.  Two rounds, maybe.”

Sam took a deep breath.  “We’re going to have to figure out how to get to the Far Frozen, then.”

“Uh huh,” said Danny.  “That’s.  Going to be a problem, isn’t it?  With your parents and all.  And school.”

He wasn’t wrong exactly.  “I can get around them.  Whatever this is, it’s more important.”  And for more reasons than just Danny’s health.  Danny was a superhero, and not the kind that just hung around looking pretty.  Sharing the burden was half the reason Sam and Tucker wanted to learn magic.  

“I was thinking,” said Danny.  “I was thinking, maybe, you could try–”

.

“Summoning the Box Ghost?” Tucker hissed into the phone.  “Seriously?”

“It isn’t a terrible idea,” said Sam.  

“It kind of is?” said Tucker.  “Even the Box Ghost can be dangerous, and Danny’s out of commission.”

“There are magic circles for that,” said Sam, “and we’ve always got Fenton-tech.”

“It just seems like a big jump to go from becoming warlocks or whatever straight to summoning something.  Why can’t we just steal the Speeder again?”

“Parents,” said Sam.  “School.  Classes.  I figure, we each bring what we can to school, then do it during lunch or after school or something.”

“What about Danny?  Can the Box Ghost get into his house?”

“It sounded like he was going to try to get to school,” said Sam.  “But the Box Ghost didn’t have any trouble getting in yesterday.” 

“That’s true,” said Tucker.  “Maybe we can practice one or two things before we summon the Box Ghost into school, though?”

“Like what?” asked Sam.  

“I have some ideas,” said Tucker.  

.

Danny leaned his head against his locker.  Everything felt… blurry.  Fuzzy, even.  And the noise in the hallway was starting to give him a headache.  And– Had they ever finished their group project?  Ughhhh.

“Wow, Fendope, you look even dopier today than usual.”  

Dash.  Double ugh.  

“What’s that?  You want to become one with your locker?”  A large hand grabbed his shoulder and twisted him around.  “I can give you a hand with–”

“Back off, Dash.” Sam came out of nowhere, eyes blazing.  

“Ooo, so scary, Fentwerps spooky ooky girlfriend.  Whatcha gonna do to me?”

Sam looked at Dash like he was something she’d scraped off the bottom of her shoes.  “I,” she said, “can get my parents involved.  You know, the ones who are on the school board and PTA, and make decisions about things like sports.”

“Yeah right,” said Dash, rolling her eyes.  

“Try me,” said Sam, bristling.  

“I’m filming,” said Tucker, who was carrying a truly enormous black bag that looked like it belonged to Sam in addition to his PDA.  

Dash scoffed but backed away.  “Nerds.  Breaking your crap would take too long.”

“That was weird,” muttered Tucker.  

“Huh?” said Danny.  

“We could feel when he started threatening you,” said Sam.  

“Sam dumped her bag on me and sprinted,” said Tucker.  

“Don’t say that like you didn’t run, too,” said Sam.  “Danny, how are you feeling?”

“Still drained.  Did, um…”  He blinked hard, trying to keep himself awake.  “What I said this morning, do you think it’ll work out?”

“Yeah,” said Sam.  

“Maybe,” said Tucker.  “I want to test some stuff before we summon the Box Ghost to toss us into the Ghost Zone.”

Danny nodded.  That was probably a good idea.

“We’ve got fifteen minutes before class starts?” suggested Sam.  “Backrooms?”

Danny nodded again and let them lead him towards the less-used part of the school.  When the ghost attacks started, people had left, both teachers and students, and not all the classrooms were in use, especially in the back.  There was enough space for students to get up to all sorts of things they weren’t supposed to.  

They found one of those rooms, which was mostly bare except for some broken and dusty furniture.  Sam wedged a chair under the door, so they wouldn’t be disturbed, and Danny found himself a chair that was only a little broken to fall into.  

“Okay, so what were you thinking for a test?” asked Sam as she pulled tools from her bag.  

“Something simple,” said Tucker, “and– oh my gosh, I can’t believe you brought that knife.”

“I want to use it!” said Sam, blushing.  “It’s cool!”

“It’s a knife.  We’re at school.”

“And I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be summoning ghosts at school, either,” said Sam, “yet here we are.  So, what are we doing?”

“Nothing that needs a knife.  I thought we could try ghost rays.  Maybe we could do that one circle.”

“Circle for ghost rays?” asked Danny, staring at the bewildering variety of items Sam was laying out.  

“Yeah, you know,” said Tucker.  “It’s supposed to make it easier to invoke ghost rays.  I think invoke is the right word.  Like, you’re supposed to do something specific to make a ghost ray go off, but it’s not really something natural for humans.”

“Mmm,” said Danny.  He wasn’t exactly the best at telling whether or not something was natural.  Ghost rays felt natural enough to him, even though they weren’t among his very first powers.  He just had to gather up energy and, well, hm… Huh…

On reflection, he wasn’t sure how he’d put that into human terms.

“So, the circle is supposed to activate that for the first time and give you, like, a template to work from.  Give you a feel for what it’s supposed to be like, how it’s supposed to feel.”

“Okay,” said Danny.  “Then we’ll summon Boxy?”

“We… Probably we won’t be able to do that until lunch.  This all takes a while,” said Tucker.  “Do you think you’ll be able to hold out for that long?”

“Sure,” said Danny.  

He watched with a detached sort of interest as Sam and Tucker made the circle… and immediately inadvertently blasted the ceiling, making all the tiles come off the ceiling.  Danny threw his hands over his head just in time to avoid getting smacked.  

“You guys okay?” he asked, immediately worried.  It looked like both Sam and Tucker were on the floor.  He got up out of his seat and tried not to wobble.  

Why was he so wobbly?  What did they do wrong, to make him feel like this?  This couldn’t be how warlock patrons felt all the time, no one would do it!

… Although, the warlock arrangement didn’t exactly seem to be popular, in this day and age, did it?

“We’re fine!” said Sam.  “It, uh, it looks like we’ve figured out intangibility, though.”

“Oh!  Are you–?”

“We’re stuck in the floor, yep,” said Tucker, strained.  

Danny picked his way over to them, over the ceiling tiles.  Tucker’s knees and hands were stuck in the floor, while only Sam’s feet had sunk in.  

“How do you usually get out of this?” asked Sam.  “Think intangible thoughts?”

“No, actually,” said Danny, frowning.  “I mean, the thoughts you’re thinking are intangible thoughts, I guess, but they’re not…  You’re not just thinking ‘I’m intangible.’  It’s more like… sliding?  But not sliding through space, exactly, you’re sliding… outside of space?  Or out of touch?”

“Isn’t there a song like that?” asked Tucker.  

“How’m I supposed to know?” asked Danny.  “You’re…  You’re skipping part of reality.  You’re on the map, but you’re in another layer.”

He waited, hopefully, but that hope started to fade when they didn’t immediately free themselves.  Maybe, even with his exhaustion, he could provide a spark, something that would at least let them get started.  

“I think we should’ve tried to do a circle for intangibility,” said Tucker.  

“Come on, you’ve done it once and–”  

The bell for the beginning of class went off, and Sam and Tucker startled so badly that they pulled themselves out of the floor all at once.  

“That… works too,” said Danny.  

.

Danny spent most of the next few periods somewhere between half asleep and fully asleep.  He felt his participation grade in some classes actively suffering, but he knew that some of his teachers were just happy that he was there.  

As for what the classes were about…  He had no idea.  They were a blur.  He hoped that Sam and Tucker were turning in their group project.  Or was that in the afternoon?  What class had that been for?  Their topic?  He couldn’t remember.  

“Danny,” said Tucker, nudging him.  “Danny, class is over.  It’s lunch time.”

“Did you turn in the poster?”

“That’s not due today,” said Tucker.  

“Wasn’t it?”

“No, we did it early for once.  Which is a good thing, because we’re going to have to redo half of it…  The ritual wasn’t great for it…  Not sure when we’ll do that, with our parents breathing down our necks…”

Danny hummed.  “Maybe we’ll have more time, now that…” He gestured vaguely to indicate the existence of magic.  

“Uh huh.  But maybe you should get up so we can go take care of the other thing?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Danny.  Slowly, he slid out of his desk and followed Tucker back to the unused wing of the school.  They did, however, go to a different room.  One whose ceiling hadn’t been destroyed.  One that didn’t have any chairs, only rickety old desks, all stacked together in one corner, and a few shelves of old textbooks.  

“Where’s Sam?”

“Getting her stuff together.  She didn’t want to leave it in the other room, remember?  It’d be bad if any of our stuff was found there after, you know, the ceiling…” 

That made sense.  Danny bobbed his head and found a desk to sit on.  He thought about it for a few minutes, then laid down on the desk instead.  

He must have dozed off, because the next thing he knew, the Box Ghost was screaming his head off, and Sam was brandishing her huge silver knife.  

Danny was on his feet immediately, between Sam and the Box Ghost.  He wasn’t entirely sure which of them he was protecting, wasn’t sure if either of them really needed protection, per se, but he didn’t want a fight to break out when he was feeling like this, and he sort of stretched out–

Both the screaming and the knife waving stopped, to Danny’s relief.  

“Ohhhh,” said the Box Ghost, surveying Danny.  “Uh.  The GREAT and TERRIBLE BOX GHOST wonders if, uh, you’re okay?”

“Do I look that bad?” asked Danny.  

“You’re…  Kind of looking a little inhuman, right now,” said Tucker, wincing.  

“And in-ghostly!”

Danny didn’t know what that meant.  

“Well, that’s what we’re trying to fix,” said Sam.  “But we need your help to get him into the Ghost Zone.”

“To the Far Frozen and Frostbite, specifically,” clarified Tucker.  

“Does the ghost child not have a portal in his very lair?” asked the Box Ghost, only yelling a little bit.  “Why does he need my– Ahem.  The help of the TERRIFYING BOX GHOST?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” said Sam, dryly, “but the Far Frozen is pretty far from the portal.  We want to get there–”

“And back,” said Tucker.

“--relatively quickly.  But, yeah, you’d have to stick around to bring us back when we’re done over there.”

The Box Ghost squinted at all of them for several long seconds.  “The Box Ghost requires… payment.”

“I have a bunch of cardboard shipping boxes in my closet, from when I was buying all the stuff.  You can have those,” said Sam, very generously.  

“I’ll put aside all my boxes for the next month,” offered Tucker.  “I’m sure you’ll pop up again by then.”

The Box Ghost sniffed.  “You assume correctly.”  Then, he looked significantly at Danny.  

“Uhhh…” said Danny.  “I can give you… more boxes?”

“Yes!” said the Box Ghost.  “I will receive boxes!  Boxes for me!  I will do this thing!”  He raised his arms and a portal swirled into being between his hands.  

Sam and Tucker grabbed Danny’s hands and they all jumped in together.

.

“Hm,” said Frostbite.  “What do you think, Winterdew?”

“Hm,” said Winterdew, the Far Frozen’s magic expert.  “Well.  Warlocks and familiars…  It’s never been very popular in our tribe.  We don’t know everything about it.” 

“So… you don’t know what’s wrong?” asked Danny.  

“I have some guesses,” said Winterdew, “but nothing certain.  You really should have recovered from the initial expenditure of energy by now.  What you should be experiencing now is the relatively light constant drain.  That was why you formulated your particular ritual as part of a coven…”  He trailed off, as if realizing something.  “One moment, please.”

Winterdew looked back down at his copy of the ritual, his furry face contorted in a deep frown.  Danny watched him.  If he was more awake, he probably wouldn’t have stared quite so much, but Danny was quietly fascinated by the ghost’s beard.  It was so big, and it was braided with gold rings and little ice-blue beads.  

“I have a slight suspicion about what might be happening,” said Winterdew, finally.  

“It was a problem with the ritual, then?” asked Sam.  

“Not as such, no,” said Winterdew.  “More with… application.  You did not include a clause for how much power should be channeled, only that it should be enough to make you capable of magic.  There is no upper limit.”

.

Tucker felt himself turn green.  Metaphorically.  He didn’t suddenly morph into a ghost.  Again.  “And because there’s no upper limit, he’s just dumping everything into us?”

“Which I doubt is healthy for you, either.”

“We can’t change the contract,” said Sam, strained.  

Winterdew nodded.  “That is true.  But if I am correct, the Great One should be able to correct the issue by simply reducing the amount of power he is giving you.”

“And if not?” questioned Sam.  “What if he’s not already doing that because he can’t?”

“Then there are some… experimental avenues available to you,” said Winterdew, “ones that are open because of the Great One’s unique status.”

“Like what?” asked Danny.  

“You are partially human, and you wisely chose to use covens.  Your coven has a mechanism to let others join, correct?”

“Winterdew,” said Frostbite, with a tone of warning, “while that might be possible, I do not believe it is wise.”

“No, probably not,” said Winterdew, with something like a sigh.  “Which is why I hope that it won’t be necessary.”

“Wait,” said Tucker, “are you saying that Danny could join the coven, then give power to himself?”

“That would be the idea,” said Winterdew.  

“Wouldn’t he just… pass on the power again, once he got it?” asked Tucker.  “That sounds like a way to get stuck in some kind of, I don’t know, logical loop.”  Or like building a circuit with no resistors in it.  Batteries overheated and wires melted when you did things like that.  Considering that his best friend would be the battery and the wire, Tucker was… unenthused about trying that.  Or anything like that.

“Possibly.  Which is why it is not an experiment I am eager to try.  There could be side effects.”

“Cool,” said Tucker.  “That’s really cool.  Cool.”

“Stop saying that.  It’s going to lose all meaning,” said Sam.  She didn’t sound much happier, and Danny hunched his shoulders when she turned to him.  “You’re not passing on all your ectoplasm or energy or magic just because you subconsciously want to ‘give us everything’ or protect us or whatever, right?”

“How would I know, if it’s subconscious?” asked Danny.  

“I don’t know, introspection?” said Sam, shrugging.  

“Introspection?” repeated Tucker.  

“Hey,” said Danny.  “I can be introspective!”  

“Sometimes,” said Tucker.  Usually, though, he was only introspective when he was tying himself into mental knots about stuff that really wasn’t his fault.  Like Tucker’s broken leg.  

Danny shot him a glare, then laid back on the examination table and closed his eyes.  “I’m going to introspect now,” he announced.  “I’m being introspective.  Inspecting the intro.  All that good stuff.”

“Not narrating would probably help,” said Tucker, helpfully.  

Danny stuck his tongue out at him, but fell silent, a frown on his face as he focused inward.  Tucker watched him, hopefully, but after several minutes of silence, both he and Sam had to face the truth.  

“He’s fallen asleep, hasn’t he?”

“Yep.”

.

Danny blinked awake and his eyes focused on blue white ice.  

“You back with us?” asked Tucker.  

“Uhm.  Mhm,” said Danny.  “What happened?”

“You fell asleep,” said Sam.  

“Oh,” said Danny.  “In my defense, being really tired is why I’m here.”  He pushed himself into a sitting position.  “Maybe we shouldn’t do the introspection thing, then.”

“It may still have value, if you do not fall asleep again,” said Winterdew, with more hope than Danny felt was warranted.  

“You know,” said Sam, “even though you’re sending us all this power, we don’t actually know how to use it.”

“Yet,” said Danny.  “You did that one spell for ghost rays.”

“Yeah,” said Sam.  “But you saw how it was with the intangibility.  This is going to take time to figure out, and we’re going to be worse than you, because we’re not ghosts.”

“Uh huh,” said Danny, glancing at Winterdew and Frostbite, who nodded.  “So?”

“So, magic or not, we’re actually safer if you’re functional.”

“Well, yeah…?” said Danny, slowly.  

“And we’ll be happier if you’re functional,” she added.  

That was very nice of her to say, but he wasn’t sure where this was going.  Maybe being so tired was making him stupid.  

“And it’ll always be like that.”  Sam looked at him expectantly.  

“Maybe we should try adding him to the coven,” said Tucker.  

“No,” said Sam, “that’ll cause weird problems, like you said.  And we can’t do that during lunch time, anyway.  It’ll take too long.”

“It’s already more than halfway done,” said Tucker, checking his PDA.  

“Sorry,” said Danny. 

Sam waved him off, even though she was frowning hard.  “We should have realized that we needed some kind of limits.  We messed up, too.”

“It is very unusual for this to happen,” said Winterdew, helpfully.  “It is my understanding that a patron would normally be able to regulate.  I’m not sure if the fault is in your status as a half ghost or in your relative youth– Not that it is your fault at all, Great One.”

“Indeed,” said Frostbite, who was giving Winterdew a look out of the corner of his eye.  

“Mhm,” said Danny.

“We don’t want you to be like this all the time,” said Sam, apparently still trying to do… whatever it was she was trying to do.  “We care about you.”

Tucker nodded, earnestly.  

“I… know that?” said Danny, feeling bewildered.  

“Okay,” said Sam, “but does it make you feel like, I don’t know, you don’t need to send us so much ectoplasm or energy or whatever?”

“I already feel like that.”

“Do you?”

Did he?  Danny didn’t know.  He wasn’t sure he felt that he was sending them energy, per se.  On the other hand…  Danny was starting to feel… weirdly uncomfortable in addition to feeling exhausted.  This was a long time to be so… human.  So heavily, solidly physical.  

The last time he’d felt like this…  He wasn’t sure.  Maybe he felt like that for a few seconds when he accidentally flew through the Ghost Catcher that one time, but that had been so brief that it had hardly registered.  

But his discomfort…  What Sam was saying…  She and Tucker didn’t want him to feel like this.  He wouldn’t mind feeling uncomfortable, to make sure they were protected.  That’s why he’d been willing to try a familiar ritual.  But if it wasn’t necessary… 

Well, he already knew that.  More or less.  

So, he didn’t get an epiphany where he suddenly felt better.  He just got an awkwardly long frustrated staring contest with Sam and Tucker.   

“Any change?” asked Sam.  

Frostbite cleared his throat.  “Even if the Great One has managed to adjust the amount he is sending to you, it will take some time for him to recover.”

Gratefully, Danny flashed Frostbite a smile and a double thumbs up.  “So, we can head back to school?”

“I would prefer it if you stayed for observation, in case of complications,” said Frostbite, “but, to be truthful, there isn’t much we can do for you, if this problem originates from your contract.”

“It certainly does,” said Winterdew.  “I may not be as well versed in this as I am in other types of magic, but I can tell that, at least.”

Frostbite nodded, conceding the point.  “And there currently aren’t any other health issues that I can see, although some might arise if this continues.  I also know that your condition will make it inconvenient to travel as you normally would.”

“Not to mention our parents,” said Sam, venomously.  

“So I can understand if you want to return home now.  However, for my own peace of mind, if you do not come back within a week, I will come find you.”

That promise almost sounded like a threat, but Frostbite was just so sincere about it.  Danny couldn’t do anything but nod.  

Then, he remembered something else.  

“You guys don’t happen to have any boxes you aren’t using, do you?”

,

Danny sat down under the tree in front of the school.  Sam sat down next to him and watched as other kids got on the bus.  Tucker stayed standing for a minute longer, typing something on his PDA.  

“What are you even doing?” she asked.  

Tucker shrugged.  “Programs and stuff.”

“For what?”

“Messing with Skulker.”

“A noble goal,” said Danny.  He had his eyes closed, but if he was paying attention he was doing better than he had been before.  

“Are you feeling better?” she asked.  

“Ask me tomorrow,” said Danny.  He groaned and rubbed his face.  “At least there haven’t been any attacks today.”

That they knew of, anyway.  Sam wasn’t sure that Danny’s ghost sense was working.  

“Mhm,” said Tucker, agreeing.  He sat down on Danny's other side.  “Hey, uh, maybe I should've brought this up when we were over at Frostbite’s, but at the very end of the ritual, you said something extra, didn't you?”

“... Yes?” said Danny, very hesitantly.  

“Yeah,” said Sam, “you did.  We passed out right after, so I didn't really remember.  What did you say?”

Danny blushed hard enough that Sam could see the faint pale lines of an electrical scar licking up the side of his face.  

“It's not- I don't see how it could've affected anything in the ritual…”  If it was possible, he blushed harder.  His eyes tracked the few students who hadn’t gotten on the buses yet.  

“But what was it?” asked Tucker.  “It can’t have been that bad, right?”

Sam’s vision rippled briefly, as if reality itself was being pinched, and then Danny vanished.  She prodded the space where Danny had been.  “Danny?” she whispered, aware of all the people still around.  It didn’t seem as if anyone had noticed, but still.  “Is he invisible and intangible or did he just teleport or something?”  It wouldn’t be the first time Danny had gotten a new power at a truly random and semi-inconvenient time.  

“I don’t know,” said Tucker, also waving his hand around.  “That was a lot more, uh, dramatic than he usually is, when he disappears.  Sometimes there’s mirage-looking stuff, but not like that.  Do you think he really just… fixed the problem because he was embarrassed? ”

There was another weirdly inverted ripple that pricked and pulled at Sam’s skin and Danny reappeared.  As red as he’d been before, he was now pale.  His eyes shone bright, even in the sun, and his hair seemed to float for a minute before settling.  Green sparks floated in the air and static gathered briefly on the edges of Sam’s vision.  He was as ghostly as Sam had ever seen him in human form.  He felt ghostly, too.  Where his arm pressed against hers, it was ice cold.

Then he inhaled, and life flowed back into him.  “Sorry,” he said, hoarsely.  “I think that was me, I don’t know, recalibrating or something.”  He visibly swallowed.  

“Your powers are back?”

“Not really.”  He rubbed his eyes, then shook his head, as if clearing it.  “I’m still running on empty.”

“Right,” said Sam.  “But you feel your energy coming back, now?”

“No idea.  But that was something.  Intangibility and invisibility turning back on, at least.  I don’t know.  I don’t think I can do it again right now.”

“Cool,” said Tucker.  “Are we going to need to carry you home or call Jazz?”

“I can walk, like usual,” said Danny.  “But, uh.  It’d be cool if we went to my house first.”

Tucker nodded, then patted Danny’s shoulder.  “So…  What did you say?  During the ritual?”

Danny turned pink again.  The blush wasn’t quite as deep as before, but it was still impressive.

“I’m curious now, too,” she admitted.  “But… if it’s really that bad, and you’re feeling better, now, I guess it isn’t that important.”

Danny squirmed, then covered his face.  He said something, but the sound of the buses pulling away drowned it out.

“Say again?” asked Sam.  

“I love you,” he mumbled through his hands.  “That’s what I said.  During the ritual.  I love you guys.”

“Aw,” said Tucker.  “We love you, too, man.”

“Me too,” said Sam.  Then, because she felt like that wasn’t enough. “I love you.  Both of you.”

Now she was blushing, too, darn it.  

She stood up.  “We should work out some plan to test everything.”

“Everything is a lot,” said Tucker, also standing.  Together, they pulled Danny to his feet.  

“Maybe tomorrow, though,” said Danny.  “When I feel less like roadkill.”

.

Later, that summer…

Sam and Tucker flanked Danny as he shivered.  He was not a fan of his new power at all.  Neither was Sam, after he froze over a substantial chunk of her greenhouse.  

Then again, it was the main reason the three of them hadn’t been mind-controlled by a giant plant shaped like a chicken man, so.  Tradeoffs.  

They walked through the storm sewers in a bubble of chilled air held together with a shield.  Sam and Tucker had ghost rays at the ready - despite all the things they’d learned to do with magic, ghost rays had turned out to be the most reliable thing to use in a fight.  

(Meanwhile, intangibility was the least reliable, although Danny couldn’t really blame them for that.  He wasn’t always the best at using intangibility in battle, either.  Invisibility was the next best, and the only other one they could do at-will under pressure.  Other things, they had to use incantations for, which was somewhere between really cool and tedious.)

Frost formed in their footprints as they walked.  Danny was pushing some of this new power out to Sam and Tucker, but only a little of it.  He could barely cope with how cold it was making him, and he was a ghost.  

He breathed in and out, ghost sense triggering each time, reacting to the ghost plants that were growing even here, and the shield pulsed with his breath, trying to contain everything.  It was taking all of Danny’s concentration to maintain.  That is, all of the concentration that wasn’t dedicated to not letting his new powers run wild.  

It was a good thing that Sam and Tucker were here, that they had fought off that first wave of surprise attacks, because if they weren’t taking care of all the little plant minion things, roots, mind-controlled people, mind vines, and directions, Danny would have lost that concentration, and then he’d be freezing from the inside out… and probably swamped by enemies, too.  Some of them had to be at least partially resistant to cold.  

“How much further?” asked Sam, quietly.  

“Not much,” said Tucker, at the same volume.  He was referencing the Fenton Finder.  Just after this started, he’d modified it - with the help of a few spells - to show the biggest ectoplasm source in the area.  Then, he’d hit the speaker with a hammer.  A large hammer.  

(That had been very cathartic for Danny.)

Danny let out another puff of cold.  Sam and Tucker both shivered violently.  

“We’re getting you to the Far Frozen as soon as this is over,” said Sam.  

“Thanks,” said Danny, dryly.  

“With love,” said Tucker.  “We need to turn h– Look out!”

Tucker dashed forward.  Danny followed Tucker.  Sam brought up the rear, shooting ghost rays at flowers that looked like they belonged on the set of Jumanji. 

Danny swiped backwards with one hand, and an icy wave of ectoplasm blew past Sam.  She braced herself, but her connection to Danny kept her from any worse harm.  The plants, on the other hand, withered with the cold.  

And Danny dropped to his knees, shivering and gasping.  He flickered.  The space under his skin was crystalline.  

Tucker hooked an arm under his and pulled him forward.  “You okay?”

“Gotta get there soon,” said Danny, teeth chattering.  

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Tucker.  The wall in front of them burst open with roots and Tucker raised his hand, zapping them.  Sam joined them a minute later.  

“Where–?” started Sam, breathlessly.  

“Just past here!” said Tucker.  He, at least, was no longer bothering to keep his voice down.  

They stumbled around another corner as a group, and Tucker checked the Fenton Finder one more time.  

“Here!  Undergrowth should be right above us!”

Danny grinned.  “Then let’s take him out by the roots.”

“Shields first,” said Sam.  

“Got it,” said Tucker, dropping the Finder and pulling out his PDA.  “Repeat after me.  We’re doing a complicated shape and we want them to be strong.”  He started chanting, and Sam followed his lead.  

Danny, meanwhile, looked up at the ceiling.  There were roots, small ones, worming their way through the concrete.  He could feel the shields settle around him without looking, curved planes forming a funnel that would blast the cold straight up into Undergrowth.  

“Ready?” he asked, voice trembling.  He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on, or what shape he’d be in after he finally let go.  

Tucker shook his head hard, still chanting.  A second later, the shield snapped into solidity.  Danny looked at it for another minute, making sure it was sound, making sure it would keep the ceiling from coming down on Sam and Tucker.  Making sure they were going to be safe.  Then, he grinned.  

“I love you guys, you know.”