It was lucky that in her shock, Valerie remained frozen behind the fallen pillar until after Vlad, (both Vlads? the single Vlad?) had long since left. Lucky for whom, Valerie couldn't decide, as she stumbled up and away for enough room to activate her jetboard. She knew the Wisconsin Ghost was powerful, and if he was that recovered from Danielle's massive assault already . . . Valerie wasn't the type of girl to give much forethought to her attacks, and she candidly admitted to herself that she probably talked a bigger game than she was able to play, but she didn't think she'd stand much of a chance against Vlad by herself and.

Holy shit. The realization hit her at the same time as the cold night air. The mayor was a ghost. Or. She'd been close enough to him to know that he was able to pull off still living human. Half ghost. Like Danielle. That was one connection made in this farce. But how did Phantom play into all of this.

She drifted along through the night sky, thinking about the elusive ghost. The data Vlad had provided on Danielle included her full ectosignature and the factoid that she was capable of masking it. How, he hadn't explained, but Valerie surmised that her human form was all that was necessary to hide it. Certainly her sensors hadn't picked up on the kid until Valerie had been practically on top of her, scanners set to the highest sensitivity. If Vlad hadn't given Valerie a general location to within a few blocks, and she hadn't scouted down that particular alleyway at that particular time, there was no way she would ever have managed to locate the younger girl. Scanning for her now revealed that unless she'd flown fast enough to reach the next state in the hour since they'd parted, then she had already reverted back to human.

And Phantom . . .

Valerie had always assumed the ghost boy had to have some kind of hiding place within Amity itself, the way he could disappear at the drop of a hat. But now . . .

If Danielle was half human, it stood to reason that her "cousin" also might share that affliction. They certainly looked similar enough that Valerie couldn't even question whether or not they were related: if they hadn't claimed being cousins she would have guessed siblings or . . . clones or something, it was seriously uncanny.

Valerie dropped down to the roof of her apartment building, dismissing her suit with a thought and trotting over to the door to the stairs on autopilot. The duct tape over the automatic locks was still in place, and she slipped into the stairwell.

Sneaking into the apartment was a lot easier when her dad was on nights. Sneaking in was in fact something of a misnomer when her dad was working nights. She locked the apartment door behind her and sighed, leaning back against it in sudden exhaustion. She wished she could talk about this with him. If her dad was less than understanding about the ghost hunting, he had at least started to loosen up about it after he'd realised there was no getting this ghost hunting suit away from her like he took the first one. Not that he had a choice.

Valerie sighed as she entered her room, examining the face featured prominently on her motivation wall. Phantom. The lynchpin in this entire mess, she was positive. She'd seen the Wisconsin Ghost- VLAD- and Phantom interact often enough to know that there was absolutely no love lost between them, and maybe it was this half ghost bullshit that lay at the center of it all.

She flopped down on her bed, burying her face in her pillow before rolling over and squinting at the smirking face of her number one target. There had always been something frustratingly familiar about Phantom, some name always at the tip of her tongue. Something about him rubbed her the wrong way, and it was more than just his destroying her father's career and reputation. It was that he was so frustratingly familiar.

She glowered at the wall, thinking back to earlier in the evening. When she had first spotted Danielle, her target had been in human form. She'd been too far away for Valerie to get a good look at her eyes, but she was certain the girl's hair had been dark, probably black. Standing back up with a jerk, she reached over to the nearest picture of Phantom and tore it off the wall. Pulling out her desk chair, she slumped down and fumbled around for a black pen. If Danielle's hair went from black to white, then Phantom . . .

Picking up a black marker, she began furiously scribbling over the ghost's white hair, turning it black. Once she was done she sat back, stunned.

Without a doubt, that was Danny Fenton grinning cockily from the photo in front of her.