"Um," Danny said, with a blank expression on his face as his mind worked rapidly, trying to come up with a solution. "May I have some water?"
Izzie beamed and replied, "Why, certainly! You are welcome to anything in the kitchen! Except the poison. Don't eat the poison, you'll die."
Danny started to say, "What?!"
"Oh! And not the potentially dangerous chemicals I keep in the spare pantry either! Ida, why don't you show this nice young man around?"
"But, Dad!" Ida started. Gladys cut her off with a look, mouthing, this idiot may be annoying but he just saved our behinds and you know it so shut up and show him around. Ida sighed. "Sure, Dad. Why not?"
She stood, and beckoning to Danny, led the way into Sam's kitchen. Okay, he was going to have to stop thinking of it like that. That was confusing. From now on it was Ida's kitchen.
That was going to take some getting used to.
Ida stopped right inside the doorway and spun to face him. "I guess most conventional standards would have me thank you right now. So in honor of this horribly confining society, thank you. And now that that's out of the way, why don't you just come with me and I shall show you where the poison is. Feel free to take it any time! Preferably soon!"
"What?!" Danny repeated. "Why do you want me to eat poison?!"
"Because!" she scoffed angrily. "You are only going to get in our way, besides the fact that you're some kinda weirdo from the future or whatever. And we are trying to get a reputation for being the ones who will always help! Whoever you are, and wherever you came from, I just WANT YOU OUT OF THIS HOUSE AND OUT OF MY LIFE, RIGHT NOW!"
""Wait. You mean to say that you were serious about me taking the poison?" Danny asked incredulously.
"Yes! No! Maybe!" she said. "Look, can you at least try to understand the position I am in right now? My father thinks we're related. My friends know that I picked some random guy off the street. A murderous thing attacked us. You claim to be from the future and are half- half- half-" she searched for the word briefly, and came up with, "vampire or something!"
"Uh, not half-vampire. Half-ghost," he corrected automatically.
"Whatever!" she replied. "All I know is that our dream is in jeopardy because of you! Right before you showed up, that was the first time it attacked us. I'm just worried that it's what's been causing all the mu-" she cut off suddenly.
"Murders," he finished. "You were about to say murders."
"No! I wasn't!" she protested.
"Well then," Danny said. "If that wasn't what you were about to say, what was it?"
"Um... er..." she mused for a while, and then looked at Danny sheepishly. "I was going to say murders."
"Maybe I can help you," Danny said. "If you'll just tell me what's been happening-"
Ida's face turned to stone. "No. No way. I- we still think you're part of the problem. Not the solution by any means. Now, would you just get your poison and die already?" With that, she stalked out of the room.
Danny stared after her in disbelief. Geez. Sam's grandma could be a bit of a jerk.
Izzie found Danny sitting on the couch, boredly staring off into space.
"Where'd Ida go? That girl, I swear," he muttered to himself. Then he sat beside Danny unceremoniously. "Hello, Danny. Did Ida abandon you?"
"What gave you that idea?" Danny asked sarcastically. "Was it me, sitting all alone on the couch? Or do you just know your daughter really well?"
"I think perhaps it's a little bit of both, halfa Daniel Fenton," Izzie said calmly. At Danny's surprised glance in his direction, he shrugged. "I am a genius inventor. Give me a little credit here. I may act all eccentric and stuff, but that's just an act. Mostly. I mean, there are times."
"Not even my genius mother has figured it out yet, and it's been two years," Danny told him. "Can you read minds?"
"No," Izzie laughed, a great, booming laugh. "Whatever gave you that idea, Daniel? But I do happen to have exceptional hearing."
"And you... what, heard Ida and her friend Gladys talking about it?"
"Precisely!" Izzie said. "You know about the town history. But perhaps not all of it. So I believe I shall enlighten you on this particular time period.
"It started about a month ago. A young woman was found in the river. Her name was Barbara Joans. A young man named Kenneth Dethloff was found in a box warehouse. Both merely bones with a few traces of flesh. They could only identify his body because his teeth were found to be intact and matched up with dental records of his. After that, we all assumed it was something like a freak accident. Then Carol Foster was found in the same state. She was the mayor's daughter, and as such, everyone panicked. That was only a week ago.
"Ida and her friends decided that, as the unofficial amateur detectives of the town, they needed to get to the bottom of these mysterious murders. So they began investigating the bodies and other such morbid things.
"What they found," Izzie continued, leaning forward intently, "was disturbing. In the area of Amity Park a society existed that was largely cannibalistic. The eating of human flesh was common and almost a ritual, in which the dead person's soul and talents were thought to pass into the consumer's person. The society would mark the skulls of those who were sacrificed in this way. They would carve into the skull a mark that said, 'Unkatarmanilab'."
"Er. What does that mean?" Danny asked.
"I have been eaten," Izzie said. "The victim's skulls... well, it took a dead languages expert, and an anthropologist, and a forensic analyst, but it was determined that all three skulls bear this mark."
"Well," Danny said softly after a pause, sitting back. "That narrows down the suspects we've got, doesn't it?"
Izzie leaned back and grinned in a way that was slightly disturbing. "Yes, I suppose it does."