The both of them stood in the middle of the street, silently contemplating the events of the evening. Vlad seemed to be done with his villainous confessions for the day, however, as he glanced downwards at the time from the antique in his hands.
"I'm taking this watch with me." He said, closing his fist around it.
"What?! Why? I'm not letting you do that! It was entrusted to me!"
"You've seen what can happen if you're not careful around ghostly artifacts, Danny. Considering I know more about them than your average local teenage half-ghost, I'd say I'll be more qualified to handle them than most." He started walking away.
"I am NOT letting you take that." Danny grabbed onto his cape, adamant.
"Why must all my actions seem villainous to you, boy? I have equipment in my lab that I can use to analyze this and figure out its purpose. You don't want another repeat of today happening, do you?"
Danny opened his mouth to protest, but just then, the sound of a Fenton vehicle rumbling towards them echoed across the neighborhood, his father's hollers audible to all living on both sides of the street they were unfortunately in. His arguments withered on their way out.
"Yeahokaysure as long as we get out of here."
Vlad nodded, turning invisible in preparation of taking off.
So did Danny. "But I'm coming with you to make sure you return that!"
"Stop being so paranoid, Daniel!"
"The last time you took an artifact of mine, you destroyed Rome. I have every right to be paranoid!"
They stopped arguing as the first ectobeam came their way.
Down below, in the street, Jack Fenton shook his fist and cursed as the two ghosts flew out of his firing range.
One short flight later, Danny was at Vlad's doorstep, of his mansion in Amity Park. They flashed into their human forms. For all the times he's intruded as a ghost, he could never get across the awe of seeing a house like Vlad's. His parents weren't exactly homeless and he's seen his share of luxury with Sam, but there was just something opulent and obviously grand about one of Vlad's mansions. They passed the decorative fountain and reached the porch. He stood staring at the detailed engravings on the window frames as Vlad reluctantly swung the door open for Danny. Lights flickered on inside, illuminating an empty hall. Vlad strode inside but Danny stopped at the doorway, unsure as to whether he should proceed.
Vlad turned and sighed. "Well, Daniel?"
Danny faltered, looking up sheepishly. The empty hall beckoned, and a stale draft of wind blew from it. Vlad was holding open the front door of his mansion for him, with an irritated twitch in his eye.
"You were the one who insisted coming with me. So why don't you stop standing there and come in?"
"Yeah but…" He hesitated. I've never been into your house willingly as a human before.
"Don't tell me you've changed your mind."
Danny snorted and stepped across the doormat onto freshly waxed marble. "You wish. I'm only doing this for my watch. For a rich guy, you sure don't have a reliable doorman, Vladdie."
"What are you talking about? Of course I do. He comes every Monday and Tuesday Morning, and when there's guests. Expected guests. Can't have him reporting my comings and goings to just anyone now." Danny didn't dignify that statement with a reply.
The boy tucked his hands into his pockets as he followed Vlad past the entrance hall with the curling staircase into a dimly lit hallway. He watched as portraits of unfamiliar people in painted landscapes followed him with their dead eyes, and counted the number of doors he passed. They were all closed, but he could vaguely glimpse the dining room across a corner, a row of empty chairs surrounding a massive table. Vlad's house was not just empty, it was strangely lonely.
Vlad led him into a cozy library slash sitting room complete with a minibar and a dead fireplace. There were dark paneled bookshelves filled with old tomes, and a few red couches placed on the carpet. With a flick of his wrist, the fireplace came alive, roaring with a strange reddish pink glow.
"Ambient ghostly energy. More useful than some maids are nowadays."
Danny whistled. "That could be so helpful when cleaning my room…"
Vlad gestured towards a couch next to him that he gingerly sat in. Despite the solid wood frame, the chair was more comfortable than it looked, and he found himself leaning backwards into the cushion. Vlad went to a bookshelf placed next to a work desk, and pressed a button that made a row of shelves depress and bring up a whole row of lab equipment niftily hidden behind the wall.
Secretly impressed, Danny wondered, "Don't you have a lab downstairs?"
"Yes, but sometimes you need to do research more than you need to experiment. I never place too many books in the lab. Fire hazard."
Danny wondered how many books he'd burnt before he learnt that lesson. Personally, he thought that this was one precaution his parents never caught the hang of.
The plastic snapping of surgical gloves was heard as Vlad got to work. He watched warily as Vlad carefully took the pocket watch out from his pocket and disinfected it with wipes. He then examined it, measured it, weighed it, took photos of it from every angle and eventually placed it onto an instrument that looked vaguely like a fancy metallic measuring scale. A glass cover was placed it onto it and a button was pressed. A whirring sound was heard as the pocket watch eerily floated upwards in its little glass box like Houdini attempting to fly. The watch rotated about an axis, and little greenish purple streaks slowly started to appear.
Danny, who watched the whole process in fascination, had to admit, compared to his parents who practically mashed samples together and called it science, Vlad had a much more scientific and practical approach to things.
"Just in case you're getting any ideas into that dense head of yours, Danny, I'm not going to take over the world or anything. I'm merely going to analyze the composition of the ghostly energies surround the watch. This thing is just meant to extract a sample of its energy in its purest form so that I can- "
"I know what it is. A ghostly equivalent of a centrifuge."
Vlad appeared surprised for a moment. "That's a very crude way of putting it, but it's not incorrect. I guess you're smarter than what your test scores indicate."
"I've never really done well in school, but that doesn't mean I don't understand." He reminded Vlad wistfully.
The older man contemplated this, unsure of what to say.
Vlad stared at his experiment intensely for a few minutes, then a 'ding' was heard as the pocket watch floated back down onto the tray. He then took it out carefully and used glowing green pliers to extract the purplish streaks that appeared in the glass box. Despite appearing gaseous, they adhered to the pliers. He placed it into a test tube, then added various liquids to said test tube before placing it into what appeared to be a dishwasher. A few complicated maneuvers later, a small slip of paper with the analysis was printed out from the bulky machine.
He sighed as if he had just completed some great chore, stripped off his gloves, and ambled over to sit down next to his guest.
"Would you like some tea? Coffee?"
Danny made a face. "That's okay, Vlad."
Vlad somehow managed to conjure a drinks tray on wheels from the minibar anyway, and poured a glass of wine for himself. Danny couldn't help but ogle at the selection in the fridge. Other than Vlad's arsenal of what Danny deemed 'posh drinks that cost more than a whole year's pocket money combined', there was also a small but complete collection of soft drinks, juices, and milk at the side. He gleefully grabbed a can of Cola off the shelf. If anything, he got a free drink today.
Vlad sipped at his wine and meddled with the pocket watch in his hand, unsure how to start the conversation.
"This clock is composed mostly of unknown powerful substances of ghostly origin, but I could detect some sort of time magic intertwined within it. It seems that it has many uses. Communication, prediction, prevention… But what's so strange about it is that despite how clearly powerful it is as an artifact, it is clearly stable. Most ghostly artifacts are volatile, unstable or cursed, like the Ghost King's ring, but this one can literally sit in the pocket of its owner for millennia without ever causing you so much as a bad hair day."
"What does that mean?"
"It means that this watch belongs to you. Or was meant to be with you, at this exact time and place. I suppose you weren't lying when you said it was given to you."
"Not everyone steals to get what they want, you know."
Vlad ignored that. "You must tell me where you got it from."
Danny did.
"The Observants! They visited you personally? This is larger than you or me both."
"You know them?"
"I know of them. And I cannot believe you know Clockwork." Vlad said, with a tinge of fear and jealousy. "That is not his true name, by the way. He is one ghost you would do well not to anger."
Danny rolled his eyes. "He's just another ghost, Vlad. And this must be connected to the strange things happening to the both of use recently." He proceeded to tell him about the magazine and what happened in the school. "The ghost I fought was one I thought I would never see again. It was born from one of Desiree's botched wishes. It's very unusual that she would appear again now, of all times."
"Of all times…" Vlad echoed. "And neither was my… business competitor. I thought I had gotten rid of him years ago. Something is definitely amiss here."
They sat in silence as Danny placed ice chunks from a metal bowl into his coke. The ice splashed into the black liquid, creating generous amounts of fizz as the ice clincked together.
"Events from the past are coming back to haunt us. Things aren't as they seem, and this pocket watch seems to be able to predict and fix these chronological irregularities just by being there."
"And Clockwork just so happens to give it to me. Why couldn't he just fix it himself?"
"Perhaps… Time is unraveling on itself, and he is no longer in a position to contain it" Vlad concluded.
Danny stopped adding ice to his coke, watching as the condensation dripped from the surface of the cup and formed rings on the table.
"Then maybe we can help."
_
Next: Danny gets a wardrobe change.
