[A/N: a continuation of one of my personal favorite one-shot fics, Rituals from 2017 Phanniemay.]

Maddie couldn't stop pacing. She had tried to sit, she really had tried, but all this waiting, the not knowing, she couldn't take it.

The four of them had been in the waiting room for what felt like years. It was only a few hours, but still much longer than she ever wanted to wait.

Just this morning she'd seen her children off to school, both happy and healthy. It was beyond surreal that she'd find herself in the hospital waiting room almost eight hours later as her son was fighting for his life.

At first, she was suspicious when Vlad appeared in the hospital with his own special team of doctors that he had somehow talked his way into letting them be the only ones to see to Danny. She knew about his infatuation with her but did her best to ignore it. She was also very aware of how close he tried to get to Danny, and how much her son didn't like it.

If it were any other day she might have said something, but not today. Not after Jazz had described Danny's condition, as best she could make it out through all her daughter's tears.

Somehow the school's new ghost defense system came with some horrible side effects, ones her son was paying for.

But why?

Knowing she wouldn't find any answers here she decided to head to the school. They needed someone to clean up the mess anyway, it was a biohazard after all.

Mr. Lancer showed her the way and did little to fill the silent halls. He simply opened the door and let her inside the classroom, no fuss at all.

Even with the lights off, she could see it. The bright glowing splatter of ectoplasm. It covered the desk, slowly dripping in long viscus strands to join the puddle on the floor. There was a small trail that led out the door, probably from when they carried him out. She had noticed small samples as they had made their way to the classroom.

There was so much more than she was expecting.

Jazz said it had come out of him, out his nose, in bursts past his lips when he coughed. Her daughter said before he lost consciousness, he was crying it out as well.

She had heard of things like this happening before. It was usually just in old stories about seances, but it was possible.

She still didn't expect this much.

How did he manage to have that much ectoplasm in his system and not show any signs of it? Or was that why all their inventions kept keying into him? With enough ecto-contamination maybe it could register as a small ghost?

But there was no way a person could possibly survive that.

Her mind conjured images of her baby boy in the hospital. Struggling to breathe as that putrid slime oozed its way out of his mouth.

She shook the image from her mind. She needed to collect these samples and she needed to trace where this particular strain came from.

If she could do that maybe she could find the answers she was looking for.