Chapter 6: Obsession
Eventually, Dani has to go back to Fenton Works. She stays with Sam and Tucker at the mall for a few hours, enjoying their company; but, as the afternoon wanes and evening draws near, their hangout time comes to an end.
"I can't believe my parents are making me stick to a curfew. I'm eighteen. I didn't have a curfew a month ago," Sam says when she notices the time.
"A month ago, they didn't know you part-time as a ghost hunter. I can't believe they made your curfew eight," Tucker says.
They manage to hit a couple more stores before Sam has to go, and even swing by the food court again to grab some food-to-go. By the time Dani goes home, she has four bags of new clothes plus a box of pizza all to herself.
"Here." Tucker leans across the passenger seat and holds something out to Dani.
When she takes it, shuffling the shopping bags around her arms so she has a free hand, she notices that it's a cellphone. Basic, with a touch screen.
"It's pre-paid. I have a bunch, so don't worry about it. Mine and Sam's numbers are on there, so you can text us if you want to hang out again."
Dani clutches the phone to her chest. "Thank you."
"No problem."
Dani waits until Tucker has pulled away before turning toward the house. It's hard to tell with the curtains drawn, and the harsh glow of the Fenton Works sign splashed across the building, but it looks as if the lights are off inside. A quick scan of the street shows that Jazz's car is gone, although she could have parked around back, or by the garage instead. Dani heads up to the front door and tries the knob. It doesn't budge.
Rather than trying the doorbell or knocking, she goes intangible and walks right through the door. Inside, the lights are off, just as she suspected. She doesn't bother turning them on. With her enhanced vision, she can see perfectly well in the dark, albeit in dark, muted shades.
In the kitchen, she finds a note from Jazz: Mom and Dad out testing weapons. I will be at Spike's. There's food in the fridge. Dani doesn't know who Spike is.
When she peeks in the fridge, she finds a tin-foiled plate of meatloaf waiting for her, as promised. She doesn't bother with it, though, taking her pizza up to Danny's room instead. The house without the Fentons there feels... pretty much the same. Without the ambient noise of Jazz's typing or Jack's distant footsteps, the house is far quieter than Dani has ever heard it. Even at night, Maddie's chainsaw snores—which surprises Dani more than it annoys her—keep the house from falling completely silent.
Now, there's nothing but Dani's soft breathing.
It's quiet, and yet, the house feels no less empty than it always does.
She deposits the shopping bags at the foot of Danny's bed and takes her pizza to his desk. Since arriving, she has cleared away enough clutter that the box can fit, although it's a tight squeeze. One side of the box rests on top of the keyboard. She looks between the greasy cardboard and the keys, wondering if it might wreck them. There shouldn't be enough grease that it will leak through, but she decides not to risk it.
Dani lifts the box and shoves the keyboard aside. It smacks into the base of the Challenger's display case, sending it toppling over the edge of the desk.
"No!" Dani throws herself out of the chair, reaching for the model. Her fingers skim the glass but miss. Blind panic fills her and something in her chest bursts. A bright glow launches from her palms and surrounds the case.
The model jerks to a stop a mere inch from the floor.
Dani's heart hammers in her chest. The horrible realization of what would have happened if she missed drains the blood from her face. Careful not to make any sudden moves, she pushes herself onto her knees, arms still outstretched. A thin thread connects the light surrounding her palm and the display case. It tugs on her, like a sixth finger, each movement sending an unfamiliar ripple up her arm.
Telekinesis is not a rare ability among ghosts. A common power, like intangibility, invisibility, and flight, more than half of all spectral entities have some form of it. But unlike those first powers, telekinesis can rely heavily on a ghost's power level and general skill. Where one ghost may struggle to move a toothpick, another can uproot a whole tree with nothing more than a thought.
Dani, until this moment, could not use it at all.
When she flexes her fingers, the model drifts toward her. The moment she has it in hand, the light disappears, and the model's weight hits her. Heavier than expected, enough that her arms bow under its sudden presence. She holds the model in a tight embrace as she rises to her feet. With her elbow, she pushes the keyboard out of the way to clear space and returns the display case to the desk.
After a moment's consideration, Dani nudges the model closer to the middle of the desk. Even if it makes things tighter, she doesn't want that to happen again
She returns to the chair, but rather than eating her pizza, her focus stays on the model. It looks undamaged inside the case, still fixed to its wooden base. At a glance, it seems sturdy enough that it could hold up to a bit of knocking around. A hard smash to the floor would probably do it in, though. The thought makes her stomach twist.
With most of Danny's things, their importance still eludes her. Now that she has her own clothes, and a phone, it's starting to dawn on her why people like things. It's nice, to speak frankly. Being able to have something, to keep it somewhere and return to it, is a nice feeling. But then there are feelings attached to the items, too.
Jack said this model was Danny's favourite. Dani has no way of knowing if she is right about why it was his favourite. It was only a guess based on what she knew of her cousin, what he thought of his parents. Danny didn't smile a lot when it came to them, at least not as far as Dani saw. Maddie and Jack rarely came up during cousin bonding time unless they came after Dani and Danny while they were hanging out. But, sometimes, Danny would smile so bright at the mention of his parents.
If he had done well on a test and they congratulated him. If they took him to the planetarium. If they went stargazing recently. None of these things happened often, but when they did, and Danny told her about them, his smile would be so bright Dani found it hard to look at.
Thinking about her new clothes, Dani wonders if the smile she can feel on her face is just as bright as Danny's had been.
"I'm sorry I lost the music player you got me," she says to the Challenger. "I didn't realize how important it could have been." She shrugged it off at the time. Even now, what little guilt she feels over it stems from losing something that could have been dear to her rather than something that was dear.
How many things has she lost that could have been important? She already knows the answer: far too many.
Jazz was distracted during the funeral. She tried to hide it, but Jack knew his daughter all too well. As she gave her final goodbyes to Danny, she kept wiping her eyes and looking over the crowd, her gaze searching. Jack looked over his own shoulder a few times, trying to see what Jazz was searching for. He couldn't find it, obviously.
There weren't many people in the crowd. Immediate family; Sam and Tucker, plus their parents; Valerie came, as well, along with Casper High's vice-principal. Jack had no other family to speak of besides his wife and children—now child. And the only relative still in contact with Maddie, her sister, could not make it in time. Jack understood although it hurt.
Over the past few months, Danny had grown closer with his aunt. Jack wasn't sure when it happened, and it took him a while to catch on. Maddie and Alicia spoke on the phone at least twice a month since Alicia didn't have a cellphone or internet. It was standard practice for Maddie to drag one of the kids into the conversation to say hi. Jazz always went willingly. Danny usually complained.
However, at some point, his complaints stopped. If Danny caught Maddie on the phone, he would eagerly jump into the conversation. He even started shooing out whoever was in the room. Jack blamed it on teenage antics. It wasn't until Jack caught the tail end of one of their conversations that he realized something had changed.
Danny sat at the kitchen table, phone to his ear. When Jack entered, he sat up straighter.
"I'll try and bring it up next time I see her. Not sure when that will be, but her birthday's coming up." Danny paused as the person on the other end replied, then nodded. "Cool. Bye Auntie Alicia, love you."
"Alicia? Don't you think your mother would have liked to say goodbye before you hung up?" Jack asked.
Danny set the phone down on the table. "That'd be weird since Mom didn't call her. Is she even home right now?"
Now that Jack thought about it, no, she wasn't. Maddie went to the store nearly an hour ago to buy cookie fixings. "Good point!" Now that Jack was paying attention, he saw the phone on the table was Danny's cell and not the house phone. "Was she leaving you a message for Maddie?"
"No, I called her."
"Plans for your mom's birthday next month?"
"Nope." Danny stood up and pocketed his phone. "I'm going to Sam's. See you later."
Jack paid more attention after that. There were other phone calls, always the same, where Danny would find somewhere private to talk. Sometimes he clammed up when Jack walked in and quickly ended the conversation. Once, Jack thought he caught Danny crying. It was late. Jack himself had only gotten home a little while ago thanks to a particularly nasty ghost attack that day. For nearly twenty minutes, he and Maddie had chased the ghost boy, trying to catch him while he was down. Phantom was a damn good flyer, though, even when injured.
The first thing Jack did when he got home was check on the kids, and that's how he found Danny curled up beside his bed, his phone cradled against his ear. Every blanket in the room was pulled tight around him.
"I don't know if I can do it anymore," Danny had said. "It keeps getting harder, and today I just–" his voice cracked.
The moment that followed was quiet. Not a single sob escaped Danny, but his shoulders shook. Jack was about to step inside when Alicia's voice, strong and steady, so loud in the silence, came from the phone.
"You're gonna be okay, kiddo."
Jack didn't go inside. Maybe he should have. Danny asked several times when they would be visiting Alicia next after the phone call. Every time he asked was like a punch to the got, but Jack never spoke up. If Danny wanted to come to him, then he could. If he was more comfortable talking to Alicia about this mystery problem, that was fine too.
He'll come to me when he needs to. Jack kept telling himself that until the day Danny died.
Jazz hoped she might see Dani in the crowd. A small part of her whispered that maybe she had missed Dani, glanced away right as she appeared. But, considering how few people were in attendance, that seemed unlikely. Beyond that, if a halfa did not want to get seen, they would not be seen.
Which brought Jazz to another guest she expected, although did not welcome: Vlad. Her worrying proved pointless, though, when he never showed up. As the lingering crowd thinned, Danny's friends and loved ones saying their final goodbyes, Jazz searched the heads once more. No red beanie or glowing white hair, and no pompous ponytail.
At the first opportunity, Jazz pulled Sam and Tucker aside. "Have either of you seen Dani?"
"Uh... is this some kind of joke?" Tucker asked. He glanced none too subtly toward the freshly filled grave. Sam at least had more tact and waited for Jazz to elaborate.
"Dani-with-an-i."
"Oh." Tucker shook his head. "No. We've been trying to contact her, but there isn't a great way to reach her. Left some messages with some ghosts, but that doesn't help if she's not in the Ghost Zone right now."
"She isn't." Jazz checked on the whereabouts of her parents. They were nearer the grave, speaking solemnly with Angela and Maurice Foley. Most importantly, they were well out of earshot. "I saw her at Fenton Works last night, but she ran away."
"Damn." Sam lifted the black veil hanging from her hat, revealing red eyes and smudged makeup. "I hope she's okay. Did she say anything before she left?"
Jazz hesitated. Although the whole exchange only lasted a few seconds, it had yet to leave her mind, for reasons she was ashamed to admit. And yet, no matter how guilty she felt about her initial reaction to Dani, she could not forget about it.
"No," she said. "Dani saw me and bolted. She might have thought I was my mom since it was so dark."
"We'll have to keep an eye out for her. I don't if she would stay without Danny here, but it's not like she has anywhere else to go, either," Sam said.
"I will, too. I thought she might show up here, but..."
"Sammykins!" Pamela Manson called from the cemetery gate. She tapped her wrist, although she wore no watch. "There's a crowd forming, dear."
Jazz grimaced at the sight beyond the funeral gates. A small gathering of Danny Phantom fans stood on the sidewalk, some bearing signs, all dressed for mourning. It was the most inappropriate display she had ever seen. None of them had breached the cemetery, but Jazz suspected that was because of the hired security standing at the gate and not the onlooker's own sense of morality.
She dreaded what the crowd might do as soon as she and her family left.
Sam scowled. "I can't believe them. I get if they want to mourn the local hero, but this is such gross behaviour." She looked remarkably like her mother as she hissed those words, her lip curling in disgust as she glared at the onlookers.
Jazz agreed wholeheartedly.
"I'll text you as soon as my mom takes me off house arrest," Sam told Tucker. "Jazz, let us know if you see Dani again. I'll sleep a little easier knowing she's alright."
Jazz nodded and gave her guarantee.
Vlad has lost obsessions before. Most well-balanced ghosts have. Any experienced ghost knows to have a few central obsessions and a handful of smaller ones. Latch on to a passing interest hard enough and all it takes is a little dedication to turn that into a full-blown obsession. Then, once it becomes tedious, let it go and move on to something else.
There have been some obsessions that he lost against his will. He once had a bonsai tree, a nice juniper, that he loved dearly. It went up in flames with his Wisconsin mansion the first time Danny destroyed his home. Vlad felt the loss like a bitter sting. At the same time, his determination to capture Danny for himself only grew, overwhelming painful prickle. Every slight against him only fuelled his desire more. Never had he fought so hard for something without immediate success. It made the game that much more fun.
And it was a game. Danny learned fast, but there was so much he didn't know, couldn't do. It was so easy to toy with him, egg him on, guide him to new abilities. The potential within him was limitless. Vlad could have overwhelmed Danny in seconds but there's no fun in that.
Perhaps that's why it was so easy for his other obsessions to slip away without him noticing.
He drifts through the halls of his mansion, familiar yet alien at the same time. On the landing, he drags his hand along the bannister, dust gathering against his fingers. His limb flickers, wispy blue, jumping sporadically in and out of intangibility. He designed the balustrades himself, inspired by the first twisted haunts he discovered within the Ghost Zone.
The wood cracks and splinters as his fingers solidify while passing through.
Before him, the front hall looms. Vast, open, a point of pride in every mansion he has owned. Better to impress the guests with a grand display upon entry. Now he finds it suffocating. All his hours of work, his obsessions wasted. Where simply looking upon his walls once filled him with pride, now they sicken him.
There is nothing for him here.
He went to such desperate lengths. Threats, bribery, manipulation, cloning. Nothing ever worked. Each new failure cut him deeper, made him more desperate, more eager. No. No, that wasn't right. He was subtle, clever, controlling an oblivious pawn in a cruel game. The winner, the mastermind. The cloak, not the dagger. The cat, not the mouse. But still always losing. Surely something he had to work this hard for, harder than anything in his life, had to be worth it.
And then, in an instant, in the span of an ectoblast, his obsession died.
"Maddie." Vlad moans, voice breaking. "Maddie. Maddie. Maddie." His please reach no one who cares. All his attempts to reach out, reforge that connection they once had, have been rebuffed.
"Maddie." Once, not so long ago, the sound of her name alone was enough to light his core ablaze.
But when, when, when, how, somewhere along the way that warmth died.
"Madeline, I need you." Please, please. Don't leave me to this. Don't go.
The cold wind whips against him, not unusual for an October day, but it startles him, nonetheless. He hunches halfway down the drive, the empty halls of his mansion long behind. He could return home, but... no. Home won't help him now.