Chapter 285: Jinx
.
"How hard could it be," grumbled Sam, glaring at the flickering ghost shield that surrounded the White House. "I just had to say it."
Now, the shield around the White House wasn't any good. In fact, it was worse than the shields the Fentons had before they got the portal running. The shield projectors were less reliable than accommodations for dietary restrictions at Casper High. The shield itself looked weak and patchy, with some areas stronger and thicker than others. By the way it rippled by the trees and shrubbery, it also didn't seem to go underground, or do any good at accommodating physical, normal-matter objects in their path.
But it was still a shield. And if they had a shield out here, around the whole building, they probably had ones around individual rooms.
It was also troubling, how quickly they'd got this up. Sam had known they'd probably had access to at least some of the GIW's inventions, they were the one's backing them, but she'd thought that most of the useful ones had been lost with the GIW headquarters.
She should have known better.
This would make things more difficult.
"Mrs. Manson, Miss Manson," said the president. He was wearing a Fenontworks Specter Deflector. Probably the one Maddie Fenton had given her sister. "I'm glad you were able to come back safely."
"So are we."
Sam held back her comment about the Spector Deflector until they had gotten inside. "I hope you haven't been trying to give any of the ghostly members of delegation a handshake while wearing that."
"Pardon?"
"The Spector Deflector is a taser for ghosts," said Sam. "I know we've mentioned that before. You aren't going to get much done when brushing up against you will hurt the people you're negotiating with."
"It's hard to get anything done when everyone is worried that the people I'm negotiating with are going possess me."
"Ghosts come with weapons build in," said a man whose name Sam couldn't remember at the moment. "Consider it leveling the playing field, Miss Manson."
"Overshadow," said Sam.
"What about shadows?"
"It's called overshadowing, not possession. There's a difference."
"Perhaps we can discuss this later," said Pamela. "We're still not entirely recovered. I'm sure you can imagine."
"I don't know," said the president. "I'm lucky enough not to have ever been in a hostage situation."
"But you did get dragged through the Ghost Zone," said Pamela, "and goodness knows, that's upsetting enough."
Sam half listened as her mother and the president rebuilt their rapport, or whatever they were calling it now. They wouldn't be here for long before going back to the embassy. She scanned their surroundings. How much of this would Freakshow have had access to, before he was sent away? His Miss Forest had been Mrs. Klein's sister. Would Freakshow have trusted her to move the anchor, whatever it was?
Probably not. So, they were looking for places Freakshow would have been in or near with minimal supervision.
Maybe the Chef would have a better idea of where to start looking. Or Inky. They'd have to discuss it carefully.
.
.
.
Vlad had been in the Ghost Zone for too long. He'd rather gotten wrapped up in research and in… other things.
Daniel. Ellie. Damien. News of Dmitri. And… Dustin. Dustin was the other one's chosen name. Even that aggravating young man who went by Dan and kept stopping by to taunt him about random things.
He couldn't help but… wonder.
Wonder what could have been.
Wonder what he could do to grasp that possibility regardless.
It was, most likely, a fruitless endeavor. He had been chasing around legal and medical records for days now, driven on by Obsession and stubbornness.
Even so…
He stacked his reading materials to one side. Even so.
Daniel, for all the ridiculousness of the situation had been right. He hadn't exactly tried to mend bridges, instead falling back on old patterns, trying to force things.
He should have known, by now, that it didn't work that way.
Buying his way into the children's favor was most likely a futile effort. They'd take his money, but they wouldn't consider meaningful, emotionally. A gesture of reconciliation would have to be far more personal. But how could he make such a gesture if they distrusted him so much? There had to be intermediate steps.
Putting reconciliation to the side for the moment, what peace offerings could he bring? Besides what he was already doing in Amity Park with the medicine and other supplies.
He rested his chin on his hands and contemplated his options. He'd been doing this frequently during his time here. But he'd just been going around in circles.
There had to be something that only he could give them. A link to human lives—But did they even want that anymore? Or would they be satisfied with the new order of Amity Park? It seemed likely that Daniel, at least, would be.
Daniel… Daniel would be difficult, regardless. He was always defiant from the very beginning, always suspicious and uncooperative.
What about the others? What could he give them that no one else could? He had made them. There had to be something.
He had made them.
Perhaps that was something.
He stood up, a new purpose in mind. Much of his cloning research had been destroyed by Daniel – and rightly so, Vlad now grudgingly admitted – but he had kept what he could, including records of the clones' growth and development. No one else had that. No one else could have that. As common as children-by-theft were (which was, in fact, not very), Vlad had never heard of anyone successfully making any out of a liminal.
It was time to pay a visit to Colorado.
.
.
.
Danny rubbed his face and squinted out at the fruit trees populating the park. They hadn't cut down any trees, in there that Danny could detect, but there were also many trees bearing fruit that really, really, shouldn't.
So. That had been sorted out. Mostly.
Now what?
Now… Now trying to get the 'zoned out' ghosts to 'wake up.' And diplomacy. And trying to get the last of his little siblings to form. And helping Clockwork.
All important things. All things he wanted to do. But… he didn't want to have to do them.
At least all the trials were done with.
Which meant…
"I don't have to go back to Libra, do I?" asked Danny.
"You do have many of your belongings, much of your correspondence, your doctor, and your still-sleeping clone there," said Clockwork, sounding faintly amused. "Not to mention the Regency Council, although that can move easily enough. You will want to return eventually. But I suspect you mean to ask if you must stay there, and the answer to that is no. You have fulfilled all your oaths."
"I haven't managed to get Tucker back here," said Danny. "And oaths are different that obligations in general. Which you sort of pointed out with that whole list of yours."
"Yes, I think that was quite neat of me," said Clockwork.
"Yeah," said Danny, slumping on the bench and letting his eyes unfocus as he stared at a pine tree with strange orange fruits growing from its branches. "Hm."
"What's on your mind, Daniel."
"It's silly," said Danny.
"Humor me," said Clockwork.
"Do you think we could invite humans to the Holiday Truce?"
"To one of the celebrations? I don't see why not. Although," said Clockwork, "it would be up to them to accept."
"Right," said Danny. "Right." He blinked, realizing something else. "I don't have to go back to Libra."
"Yes?"
"I can go visit Dmitri!" He jumped up, floating several feet above the ground. "Let's go!"
.
.
.
"I want to go back with you," said Dmitri, pinching and worrying at a bit of Tycho Bearhe's fur.
"Are you quite sure?" asked Sojourn, looking up from a letter he was writing. "No one would take it amiss if you wanted to stay home for a little while after everything you experienced."
"Home is with you," said Dmitri.
"I feel the same way about you," said Sojourn, "and I will always return for you, no matter how far I travel, but it's alright to stay in one place to heal."
"No, literally," something in him cringing slightly at the contradiction. "I've never actually existed anywhere else for a long time before. Not while I was, um, awake."
"Ah, truly?"
"Yeah," said Dmitri. He didn't really want to think deeply about Vlad's labs and the things he did in them, nor the ways he'd been asked to spy on people. He really hadn't been awake back then. "The embassy is the longest I've ever stayed somewhere."
"In that case," said Sojourn, "I should likely show you my lair soon. I spend little time there, but it's a good place to rest. Perhaps we could look for your lair as well, so you know you always have a safe place of your own to retreat to."
"I know where my lair is," said Dmitri. He felt… Sojourn wasn't trying to get rid of him, was he?
"You do?"
"Ellie told me. She thinks we all share."
"That's certainly unusual," said Sojourn. "But given your unique circumstances, not shocking."
"But I want to stay with you," said Dmitri, hoping he wasn't whining.
"Alright," said Sojourn. "I just wanted to make sure you knew you had options, that you didn't feel forced."
Dmitri didn't think he'd ever feel forced to stay with Sojourn. Well, he corrected his thoughts, in Sojourn's general vicinity and care, not constantly face-to-face. Privacy was a thing.
"Okay," said Dmitri. "When are we going?"
"I think the doctors want to keep you under observation for a few more days," said Sojourn. "We'll decide after they release you."
There was a knock on the door to the room.
"Come in," said Dmitri.
One of the nurses, a bald ghost with hieroglyphs tattooed on her head under her nurse's cap, leaned in. "You have a visitor," she said.
"Who?" asked Dmitri, frowning. There weren't a lot of people he knew, and he was pretty sure most of them would be back in the human world, doing damage control and hunting down Freakshow.
"The prince," said the nurse.
Danny.
Ah. That made sense.
But hadn't he sworn to stay in Libra?
"He's here?"
"Yes," said the nurse. "If you don't want to see him, I can send him away."
"Um," said Dmitri. He rubbed his hand over Tycho Bearhe's fur. "No. I'll talk to him. He can come in."
It took a few harried minutes for Danny to be fetched. He hadn't been waiting nearby, apparently, which made sense. Duat was pretty good about security and patient comfort and things like that.
When he finally stood in the doorway, he looked strained. Clockwork floated placidly behind him.
"Hi," said Danny.
"Hi," said Dmitri.
They stared at each other. Rather, Dmitri stared rather desperately at Danny, who seemed to believe that avoiding eye contact would make him seem less threatening.
"Sojourn," said Clockwork. "It's good to see you again. I have some updates from the Regency Council that you might be interested in hearing."
"Ah, you have excellent timing. I was just about to send a request."
"I always do," said Clockwork.
They promptly left.
"Did you like him?" asked Danny, suddenly.
"What?"
"Tycho," said Danny. "I kind of—You remind me a lot of Jazz, and saying she loves Bearbert would be an understatement…" He trailed off, eyes widening. "Oh, gosh, I should have tried to see if the GIW missed him when I was home…"
"You… went back to Amity Park?"
"Freakshow tried to do something to the shield there," said Danny, straightening. "I wanted to talk to you about that, actually. Clockwork says he thinks he was trying to use it to spread his mind control, but we still aren't sure, since he doesn't want to talk. We sent him back to the Americans with Sam and Mrs. Manson."
"You what?"
"It was the condition for getting permission to hunt him down in the first place," said Danny, leaning forward apologetically.
Dmitri felt his lips wobble. He didn't like the thought of Freakshow being loose.
"They will put him in jail," said Danny. He sighed, then continued to speak quietly. "I'm sorry. I just needed a way to stop him and save Sam and Mrs. Manson without starting a war. It isn't ideal."
"What about," said Dmitri, "what about the other one? The woman?"
"We handed her over, too. Powerful relatives."
"That's stupid."
"I know," said Danny. "We got everyone back, though. All the ghosts who were captured. We just have to figure out how to break them out of whatever Freakshow did to them." He waved his hand in front of his face. "I was sort of wondering… Do you know how you broke out of Chandler's – that was the woman's real name, Chloe Chandler – control?"
"Dan knocked me out," said Dmitri.
Danny winced. "We tried that with some of the others," he said. "It didn't work very well."
Dmitri didn't want to think about it. He really didn't. But he understood why Danny was helping. "I guess," said Dmitri, "that it was also… I wasn't being very helpful like that."
"Oh," said Danny. "I… know how that feels." He fidgeted. "I'm sorry for asking you about all of this, first thing. I don't want to- to make you upset, or scare you, or anything like that. I want to get to know you, and the others. Damien, Dustin, the- the one who's still sleeping. I want to just… sit and talk."
"But you can't help yourself," said Dmitri, no longer looking at Danny. "You have responsibilities, and you need to help. I…" He understood, in a way that was anchored deep under his skin, in the core of himself, in the best and brightest of the qualities he had received from Danny when Vlad decided to steal who he was.
"I get it," he said, finally. He wasn't entirely happy about it, but they understood each other, about this.
It was why Dmitri had chased after Freakshow all the way to his plane.
He was glad he didn't have responsibility for all the Infinite Realms, like Danny did. He wasn't sure he'd be able to stay sane. It was so large, and Dmitri was…
Dmitri was small.
"I want to know you," said Danny. His fingers twitched.
He did. But asking those questions was one of the ways Danny had justified coming here at all, instead of focusing on whatever he thought was the next biggest problem to the exclusion of everything else. Freakshow still having control of some people, probably, or maybe the treaty dispute, or maybe…
Who knew?
Obsessions were important. They were your reason for existing. But they weren't always easy.
"It's not that," said Danny, suddenly.
"What's not what?" asked Dmitri, cautiously.
"I'm sorry, I just—I didn't need an excuse to come here. I was just sitting on a bench in Amity Park with Grandfather, not doing anything, when I realized I could come here. You don't have to worry about me like that."
A memory that wasn't his flickered across Dmitri's consciousness. He shook his head. "You weren't just doing nothing," he protested.
"Near enough, and we kept talking while we flew over here. I can manage my Obsessions, more or less." Danny shrugged. "I just… don't want to pressure you, or… if you feel like I'm forcing you, and using my Obsession as an excuse, you can stop me, you know?"
"Oh," said Dmitri, taken aback. He wasn't sure Danny's assertions about his Obsessions were as true as he thought they were, but what Danny meant to say was not what he had thought, which meant… What, exactly?
"So… If you don't want me here…"
"No," said Dmitri, hiding slightly behind Tycho Bearhe. "I think—I think it would help, if you were here. At least until Sojourn comes back."
Danny smiled.
"That reminds me," he said, "I have another gift for you."
.
.
.
Vlad arrived at Duat hospital just in time to catch Daniel leaving. They gazed at each other, not quite hostilely. Daniel's eyes drifted down to look at the papers and laptop Vlad was carrying, then snapped up to look him in the eye.
Very slightly, he nodded, then left to follow his 'grandfather,' who was waiting patiently nearby.
Vlad suppressed a shiver. There shouldn't have been any way for Daniel to know just what he was here for, and yet Vlad had no doubt that he did. But he'd be damned if he'd let the little upstart intimidate him.