Chapter 7

Danny stepped up to the Manson's front door and stopped. The large house no longer felt threatening to him, after having lived in a mansion much larger himself, but Sam's parents still scared him. More so now than ever that he was dating their daughter and they knew his secret.

Gulping down the solid fear building up in his throat, Danny pushed the doorbell and stepped back a step to be closer to the sidewalk.

The door pulled open to reveal Jeremy, his face dropping from pleasant to annoyed. "Why are you at the front door? Use the back like you normally do in the future," Jeremy said, stepping aside to let the teen inside the entry hall.

"Sorry," Danny tried. "I just wanted to be polite."

"Noted. She's upstairs," Jeremy informed.

"Quit being so hard on the boy!" Grandma Ida scolded, getting a smile out of Danny as the old woman rolled down the hall to the front door. A blush quickly overtook Danny's face as she added, "He could be your future son-in-law."

"No son-in-law of mine will be part ghost," Jeremy retorted, giving a glare at Danny before heading to the family room.

"Come on, Danny," Ida said, waving a hand to get him to follow her as her electric scooter went in the opposite direction. "Don't listen to my son."

Danny hurried after her, keeping pace beside the scooter as they headed towards the elevator. "I know he just wants what's best for Sam," Danny said, trying more to convince himself.

"That's just another way of saying he means well," Ida informed. She looked up at Danny and added, "And that's the worst thing you can say about a person."

"Sorry," Danny said, hoping he didn't offend two of Sam's family in quick succession. They stopped at the elevator, prompting Danny to press the button to call it.

"Don't be," Ida said quickly. The door opened, letting her get in before turning her scooter around. Danny stepped in after her and pushed the button for the second floor. "You need to prove to him you are what's best for Sam."

"What do you think?" Danny asked, looking at the gray haired woman as she watched the door close.

"I knew you were the town superhero since last summer," Ida admitted to.

"What?"

Ida looked at Danny and said, "My husband was an inventor and a war hero. You act just like him." The elevator pinged, signaling they had reached the second floor. Ida turned as the door opened and added, "And honestly, your first year you weren't hiding it as well as you thought you were."

The woman road out of the elevator, leaving Danny until his brain caught up with him. He jumped forward and asked, "And you never told anybody?"

Ida stopped and looked over her shoulder. "It wasn't my secret to tell," she simply said. "Go see your girlfriend. She's been dying to show you her new idea."

Danny stopped and watched the woman drive off down the hall to her bedroom, trying to understand how long she had known. He watched the woman make it safely to her room before turning towards Sam's closed door. He gave it a quick rap of his knuckles before grabbing the door handle. Pushing the door open to let himself in he found himself face to face with a life sized cut-out of his Phantom self.

"Sam, did you steal this from those Comic-Con guys?" Danny asked before looking around the room to notice boxes, most of them sealed, sitting on the floor of her bedroom. Not seeing the goth in question he called out again, "Sam?"

"I'm coming," Sam said, her voice coming from the closed bathroom.

Danny gave the cut-out a glare, not even recognizing the pose they had him smiling in, before stepping over to one of the boxes to see black shirts with neon green writing. He grabbed one off the top and held it by the shoulders to read out 'Ghost Were People Too' with a dab of what he presumed to be an ectoplasmic splat sat on the right shoulder. He turned it around only to be surprised by a long list of city and states like the back of a band concert shirt.

"So what'd you think?" Sam asked as she stepped out of the bathroom to reveal she had on one of the shirts, abet a few sizes too large.

Danny looked her over, finding it strange to see her in purple and black plaid pants. She had the shirt tied at a side, showing a little sliver of skin, and the neck of the shirt hanging the other way to expose her shoulder and bra strap. "You look great," Danny managed to get out as he lowered the shirt without thinking.

"Not me," Sam said with a laugh. She stepped over to the Phantom cut out and twirled it to face Danny. "About this."

"You're gonna have to fill me in some," Danny pointed out, raising the shirt again to look at anything else.

"It's my ghost awareness group," Sam started, letting go of the cardboard cutout. She stepped over to one of the boxes that were still sealed and pulled a pocketknife from her pants pocket to slice it open. She pulled back the flaps to reveal buttons with either the t-shirt phrase or the ectoplasmic splat logo and continued, "Now that the world believes ghosts exist, a lot of Ghost Exterminators have popped up."

"You don't have to remind me," Danny mumbled, unwillingly brought to the memory of chasing down ghost mice the size of cats while being chased himself by the newest Ghost and Pest Exterminators. He looked at the shirt again and added, "But the elementals weren't people."

"I haven't come up with a good slogan for the elementals just yet," Sam admitted, stepping over to another box to slice it open and reveal more t-shirts. "But I figured I'd start somewhere and I had the best ghost spokesperson."

"Me?" Danny asked, putting the shirt back in the box. "Sam, I don't need people trying to figure out who I was. Your grandma already told me she knew last year."

"Fenton could be there too," Sam said hopefully as she looked up from where she was digging through a box of shirts towards the bottom.

Danny looked at the Phantom cutout, blatantly realizing how similar his two forms looked. He looked back at Sam and said, "If I'm lucky, people will just think I'm a wanna-be." He looked at her hopeful face, weighing letting her win and following his gut when a fear tugged at him. "You want this to be a country wide thing, don't you?"

"I've already gotten the okay from all the venues listed on the back of the shirt," Sam pointed out. She smiled as she stood straight with a folded piece of paper in her hands. She gave it a look, straightening it out, as Danny realized it was an invoice for the boxes.

"And how long?"

"The whole tour will take a year with how spaced out they are," Sam explained. "They only take place on weekends and you'd only be gone three days max for each one."

"Can I think about it?" Danny asked, secretly unsure if he would be able to do every weekend.

"Well," Sam started, looking up from the paper to study him. She paused a moment, as if surprised he didn't give her a confirmation. "Okay, but I need to know before the first weekend of August."

"I just don't know if I can be away that often," Danny tried. Quickly he added, "What if I found a replacement for the weekends I couldn't do it?" He walked around the room to take a seat on the edge of the bed, eyeing the girl with worry.

"Danny, most of your friends are Ghost Zone natives," Sam pointed out, sitting the paper on her computer desk. She turned to face him, leaning against the desk, and crossed her arms. "I can't go around with Pandora claiming ghosts deserve rights because they were once human."

"So what; Pandora doesn't deserve rights?" Danny asked with a smile, knowing Sam well enough.

"Like anyone knows she was once human," Sam retorted. "I need someone with a little less history."

"There's always Poindexter," Danny offered.

"Last resort."

Danny let out a laugh as he looked Sam over, a longing to hold her pulling at him. He pushed down the feelings, half out of embarrassment, and said, "Well, there's Kale Canoe."

"What type of name is Kale Canoe?" Sam asked, dropping her arms in surprise.

"Who knows where he picked that up," Danny said with a shrug. "He's the one that showed up Monday night."

"Great, new ghost," Sam said, rolling her eyes. "What's his thing?"

"He's like Indiana Jones," Danny simply said, avoiding the fact he was from the future. "I don't know where he's been for the past hundred years, since he's been dead since the turn of the last century."

"You found out a lot about him already?" Sam asked, surprised. "I thought Jazz was too busy with baby brother proofing the house."

"Sam!" Danny exclaimed. He knew that was what Jazz was doing, but hadn't thought of it like that in so many words. He gave Sam a pout before adding, "I found out all of that on my own."

"Oh, I'm proud," Sam said in surprise.

"Hey, what's that supposed to mean?" Danny asked only for his ghost sense to escape his lips while he was speaking. He let out a sigh as he pushed himself to his feet, letting the lights cover him. Looking at Sam he promised, "I'll be right back. I hope there'll be an end to all these elementals."

"We'll have to find another refuge," Sam mumbled.

Danny gave her a glance before flying through the wall. He gave a glance down to the street before flying over the house to the spacious back yard. Looking down at Sam's green house, trying to find where his ghost core was pulling him towards, and stopped as a glowing green thing heading to the glass wall. He watched it fly through the glass before dropping down, floating a foot off the ground as he followed it through the same part of the wall. He stopped, keeping as silent as he could, and looked over the rows of plants both hanging and on wooden tables. The flying ball of green he was following floated around a tall purple flowering plant Sam had labeled as a Night Salvia. He slowly pulled out the Fenton Thermos from his pocket, hoping not to startle the baseball sized ghost. He floated closer as the elemental hovered close to a flower, sticking its head inside. Uncapping the thermos, Danny stopped in surprise as the ghost flew back on tiny wings, its fluffy body green and black, and turned a small cat-like head towards him.

Quickly Danny pushed the button, sucking up the bee/cat combo, and dropped to his feet. He capped the thermos, wanting to look at the small elemental again but resisting at the moment, as he tried to remember the last time he had seen an elemental that was combined like this.

He jumped back in the air, flying through the green house roof and straight into the Manson house to make a bee-line to Sam's room.

Sam looked up from a note book she was writing in on her desk as Danny landed on his feet still as Phantom. "That was fast. What was it?"

"Sam, you've been keeping record of the elementals we've put in the reserve, right?" Danny asked, skipping her question as he kept a tight grip on the thermos.

"Yeah," Sam said, dropping her pen on the desk. She stood straight with worry on her face as she asked, "Danny, what's going on?"

"None of the elementals have been combinations, right?" Danny asked. "Even the ones we dealt with before?"

"Well, there's the extra horns or arms," Sam offered.

Danny held his free hand up, creating a shield big enough to cover himself and Sam, before releasing the ghost.

Sam's eyes widened in panic a moment before she noticed what the elemental was. She held out her hand, getting the little ghost's curiosity.

Danny stepped closer as it landed on the back of her hand, noticing it not only had a small cat-like face but also a cat's tail in place of any stinger.

"Aw," Sam said, carefully pointing a finger at its face to let it smell her. It rubber it's face on her finger, a small trill coming from it. "It's a little cat-bee."

Danny gave Sam a look, a smile on his face at her love for both creatures present in the small elemental. Dropping the smile as the seriousness of his fears resurfaced he said, "I don't remember even Vlad's experiments being…" he searched for a better word only to end up with, "frankenstein'ed."

Sam stopped petting the small hybrid, giving Danny a look before turning her eyes back to the cat-bee with a sigh. "I think you're right. Some changes happen to even animals when they cross over but not to this degree."

Danny gave her a moment longer with the little animal, admitting silently it was cute, before saying, "I need to put it in the refuge."

"I know," Sam sighed, giving it a pat on the head once more. She held it close to her head and whispered, "I'll come and visit you. Maybe even train you."

"Great, another ghost pet," Danny said with a laugh.

"You have Cujo," Sam defended, lowering her hand.

Danny took the chance and sucked the little cat-bee back into the thermos before changing back to Fenton, the shield dropping. "You're already thinking through names, aren't you?"

"I'm thinking Eldeah," Sam said with a smile. He found himself locked on her purple orbs as she added, "It means God's knowledge in Hebrew."

Danny found himself following thoughts of if they got married how they would incorporate both her Jewish traditions and his Christian background into the ceremony. Would their kids have to choose, or would they create some in between of the two? How much about Sam's family's traditions did he really know? He remembered her bat mitzvah when she had turned twelve and last Hanukkah he had been invited but after the year previous getting cursed, he thought it might be safer to hide out in his room as best as he could through the Christmas Truce and his own parents' bickering.

And who was Kale calling his wife? If she was in possession of something as dangerous as a mind reading pendant that meant she had to know about his secret. Could Sam be his wife in the future Kale came from?

"Danny?" Sam asked, pulling him out of his mind.

"Sorry," Danny started, taking a step back. He noticed worry pulling on the corners of her lips and took the step to be close to her again, putting a gentle hand on the side of her face. He pulled her closer just to give her a kiss, melting in the heat radiating off of her, before releasing both her lips and head. He gave her a smile as he said, "I don't know how long I wanted to do that."

Sam licked her lips, surprise playing on her face, as she said, "We've kissed before."

Danny felt his face heat up as he forced himself to admit, "But now I can get as many kisses as I want."

Sam let out a laugh as she said, "As long as that goes both ways." Without warning, she wrapped both arms around his neck and planted her lips to his.

It took Danny a moment to process what she was doing before his brain jump started back up. He wrapped his arms around her back, pulling her closer, as he tilted his head enough to free his nose. He covered the Fenton Thermos in a glowing green field, slowly levitating it to the ground to free his hands.