Some of the ghosts flinched, straightened, or showed other signs of surprise when he greeted them. The woman from before, the one with braids, pushed her way to the front and gestured at him, presenting him to the other ghosts.

But none of them said anything, or made any other sound, much less started to explain anything to Danny.

"So," said Danny. "Why are you all here? Why are there so many of you?"

The ghosts looked at him. They did a lot of that, didn't they?

Finally, the woman with braids stepped forward and tapped her throat three times. Deliberately, maintaining eye contact, she shook her head.

"You can't speak? None of you?"

The woman nodded, the rest of the ghosts following suit.

"Could you maybe… try?" He winced. "I mean, you usually can't be seen, right? Maybe I'll be able to hear you, too."

The woman sighed, exasperation exaggeratedly clear on her face. She opened her mouth and closed it several times, her lips forming the shape of words.

"Okay," said Danny. "I guess not. Maybe you could write something?"

The woman pointedly swiped her hand through the kitchen counter.

"I could hold a pen and you could move my hand?" suggested Danny, miming the action, one hand 'holding a pen,' the other 'holding paper.' He didn't really want to do something like that. Not for very long, anyway, but it would be better than mime.

The woman took a few quick steps forward, and put her hands on top of his. She paused for a moment, and looked up at him, clearly surprised. Then, she pushed down. Danny couldn't feel it at all.

"Sign language?"

The woman raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, I don't know sign language, either," admitted Danny, defeated. Even if he did and they did, the ghosts here probably wouldn't have used American Sign Language. Or even, necessarily, a living sign language. "Charades it is. If you can tell me why you're all here, I'll try to figure out a way to help you out."

Assuming, that was, that what they were here for wasn't murder and mayhem. Then, the only thing that Danny would be helping them out of was the living world. Not in the sense that he was going to kill them, but in the sense that he'd be sending them back to the Ghost Zone. Somehow. All several hundred of them. Across an ocean from where the portal was.

At least he had the thermos?

The woman gave him a small smile. It was probably reading too much into it to interpret it as hopeful.

She turned away, and made a separating motion with her hands. The ghosts cleared a path, and she led Danny through it, to a door. Danny followed, a touch of ectoplasm tingling his fingertips, just in case.

The door led to a large, formal dining room. There were pictures on the wall, family pictures. Danny felt his breath catch in his throat as he saw one with him and Jasmine in it, sitting among the rest of the 'kids' of the family. Vivian, Lewis, Leo, Iris, George, and Eugene. He remembered Martin taking that picture, just a couple years ago.

He looked around at the rest of the pictures. There was one Fenton family portrait after that, and a few scattered photos of Maddie and Alicia from when they were younger. Of the others, most of the others were of Martin's immediate family. His parents, Theodore and Cathrine. His brother, William. His sister-in-law, Sophia. His nieces and nephews, Vivian, Lewis, and Leo. The rest were of Danny's other cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great grandparents. All of them in casual clothing, in casual settings.

It… hurt. Martin must have done the decorating, or at least decided which pictures would be included.

Danny couldn't believe he was dead.

The ghost woman flitted from picture to picture, pointing at people in them. Martin, William, Theodore, Isabella, Alfred–

"Something about the– my– the people who died," said Danny. The woman nodded sharply. "Did you– Do you know what killed them? Do you know why?"

The woman raised a hand and tilted it back and forth.

"Kind of."

She shrugged.

"So, you know what killed them?"

Another hand wiggle.

"You know why they were killed?"

A sharp nod.

"Was it murder?"

The ghosts around them bared their teeth in a dozen silent snarls. Danny understood the impulse.

The woman nodded.

Well, it wasn't as if Danny hadn't expected it, but the information came as a blow. He let himself close his eyes for a moment to regather himself, a necessary habit when strong anger made your eyes glow green.

Someone was trying to kill his family. Someone had killed his family.

Well. Turnabout was fair play.

"Do you know who did it?" Danny asked.

The woman nodded, then touched her mouth and shook her head, then shrugged.

"You know, but you don't know how to tell me?"

The woman tilted her hand from side to side again. Kind of.

"Okay, maybe I can just go through letters, and you can tell me when to–"

The woman was shaking her head vigorously. She held her hand up, fingers splayed, and then brought them together. Then, she held up both hands and lowered and raised her fingers several times.

Danny glared at her hands, stumped and frustrated. She repeated the motion, then threw back her head in a display of frustration that echoed what Danny was feeling. She strode over to the other ghosts and gathered up a group of them. She made an open-handed motion at them, then another as if lassoing them together, then that earlier motion, of raising and lowering fingers.

"There's more than one. It's a group."

The woman snapped her fingers - there was no sound, of course - and nodded.

"But do you know who they are?"

Shuffling. Some nods, some shrugs, some shaken heads.

"Could you point them out to me?" asked Danny.

The woman shrugged.

Danny pulled a chair out from the dining room table and sat down. "Do you at least know some of them?"

Nods.

"Okay, I can work with that," said Danny. "But… why are all of you here? Were you killed by these same guys?"

The woman laughed, soundlessly, pointed at herself, and shook her head. A moment later, her clothing rippled, shifting from something fairly modern to something a viking woman might have worn. A long smock dress with a strap dress over it, a belt, a cloak, and brooches and beads tying it all together. Golden clasps glittered in her hair.

She looked familiar like this. Like someone Danny had seen in a picture somewhere, once. He frowned trying to think of where, and only stopped when he noticed her frowning back at him.

"Sorry," he said. "Just thinking about about something. So… You've been around for a while? Viking times?"

The woman made the 'kind of' signal again.

"Can you - Do you know the year? I know the calendars changed, but…"

The woman held up nine fingers, then three, then two, then signed 'kind of' again.

"That's a long time," said Danny. "But, then what do you get out of this? What do any of you get out of this?"

The woman walked across the room, straight through the table, and pointed at another picture. It was of a young William and Sophia sitting on a picnic blanket in the middle of a flowery field, but Kyr Argyn was clearly visible in the background, and that was what the woman was pointing at.

"Under the castle… is it related to what happened to my grandparents? Or are you buried there or something?"

The woman froze, then nodded, once, twice.

"Is it… for you, specifically, just that you saw… whatever happened to my grandfather? To Prince Leon?" That didn't explain all the other ghosts, or why they were ghosts in the first place, but it would make sense as a motivation for the woman. If someone had been murdered on top of his grave, he'd want to do something about it, too.

The woman's face twisted up, as if she were trying to figure out what, exactly, to say, and how to say it, but then all the ghosts went stiff and turned to face the door. Danny felt it, too. An approach. A newness. Mist dribbled sluggishly from his lips.

He stood, turning as he did so to face the dining room door. Vivian was standing there, her face pale. Right next to her, on the wall near the door, was a photo of her, and it struck Danny that she was dressed just like she was in the photo - business casual, large colorful barrettes, the lesser seal and key on the bracelet on her wrist.

The expression she wore now couldn't be more different, though. In the photograph, Vivian was laughing. Here, in the dining room, her face was twisted with despair.

Danny saw her mouth the words oh, ancestors, but she didn't say anything out loud. She couldn't.

After all, Vivian was quite dead.