There was a pounding noise, the sound of something heavier than a human's tread running up a set of stairs. Shouting, followed by that bright, obnoxious laughter. The sound of a guitar being tuned. More shouting, followed by the quiet beeping of her ghost alarm. After a few seconds, it went off again, just in time for the young woman who triggered it to resume tuning.

The bracelets probably dampened her powers, Valerie realized with that part of her mind that had taken to always analyzing things like that. There had to be that part, the part that noticed everything and told the rest before she could figure it out. She would have been long since killed by ghosts if it weren't there.

It had failed her when it came to Danny, though.

Or had it? She had to admit, once she finally calmed down, that she wasn't terribly surprised. In fact, she felt a little stupid that she hadn't known. It should have been blatantly obvious. But humans couldn't also be ghosts, and Danny was quite clearly alive. There was absolutely no reason to think that the apparently normal boy was also a ghost. A half ghost…

But obviously, it was possible. Sandruu and Lucy were both part ghost, and both of them had pulses. Or at the very least, they breathed.

She had spent what remained of the previous day hiding in the room they gave her. There was actually a bed; apparently, the blanket and sleeping bag arrangement was simply the hippie girl's preference. Valerie lay staring at the ceiling, wondering where Danny was. Was he even still alive? His two children existed, so he had to be, right?

A thumping noise as Sandruu ran back downstairs. Yet more shouting and something about the Fenton house. Something else about Valerie. She crept forward and eased the bedroom door open.

"No, our Val!" Sandruu called in response to something she didn't hear. "Come on, Luce! The mall's under attack and she's not there?"

"Who's attacking the mall?" Valerie demanded.

A few feet away, the cyborg glanced in her direction. "Fright Knight. You know him, right?"

Valerie stepped the rest of the way into the hall. "And you two aren't going to do anything about it?"

"Hey, it's all cool, man!" Lucy replied, peeking around the corner. "Peace and love make the world go around."

Sandruu rolled his eye. "We're not going anywhere near the Guys in White," he translated. "Last time we tried to help them, my leg got snapped in half, and Luce had to spend a week in the Ghost Zone before her form was stable again. It was not fun. Trust me, they can take care of themselves."

There was a door slam that caused everyone to jump followed by a pounding noise on the front door and muffled yelling. The siblings exchanged glances and seemed to come to some kind of agreement; Lucy fell in behind her brother, who crept forward cautiously. After a moment, Valerie followed. She eased up to the corner and was just about to peek around it when the younger Fenton squealed, "Daddy!"

"Hey, sweetie," was the tired yet loving response. Valerie's breath caught; of course, it wasn't the voice she expected. Danny would be quite a bit older.

"Ms. Grey outside?" Sandruu asked around the time the pounding noise stopped. He sounded on the verge of laughter.

She could almost hear the eye roll. "When is she not?"

There was prolonged silence, the kind a family might share in greeting after being parted for a long time. Eventually, Sandruu, sounding supremely annoyed, began, "I thought you were going to feed my dog."

Low laughter. "Tucker is feeding your insane, vicious monster dog. If you wanted to keep me there, why did you tell him, of all people, that we had a guest?"

Bright laughter. "That was Uncle Tuck? You must have been blitzed or something, man!"

"I was not 'blitzed'."

The voices were closer; they had probably moved to the living room. As if to prove the observation, the couch groaned in protest of Sandruu's metal weight. Valerie listened to the pleasantries for a few minutes longer, then took a breath to steady herself and peered around the corner.

In one corner of her mind, she was happy to see that he hadn't inherited his parents' fashion sense. That corner of her mind couldn't help but appreciate how he'd grown, so she focused on it to keep the rest of her brain from shutting down. Even if she hadn't known who he was, he was quite clearly a Fenton. He almost could have been his father, in fact, save that his bulk was mostly muscle. Then his eyes met hers and, a moment of unsure recognition later, he was that nervous, blushing fourteen-year-old again. "Hello, Valerie," he said quietly.

The part of her mind that was still admiring thrilled a bit at the purring tone, and she squashed it down before it could respond with a blush of her own. "Phantom," she greeted him. Her tone was as cold as she could have wished, and it didn't make her feel quite as victorious as she thought it should.

Sandruu shot her a warning glare and shifted to a posture that implied she would be on the floor before she could blink if she tried anything. Next to him, Lucy leaned forward, as well, though what the ghostly hippie could possibly have done was under debate. "Don't you choose-off my daddy, man," she said. The steel menace in her voice would have been alarming if she'd had any power to back it up.

"I can fight my own battles, kids," Dan said, standing. Valerie's breath caught a second time as she glared up at him. It suddenly hit her that he could swat her aside like a fly and save himself thirty years worth of grief. So why didn't he? He sighed sadly and shook his head. "Thirty years too late maybe, but if you want to try something, here I am. I won't stop you."

The ghost hunter stared at him, but her attention flicked toward his children. He might not try to stop her, but they certainly would. After a few minutes, she shrugged and claimed the only remaining chair. "I doubt I could hurt you much, anyway," she muttered, staring at the floor.

There was pause before he said, "You'd be surprised…" Then he sat down again, and the moment was over. The siblings relaxed; Lucy started to strum a quiet song that Valerie didn't recognize. Sandruu and Dan launched into a conversation about German Shepherds and how much they hated certain half ghosts but had no taste in computer experts. And underneath it all was a current of tension, the feeling that they were all waiting for something to happen. And Valerie knew they were waiting for her.

Fenton Works had been empty. It didn't seem to have been abandoned, just closed up, as though whoever owned it in this time had gone on vacation. Or something. Valerie wasn't there.

Danny tried looking where she lived in the past…his present…but the whole block was long gone, replaced by an office building. He was afraid to simply go looking; he'd seen her older self chasing some black and white ghost earlier and did not much want to meet her. Consequently, he sat with his knees drawn up against his chest on the roof of the clock tower trying to figure out where his Valerie might have gone. It might help if he knew who had found her.

He shivered slightly and glanced around. One the one hand, he couldn't see his breath. On the other, he didn't feel the cold in his ghost form. It had to be his ghost sense, but where was the ghost? He shivered again and noticed that a cloud seemed to have dropped down while he wasn't looking; the light fog crept up on him, almost alive. It was just creepy enough to send him flying off into the sky again.

Behind him, the older version of Valerie swooped down and glared about, also looking for the ghost. She narrowed her eyes in his direction and started to go after him, but a quiet voice stopped her.

Good morning, señora ghost hunter…

"Who said that?" future Valerie demanded glaring around in all directions.

We did, the voice responded just as she came face to face with the pale, foggy being.

Valerie jerked back and aimed her weapons at the not-quite ghost, her mind reeling against the whispers that accompanied the voice. It seemed female in nature, dressed in a tattered white nightgown. Chains hung around her "body", swaying and writhing like seaweed, and one of her hands had been apparently torn off. Flesh hung in ragged strips around a wound that still dripped silver blood after thirty years. "Who are you?" the ghost hunter couldn't stop herself from asking. There was something that nagged at her memory…

We feel your hatred, your pain. That one betrayed us, long ago. Betrayed me…Join us, and we will make him pay…

There were too many voices; it was difficult to think. She managed to snap, "I don't work with ghosts!"

We are not ghosts, Silver whispered. We are the Malice.

Well, that was different, then.

A/N: Argh! The day I say I'm going to start updating every day again. Doesn't it just figure? Anyway.../shuffles feet/ I may not have planned this story in the first place, but when I realized it was going to happen, who better to show Valerie the error of her ways than the one person who could propably give evil canon Dan nightmares?