I'm glad that the last few chapters got so many reviews. I'm not at all confident about my ability to write relationships, mostly because I'm so bad with them IRL. Seriously, I've never dated, and I'm so asocial I can't even keep up friendships if my family isn't involved. Any advice from you guys would be appreciated, with the understanding that I'm keeping romance strictly back-burner in this fic. I'm sorry to disappoint you guys, if you were expecting more on that front.

I'm a little uncertain about this chapter. I wrote a bunch of it while on a plane and/or super jet-lagged. Please tell me if you catch any mistakes!

Thanks for reading!

.

.

.

Chapter 56:

.

Danny woke to find himself constrained, constricted. He did not like this. He pushed against the soft restraints, but made no headway against them.

A whimper escaped his lips.

"Hey," said a familiar, soft voice. "Hey, Danny, it's okay."

Danny let himself relax a little. He did not like being trapped, but if she said it was okay, then it must be okay. Instead of fighting against the restraints, he instead fought to open his eyes. It was far harder than it should be.

He drifted off again.

.

.

.

Paulina was crying. She didn't understand. She had thought that he, her ghost boy, her love, Phantom, had come for her. He was supposed to be her prince in shining armor. He had even dressed the part. But he had spent most of the time talking to Valerie, answering questions, or deflecting them. Ignoring her. He shouldn't have done that. It wasn't right.

She sniffled, curling deeper into the hollow of the tree, not caring that her clothing, her only clothing, was getting smeared with dirt, or that her hair was full of leaves and twigs.

"Paulina?" said a hesitant, familiar, echoing voice. "Are you crying?"

"Go away," said Paulina.

But there were footsteps, coming closer. "I-" said the voice. "I didn't mean to-" the voice cut itself off again.

"Which one are you, anyway?" asked Paulina.

"Mirage."

Paulina scoffed. "Why aren't you with Valerie, or Sam?" she asked, bitterly.

"They went to bed. You should, too."

"Or what?"

"Or you'll be tired tomorrow, I guess."

"I don't care," said Paulina.

"I didn't mean to make you cry," said Mirage, quietly. Paulina looked up to see the boy staring down at his feet, his hands clasped behind his back. "I'm sorry." He fidgeted, and his whole form flickered and rippled.

"You humiliated me," said Paulina. "In front of them."

"I didn't mean to," said Mirage. "Sam might've," he admitted. "She doesn't really like you. But I don't hate you."

"So, Phantom does like me?" asked Paulina, hopefully.

Mirage cringed. "Not really," he said. "Not like that. Paulina, you... You do recognize that..." He hesitated again. "He doesn't hate you," he said, finally, "but he isn't in love with you, and probably never will be. He isn't- He's not quite what you think he is. He couldn't be what you want him to be."

"And that's what, exactly?"

"Perfect," said Mirage. "Paulina, you can barely stand the sight of blood. Sam, Tucker, Jazz, and Danny, they have to stitch him up at least once a week. He forgets things. He would never be as romantic as you want, in the way that you want. He isn't terribly sensitive all the time. Look at me, and what I've done. What I am comes from him. He enjoys messing with people too much. Ancients, what he's done to Sam and Tucker... He'd drive you crazy in a week, most likely."

"That's just a lie to get me to stop trying."

"It is to get you to stop, but it isn't a lie. We've been trying not to lie. It would make some things easier, though, if we did. But, Paulina, what you're doing, even ghosts usually consider obsessing over a single specific thing or person to be unhealthy. There is someone out there for you, I'm sure. It just isn't Phantom."

"What do you know?" muttered Paulina.

"Enough," said Mirage. "Think of it another way, if you don't like me, and I'm basically him, with different parts emphasized, after a while, you wouldn't like him, either. He has days where he's just like me. Does that make sense?"

"I guess," said Paulina.

"Okay," said Mirage, floating off the ground. "That's good. I can take you to a place where you can clean up, if you'd like, and I think that we have some clothes in your style, somewhere." He hummed, contemplatively. "Walking shoes, too, but most of them are used."

"Okay," said Paulina, starting to pull herself up.

Mirage grinned. "Great!" he said, fading into the trees. "Wanna play a game while you walk? I spy with my little eye..."

.

.

.

When Danny regained consciousness the second time, he was much more aware of his surroundings. He no longer felt constrained, but secure, wrapped in his blanket with warm bodies on every side. How did that happen, anyway? He had thought that there were enough beds for everyone tonight.

He felt a cold hand brush his cheek, and he let his eyes flutter open. It took him a long time to focus on the ceiling. His eyes didn't want to cooperate at all.

Danny could feel his friends, his sister, with ghostly senses that had, since coming here, and until now, been unresponsive. It was a comfort to have them so close. He could feel Tucker, to his right, hugging him like he was a giant teddy bear, emotions muzzy and satisfied from long, uninterrupted sleep. He could feel Jazz's jittery, excited dreams from where she laid, curled, on the end of the bed near Danny's feet. To his left was Sam, just now starting to dream, but deeply satisfied.

The hand ghosted over his cheek again.

Danny's eyes flicked up, over his head, to, finally, focus on Echo. Danny blinked, brain trying to catch up with what he was seeing. Echo hadn't spent the whole rest of the night like this, had he? Actually, that would be just like Echo.

The shadow brushed his thumb over Danny's cheek again. Danny leaned into the touch, but then the corners of his mouth turned down. He tried to sit up, but failed. He glared first at the blankets he was encased in, and then, noticing the ghostly tail tangled in among them, up at Echo.

"You know," said Echo, "if whatever is out there really is a threat, bringing them to the door is only putting them in harm's way."

"I know that," said Danny, trying to squirm out of the blankets without disturbing Sam or Jazz. "Kinda was hoping you and Fractal would stall, or do circles or something 'til we knew. Can you... not do that? I still don't know how this all works."

Echo sighed ostentatiously, and phased Danny out of the blankets before setting him down in a chair in the next room. "That's just it," said Echo, "neither do we. But we can definitely go in circles, or any other shape you'd like. We've got a few impossible ones, even." He grinned, more than a little wickedness showing through. "They'll never even notice that they're being lead around, as long as Fractal doesn't get flustered."

"I think he's been doing okay."

"Small groups," said Echo. "Remember when he introduced himself?"

"It'll be fine," said Danny, standing to look for fresh clothing. "Hopefully whoever is outside my door will go away before too long. What happened after I passed out?" Danny paused, frowned, and turned. "Actually, why did I pass out like that? I know that I've been weird lately, sleep-wise, but still..." His eyes flicked over Echo's face. Was that guilt he was detecting? "Did you drug me?" asked Danny, somewhat annoyed.

"Just a little," admitted Echo.

Danny groaned. "How did Mom and Dad re- Oh, my gosh. Mom and Dad. I told them. I told them."

"Yes, but they didn't reject you," said Echo, putting a hand on Danny's shoulder, "and even if they did, we've got that contract, and you are safe here."

Danny's heart rate, which had been spiking, dropped so fast that Danny had to blink spots out of his eyes. "How're you doing that?" mumbled Danny, raising a hand to his head.

"I think that it's a feedback, issue," said Fractal. "We all have the same ectosignature, after all: yours. Good morning, Danny."

"Hi, Fractal," said Danny, breathing through his nose, and trying to stay awake. "Either of you care to tell me what happened last night after you drugged me?"

"Sure," said Fractal, "but we should probably get Mirage in to tell you about the stuff that he did, and introduce you."

"Actually," said Danny, "I think that I might remember what he did. Something with Sam, Valerie, and Paulina. How did he keep them from tearing each other to pieces? And a card game? Sam won?"

Fractal's eyebrows went up. "You remember all that?"

"Well, I'm just guessing about Sam winning, but I don't think that she'd be that happy if she'd lost, if that makes sense."

"But you don't remember what Mirror and I did?"

"No, not really."

"How about Shade and Umbra?"

"Um. Are those the other new ones?"

"Yeah."

"No, no idea."

"Interesting," said Fractal. Then he shrugged. "Nothing terribly important happened. We just walked your parents back, and then went to go help Shade in the workshop." He sighed. "I really wish that we could show you and Tucker the workshop. I think you'd like it."

"Not worth the risk, even if my parents behave, we have the rest of the class to worry about," said Danny.

"Still," complained Fractal.

"I'm sure I'll come back at some point," said Danny, finally managing to find a reasonably similar pair of socks. "Assuming that I don't, you know, manage to die before then."

"You should just stay," said Echo, invading Danny's personal space.

"I can't, I promised to bring them back to Amity," said Danny, edging away.

"You didn't say when," said Echo, "and you could get Jack and Madeline to release you from the oath."

"Echo..." said Danny, warning in his tone. He didn't want to hear this. He didn't want to be tempted to stay, safe, in his lair, in his little bubble world. He was of course. He just didn't want to be. He wanted to be stronger than that.

(He didn't want to be tempted to trick away the freedom of others. He knew what being a prisoner felt like. He knew what being a slave felt like. To do that to others was unacceptable.)

Echo sighed, and took a deliberate step back, hands raised in a human gesture of surrender.

"Okay," said Danny, "is anyone else up?"

"Mr Lancer is," said Echo. "I don't think that he slept well."

"Maybe I should go talk to him," said Danny. "I haven't really had a chance to, since he figured me out. Ugh. This is so weird. Mr Lancer knows, and now my parents... And what was up with Valerie last night? Jeez, next thing you know, it's going to be the whole class."

"Hopefully not," said Fractal. "I doubt that they, collectively, could keep a secret to save their own lives, much less yours."

"Yeah," said Echo, sounding somewhat ill. Could shadows even get ill?

"Can you guys get sick?" asked Danny, seizing on the topic to distract himself.

The shadows did not appear to be surprised by the question. "We certainly felt sick right after you took that ectoplasm," said Fractal. "Other than that..." he shrugged.

"Right. I'll add that to the list of things I'm going to have to ask Clockwork or Frostbite. I'm going to go talk to Mr Lancer. You two should probably stay out of sight."

.

.

.

The population of Harmony consisted of, in no particular order, three hundred and twenty-six living humans, forty-eight of whom were under the age of eighteen, thirty-four humanoid(-ish) ghosts, six living dogs, an excitable ghost puppy that was, according to his tag, named 'Cujo,' twenty-seven living cats, thirteen dead cats, an elderly pony, a possessed teddy bear, a parrot named Leon who, most of the other inhabitants agreed, had achieved sapience, ten ghosts who self-identified as 'blobs,' and an unclear, but large, number of will-o'-the-wisps.

Anthony Trent hadn't the slightest idea how he had wound up (nominally) in charge of such an eclectic population. He supposed that it had something to do with his status as (former) copilot of the plane that had been the source of the majority of the humans in Harmony, although he would have thought that the dubious distinction would have made him a less likely choice. Perhaps it was because he was the only one who was passably fluent in Esperanto, in addition to his native French and job-required English. The fact that such a young language, relatively speaking, was the lingua franca of the Spirit World was odd, but, he supposed, no odder than the almost complete lack of doors in this place, or the way that blue, shape-shifting man with a clock (of all things!) embedded in his chest had directed them here, or, even, the strange, nude boy he had seen on the roof of the Door Building.

Which was, as it turned out, what Anthony had called this town hall meeting for.

It was, perhaps, a measure of how peaceful it was here, of how well the town lived up to it's name, that such an event was worth holding a meeting over.

When a town meeting was called, almost everyone showed up, except for those charged with watching the door, or the very elderly and their caretakers. The structures that the people of Harmony had commandeered for their own purposes had clearly been intended for a much larger population. A city, rather than a village. They met in the Town Hall, a rectangular red brick building topped with a cupola, which also served as an entrance to whatever laid beyond Harmony.

Some young men and women had once mounted an expedition to the deeps below Town Hall, braving the spiraling staircase. They had discovered a place that was, if possible, even more confusing and contradictory than the green wastes that they had passed through before. It was all stone staircases and almost-Grecian carvings, all covered in glowing, flowering vines, all going every-which way, some of which formed either very convincing optical illusions, or simply defied the confining logic of three-dimensional space.

The place beneath did not seem to be dangerous, however, and when the expedition got lost, the flowering vines had led them back by closing all flowers except those on the correct path, so the people of Harmony continued to use the Town Hall for their meetings.

(This also had the effect, acknowledged by only a few, of giving them an escape route if ever one of the more dangerous monsters from Outside got in.)

Anthony called the meeting to order, and the conversations died off. The younger children, some few of whom had been born in Harmony, took longer to quiet down, but they did eventually, smiling up at the mayor with oddly luminous eyes. He smiled back. The very youngest children, the 'native Harmonians,' were a precocious, well-behaved, bunch, for all that the eldest of them was only three. Their elders, even the teenagers, also seemed, to Anthony, to be different than children he had met before coming to Harmony. Perhaps that was only an effect of the small, tightly-knit, population, but at moments like these, when their eyes glittered and shone with shades of green and amber, he had to wonder. How much did this place effect them? Were they becoming more like ghosts?

(Unbidden: Were they dying, even now? Still, Anthony found it difficult to be alarmed.)

Anthony opened his mouth to explain what had happened, what he, and a few others, had seen, and to ask other witnesses to come forward, when there was a knocking sound.

The silence in the hall became profound as everyone turned to find the sound. No one really knocked anymore, especially not to come into a public place, such as this one. There were no doors, except for the Door. Even when people had tried to build doors, such things would be destroyed, usually when no one was watching, but sometimes even when they were. Something about this place didn't like doors, or even windows.

(It was a good thing that the weather here was so temperate.)

Instead of doors, curtains were used for privacy. Instead of knocking, people clapped, or whistled, or simply shouted. So knocking, actually knocking, was very unusual.

A boy, aged about twelve or thirteen, by Anthony's estimation, stood by the arched doorway of the large room, knuckles of one hand resting lightly on the lintel. His skin was deathly pale, his hair was pitch black, and his eyes were a celestial blue.

"Hello," said the boy.