For a moment following Danny's pronouncement, the room was silent.
"Um," said Star, her voice wavering. "Not to really derail or anything, but why are you three even here?"
"Sales for the fundraiser," said Sam, crossing her arms as she leaned against the wall. "We were going door-to-door. What are you doing here?"
"Star is my niece," said Mr. Lancer, blowing Danny's mind. "Andrew, how long is this going to last? A few hours?"
Wow, Mr. Lancer was optimistic.
Ghost Writer shrugged. "The last time I was in such a situation, it lasted for… two, three days?"
Unless Ghost Writer had gotten involved in another one of these in between now and the last time Danny had seen him, it had, in fact, been four days, not three. A whole long weekend, obliterated in favor of a heist plot. He'd been so mad. He was still mad.
But he wasn't about to correct Ghost Writer. He could just imagine that conversation.
"Alright," said Mr. Lancer, cautiously, "I think I have enough food for that long."
"You misunderstand. The plot in that case was resolved. When I was new to my abilities, I trapped myself and my half-brother in a– Oh, it doesn't matter, but it did last quite a while. We considered ourselves lucky in that we were already dead. The only way out is through, as they say."
"I think it'd be a bad idea to stay in a house with a murderer, anyway," said the Skulk'n'Lurk guy.
"You're right, Bobby," said Lancer.
"It's the Beholder, " said… the Beholder.
Okay, whatever. Danny had heard weirder. Technus, for example. The Box Ghost . Heck, he called himself Phantom. Still, insisting on something like that was a weird look on a human. He squinted, trying to see if the guy looked transparent or discolored.
He did look discolored, but just in the usually pasty goth way.
The thing was, usually it'd be easy for Danny to figure out who the ghost in the room was, but Technus and Ghost Writer were right there, not to mention the dead body upstairs, and he honestly felt overexposed and raw, like someone had taken sandpaper to his senses.
Maybe if he could get everyone to go stand on one side of the house, and then get them to come to him one by one… But there was no way to arrange that without outing himself. And maybe Technus.
Could he lie and say that he had a ghost detector? Or, people already knew about the dead body thing. Maybe he could just leverage it into a general dead person thing?
That… that was what he should do, right? To find the murderer and bring them to justice or whatever?
He didn't really want to let a murderer know what he could do. That body. It had been brutalized.
Heck, for that matter he didn't want to let his (potential murderer) classmates and teacher know what he could do. Them knowing that he could sense ghosts would be so annoying.
And dangerous.
He didn't want to think about what would happen if news of something like that got out to ghost hunters.
Ghost Writer cleared his throat and Danny realized that he'd zoned out for an argument between the adults in the room about… why Mr. Lancer knew a ghost? Yeah.
Honestly, Danny wanted to know how Mr. Lancer had managed to get to know Ghost Writer and Technus well enough to invite them to his birthday party, but that was neither here nor there.
"Alright!" shouted Tetslaff. "I know who did it!" She shoved her finger right up into Ghost Writer's face. "The only one here who could have done that to a person is a ghost like you!"
Nothing happened.
"If you really thought it was him," said Sam, "why would you trust what he said about his powers in the first place?"
"Power tools," said Danny, voice still uneven. "I noticed there were still a few of them around… Plus," he continued, a little more strongly, "a ghost would probably have phased the body into a wall, and maybe have done something about the new ghost, too."
"Unless they were planning on disposing of the ghost later!" said Technus, unhelpfully.
Ghost Writer coughed awkwardly and entirely artificially. "In any case, I believe that for this genre, one must be convincing in their accusation. Perhaps we ought to begin by introducing ourselves. I find that I know… very few of you."
Danny tried not to glare at Ghost Writer for looking at him during that suspicious pause. He really did.
Mrs. Ishiyama's hands fluttered. "We should share what we've been doing since we got here as well," she said, "so we can get a better picture of events."
"Alibis, you mean?" asked Mr. Falluca, sardonically. "Alright, I'll start. My name is James Falluca, I teach math and science at Casper High. William invited me along with the rest of his coworkers." He gestured at Tetslaff and Ishiyama.
Only the three of them came, huh? Ouch.
"Michael here is my son," continued Falluca, putting a hand on Mikey's shoulder. "We arrived half an hour or so ago, and we've been on the first floor the whole time. Circulating."
Well, that was a lie, at least in Mikey's case.
"I did go up to play video games with Kwan and Star," admitted Mikey. "But we stayed in the room the whole time."
"Kwan and I got here just before James," said Mrs. Ishiyama. "We brought the salad. Kwan, you've been with your friends the whole time?"
"Playing video games, yeah," said Kwan, nodding vigorously.
"You were with Tetslaff, too, weren't you?" asked Falluca, somewhat snidely.
"We pulled in at the same time, yes," said Ishiyama.
"What," said Tetslaff, "is that a crime, now?"
"Chris," said Mr. Lancer, when no one else continued, "why don't you go next?"
"I changed my name legally, unlike Robert, " said Lance Thunder, weatherman extraordinaire, running a hand over his elaborate hairstyle, tucking in stray strands. "That means you can't call me that anymore. As I'm sure you all know, I'm Lance Thunder, weatherman . I've been staying on the first floor as well."
Danny saw Kwan, Mikey, and Star all shift at that statement, but no one called him out.
"Didn't you go up to the second floor with your daughter?" asked the Nasty Burger manager.
"Only for a few minutes," said Thunder, dismissively.
"Daughter?" prompted Tucker. "Star? No way, isn't your last name Strong or something?"
"Yeah, that's my mom's name," she said. "I'm glad, Dad was still going by Lancer. Can you imagine?"
" What? You guys are related? But…" Tucker pointed first at Thunder's golden waves of hair, then at Mr. Lancer's sparkling bald dome. " How? "
"Yeah, Uncle Bobby is here, too," she pointed at Skulk'n'Lurk.
"The Beholder. I am the Beholder ."
"He's the baby of the family."
The Beholder's entire face spasmed. "No one appreciates my genius."
"What genius?" muttered Sam.
"Right," said Mr. Lancer, sounding strained. "Beholder, you were with me for most of the time–"
" The Beholder."
"I said that, didn't I?"
"No," said the Beholder.
"Yes, well," said Mr. Lancer. "Irving, what about you?"
The Nasty Burger guy shrugged. "I've mostly been going around, talking to people. I went up with Chris here to the second floor." He smiled at Thunder, the expression oddly sharp. Thunder looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel from annoyance. "Checked out the games. Weren't really my thing. I think he went down first."
"Nicholas? What about you?"
"Ah, yes!" exclaimed Technus. "I arrived three hours early, as I was informed was optimal and stylin'! I repaired the game system, set up the stereo to drop some gnarly sick beats, and fixed the light switch in the pantry!"
"Oh, are you an electrician?" asked Ishiyama.
"I am an inventor!"
"Alright," said Mr. Lancer, "I think that's everyone accounted for."
It really, really wasn't. Hardly anyone had even said what they'd been doing since they'd gotten here.
"At least as far as names go."
"No," said Tetslaff, pointing at Ghost Writer again. "We haven't heard his story, yet."
"I am Ghost Writer," said Ghost Writer, with the exaggerated care of someone who had repeated the information multiple times, "although I will allow you to call me Andrew. I know William through the library book club, and I, too, spent the majority of my time on the first floor, although when I noticed Daniel going up the stairs, I followed him."
"Why did you go up the stairs, anyway?" asked the Beholder, crossing his arms. "If you were only here to use the bathroom?"
"Er," said Mikey, "you don't know?"
"Oh my gosh," said Star, "you must be, like, the only one. Fenton here is, like, a corpse detector . Better than a dog."
"Can you hold off on comparing me to a dog while we're in the middle of a literal murder mystery? Please?" Somehow, given the current circumstances, the typical A-list bullying felt invigorating. Almost. "What happened to alibis, anyway?"
"We've been playing Apple of Eris almost the whole time," said Mikey, gesturing at himself, Kwan, and Star. "You could check our save timestamps."
"Will is my alibi," said the Beholder.
"He was with me most of the time."
"Keiko was with me," said Tetslaff.
"Of course she was," said Mr. Falluca.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Not now, James, please," said Mr. Lancer, tiredly.
"We were setting up in the kitchen," said Ishiyama.
"And, again, you really didn't have to," said Lancer.
"A bit late for that," said Ishiyama, waving him off. "Irving, you came to talk to us, didn't you? You do remember that, yes?"
"Yeah," said Irving, looking at her suspiciously and drawing out the word.
"The only time two adults were on the second floor, it was you and hair over here," said Tetslaff, jerking her head at Thunder. "I wouldn't be casting aspersions ."
"I'm not castin' anything–"
"Careful, May," said Mr. Falluca, "with how he did on his CATs, I'd be surprised if he even knew what that meant."
"Now, now," said Mr. Lancer, "I know we're all stressed, but–"
"Let's make a timeline!" said Sam. "We can make a timeline of what happened and when, and who saw who where. That should let us at least start to rule out people. Then, we can go look for clues or something."
"Oh," said Technus, "did one of you figure out the approximate time of death, in that case? I know that isn't always easy."
Danny remembered the body upstairs and the state it had been in. He imagined what it would take to even do something like check for rigor mortis on a body like that.
"I'm going to be sick," he announced, and, this time, he did go straight to Mr. Lancer's bathroom.
