A/N: Set post-series for both fandoms but ignores Phantom Planet.


Mabel was doing her usual thing.

These days, that meant watching Dipper's back while he did whatever he needed to do, because he was her brother, even if he sometimes was a bother, and she loved him and didn't mind doing favours for him like this.

Well.

Favour made it sound like this wasn't terribly risky.

It was.

Mabel knew that much. Ghosts could be particularly tricky. Dipper had explained it all to her, multiple times, but she'd be the first to admit that he understood all this supernatural and paranormal and cryptid and whatever else stuff way better than she did.

"Are you sure this place is actually haunted?" she asked.

Dipper shushed her instead of answering, so she turned so she could survey the room again. She was supposed to be keeping an eye out. Not that that would do much good if Dipper was right about this place being haunted.

This was, in her opinion, a standard abandoned house. Warped and therefore creaky floorboards. Dust everywhere that had her sneezing and proved no one besides them had been in here in ages. The windows were either broken or boarded up or both, which is why she had a flashlight and Dipper had a camping lantern—which was extra useful now that the sun was setting. Most of the rooms were empty, but some had the odd piece of abandoned furniture. (A small table? A tall stool? She couldn't tell.) The walls were covered in either faded, peeling wallpaper or cracked, flaking paint, depending on the room. There were no creepy portraits. No broken mirrors. No giant messages written in something that was either blood or meant to look like it. She'd already checked the fireplace for loose bricks and had come up empty.

Shame, really. Judging by its size, this had probably been a living room (or any variation thereupon, since old houses had loads) or a dining room. There could have been plenty of reasons to hide something in here.

Mabel started humming, caught herself, and switched to twirling the rings she wore instead. One was silver; the other was iron. In theory, if Dipper's books were right, the iron one would help her here. Ghosts weren't supposed to like iron. If it worked, it would be worth the trouble they'd gone to to get it. Not that it hadn't been funny to see Dipper's face when he'd tried to order an iron ring. He'd pretended to be an engineer who was searching for a replacement, but he was still awful at lying, even when it was just over the phone. She'd burst into giggles and blown the whole ploy, and he'd ended up taking industrial arts for a term specifically so he could make his own.

(She had also taken that class. She'd made a ring, too, though she hadn't told him that, since she thought her ring fit better and she didn't want to hurt his feelings. It was her backup ring in case she ever lost this one. As far as Dipper knew, the only thing she'd made was a socially acceptable cooling rack; it would've been frowned upon to make something more useful for these activities. Dipper's official project had been a plant stand.)

She heard Dipper strike a match behind her—he couldn't get the hang of lighters—and she looked over her shoulder in time to see him drop it into a bowl of…summoning stuff. She wasn't sure what was in there. Some specific herbs and other stuff. "Do you really think this is a good idea if this place is haunted?"

"The point is to summon it into the circle so it can't start attacking everyone—"

"You mean us."

"—so yes. You saw the newspaper stories. You know what the chances are of that being coincidental."

Freak ice storms coinciding with disappearing kids that tracked back over decades. Yeah. They'd been doing this for long enough that she didn't question that something was up; she just wasn't sure why Dipper was convinced it was a ghost and not something else. Then again, he knew more about what else it could be than she did, so it wasn't like he hadn't done any research before settling on 'ghost'.

Mabel huffed and resumed her watch. Behind her, Dipper started to say the words of the summoning.

The room grew cold, but it was supposed to do that.

Probably.

"Uh— Maybe we should move back a bit."

Mabel moved as Dipper nudged her and glanced back over her shoulder to see the fire in the bowl flaring and spitting sparks. "It's supposed to do that, right?"

"I think so."

"So why does the circle still look empty? If a ghost is going to show up there, shouldn't there be, I dunno, fog or something?"

Dipper made an indecisive sort of sound. "I think it depends on the type of ghost."

"And what type is this one supposed to be?"

"I don't know. I thought Category 4 before we got here—haunted pictures or objects, remember?—but—"

"But the walls are empty."

"But the walls are empty, which means it's probably either a few Category 2s or a Category 10."

Mabel frowned. "Twos are pranksters, right? Those are way different from the kind of ghost that showed up at Pacifica's house."

"I know."

"You not being certain is not comforting."

"I know. But I'm thinking there are more types than Grunkle Ford knew when he wrote the journals, so it might not be that bad." He held up his book to show her the cover before tucking it back under his arm. "This Showenhower guy talks about—"

There was a very loud, very distinct thump of something heavy coming from the direction of the circle, and the wooden floor cracked right through Dipper's salt-and-paint mixture as the temperature tipped over this side of chilly and plummeted straight to arctic blizzard. Minus the snow—so far.

Mabel moved forward to try to punch the ghost, since presumably it was there even though she couldn't see anything, but Dipper grabbed her hand and shouted, "Run!"


Jazz adjusted her scarf to ward off the bite of the autumn wind and picked up her pace as the shadows lengthened; it was going to be dark out before she knew it if she wasn't careful. She hadn't seen any kids in Halloween costumes in a while—she assumed they were hitting up more popular neighbourhoods—but she hadn't seen any teenagers out, either.

Then again, it was early for that.

Most pranking happened under the cover of dark, and the sun hadn't completely set yet.

"This is stupid," Jazz muttered. "I should just be happy Danny's visiting me when there isn't some disaster going down."

She had a few hours before she had to be at the airport to pick up her brother, though admittedly that was more for appearance's sake than anything else. She didn't want her roommates asking questions, and Candace and Wendy were more than capable of figuring out that something was up if they tried.

It had gone over well enough when Jazz had apologized to them for the lack of notice and said her brother would be crashing on the couch for a few days, but Jazz wasn't wholly comfortable with the fact that Wendy had immediately offered to come with her to pick up Danny from the airport. That was more Candace's thing than hers, usually, because Candance wanted to know everything about everything. (Wendy did, too, but she was usually more subtle about it.)

Tonight, however, Candace was going out with her boyfriend, but apparently, Wendy figured Halloween parties were overrated. Well, that, or Jazz had told so many stories about her brother—carefully edited, of course—that Wendy's curiosity was piqued. Either way, turning her offer down would've been rude, and being on Wendy's bad side meant getting pranked. Jazz wasn't in the mood for that.

Normally, if Danny came to visit her, he gave her more than a day's notice and didn't bother flying in on a plane. He'd text her ahead of time, and if her roommates were home, he'd do a short stint in a taxi from somewhere nearby and claim he'd caught an earlier flight to surprise her; if her roommates weren't home, he'd fly right in. It was convenient. Civil.

This time, since she hadn't been home in a while, her parents had apparently decided that a surprise visit from her brother might convince her to surprise them as well, maybe to come home for Thanksgiving since she and Danny still tried to avoid Christmas. This was officially a joint Christmas/birthday present for the two of them—Danny had spilled the beans when he'd told her about it when he'd found out yesterday—and she guessed Danny had been sent to her since she'd insisted she couldn't come home because, despite having the last of her first round of midterms last week, she had the first of another set coming up next week.

But tonight was a Friday, and the tickets were bought (even if they were only Air Grits; who knew they flew out here? She was just thankful Danny was to jump out in a designated landing area or she'd really have some explaining to do), and it wasn't like she didn't want to see Danny. She did. It was the near-complete lack of warning she didn't appreciate.

Hence the walk to clear her head.

Well, the longer walk to clear her head. She had a route she walked normally at least once a day. It gave her some time to be by herself and to think—or not think, whichever she needed.

And, sure, she had researched potentially haunted locations near where she lived. She'd be a fool not to. And, yes, she had made a point of including the old Heinrich place in her usual walking route, but it wasn't because of the rumours. It was only a couple of blocks from the house she rented with her friends on the outskirts of town, and the place was hardly on a single lot. There was a lot of green space out front. It was a nice walk. She was not being paranoid. It was not a patrol, whatever Danny thought.

(Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Danny always said when she denied it, which usually resulted in her throwing a pillow at him if he was in the room. The pillow never hit him unless he let it, but it still made her feel better.)

Danny was the one who had suggested she start carrying a thermos with her if she was going to be 'hanging out' around 'supposedly haunted' places that he hadn't checked out. She didn't know if the suggestion had come out of teasing or out of worry, but she did it. She kept a Fenton Lipstick on her, too. Just in case.

Normally, it was easy for her to forget about the weaponry—her parents had improved on their thermos design and created something even more lightweight than usual—but Danny was coming, which was something that may or may not have gotten around the Ghost Zone, depending on who was gossiping. And, well, tonight was Halloween. Ghosts weren't necessarily beholden to anything behind the day, and far from everyone in the Ghost Zone who knew of Danny had a grudge against him, but some ghosts had a sense of humour, and there was no guarantee that sense of humour was harmless.

True, she had no idea if the local ghost—assuming they existed—knew about Danny, and even if they did know about Danny, there was no guarantee they'd connect her to him.

Still, tempting fate around Danny, even when he was a few hours out, was never a wise thing.

Jazz was distracted by her thoughts, but she was not distracted enough that she didn't notice a light where there wasn't usually a light up at the Heinrich house. She'd been out at this time before, or at least when the sun was at the same angle, and barring a few more displaced boards on the windows since the last time, she wasn't seeing sunlight.

Of course, it wasn't unreasonable to think that a couple of teenagers would have picked tonight to dare their friends (or dare to come themselves) to spend the night in the mansion. She could be seeing the signs of someone setting up shop and getting ready for the night ahead.

Jazz blew out her breath in a huff and made her decision.

It might be nothing. The Heinrich place might not be haunted. She wasn't going to risk it, though. If it was haunted and some kids decided to trespass and do who knew what, then chances were very good a ghost of any strength would make their presence known—even if they were a friendly ghost like the Dairy King who preferred visiting to vengeance for some presumed slight.

The cold of the iron gate seeped through her thin leather gloves, but the curling scroll design gave her enough footholds to climb up and hoist herself over, even if she had to be careful to avoid the spikes at the top—meant, no doubt, to deter exactly what she was doing.

She dropped to the ground on the other side, wincing as she landed poorly and the shock went through her. Still, she couldn't regret her actions, because the closer she got, the clearer it became that she was right.

There was a light shining inside the house.

From a place that had no electricity.

Jazz pulled the lipstick from her purse but left the thermos where it was. She could conceal the lipstick—or at least pretend it was only lipstick and not a weapon—but Danny's adoption of the thermos meant more ghosts than she'd met knew it for what it was. If all she found were a couple of kids, well, she didn't feel like explaining that the thermos didn't hold soup or water or any other liquid meant to be ingested; she'd almost rather tell them the truth, except for the fact that it would make her sound insane.

She hadn't realized until she'd left Amity Park that most people outside of it not only didn't believe in ghosts, or at least not in the kind of hauntings Amity Park had, but they also straight up thought the place was an elaborate tourist trap—if they'd heard of it at all.

It was too exhausting to correct people.

Sometimes, it was easier to lie and say she was from Elmerton.

"I hope I'm overthinking this," Jazz muttered as she started hiking up the driveway.

Then she heard the scream.

She wasn't overthinking this.

She started to run.


This was not going well.

Dipper did not need to see the ice forming on the walls to know that it wasn't going well.

Mabel shrieked as she slipped, and he slid into her a split second later as she brought him down, too. There was laughter behind them, and it made his skin crawl.

Ten.

This was definitely a Category 10.

"Try to get to the door," he said between chattering teeth. Mabel's flashlight had spun across the floor and the camping lantern had been left behind, but the room was filled with an icy blue light that made it easy enough to see. He reached for the book that had skidded a few feet away and tugged it towards him with cold-bright fingers. He was never teasing Mabel for wearing a sweater everywhere ever again.

"You think you can get through a spell now?" Mabel hissed. She had her hands tucked into her armpits. "Can you even turn to the right page?"

"Yes," he said, immediately defensive enough though his fingers ached with cold and had none of the dexterity they should.

"You're going to stay with me!" a voice boomed behind them, and Dipper winced. Mabel had turned to stare behind them, but he could see enough of her face to know her eyes were wide. "Won't that be fun?"

It started to snow.

He tried to flip the pages faster, but his fingers wouldn't grasp the pages properly. He kept his head down, but he still kept one eye on Mabel, who had gotten into a crouched position so she could spring up more easily than he could. He wasn't terribly surprised she'd chosen to defend them instead of heading for the door. Leaving each other behind was not a habit of theirs.

He wasn't only cold from the sudden frigid temperature in the room, though—or because he was sitting on a sheet of ice. Fear and dread curled in his chest, and he had this awareness of the looming ghost behind them.

It was not small.

Still, he was concentrating so much on the task at hand that he shrieked when the sound of splintering wood came from in front of them. Even Mabel jerked and lost her balance on the ice again.

The first thing Dipper saw was a flash of red hair, and his heart leapt. Wendy! Wendy had come to save them!

Then his brain caught up with his heart and he remembered that Wendy didn't know they were here.

It was supposed to be a surprise.

He and Mabel were supposed to deal with this before they dropped in on Wendy so they didn't freak out her friends—or immediately ruin whatever cool story she'd told them about herself. Failing that, since it was now abundantly clear they were past the stage where he and Mabel could take care of it alone and Dipper had known that might happen, the plan had been to see what they were dealing with before coming back with Wendy to tidy things up. That plan was now also out the window, mostly because the ghost had broken through its containment pretty much the second it had arrived, and Dipper was thinking they should've stuck with something like taking the town's walking ghost tour instead.

Back when he and Mabel had talked about this, Dipper had been optimistic. He'd figured, if Wendy wanted to tackle something with them, it would be good for them to have gotten in a bit more practice first. Then, he wouldn't (in theory) be rusty and wouldn't (in theory) embarrass himself in front of her. That ship hadn't quite sailed—embarrassing himself in front of her was very much still on the table—but at least they hadn't blown her cover. If she had a cover.

Knowing Wendy, she could have told everyone she met the perfect truth about her life in Gravity Falls and wouldn't have been believed because of how she'd said it, but the girl could keep a secret when she wanted to.

But this girl wasn't Wendy, however similar she might look at first glance.

It was snowing harder now, tiny little flakes that covered his clothes and stuck to his eyelashes, but the girl took one look at him staring at her before stripping off her coat and throwing it at him. Her scarf and gloves hit Mabel a second later. "Put those on and stay behind me," she ordered as she shouldered her purse again.

She held one hand up to shield her eyes against the snow, and but he wasn't sure what was in her other hand. A laser pointer, maybe? What good would that do?

"Hey," she yelled out. "Knock it off!"

The storm faltered, and Dipper and Mabel used the distraction for what it was, getting to their feet and putting on the outerwear the girl had given them.

A normal person might have run, but this ghost was here because of them. All he needed to do was a share a glance with Mabel to know she agreed; they were going to stick around in case things went sideways and this girl needed their help. It was their fault she was here—probably—so it's not like they could abandon her.

Of course, she seemed oddly prepared for someone who hadn't intended to walk into this situation.

She'd planted her feet like she was used to the threat of being tossed around by a ghostly wind or sent sliding across the room on ghost ice. She sounded challenging, not afraid, and she had that laser pointer that she was clearly pretending was a weapon, if the fact that she'd raised her arm to point it in the ghost's direction was any indication.

She wasn't making any threats, though.

The wind had to be blowing right through her clothes—she might have long sleeves on, but she wasn't wearing a sweater like Mabel—but instead of huddling in on herself to keep warm or moving towards a wall so she had some semblance of shelter, she started walking carefully forward.

"I mean it," she said as the wind started whirling the snow around again in earnest, and then a bright green light shot out of the penlight (which was obviously not a penlight) as she moved her hand in a wide arc. It was a warning shot, Dipper realized; she hadn't been trying to hit the ghost. "We don't have to fight if you'll talk to me."

The ghost let out a shriek, and ice fog filled the room, making it impossible to see anything beyond vague shapes.

There was another sound carried just above the wind as the scream cut off. If it hadn't been coming from a threatening ghost, Dipper would've guessed it was whimpering. Maybe she'd hit the ghost after all? How had she managed to injure it, especially with something physical? It was a ghost.

"Are you from the Far Frozen?" the girl pressed, her voice raised so she could be heard clearly over the wind.

"What's that mean?" Mabel said in his ear. "Where is that?"

Dipper shook his head. He didn't know. Grunkle Ford hadn't mentioned such a place in his journals, and neither had Showenhower.

"Wait." The girl stopped her advance. "Klemper?"

The wind and snow stopped abruptly, and the fog began to dissipate. As the last few flakes caught in the air drifted down, Dipper got his first good look at the ghost: a blue-skinned giant in striped pyjamas.

"Will you be my friend?" the ghost asked as it lifted its head from its hands, and Dipper recognized the eagerness in its—his—voice.

"I'll be your friend!" Mabel called out, bounding forward before Dipper could stop her. What if this guy was like a phantom of pain, except instead of needing be summoned to be able to hurt you, he couldn't do that unless you agreed to befriend him? Sure, that would be all kinds of messed up, but—

"Friend!" The ghost held out his arms, and Mabel ran to hug him. Had this ghost been a kid when he'd died? Had he lived here?

The girl stared, and then she glanced over her shoulder at him. "You two are human, right?"

Dipper nodded, too surprised to wonder at the question. Mabel could touch the ghost without any trouble. She was hugging him, and Dipper could see what he now realized were the ghost's striped pyjamas bunching up as she squeezed and stretched, trying—impossibly—to wrap her arms all the way around his torso.

Odd choice of attire aside—unless the ghost had died at night or frozen to death after wandering outside or something; Dipper didn't really want to dwell on that—Dipper was starting to think that this ghost was as misunderstood as the Multi-Bear. If all he wanted were some friends, the fact that he could very easily have frozen them to death might not have crossed his mind. He might not have realized. He might've, for all Dipper knew, tried to create a fun wintery environment so they could all play.

Whatever the reason behind it, the girl who'd burst in here knew the ghost on sight.

The girl turned back to the ghost, who had hoisted Mabel up so that she sat on his shoulders. "Klemper, you live here? I thought you stayed in the Ghost Zone?"

"No friends," the ghost said as his shoulders drooped, and Mabel had to grab at his hair before she tumbled off.

"It's okay, big guy," she said. "We'll be your friends, right, Dip-Dip?"

"Uh—"

"You have friends in the Ghost Zone," the girl said as she walked forward to touch the ghost's hand. Dipper hadn't noticed when she'd pocketed her weapon, but it was out of sight now. "They can't be with you every moment, but that doesn't mean they aren't your friends. You have friends in this world, too, like me and Danny and Sam and Tucker, but we can't always play with you even if we want to."

Dipper saw tears well up in the ghost's eyes, and the girl quickly moved to put one hand on his shoulder and the other up to steady Mabel. "But I'm lonely," Klemper wailed, and Dipper shivered as the room grew colder again. The tears falling from the ghost's eyes hit the floor and spread into ice, thickening the layer that hadn't melted from earlier. He put his hands over his face, but it did nothing to stem the flow.

When Dipper saw the girl lift her feet one at a time, he did the same—and realized he'd nearly frozen to the floor where he stood.

Huh.

It made sense now that he thought about it, now that he saw one way the ghost did what he did, but…. This girl knew that ghost. Knew him well, from the sounds of it.

If she knew about the ghost, did she know about all the stories, too?

Even if she didn't, the question still remained: who was she?

"Well, I'm Mabel," Mabel announced, "and that's my brother, Dipper. We can be friends even if we can't be together much. We can still talk. Ooh! We can be pen pals!"

The tears disappeared. "Pen pals?"

"You can write each other letters," the girl said. "The Ghost Writer could help you, and he'll have plenty of paper."

Dipper had a feeling that whatever—whoever—she meant when she said ghostwriter wasn't what he was thinking of.

He cleared his throat. "Um…. What about all the disappearances?" he asked, pointedly ignoring Mabel's glare in favour of the girl's interested look.

"Disappearances?" she echoed. Her gaze went distant for a few seconds and then she went, "Oh."

Klemper started to cry again, even though Mabel was clutching his hair and trying to tell him it was okay and that Dipper hadn't meant to be mean by bringing it up.

"Klemper," the girl said, "have you made friends here before?"

Klemper was suddenly all smiles. "Yes!"

The girl was tugging on Mabel's arm. Mabel took the hint and slid off, though she didn't look happy about it. "Did you ever show your friends your home in the Ghost Zone?"

"Yes!"

"Did you ever bring them back here?"

The smile dropped away, and Klemper drew in a deep breath that made him seem even larger than before. "They didn't want to go back!" he yelled. A blizzard spewed from his breath, and the girl pulled Mabel behind her. "They wanted to come and play with me! We were going to be friends forever!"

The girl turned away, ushering Mabel towards Dipper as the visibility in the room dropped again. "Get out of here now," she ordered. "I don't know how Klemper is passing between here and the Ghost Zone, but if he can take people with him, we do not want to be trapped in his lair. I don't want to think about how long it takes for another ghost to notice he kidnapped a human, even if he means well."

She gave them both a shove and they stumbled, barely keeping their footing on the growing ice. "Who are you?" Dipper asked. "What do you mean by lair? Where's the Ghost Zone? Is it another dimension?"

"My name is Jazz Fenton," she said, and then she rattled off an address that was very familiar.

It was Wendy's address.

This girl was one of Wendy's roommates.

"If I don't come out in ten minutes," Jazz continued, "go there, tell my roommates you're friends of mine, and wait for my brother Danny. He's flying in tonight, and he'll know something's up when I don't meet him at the airport and will come to the house. It's the only yellow one on the street; you can't miss it. Tell Danny what happened. It doesn't matter how crazy it sounds. He'll believe you, and he'll be able to help. Trust me. Can you do that?"

"Yes," Mabel said, which was good, because Dipper was too busy trying to reconcile the fact that this mystery girl who knew about the ghost was Wendy's roommate, "but—"

"Great, thanks!" Jazz pushed them again, harder. "Run!"

She disappeared into the storm before either of them could protest.

Mabel helped Dipper to his feet. "So," she asked brightly, "do we go outside to wait like we've been told or stay here and charge recklessly towards danger?"

Dipper laughed.

There wasn't any real choice.


Jazz didn't want to fight Klemper, but she needed to defend herself, and she needed to wear him down. She hadn't been lying when she'd called him a friend. She wouldn't call him a good friend, but he was more than an acquaintance, and Danny had not-so-subtly hoisted him off to her more than once. On good days, they had a good rapport.

This was not a good day.

He wasn't at a point where he would talk to her anymore, let alone listen to what she had to say.

Leaving him alone to cool down (warm up?) wasn't an option when that meant people were entirely too likely to get hurt—kids especially, considering it was Halloween. Someone curious who might not know any better might decide to see what was going on, and at this rate, that would end badly.

Whether she liked it or not, fighting was necessary.

A Fenton Lipstick would not be her first choice for that task—an ecto-gun packed a bigger punch, so she was really paying for the trade off of discretion—but the need to move helped keep her warm, even without her coat. It was easier to skate than dance on the ice—albeit not as easy in shoes as it would have been in actual skates, though if she'd been in skates, it would be even more likely that Klemper could blow her off her feet.

It certainly felt like he was trying to do that, even if he was probably only trying to freeze her solid.

Well.

Not intentionally.

She didn't think so, anyway.

But it would still be the end result if she wasn't careful.

Klemper's size made him a bigger target, but it also made him more resilient. Jazz didn't bother trying to aim for somewhere less painful than the torso; the trunk of the body was where she was least likely to miss, and that was important now. Besides, her parents were wrong to think that ghosts don't feel pain, but from what Jazz had theorized from her own observations, there was no 'less painful' or 'more painful' spot for a ghost, and she figured that was at the root of her parents' misconceptions. That and their refusal to consider everything it might mean if they were wrong, at least.

They were trying to filter everything they knew about ghosts through the biased lens of humans, but Jazz had seen Danny walk off (fly off) things that should have laid him up for at least a week. Sure, Danny wasn't quite like other ghosts, but the other ghosts never showed the damage from the fights later—except someone like Skulker, anyway, and his armour hardly counted. She didn't need to capture and dissect a blob ghost to know every single scalpel cut would've been felt. She'd seen ghosts twist and shift and distort to avoid a blast; they'd do the same to avoid the blade of a scalpel if they weren't given some cocktail of suppression drugs Jack had mixed up.

What it came down to, in the end, was that Jazz couldn't pull her punches. Every blast would be felt, no matter where it landed. If she could just wear Klemper down enough that he couldn't resist the pull of the thermos—

One of Klemper's wild arm swings caught her in the head as she misjudged his reach. She staggered, slipped to the floor, and was struggling to stand when another swing caught her square in the stomach and flung her like a rag doll. She lost her breath in one painful blow and then collided hard with the wall a second later. She couldn't seem to breathe in; she could only groan out the little air that remained in her body.

She had to get up.

She couldn't.

Small breaths. Shallow. She just needed something—

Yelling. Green light that caused the ice fog in the room to glow. The Fenton Lipstick? It must be. Her hands were empty. Unless Danny was here? Maybe Danny was here.

Wouldn't that mean he was early?

Maybe he knew.

No.

He'd be too far away to know, even now. It hadn't been that long.

Had it?

Jazz sucked in through her teeth. Slowly. Too slowly. She opened her mouth to pull in more air and her lungs refused; she had to breathe out the little she'd gotten first.

Again.

Focus.

Klemper was distracted.

She had to take advantage of that.

Breathe in, breathe out. Repeat. Her head cleared enough to remind her fingers to fumble for her purse and pull out the thermos. It might not work yet, but she had to try.

She activated the thermos, aimed it in front of her, and twisted off the cap.

The bright blue light pulled at the ice fog, stirring it up but stopping short of completely clearing it. Ghostly in origin though it was, it didn't have a strong enough connection to its source to be so easily removed.

She adjusted the angle and saw that Klemper was already in the thermos's pull, fighting to get away from the light.

She also saw the two teens who had either never gone outside or come back in, despite what she'd told them.

Mabel was clinging to Klemper's back, though as Jazz watched, she freed herself even as Klemper tried to cling to her in turn.

Dipper still held the lipstick, not realizing or not caring that he was dangerously close to burning a hole clean through the floor with its laser.

"Why won't you be my friend?" Klemper whimpered as his body began to distort, and then he lost the battle entirely.

Jazz capped the thermos.

"What's that?" Mabel asked, pointing to the thermos. "Can Dipper have one so I can have a laser thingy?"

Jazz started to chuckle despite herself, but the sharp pain that shot through her put an end to that. She tucked the thermos back into her purse and climbed carefully to her feet, trying to move her torso as little as possible. Getting back over the gate was not going to be fun. Why hadn't she ever learned how to pick locks?

"Come on," she said, holding out her hand for the lipstick. Dipper looked a little put out as he handed it over. "Let's go back to my place and warm up."


Wendy raised her eyebrows when Jazz brought home two teenagers instead of her brother and then said she was going to get Danny from the airport by herself and that she expected a good story by the time she got back.

Dipper and Mabel stared at her but said nothing as she grabbed her coat and the car keys and brushed past them and out the door.

Since neither of the teens immediately asked, Jazz decided the introductions could come later, once Wendy was back with Danny. (Candace, if Jazz didn't miss her guess, would be out most of if not all night.) Mabel and Dipper couldn't immediately say where they were staying that night, so Jazz went to pull out the air mattress (which hopefully didn't have a hole in it) and scrounge up more sheets and pillows than she'd initially planned.

Mabel, after asking where to find the ingredients, made them all hot chocolate with marshmallows. She even threw in some chocolate chips she'd found in the same cupboard. Jazz was too tired to argue; it's not like it wouldn't taste good. A little sweet, maybe, but she was more concerned about getting warmed up than she was about anything else.

Dipper unearthed more blankets than Jazz remembered owning, and they moved to the living room to huddle and warm their still-chilled fingers around their hot drinks and figure out what story to tell Wendy.

At least, that had been Jazz's plan until Dipper and Mabel said that they knew her.

As they started talking, Jazz realized why Wendy had left so early; she'd been giving Jazz time to process all this.

Jazz wasn't convinced she'd heard the half of it by the time Wendy returned with Danny.

Danny, being Danny, did not mince words when he saw her. "Geez, Jazz, you look like you got hit by a bus."

"I love you, too."

"That doesn't explain why you've been beat up."

She rolled her eyes as he sat down on the armrest of her chair. Her face was a little tender and had probably bloomed into a lovely bruise featuring at least one black eye by now, but it's not like she'd broken anything. "I'm fine."

"Have you looked in a mirror?"

"She's not fine," Wendy called from the kitchen, "and judging by the book Dipper was carrying earlier, those two squirts got her caught up in an exorcism. Without me."

Danny raised an eyebrow. "Exorcism?"

"It wasn't an exorcism," Dipper muttered, though the running water from the kitchen tap wasn't enough to drown out his words.

Mabel hummed. "More like experimental summoning that went sideways."

"That sounds worse."

Mabel grinned. "It went about as well as I expected."

"Hey!"

"I doubt your track record has improved much," Wendy said as she came back into the room. "This would've been, what, your fourth encounter with ghosts?"

"Fifth."

"Fourth," Mabel corrected. "You can't count the dog as two different times when it was the same dog."

"It wasn't the same dog!"

"Believe whatever you need to believe, Bro-Bro."

Jazz decided to intercede before Dipper could snap out a response. "Danny, the thermos is in my purse. And…." She bit her lip, but there was no sense in hiding any of the truth from Wendy. "And it was Klemper, and either this isn't the first time some kid has tried to summon him or he's tied to this place somehow. You should look into it. And maybe ask around to see if anyone ever saw humans in the Ghost Zone before Mom and Dad finished their portal."

Danny rubbed the back of his neck as the others stared at them. Jazz had the feeling none of them needed her to elaborate on what she was really asking, even if the others didn't know much of anything about the Ghost Zone. "Um, right. I'll do that first thing when I get back. You're sure you're okay, though?"

She smiled and leaned into him. He didn't pull away. "I'm fine, little brother. I promise."

"Okay. Good." He looked at Dipper. "Can I see that book?"

"Yeah, sure, I'll go grab it," he said as the kettle started to whistle.

"And I'll make more hot chocolate," Mabel announced as she scooped up the empty mugs. "Jazz told me where everything is."

Wendy snorted but didn't protest.

She didn't ask questions, either.

Waiting for the others to return, no doubt.

If Jazz had learned anything about Wendy since they'd wound up in the same dorm in first year, before either of them had scraped together enough money to move off campus, it was that she could be patient when she wanted to be.

"No more ghost fights without proper equipment," Danny ordered. He shifted so that her head fell against his side rather than his elbow. "You need to carry more than a thermos."

"So you keep saying. But for your information, I had a lipstick with me."

"One of those is not enough for a ghost fight. You need to have at least two. What if you lose one?"

Jazz chuckled, even though it had her wincing a bit at the accompanying pain. "Then I guess you need to be lucky enough to have some crazy kids acting as backup. You've still got Sam and Tucker. Who knows? Maybe Wendy and Candace will come out with me if I ever need it."

Wendy stifled a laugh, and Danny nudged Jazz gently. "Not the same and you know it. Sam and Tuck have some training under their belts."

"Yeah, well, from what Dipper and Mabel tell me, so does Wendy, even if it's not ghost-specific. And I wouldn't put it past Candace to have some weird secrets in her past, whatever she pretends." Jazz glanced at Wendy. "Well?"

Wendy shrugged. "I don't think you're wrong, but if we're swapping stories, we're starting with you. Or at least with ghosts and this Klemper guy."

Jazz looked up at Danny, only to find him looking down at her. "Your call," he murmured. "I trust your judgement, so if you trust them…."

"Yeah," she whispered. She didn't need to think about it. "I trust them."

The world might get a little crazy sometimes, but she had friends she trusted, just like Danny did. If he was willing to let her trust them with his secrets, then she wouldn't have to hide as much of her life from them as she was used to. And if that meant they trusted her in turn with secrets of their own—secrets at least Wendy had, judging by what Dipper and Mabel said? Well, then she might have a chance at having as close a friendship with someone as Danny did with Sam and Tucker.

It was nice, thinking she could have close friends like that. She'd had friends in high school, of course—she'd had friends all her life—but never anyone she was as close to as her brother was to his friends. But, maybe, if she was willing to let down her walls and let someone in, she finally would.

There was more digging to be done on Klemper and on the Heinrich mansion, but she might not have to do it by herself this time—or with only her brother's help, as best that ever worked, considering the miles that normally separated them.

This time, she might be able to do it with friends.

Jazz smiled, and then she began to talk.


A/N: I know the iron ring is a Canadian engineer thing, but I still had to mention it.