Despite the hunger that sent pangs clawing through her abdomen, Maddie couldn't bring herself to eat. Phantom watched over the top of his glass of ectoplasm, intense green eyes silently begging her to swallow just a couple of mouthfuls.
The toast and coffee sat in front of her, normal in every sense of the word.
Plain, human food that Maddie's churning core would not allow her to swallow.
She hadn't slept. Maddie had foregone the pyjamas entirely and curled up in bed with her book, but she hadn't been able to focus on the familiar story. Instead, Maddie spent the night trying not to phase through the bed.
That foreign darkness coiled at the outskirts of her mind, demanding the woman's attention and screaming for her life – she wasn't normal, this wasn't right, she should no longer exist. Every time it reared its head, she made a concerted effort to concentrate on the teenager's own plight, and the darkness recoiled again. After all, Maddie couldn't very well remove herself from existence when Phantom still needed her.
She tried lifting the mug, but it slipped through Maddie's transparent grasp, spilling the hot beverage across the table.
Phantom flinched as though he had been struck, green eyes refusing to meet the huntress'. He took another sip of the glowing liquid, and Maddie watched in fascination as it clung to the edges of his glass with a viscosity similar to that of honey. The smell of toast and coffee was strong in her nostrils, but the ectoplasm's underlying scent threw the woman's mind into overdrive.
The thought of pouring that liquid down her throat was almost too much to bear. Maddie swallowed dryly, feeling a phantom coating of sticky sweetness on her tongue and lips, a craving for something that she had never experienced before. It scared her.
The table seemed to give way beneath her arm gradually, and Maddie jolted as her flesh turned tangible again, stuck half in and half out of the lacquered wood.
Pain hit her all at once, and the woman gave an involuntary scream, trying to tug her limb free. Her efforts were useless – molecules had settled in a way that tangled and intertwined them, effectively making the huntress' arm a part of the table.
Phantom was on his feet in a flash, standing beside Maddie and rubbing her back. Small, gentle words slipped from his lips in a whisper, coaxing the woman to relax her arm and pleading with her to forget that the table was there, "because if it doesn't exist, then there's nothing to stop you from going through it, is there?".
Her mind baulked at this new and frightening way of thinking, but after a couple of minutes filled with pain from her arm and whispers from her shoulder, Maddie managed to view the table as insubstantial long enough for her arm to turn intangible and pull free of the wood.
Phantom continued to rub her back as the woman trembled and cried.
"The first time I got stuck, it was halfway through the floor," he confessed in that same quiet voice. "My hips and legs were sticking out of the kitchen ceiling of my house, and the rest of me was either stuck in wood, carpet and plaster, or sticking out the top of my bedroom floor. I was home alone and nobody was around to help me, so I screamed my head off for a good hour or so before I accidentally turned intangible again and fell the rest of the way through."
In different circumstances, that story would have made her laugh. Now, with the pain fresh in her mind and a nagging dread screaming that there was no ignoring what was happening to her any longer, laughter was the furthest thing from Maddie's thoughts.
"I'm a halfa now, aren't I?" she whispered.
"I honestly don't know," he responded, hands never ceasing in their movements as the teen rubbed at the knots in her shoulder blades. "We can't say for certain until you transform. Until then, I can't give you any ectoplasm either. But the fact that you can't eat human food doesn't look good."
"I thought you could eat human food?" Maddie rasped.
"Not for the first week or so of having ghost powers," Phantom responded. His tone was pleading, as though trying to convince her through something unspoken that everything was going to be okay so long as she stayed calm and trusted him. "It happened to me as well. Your forming core sort of rejects anything you ingest that isn't ghostly."
This new knowledge wasn't unexpected, and as she digested its implications, Maddie's mind drifted back to her own home and how often their food ended up becoming some sort of evil ectoplasmic creation. "Have you let your parents know where you are?" she asked on a whim. "It wouldn't do to make them worried."
Phantom nodded. "Yeah, I dropped by the house and let my Dad know that I was staying at a friend's house when I went to get the pizzas. He always has a lot going on, so he won't start worrying about me for another few days."
Maddie shifted in her seat, gasping at the bursts of freezing energy that tingled along her limbs sporadically. The foreign power made her fidget, and all the woman wanted to do was get up and run until she could no longer move. She was uncomfortable, feeling itchy and suffocated as sparks of spectral energy flowed through her veins along with her blood. It felt like tiny insects crawling beneath her skin, and the huntress couldn't stop the whimper that rose within her chest.
Fingering her wedding ring, Maddie felt fresh tears burn beneath her eyelids. Everything was just so strange, and she honestly didn't know what to do. The woman wasn't used to puzzling over difficult problems alone. Although Jack bumbled along most of the time, concerning himself with failed capture attempts and plates of fudge, he was a good scientist, and the one person in existence that she trusted without question. His fresh perspective was often the thing that Maddie utilised to work out a difficult problem or to test a particularly ludicrous hypothesis, and without him, she felt lost.
Taking a deep breath, Maddie turned to face Phantom. "Could you do something for me?" she whispered.
He looked so guilty. "Yeah," the teen sighed. "I'll do anything you ask."
Anything?
The question that she hadn't meant to ask was out before she could stop it. "Who are you?"
His fingers continued to knead her shoulders. "Give me a day or so to prepare," Phantom responded in a dead voice. "I… Just let me do it on my own terms."
Her mind went blank. He was really going to tell her?!
Maddie shook her head slightly. "I-I mean, when you're ready. I won't shoot you or force you to tell your parents or anything. You can trust me."
His mouth quirked at the corners, but Maddie had no idea what could possibly be funny in this situation. "Yeah, thanks. Now is there anything else?"
"How do you know that I wanted to ask something else?" Damn this enquiring mind! Why couldn't Maddie just accept things without having to know all the tiny details?
"I can taste your emotions," Phantom revealed. "It's not reading thoughts or anything, but emotions are a type of energy that ghosts can eat, so…" he raised one shoulder and lowered the other in a half-hearted shrug.
This new information wasn't as exciting as it should have been. Maybe because since he had mentioned it, Maddie could suddenly taste the cloying guilt that radiated off the halfa standing behind her chair. No wonder Phantom had always seemed to know how to react to her – he knew exactly what she was feeling at any given moment.
So that was how ghosts knew exactly how to scare their targets… There was research potential there, but Maddie was suddenly exhausted. Exhausted and lost.
Fiddling with the simple gold band, Maddie spun her wedding ring around her finger.
She needed Jack.
"Could you please bring my husband here?"
Phantom stiffened. "He'll try to kill me," the boy argued. "When I went to get the pizza last night, I managed to catch the news – thanks to the bank's security cameras, everyone's blaming me for kidnapping you, which I guess I kind of did, but Jack's running around town armed to the teeth and screaming that he's going to destroy me. I've never seen him this angry."
She should have expected that. Sighing, Maddie pulled off her diamond engagement ring. "Let me write a note to him," she said. "Give it to him with this ring, and Jack will know that I'm not dead, and it's not a trick. It's something we set up years ago."
Phantom tilted his head. "Well, any old ghost could send your ring to him and force you to write a note."
"We decided on a code as well," Maddie explained. "If I don't write some specific words in the letter, then it's not safe and a rescue mission is most likely in order."
The teen sighed, finally dropping his hands from her shoulders. "I'll go get you a pen and paper," he announced, "so long as you think you can hold the pen."
Maddie sent him a small smile, somewhat bewildered that he had agreed so readily but forcing herself not to question it. "I think I'll be able to manage," she shot back. "After all, it looks like I've got a pretty good coach."
Phantom responded with a smile of his own before slipping out of the room.