Jack crowed in triumph, throwing his hands up in the air. "You did it!"
Sitting upside-down on the ceiling, Maddie smiled as she pushed the final thumb tack into the plaster. She let go of the blanket's edge, allowing it to hang from where it was pinned. It was the final 'wall' to hang around the couch, effectively shielding it from the view of anyone who entered the room. A little more elaborate than the pillow forts she had built with her kids, but with what Maddie knew of Phantom's stubborn nature, he would have returned to the laundry floor when he woke up. At least this way, the kid would have somewhere a bit more comfortable to rest.
"Is everything secure?" Jack swept the fabric aside, testing if it could handle the strain of someone passing through this makeshift tent of curtains.
"Yeah." Maddie frowned as her stomach clenched. "I think I should get down now – I'm feeling a little shaky," she confessed, sinking to land on the floor.
Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder. "Hey, you look a little sick there. Were you flying for too long?"
The woman shook her head, leaning into her husband gratefully. Exhaustion hit her in a sudden wave, sending white rings washing over her body and returning the woman to her human form. "I haven't eaten anything since that pizza," she said, ignoring the transformation – if she treated it like something perfectly normal, it could be dealt with later. "I'm really hungry."
"To the kitchen!" Jack bellowed, pointing with a flourish. "You get comfortable, and I'll whip up a storm!"
Maddie smiled fondly as he disappeared through the dining room door with all the grace of a charging rhinoceros.
"You know that you can't eat what he makes you," a small voice rasped from beside her.
To her credit, Maddie didn't jump at the halfa's sudden appearance. "You only went to bed a couple of hours ago," she scolded, turning to face the teen. "Do I have to drag you back there?"
Phantom ducked his head. "It's sort of hard to sleep with Jack being so noisy," he countered, "and I need some ectoplasm."
His voice was still uncharacteristically quiet. Limbs shook slightly as the boy hugged himself, gloved fingers digging into his sides. His face was pinched with pain and fatigue, but at least the bruises had already faded away thanks to the halfa's fast healing. Maddie gently placed an arm around his shoulders. "I'm guessing that I need some of that as well," she responded. "I'm really hungry."
Phantom allowed himself to be guided through the dining room door. "Yeah. If you can keep that down, you're good to eat normal food in a couple of hours."
Maddie deposited the boy in a seat, continuing towards the double doors reminiscent of a restaurant. "The stuff in the bottles in the fridge?" At his nod, she pushed the kitchen doors open, quirking a smile at the sight of Jack covered in flour.
"It's not ready yet!" the man screeched, hunching protectively over an assortment of ingredients that he had spread over the massive bench.
"I'm just getting some ectoplasm," Maddie reassured him as she headed for the fridge. It would take Jack a couple of hours to manage to create anything edible anyway, so there was really no reason to let him know that she wasn't allowed to eat just yet.
Grabbing a bottle that was already open and a couple of glasses from the draining rack beside the sink, the huntress returned to her saviour. Phantom seemed to brighten when he saw her, and for a moment, Maddie envisioned the kid sitting at her dining table back in Amity Park.
The thought wasn't as ludicrous as it would have seemed a week ago.
The teen accepted his cup eagerly, downing its glowing contents in one go and pouring himself another serving instantly.
"You seem to be holding your form better now," Maddie remarked.
"Well, I didn't sleep, but I rested enough to gather a little energy."
Maddie nodded – that made sense. This new piece of information landed in the jumble of other things that she had learned from the child in front of her, shoved to the corner of her mind for investigation at a later date.
She had all the time in the world, after all.
The ectoplasm in her own glass glowed as green as the ghost kid's eyes, and the woman swallowed dryly. Revulsion sent a shudder down her spine, and as Maddie stared at her beverage, she was far more inclined to fling it across the room than drink it.
"Small sips are best to start."
Maddie wasn't sure when Phantom had moved to stand beside her, but she was glad as his hand closed around her wrist. The glass was guided to her lips, and a gloved hand supported it as its rim pressed against the crease of her mouth.
"Come on," he coaxed, tilting the cup so that its contents barely graced her mouth before pulling away again. "Just a little taste, and I promise that it won't be nearly as bad as you think it is."
Her lips were covered in a layer of freezing slime. It made Maddie want to scrub her mouth with a pumice stone until any cell that had come into contact with this horrid stuff was removed from her body.
She had to calm down. Taking a deep breath through her nose, Maddie reminded herself that she was now biologically made of this stuff to the point where it gave her ghost powers. She was weak, starving, and growing a little dizzy. This was really no time for squeamishness.
Before she could stop herself, Maddie licked the ectoplasm off her lips.
It was electric. Like putting a battery to your tongue, but far better to taste.
Phantom smiled shakily, guiding Maddie to lift the glass to her mouth again. "See?" he asked in a voice that quavered. "It's really not that bad. I've got these filter things that collect ectoplasm from the Ghost Zone's atmosphere, so it's pure and clean. And it really doesn't taste that bad, sort of like lemons but sweet or something? I dunno, I usually mix it with juice or some type of soda. There's this one guy, that evil halfa I told you about, who likes to mix his ectoplasm with wine and drink it with dinner."
A small, detached part of Maddie's mind noted that he rambled whenever he got emotional. That thought was also filed away for later – right now, all Maddie could focus on was the glorious fluid that slid down her throat with a viscosity somewhere between honey and ice-cream.
It was heavenly.
Phantom continued to control her wrist, never allowing Maddie to take more than a sip at a time. "You can drink as much as you want later," he promised. "I just have to make sure that you're okay with this, though I think a ghost form is pretty good indication that you'll be fine. Still, I threw up whatever I ate for the first couple of days being a halfa. I couldn't even drink water, and eventually I got so hungry that when I ended up in the lab and saw the ectoplasm filling up the portal's filter, I ate all of it in one go, complete with all its contaminants. It helped with the hunger, but the contamination made my new powers go all wonky."
With the glass empty, Maddie slid into a seat. She ran her finger around the rim, collecting the remaining fluid and sucking it off delightedly. "That was amazing," she admitted, more to herself than the teenager.
Phantom nodded in agreement, pouring himself a third glass and nursing it between cupped hands. "This stuff is the only reason I've been strong enough to beat some of the really powerful ghosts," he confessed. "I try to keep at least one bottle near me all the time, and I phase soft drinks out of their cans and put this in instead to try to hide what I'm actually drinking. My friends carry cans for me as well, which is great because I'm nearly always with them. We have to be really careful though, because once this guy stole a can, and he got ectoplasm poisoning and even though it was really funny it wasn't, y'know?"
"You're rambling," Maddie interrupted, drawing her finger across the glass again to collect any residue that she might have missed the first time.
She remembered that. Dash Baxter, the school's top athlete and Maddie's main suspect for the bruises that covered her son, had mysteriously collapsed several months ago shortly after lunch. By the time he got to the hospital he was glowing a sickly yellow, and it had taken all of the Fentons' extraction equipment and a lot of blood blossom syrup to cure the thick-headed boy.
Ectoplasm poisoning, but until now, nobody had any clue how the kid had managed to ingest an almost lethal dose.
Running her tongue over the back of her teeth, Maddie wondered how stupid he had to be to drink something that glowed unnaturally. Honestly, it even tasted dangerous!
Phantom shifted on his feet. "Sorry," he mumbled.
Maddie blinked, recalling her comment. "Not at all. It's… It's nice to talk to you without looking down the barrel of a gun."
The teen swallowed, casting his eyes to the floor. "Yeah," he choked, sidling towards the door. "It's really… nice."
He bolted out of the room, and Maddie found herself smiling. Sure, the kid was sometimes a little strange, but years of having ghost powers and being hunted down by humans and ghosts alike would do that to just about anyone. Before Jack had accidentally blown it up several years ago, the cat they had adopted from the shelter had acted in much the same manner.
The bottle sat in the table, still one-third full of ectoplasm. It glimmered invitingly, and the woman swallowed before curling her fingers into fists and getting to her own feet.
Phantom had said to wait, so wait she would.
Padding to the living room in search of her abandoned book, Maddie smiled at the soft, human breathing emanating from within the blanket fort. "Good night, Phantom," she whispered, tucking the book under arm and flicking off the light.
His sleepy murmur morphed into a contented sigh as the woman pulled the door shut behind her, minimising as much of Jack's noise as possible. Just before the door clicked closed, a quiet good night in a very familiar voice wafted from the darkness.
Her mind was obviously playing tricks on her, so Maddie pretended not to hear.