"What do you mean, the reading is stronger than last time?" I floated over to Tucker and peered over his shoulder to see the screen for myself. Yep, my ghost core was seriously increasing in strength. I groaned and covered my face with my hands. A whole new set of problems to worry about.
"Hasn't it gotten stronger since freshman year, though?" Tucker pointed out.
"Not this much!"
"But... isn't a stronger core a good thing?" Sam asked, sounding bewildered. I looked up at her, twinkling in the dim green light of the portal in my basement.
"Well, yeah, it's a good thing if you want more attention from the ghost scanners," I complained. I threw myself onto my back and stayed hovering right where I was. A piece of my now-white hair flopped into my eyes, and I shoved it away, annoyed. Maybe I should listen to my mom and get it cut.
"Drama queen," Tucker smiled. Then he turned to Sam. "The stronger a ghost core is, the more likely smaller things will set detectors off."
Sam spun around in her office chair a few times. "So that deal with the ECU today..."
"Wouldn't have happened a few weeks ago," I finished for her. We sat in silence for a moment.
Tucker fiddled with some wires connecting his PDA to my parents' computers. "That's the last one, by the way," he added. A few scanners beeped, getting some last-second readings. I glared at them. If they actually turned on, they'd probably train right on me, even though we'd calibrated them years ago to ignore my ectosignature if Tucker wasn't the one directing them. More powerful was good, but it also meant that my human life would be getting a lot harder. A scowl settled on my face. I was barely keeping up with sabotaging my parents' inventions as it was.
"Is it just me," Sam said suddenly, "or is it getting colder in here?" I raised my head to see her hugging her arms.
Tucker finally disconnected the last wire and paused, his finger on a power button. "Woah, yeah, it is."
"I can't feel anything," I said, but sat up and drifted over to the wall-mounted thermometer. "But it's dropped, like, ten degrees."
I turned around and we stared at each other. Then I zipped back to my backpack, reversed my transformation with the usual bone-chilling feeling, and followed Sam and Tucker out of the lab. Whatever the cause of the temperature drop, Mom and Dad would be alerted and come to check it out. We made our way upstairs to my room, then started our make-it-look-like-we've-been-here-the-whole-time routine. I dumped my backpack's innards out onto the floor, then opened a new bag of chips and poured half of it into a bowl.
The entire process only took a few seconds, and soon we were huddled together on the floor next to my bed, Tucker in the middle with his PDA out.
"Okay, Tuck, let's see the rest of those readings," Sam said.
Tucker turned on his explaining voice. "First of all, Danny, you'll be happy to know that I clocked you at just under a hundred fifty miles per hour again. And that's just down in the lab. I bet you could go a lot faster outside, when you have time to speed up."
"Yeah, yeah, we know that," Sam interrupted. "Get to the good stuff."
I grinned and agreed. "Yeah, Tuck, we've got more to talk about than just speed. Though speed is pretty cool."
"Cool, huh?" Tucker's eyebrows waggled. "It's funny you should mention that. I actually took the liberty of rifling through some of your parents' files." He brought up a picture of an ectopus on the screen. "Do you know what ghost cores are?"
Sam shook her head.
"Well, yeah," I answered. "I feel it, nice and cold in there." I tapped my chest. "But... besides the fact that they exist, I don't know anything. It's not like I read my parents' research reports for fun, you know?"
"Yeah, they can be dense. Anyway." Tucker tapped his PDA. "Turns out, ghost cores are what a ghost is, at its most basic. Guys like this ectopus here are mostly core." He touched the screen, and a ball of bright red filled the ectopus's sack of a body, leaving it to look like a cherry with too many legs.
Tucker continued. "They're easier to beat because they're animalistic, but also because when you hit their body, you hit their core. On the other hand, most humanoid ghosts have more concentrated core and can command bigger amounts of ectoplasm." An image of Ember replaced the ectopus. I rolled my eyes at the choice. A little ball of dark red sat in the center of her chest, a computer edit. "Ember's ectosignature is a lot stronger, and it's so concentrated that it's hidden in her body pretty well. Ghosts like that are harder to fight because you can't just hit their cores with a random shot."
"What's the point, Tuck?" Sam asked. She was paying strict attention.
"The point, my dear Watson, is that Danny's core is absolutely tiny. And probably freezing, but I'm not going to stick a thermometer inside his chest to find out."
I shuddered at the thought. "Me neither. So smaller means more powerful?"
"Sometimes," Tuck shrugged. "Yours might be little because you're only half ghost, but you've beaten plenty of full ghosts with bigger cores, so I think we can say that in your case, yes. Smaller means more powerful."
"And you said freezing. What does that have to do with anything?" Sam dug in a newly-opened chip bag and pulled one out. That was one snack she'd eat along with Tucker and me, since potatoes, sunflowers, and salt crystals were all faceless.
"Okay, here's the thing." Tucker actually put down his PDA. He scooted out of our huddle and turned to face us, so we made a circle. For once, Tucker looked dead serious. Dead. Hah. I broke a chip in half.
He started to talk, a bit slower than normal, as if he wanted us to really understand. "Danny's core is, as far as I can tell, unique. Most cores are based on fire or something. A few on electricity, which would make sense to be Danny's, seeing as..." Tucker trailed off, but we all knew what he was getting at. I died, or half-died, by electrocution. He was right, electricity would make sense.
"But I'm not electric," I prompted.
Tucker blinked. "Yeah. You're not. Your core is ice, Danny. I don't know how that works, but the only ghost in your parents' huge database with an ice core is you."
A chill, ironically, ran through me. Ice, huh? I felt my core buzz as I thought about it. Yeah, it was definitely cold. I remembered a few months ago when I had stuck a thermometer in my mouth because I was worried I was getting a fever. It read something about normal, but I felt horrible. Even Jazz said I'd had a fever, even though the thermometer said otherwise. Later, when I had recovered, I'd checked my temperature again. It was far below normal, almost at hypothermia levels, but I was totally fine.
Yeah, ice would make sense. And if my parents knew about it... I knew now that they had never earnestly hunted me. Um, Phantom. If they really wanted to find me, and knew that their scanners were useless in finding my ectosignature, they could just calibrate their sensors to read for low temperatures. In fact, I thought back to yesterday morning, when Dad had been telling me about some new invention of his. I didn't remember much, but it had something to do with a thermometer and a ghost scanner. Had they come to the same conclusion? Find a pocket of ice, find me. What would happen when they seriously decided to look for me?
"Oh, okay, that makes total sense," Sam said. Her voice was wavering from chattering teeth. Tucker was rubbing his arms, too, even though he was wearing long sleeves.
"Oh, crap, guys, I'm sorry," I said quickly, realizing what must have happened. "I guess it was me down in the lab, too." My friends looked freezing, but I felt totally fine. In fact, my room was usually a bit warm for my taste, and right now it was awesome.
"Can you make it warmer?" Sam protested.
"Uh..."
"No," Tucker answered for me. "Ice is cold, not warm. But you can stop making it colder!"
"How?!" I asked in desperation.
"I don't know! You're the ghost! Think happy thoughts or something, man!"
I stopped. Maybe it was my thoughts. I shut my eyes to focus. All right - what was warm? Sunshine. Florida. Cape Canaveral. The Kennedy Space Center.
Sam and Tucker both sighed in relief and I opened my eyes. "Better?"
They nodded, Sam a little less sure than Tucker. Well, if she didn't want to be cold, she shouldn't wear sleeveless short shirts all the time.
"Guess we found the cure for colds," I laughed. Sam groaned.
A few minutes later, we all found ourselves squished together again in front of Tucker's laptop. Sam had wrapped herself in my constellation-patterned comforter, still complaining of the cold, though she was pressed in on both sides by teenage boys. I think she just wanted a blanket.
The title screen of Dead Teacher 10: The Gardener flashed. We had all seen this one countless times, but it was still the only Dead Teacher that Sam actually enjoyed. As the predictable plot rolled along, I got bored. My eyes unfocused and I was having a hard time staying awake. School had taken a lot out of me today, and that blood blossom headache still lingered. I vaguely wondered if that had thrown off our readings.
Sam's smell and the pattern of stars on my blanket swirled together, creating a vivid dream where all three of us were stuck on a star. I kept trying to fly us away, but the star's gravity was too strong. In fact, it was increasing, and starting to collapse into a black hole. I tried to keep us safe and fly faster, harder, but the black hole was slowly drawing us in.
"Danny!"
I startled awake. Those shouts weren't all part of my dream, apparently. I took a moment to get my bearings... and then I was seriously confused. Why was I floating? For that matter, why were Sam and Tucker and other various things in the air, too? There was no warning, and we suddenly dropped.
Tucker, of course, reached right over to look at his laptop, which had fallen along with us and was now playing the last bit of the movie. Sam stood and rubbed her shoulder where she had landed on the ground. I winced and followed her to my feet.
"Sorry." I helped Tucker up and grabbed my comforter from the floor. "That was completely accidental, I swear."
"You were asleep, idiot." Sam rolled her eyes and whacked my head. "Of course it was an accident."
Tucker narrowed his eyes and pretended to glare at me. "At least my laptop's okay. But, dude, I guess we're not having any more sleepovers."
"You guys still have sleepovers?" Sam asked, with mockery dripping from every word. And hypocrisy. All of us still had the occasional sleepover, and used them as excuses when we had to hide out overnight and didn't want our parents to worry.
"Seriously, guys, sorry," I repeated. My face burned. What had that been about? Had I floated in my sleep before? It wasn't impossible. Sometimes I phased through my bed and woke up underneath it. Floating might have happened, but it was more dangerous. If my parents walked in and I was under the bed, I could make excuses. If they found me hovering whole feet above the bed...
"It's all good," Tucker said flippantly. "Who wants some beef?"
I smiled halfway, still embarrassed. "I'll get my shoes on." I crouched down to fish for my sneakers.
"If you're talking about Nasty Burger, I'm in, too," came Sam's voice from above me. "But don't call it 'beef'. It's demeaning."
"To what, the cows or the workers?"
"Both!"
"Lighten up, Sam. It's just a burger."
Before Sam could reply, I popped up. "Ready?"
She scowled.