Exerting his will on the universe, it turned out, was exhausting.

Whatever energy Danny had regained with Sidney earlier was gone, and if it came down to a fight, he'd lose. It was as simple as that. He was too tired to think straight.

He was getting better at creating gates, though.

He could do it reliably now.

It wasn't fast, and he still had to do the whole make-it-like-glass-and-break-it thing, which took precious time, but he could do it.

The fact that he could make the passageway outside of his body, that he wouldn't have to go through the sheer pain and panic that he associated with every crossing but Kitty's, was enough to make him cry with relief.

He wasn't going to admit that to anyone else, least of all Jazz because that would entail explaining a lot more to her than he had, but Kitty and Johnny didn't seem to judge him for it. They just left him alone, which was fine by him. He never even saw Shadow.

He wound up lying on the pavement, staring up at the sky as he caught his breath and got his roiling emotions under control. Even with the streetlights around here on the fritz, he could only make out a few of the brighter stars. And Venus, of course. The moon was blocked by the buildings, but he could see enough to fill in the blanks and know what would be visible without the light pollution.

After being locked inside, seeing any part of the night sky was comforting.

At one point, he hadn't been sure it was a sight he'd see again.

"You rested enough to move again? I don't wanna stick around here."

The groan that escaped Danny at Johnny's question was almost instinctive, but he sat up anyway. "Yeah, okay. Where are we going?"

"I know a place," Kitty said as she climbed onto the motorcycle behind Johnny. "Let's leave it at that for now."

Danny squeezed on behind her. "I don't think there are any other ghosts around here besides you guys."

"Better safe than sorry, kid," Johnny said. "Some things are worth risking, but that ain't one of them."

The place Kitty had in mind turned out to be another closet, because that was apparently his life now. Well, okay, so it wasn't a closet. It was the boiler room for the movie theatre. Point was, it was somewhere with a locked door most people didn't go into, and the fact that Kitty knew exactly where it was made him think she might've worked here when she was alive.

Or, judging by Johnny's expression, dated someone who had.

Danny wasn't going to touch that conversation with a ten-foot pole.

"Now what?" he asked as Johnny checked over his bike as if it could have possibly taken some damage during their latest trip.

Kitty raised her eyebrows at him. "What do you think?"

"I dunno, phone Jazz so I know everyone else is okay? I'm too tired to actually plan anything."

"You need more food," Johnny said without looking over at him. "Babycakes, you mind showing him how to swipe something good while I finish up here? Maybe show him a few moves so he doesn't get himself killed if the shifter tracks him down?"

Danny would have protested, but he didn't have the energy or the money, so when Kitty took his hand and dragged him through the door, he let her.

"The easiest time to nick something is when no one else can see you," she said once they were through and standing at the end of an empty hallway full of closed doors. "You figure that out yet?"

"No? Am I even able to do that?"

She shrugged. "I'd assume so. It's an almost universal ability. Some ghosts have more trouble being visible than being invisible. Knowing Poindexter, he'd ramble about light refraction and whatever else, but you don't need to know how something works to take advantage of it. You just need to know it works."

Danny stared at her and decided not to point out that there were apparently differences between gatekeepers and ghosts, differences that he suspected extended beyond the fact that he was still breathing. "You say that like that's supposed to help me."

"It is. If you don't want to be seen, don't be seen. That's how being invisible works. Once you get the hang of it, you'll barely need to think about it."

That did not help him figure out how he was supposed to get the hang of it in the first place, but that was apparently par for the course with the ghosts who were helping him.

"So, what do I do? Any suggestions?"

She frowned as she looked him up and down. "I'll grab you some food before our lessons. Johnny's right; you need to eat before anything else. You picky about what kind of pizza you have?"

Danny shook his head.

He didn't open his mouth to point out that he would've been better off in the room with Johnny if Kitty was going to go on her own anyway, mostly because he wasn't entirely sure if he would have been better off.

Maybe ghosts sometimes needed to be alone, just like people. It would make sense that that wouldn't change once they died.

Kitty disappeared (literally), and Danny didn't have a better plan than waiting for her to come back, so he sat down in the hallway to wait.

He hadn't even had a chance to organize his thoughts about all of this—barely had a chance to shiver and wish he'd swiped a jacket from the lost and found back at school—before she was back with a box of what turned out to be pepperoni pizza. She set it between them as she sat down across from him. As she grabbed a piece, he asked, "You can eat that?" Poindexter had implied that he could, but Danny hadn't been sure that was true.

Sometimes, when Poindexter wasn't busy being pessimistic, what came out of his mouth was wishful thinking.

"It's all energy," she said around a bite. "I can get it this way, same as you. I don't get as much out of it as you, but I'm not running as hot as you, either. You ever even try to shut that off?"

Danny had no idea what she was talking about, so he shrugged and grabbed his own piece of pizza.

"You're not a beacon unless you put out a general call," she continued as he proceeded to inhale his first slice despite burning his mouth on the cheese, "but you still have this energy around you, you know? I can feel it when I get close, but if I'm around you for a while, I get used to it, so I don't notice it until I'm away and come back. Like when someone's cooking something and the smell fills the room. Or the popcorn smell upstairs."

Danny was more used to the smell of smoke and burning food with the blaring of fire alarms than anything else, freshly baked cookies included, but he knew what she was talking about.

"Whatever it is, whatever you're doing? That's gotta take something out of you. Everything does. Forget the shifter using it to pick you out of a crowd; I'd be surprised if you weren't dead on your feet since you started doing that."

Danny licked the sauce off his fingers before reaching for another slice. The fact that he was already feeling better had to be a placebo effect, but he'd take it. "Yeah, I'm still not clear on what that is. The only thing I've been doing differently since this whole thing started is not feeling like I'm dying any time one of you guys comes through because nothing is forcing its way out of my mouth anymore. And if that's the reason for whatever you're talking about, I'll take being tired, thanks."

"You should see if the others noticed anything. I doubt it's just me."

He had to swallow the half slice he'd crammed into his mouth before he could say, "They never said anything."

She hummed. "Might be longer since either of them crossed paths with the other gatekeeper. Because whatever you're doing? It's either not an ability he has or he's a lot more subtle about it."

Wait.

Danny lowered his piece of pizza instead of taking another bite. "You've actually met this other gatekeeper? He sounds…sketchy. Sidney's as scared of him as he is of the shifter." At least, that was true if they were talking about the same other gatekeeper. Danny had no idea how many there actually were, but it had definitely sounded like one was close. Ish. So it would make sense that Kitty was talking about that one.

Then again, there was no reason for distance to be remotely similar between her dimension and this one.

"That doesn't surprise me. He'd beat Poindexter to a pulp without working up a sweat."

"So you do know him?"

"I stole Johnny's bike last time we had a fight and went for a ride," Kitty said quietly as Danny folded the remainder of his pizza slice over the crust and took a bite. "I didn't make a deal to cross over, but I— I heard him out. And he doesn't have the same feeling that you do."

"Would he, if you guys were talking through one of those window portals?"

She shook her head. "He came over to my side. I was as close to him as I was to you. He can cross in the time it takes you to blink, by the way, so you can at least take comfort in the fact that you're bound to get faster at it."

Danny swallowed down the last of his second slice, wincing as the large, only partially chewed mouthful scraped uncomfortably against his throat. He was never not going to associate that feeling with ghosts, even if the direction was wrong. "Do you think he could help me? With any of this?"

She pursed her lips, ignoring her own half-eaten piece of pizza in favour of fixing those unnerving red eyes of hers onto him. "You don't want him to. Even if he can, it's not worth it. His prices aren't worth paying. Anyone desperate enough to do it will regret their decision sooner rather than later. And considering you want so much more than a simple crossing…." She shook her head. "We're already here helping you. You're not standing alone against the shifter. If you were, then maybe it would be worth hearing him out, but since you're not? It's a waste of time I doubt you have. The shifter will get tired of playing hide and seek sooner or later. Those types always do."

"That's what I'm afraid of. It's way better for me to ask for help and get it now before something happens."

She tilted her head at him. "You don't think the price of that help should be a consideration? I can guarantee you it's more than whatever you're thinking, and the price isn't something you can meet with stolen money."

"Look, anything this guy wants from me is going to be better than whatever the shifter plans to do with me if they get me again."

"You would think that," she said, which wasn't the agreement Danny had wanted. She started eating again, so he picked up another piece of pizza and took a bite instead of arguing with her.

She and Johnny had been right about him needing to eat.

Whether he liked it or not, they might be right about the other gatekeeper, too. Sidney might not have simply been overly cautious when he'd shut down the idea of Danny going to the other gatekeeper before Danny had really had a chance to propose it. Truthfully, Danny couldn't conceive how someone could be worse than the shifter right now, but Kitty obviously could, which…was not great.

"Take another and eat them together if you have to," Kitty added, nudging the pizza box toward him, "and I'll toss in the rest for Johnny. He'll be in a better mood by the time you learn how to steal without being so obvious about it."

Danny took another slice as instructed and didn't ask if Johnny's mood was related to their current location and past events he really didn't need to know about. "Are pickpocket lessons really necessary? It's not like I'm Oliver."

"This isn't pickpocketing," Kitty countered as she finished off her pizza. "It's killing two birds with one stone. You needed to learn how to be a proper gatekeeper yesterday, so if you want to have a hope of catching up, you've gotta keep your energy up. Which means food. And sleep, eventually. But since it's a safe bet you don't have money, that means begging or being inventive—and even if you didn't need to learn how to use your abilities, you can't risk the attention you'd get by begging."

Kitty picked up the pizza box and leaned through the wall with it to talk to Johnny while Danny ate.

It wasn't like he could argue with her.

Food did make him feel better.

And Sidney had essentially told him the same thing, so it was unlikely they were messing with him.

Kitty hadn't even talked to Sidney. Not over here, anyway. She and Johnny had been alone when Danny hadn't really been paying attention, but he was pretty sure talking hadn't been their priority at that point, let alone talking about him.

By the time Kitty returned her attention to him, Danny had finished up his last pieces of pizza. "You ready to do this, kid?"

"Can we maybe work on the invisible part before we work on the stealing part?"

"You need to develop a light touch either way, but sure." She held out her hand. "Come on, see what it feels like first."

It was probably a good thing Johnny was in a different room.

Danny took her hand.

She wasn't as cold as Poindexter or Johnny. He hadn't noticed it as much before—he hadn't been paying that much attention before, to be honest—but while she looked less human than either of them, she felt more human. It wasn't that touching the others had felt like poking at a raw slab of steak; it was more…something. He didn't know the best way to describe it.

Alive whispered the part of his brain that he was trying to ignore, mostly because that didn't make sense. Kitty had been alive, just like Johnny and Sidney had been alive, so there was nothing different on that front. But she felt more…present. Or something.

Granted, for all he knew, he could grab Johnny's hand right now and feel the same thing. Bringing the two of them together might've completed something. He obviously had no idea how this ghost stuff worked. Maybe deciding you belonged together, like Kitty and Johnny had, and continuing that commitment into the afterlife changed things. Maybe it made it more literal, which would make breaking up more literal, too. They were ghosts. That might be a thing, right?

Danny was staring at their joined hands when he suddenly couldn't see them anymore. Their arms had vanished until it reached their sleeves, and as Danny gaped in the general direction of his shoulder, that disappeared, too.

He looked up to see Kitty smirking at him. "When you get the hang of it, you can control what's affected." His arm reappeared, but it ended abruptly at his wrist like some surprisingly good special effect. "So? Can you feel the difference?"

He couldn't.

Not really.

He'd expected there to be a tingling sensation, something a little less painful but along the lines of pins and needles of a limb falling asleep or waking up, but there was nothing. "Are you sure there is a difference?"

"It might be something you'll get more sensitive to with practice," she said as she let go of his hand, though Danny had no idea how he was supposed to practice when he didn't know how to achieve the desired effect in the first place. "Like with that whatever field you're putting out. You weren't doing that when Johnny first met you, you know. I asked. He says it's new."

Great.

So he was doing stuff without even realizing it.

Then again, that wasn't exactly new.

"But you don't have any guesses as to what it is? How am I supposed to stop it if I don't even know what I'm doing in the first place?"

"You'll figure it out."

She had a lot more confidence in him than Danny himself did.

"In the meantime, try going invisible. I don't know if you'll find it easier to do a part of yourself and not everything, but feel free to start small."

Danny had had moments of embarrassment where he wished no one could see him, so he tried to focus on that feeling and to concentrate that feeling in his right hand.

It remained stubbornly in the visible spectrum, which was absolutely useless.

He focused on the memory of what his arm had looked like without his hand at the end of it. He concentrated on very determinedly not seeing what he was staring at it. He imagined a giant eraser rubbing out his hand like his life was a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Nada.

He'd suggest trying the intangibility thing again, but he had no idea how to do that, either. If he did, he'd have gotten out of that closet before the shifter had made the door intangible.

Ugh.

"Maybe I should just call Jazz and get an update," he said, hoping ignoring the problem would make it go away—or at least buy him more time to figure out what the heck he was supposed to do. "It might be easier to focus if I'm not worried."

Kitty snorted. "Tough. You need to learn to do this under pressure." Her features shifted into something more calculating, a look Danny never liked seeing on Jazz's face. "Actually—"

Danny knew he wasn't going to like whatever happened next, but he was still surprised when Kitty disappeared.

Unfortunately, he wasn't any less surprised when he was slapped across the face. "Ow!" That stung.

Kitty reappeared in front of him, arms crossed and looking too pleased with herself to even put on a pretence of being apologetic. "You have two choices. Dodging is all well and good when you can see the strike coming and have time to move out of the way, but since you can't? You need to either go invisible to level the playing field or turn yourself intangible so I can't land a hit."

She disappeared again, and Danny scrambled away from where he'd last seen her before getting to his feet. "No fair! I didn't sign up to have you beat me up!"

He was grabbed from behind and Kitty laughed in his ear. "Fair isn't part of the afterlife, either."

"I hate all of this," Danny hissed as he wriggled out of Kitty's grip. (Okay, fine. She'd let him go. But considering it was only so she could trip him or something in the future, he wasn't going to look on that particularly kindly right now.)

"Basic survival skills before thievery," Kitty said from somewhere to his left, and Danny didn't manage to jerk away before something heavy collided with his stomach.

He hit the ground wheezing, and it was a moment before he could roll over and get onto his hands and knees, let alone speak. "Do you have bricks in your purse or something?"

A heel came down on his back and forced him flat to the floor. "Or something," she purred. "Now, picture yourself slipping away from me. Having my foot hit the cold floor. You need to shift around me to get away, so figure out how to do it."

"I was already in this position," Danny growled, "and for your information, it didn't help!"

"What did you try then?"

"Nothing that worked!"

The pressure on his back increased. "Then try something different."

Okay, Danny was officially going to have to re-evaluate which ghosts he counted as friends, because Kitty was an acquaintance and semi-useful ally at best.

"Some tips would be useful," he ground out. "How's it work for you guys?"

"If you already asked Poindexter, assume whatever he told you about molecular structure and stuff is the official answer. Me, I just know what I want and go for it. You? You need to calm down first or you'll be too scattered to manage anything."

"How is this supposed to help me calm down?"

"It's not supposed to help that. It's for you to figure out how to do it when you have a shifter breathing down your neck. You don't need to calm down enough that you're falling asleep. You need to calm down enough to focus in spite of whatever's going on around you."

Danny grumbled something unsavoury under his breath, but Kitty didn't let up, so he humoured her.

He imagined her foot falling through him to the floor, and predictably that didn't happen.

He imagined pulling away from her without having to match her strength.

Nothing.

He even tried the same thing he had with the door, thinking of that feeling he got from passing through stuff, trying to hold it within him or push it out into the obstacle that was her foot.

"Why do you think any of this is going to help me figure out how to do this?" he mumbled into the floor.

"Pressure helps some people figure it out. Necessity 'n' all."

"Clearly I am not some people."

"Mmm. I wouldn't say that. From what I understand, you've come a long way in a short time."

"Which might be proof on its own that the whole invisibility and intangibility thing isn't something I can actually do, so maybe if you want to teach me how to rob someone, you're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. Which is what, incidentally? Distraction? Sleight of hand?"

The pressure on his back disappeared, but he didn't push himself up. "Kitty?" His brain had already jumped to the horrible conclusion that the shifter had found him, that they were going to grab him any second now and—

"You don't think you can do this," Kitty said, and Danny immediately felt like a fool for thinking the worst when the truth was she was simply being nice and letting him get up. He got to his feet as she continued, "No wonder you can't make anything work. Having a modicum of faith in your own abilities is pretty much a prerequisite for everything. None of the ghosts who've ever lived would be where we are if we didn't have a stubborn belief in our own existence—either that we've lived or that we're still here. I doubt a gatekeeper is any different."

"If it were that simple, wouldn't that mean I couldn't do anything? Portals and gates and stuff included?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You knew you could do those. You've been doing them since the start. And once you found out it was possible to move them, you poured everything you could into figuring out how to move them. But you still believed moving them was possible, right?"

Danny shifted on his feet. "Sidney kinda made it sound like that was general knowledge."

"It is. So is the fact that gatekeepers aren't pushovers. You've held off a shifter without knowing what you were doing, and that's not an easy task."

"I had help."

"You called for help," she corrected, "and you received it." She reached out to tap his chest. "That power inside you? That's what helps you live like one of us. But it's stronger and more malleable than what most of us have at our centre, which means, once you figure out how to harness it, you should be more powerful and have a wider range of abilities than most of us. But if you're going to beat the shifter, you need to accept that you can do it, and then you need to be smart about it, because you can't assume they'll walk blindly into whatever trap you plan out for them. They weren't created yesterday."

That show of confidence was probably the nicest thing either she or Johnny had said to him since he'd met them.

It also brought up what he suspected was a very important point Sidney had just assumed he already knew.

"Wait, this…this passageway or whatever inside of me that helps with the gates, that's supposed to help me do everything else, too? Even though it's unrelated?"

Sidney had told him he'd have other powers as a gatekeeper.

He'd also repeatedly insisted that he didn't know what those powers were.

He had not, unless Danny had misunderstood him (which was sadly entirely possible), ever said a word about the power of the gates also powering every other ability Danny supposedly had.

"It's not unrelated," Kitty said, giving him a look that made him think she questioned his intelligence. "It's all connected. The fact that I have different abilities doesn't make me the sum of my parts, and the fact that I have different abilities than Johnny doesn't make us fundamentally different. When it comes down to it, we're the same. We just have…. We just have different specializations, but right at the beginning? The potential for anything was there. You still have all that potential, but you need to accept that you have it to access it."

Danny swallowed and tried for a joke. "So clap if you believe in fairies?"

Kitty rolled her eyes. "I'm serious, kid. Ghosts that lose conviction in themselves will destabilize at the drop of a hat, assuming they haven't already devolved into little more than what they started as. You might not be at risk of total destruction, but that other gatekeeper Poindexter's afraid of? He knows exactly what he can do, he's confident about it, and he wouldn't be running from the shifter like you are right now. So if you want to have half the chance he'd have in your shoes, you need to accept that you can do a heckuva lot more than open a gate to the other side."

She smiled at him, kissed her hand, and then—in the split second before she blew the kiss at him—whispered, "Better realize that potential of yours."