Over half a month, and Danny still didn't know where everything was in the kitchen. He hunted through the cabinets, spoons in hand, looking for the bowls. Jazz stood to the side, eyes half closed, with the milk and cereal.

"The bowls are here, I believe," said Gwensyvyr, pointing.

"Thanks," said Danny. The bowls were, indeed, there. He pulled down two of them. "You've spent a lot of time here, then?"

"I saw the first grapes planted on this hill. I saw the first bricks laid. I saw not when it fell to ruin, but when young Martin came to restore it by his own hands, I saw that, also. So, yes. I have spent time here."

A thousand years was a long time.

There was so much Danny should ask her. So much he needed to know, so much they all needed to know, in order to survive whoever was killing them. But every time he thought about the portal in Andyr, the words stuck in his throat. He'd walked into the portal beneath Fentonworks twice, and neither time had he really understood what he was doing. For that matter, he didn't think he knew what he was doing this time.

He was scared.

The kitchen door opened. "Ancestors, I'm starving," said Iris, passing them. She pulled a box of toaster pastries out of one of the cabinets and tore it open. She ate them, not bothering to toast them first. "Do you - Um. Do the spirits have anything on the password situation?"

"Yes," said Gwensyvyr, a rather grim smile on her face. "We do. They have been relayed to me, by those who could not come themselves, and those who could only wait for your attention."

"They do," said Danny. Somehow, being the translator felt more awkward rather than less, now that Gwensyvyr could speak. Because now he was just… repeating. He wasn't even reading, or trying to guess what word Gwensyvyr was trying to say with her insane spelling. "Whenever you're ready."

"Great," said Iris. "Let me steal Lewis's burner, and we can see if any of them get me in. I–" Her hand spasmed, and she dropped what was left of the toaster pastry. She stared at it blankly.

"Are you okay?" asked Danny.

"Yeah," said Iris. "I'm fine. That was just. That was fast." She stared at her hand, which had picked up a fine tremor. She flexed it a few times, and it stilled. "Too fast."

"What?"

"I didn't take the melanyorata," she said. "George and I skipped our Revyvtech meds. They may be dosing us with something… magical, but that doesn't mean they can't poison us in more mundane ways."

"A wise choice," murmured Gwensyvyr.

"But most of those medications should still linger. The last time we took them was yesterday."

"Is there anything that could cause that?" asked Danny, worried.

"Yes, unfortunately." She flexed her hand again. "It might not even be because of anything I have. It could be withdrawal symptoms." She shook her head once, sharp and quick. "It's no use speculating. I'm not even a real pharmacist yet." She bent to pick up the remains of the toaster pastry and threw it away. "I'll get the phone."

.

"Next," said Iris. "That account has been closed, too."

Maybe, Danny reflected, as he quickly chewed and swallowed his cereal, he should have suspected that people who knew about ghosts and were in the process of actively killing off a family who reportedly had the loyalty of a lot of them would be a little more rigorous about closing out the accounts of dead employees and following other information security measures. So far, all of the accounts of the recently deceased were deactivated, and the ones that the ghosts had managed to get the login info from via reading over the shoulder needed an 'authorized' computer or a USB key. Obviously, there was no easy way for Danny to get that. Even Danny could barely feel Gwensyvyr when she touched him, and the rest of the ghosts were weaker than that.

"His username was oclaflyt2," said the ghost hanging at Danny's shoulder, her voice barely more than a whisper. She'd introduced herself as Kenna Dayftyn. She'd worked here one summer, she'd said, tending the grapevines, before she'd fallen ill. "The password was '5k winner,' all caps, no spaces, but the 'i' was a one."

He relayed the information.

On the other side of the table, Joanna serenely stacked heavy, intimidating books titled things like 'Catalogue of Avlynyse Arms,' 'Herydy Avlynyse,' and 'Catalogue of Personal Seals of the House of Dyrys, or, Lyst Sygele yf sy Hys Dyryse.' Jazz was reading something on her phone, probably a news article, by the way her face pinched. Gwensyvyr was talking to some other ghosts, their voices like whispers.

Danny tried not to feel too worried about not seeing Vivian. He wanted to ask Gwensyvyr about her, but his chance for that had passed as soon as Iris had come into the kitchen. He didn't want to…

His thought trailed off. What, exactly, was it that he didn't want to do? Upset people? Scare people? Everyone knew Vivian was dead, along with half their family. Everyone knew he could talk to ghosts. He was talking to them right now.

For the first time, Danny wondered if it would be safe for him to actually tell them the truth. All of it. About the portal and his ghost half. Not just Iris and Joanna, but all of them. His family. This part of his family. The ones who accepted ghosts and spirits and their benevolence as a matter of course. As natural. As true.

But, no. Eventually, he'd have to go home with his parents, back to Amity Park. He wanted to go back home with his parents, to Amity Park. Someone would slip. Someone would get upset about something, or forget who knew what, and before he knew it, his parents would know, too.

Matthew's public announcement about him being a syvyr would be hard enough to deal with. That was out in the world, now. On the internet. Everywhere. He hadn't spoken to his parents since then. He didn't know how they'd reacted. Not well, probably. They'd either think he was overshadowed or that he'd gotten sucked into the family's 'insanity.'

(Once again, he was reminded of their 'solution' for him 'seeing things.' He didn't know how they could say they were the rational ones of the family when they tried to 'spin the crazy' out of him, and Joanna and Eugene got pills.)

(He was going to be bitter about that in the back of his head for a long time. He could tell.)

"Yes!" shouted Iris. "Thank you, Odryn Claflyt and your lack of two-factor authentication! Ha!" She bent forward, typing feverishly.

Well.

Danny's eyes drifted back to Gwensyvyr, who had, in turn, stopped her conversation to look at Iris. He cleared his throat. "Honored ancestor," he started.

"You need not call me that," said Gwensyvyr. Her expression turned slightly mischievous. "It makes me feel old."

"You are old," said Danny, before he could think better of it. Joanna looked at him askance.

Gwensyvyr snickered. "Perhaps. But you do know my name. You can even pronounce it, unlike some I've met."

"Yeah, but that's kind of…" He lowered his voice, despite knowing that Joanna and Iris would still be able to hear him. "Unbelievable."

Gwensyvyr's expression was only slightly patronizing. "And what is it you need, cherished descendant?"

Danny felt himself blush. "I was wondering if you'd seen Vivian."

Ah, now that was the sound of three people holding their breaths.

"You want to talk to her?" asked Gwensyvyr, softly."

Danny nodded.

"I will see if she is ready. But know that even we did not see all that happened to her that day. Tread lightly."

Right. Right. Because trauma. And because nothing could ever be simple. Danny got it. Danny lived it.

"Is Vivian–?" started Joanna.

"Not here. Not yet," said Danny, shoving more cereal in his mouth before anyone could ask him anything else. He turned to Iris. "Anything yet?"

"Nothing that makes sense," said Iris. "The drugs? Those serial numbers belong to unspecified herbal supplements, and we all know how well those are regulated."

Danny didn't, actually. "Badly?"

"Try 'not at all.'" She continued to type, angrily. "Nothing about what's in them– They aren't listed for sale anywhere. They're just here. In the prescription database. Recommended for anemia sufferers with other long term ailments. These aren't even in liquid form."

"Anemia. Like the anemia that you have." Danny didn't make it a question.

Iris paused. "Well. Yes. You probably have it, too. Or will get it at some point."

"Are these things in your anemia drugs?"

"Herbal supplements?" asked Iris, wrinkling her nose. "No."

"But it's still, like, for the same thing."

"Do you think the red one is blood blossoms?" asked Jazz, sounding sick. She put her cereal bowl away.

"I don't know," said Danny. He stared at the phone in Iris's hand. "I don't know." Danny's ghost sense went off, and he looked around the room, trying to see if someone new had come in.

"Maybe there will be something more in the–" Iris broke off and threw the phone across the room with a shriek.

A hand reached out of the screen.

Different ghosts interacted with technology in different ways - or not at all, as in the case Gwensyvyr and the other Avlynyse ghosts - but he'd never seen one reach out of a phone quite like this before. Instead of the body warping and dissolution that were so normal for Danny that they'd begun to feel natural, this ghost simply used the phone as a window, reaching through, grabbing, seeking, its pallid skin bunched up against the edges of the screen.

The hand, the whole arm, looked sickly, diseased. There were sores on it that glistened with off color ectoplasm. The edges of the sores looked like they'd been dusted in red.

Danny formed a shield around it, unwilling to even think about touching it. Just in time, too. The thing glitched, and was abruptly there in full. Its body was no better than its arm. Ragged clothing covered most of its - his? - body, along with sparse armor and something that might have been a fur cloak. His face was ruined, pitted with sores and stretched gruesomely.

Danny squeezed his hands into fists and the shield contracted. But something kept if from closing further, and it wasn't the ghost throwing itself mindlessly at the shield.

"Thermos!"

"On it," shouted Jazz, already out of the room and down the hall.

The ghosts already in the room had, like Danny reacted with revulsion– Except, no, that wasn't revulsion, wasn't disgust. Some of them were straining closer, faces twisted in effort, but were being repelled, being forced back. He saw burn blisters begin to form on some of their outstretched hands.

Blood blossoms. That ghost had brought blood blossoms with it through the phone. But how?

Gwensyvyr dropped through the ceiling in full battle regalia, a nimbus of light throwing all the shadows in the room into stark relief. Her eyes were impossible purple, then green, then purple again. Her braids twisted behind her like serpents, their ends swirling into ghostly mist. Her sword was drawn, bright and deadly. Its tip sliced through Danny's shield and into the ghost.

For a split second, the ghost's face twisted, and then it was Vivian's face. But wrong. Lifeless. Dead.

Then, within Danny's shield, the ghost simply ruptured.

Gwensyvyr pulled her sword out, seemingly as shocked as Danny. The movement shed ectoplasm off the blade, but the blade smoked. The tip had been melted.

The room was silent.

Somehow, Danny knew that at that moment, everyone could see Gwensyvyr.

Jazz ran back into the room with the thermos, most of the rest of the family, Vivian included, following after her, half-awake. Every one of them, save Vivian, was carrying their ritual knives.

Gwensyvyr looked up from her sword. "There are," she said, "things you must know."