Vlad's expression settled into one of polite confusion. Maddie wasn't sure if he recognized the name but couldn't remember why it sounded familiar or if he was completely baffled by the question. It was possible he'd come across the ghost girl before, of course, but it was equally likely that he hadn't. He hadn't done any paranormal research since their college days. Unless he'd been reading the papers she and Jack had published, there was a good chance he was behind in the field despite his move to Amity Park.
There was no reason for Jazz to be directing her ire at him, as if he had all the answers and was purposefully withholding them. He'd come to help them. There were far more gracious ways to ask if he knew anything about the ghost girl than demanding answers he may not even have.
"Jazz, honey—"
"Who's Danielle?" Jazz growled again, not even turning to acknowledge her mother's words.
"I imagine you already know the answer to that question if you're using the poor girl's name," Vlad said mildly, "so why don't you enlighten me?"
Without breaking his gaze, Jazz reached out and pulled open the drawer by the fridge. It was a utility drawer of sorts, holding a variety of weaponry and containment devices in case things got…out of hand. There had been too many incidents of ecto-contamination in their food for such precautions not to be prudent.
Maddie didn't miss the slight rise of Vlad's eyebrows when Jazz pulled out a pair of Fenton Cuffs and slipped something—presumably the key—into her pocket. "My dear girl," he said, "surely you know those work as well on humans as they do on ghosts? It's hardly necessary. I am here of my own free will."
"Then you won't mind putting them on," Jazz ground out. "Right?"
"Sweetie," Maddie said quietly, "I think you're taking this a bit too far. Vlad is helping us, and he can hardly work with his hands bound." Jazz's expression only hardened as she was speaking, so Maddie added, more plainly, "You don't need to treat him like a prisoner."
"You have no idea what I need to do, Mom." Jazz held out the cuffs. "Well?"
Vlad laughed and shook his head. "I don't see the need."
"Well, I do." Jazz grabbed Vlad's arm and snapped the cuff onto his left wrist. His expression darkened immediately, but before he could do anything, Jazz had closed the opposing cuff around her own wrist.
Maddie frowned and moved so that her daughter couldn't miss her expression. "Jasmine, this is ridiculous. Release him."
Jazz's left hand (her free hand) moved to her hip, resting there as if she were preparing to scold her own mother—and for something other than their dubious influence on Danny's psyche. "No. You have no idea how necessary this is, Mom."
"Then tell me what I don't know," Maddie retorted, not hiding the shortness in her voice. Jazz's actions were inexcusable. Vlad was an old friend. He was helping them. He didn't deserve this sort of treatment. It was completely unfounded.
"I'm sure this is just a misunderstanding," Vlad said smoothly. His eyes slid to meet Jazz's. "Isn't that right?"
"Like I said, we're past the point of secrets."
Maddie opened her mouth—saw Vlad do the same—but Jazz was already moving, twisting around to reach the hidden panel by the fridge. A few seconds later, she'd exposed one of the giant red buttons that activated their security system.
Vlad hauled her backwards before she had a chance to press it, and Maddie rounded on her daughter. "Jasmine, explain yourself!"
Despite having Vlad's arms wrapped around hers, Jazz managed to square her shoulders and look very grown up in that moment—more like the woman Maddie knew she would soon be, one with countless lessons of life's experience under her belt, than the teenager she still was. "I was trying to."
"Hardly," Vlad drawled, and Maddie couldn't help but agree with him.
"Irrational actions are not an explanation, and you of all people know that. Danny was kidnapped by a ghost, and—"
"He wasn't, Mom. You know too much to deny that. That ghost you had on the table? Her name is Danielle. And I don't need to have met her to know that Danny cares about her. If he didn't, they wouldn't be gone. And he wouldn't call her a cousin when he talked about her with Sam and Tucker."
Vlad's grip must have tightened because Jazz gasped. Maddie stepped forward to help, but she was preoccupied by the fact that Jazz knew the ghost girl's name. She shouldn't have known it, couldn't have connected it to the ghost girl even though she had apparently heard it somewhere else, too—and what was all this about cousins?
"Honey," Maddie tried, "we don't know what that ghost told Danny—"
"Maybe we don't." It was an agreement, but Maddie knew her daughter well enough to know that Jazz wasn't finished. This wasn't a concession; it was a setup for her counter argument. "But maybe Vlad does. Isn't that right?"
For the life of her, she had no idea where the venom in Jazz's voice was coming from. Fortunately, Vlad was taking this all graciously, smiling even though Jazz couldn't see him. He did not, however, loosen his grip. "I'm afraid I'm just as much in dark as you on this matter."
Jazz snorted. "This is ridiculous. Do you really think I won't say it now, Vlad? Danny's not hiding this anymore, so I don't need to, either."
"Danny's not hiding what anymore?" Maddie asked cautiously.
"His association with ghosts," Vlad replied before Jazz could. "That's my fault, really."
"You can say that again," Jazz muttered. She kicked at Vlad's leg. "Let me go already."
"Vlad, please. I'm sure Jazz is ready to be civil, aren't you, sweetie?" Jazz looked the farthest thing from civil right now, but Jazz also prided herself on being a responsible adult. She was less prone to drastic measures and wild lies than her brother—significantly less so, if Danny had been associating with ghosts.
It made perfect sense, though. He'd be sure they'd disapprove (not that he was wrong there) and would try to keep his…activities, for lack of a better word, a secret. And, really, this behaviour hadn't started until the ghosts began showing up on a regular basis. He hadn't shut them out until he'd been certain he'd be shut out because of his choices. She wished he'd talked to them, though. They could have tried to come to some sort of understanding.
But while an association with ghosts would explain how he knew the ghost girl's name, while it would explain his protective nature of her and—possibly—even the sense of kinship that had developed between them to the point that he'd started calling her a cousin— While that could be true, it didn't explain what she'd seen.
It didn't explain his eyes.
It didn't explain his disappearance.
It didn't explain the blood.
Even if another ghost were involved—even if something crazy had happened, such as Phantom daring to try to overshadow one of her children—it still didn't explain the blood.
Vlad released Jazz, who huffed and moved to stand beside him. She was still more than an arm's length from their security centre's activation panel. Likely as not, she knew as well as Maddie that any move toward it now would simply end up in her being farther from it than before. Vlad was no longer smiling, but he was being an exceedingly good sport about all of this, and Maddie was grateful for that. Really, he was so good to her family.
"Now, since both of you clearly know the truth, would either of you care to explain to me what Danny has been up to?"
"Protecting us," Jazz said, "to the best of his ability. But we don't need to be protected from every ghost, and I have a feeling the girl you had in the lab—"
"It was a ghost, honey."
"She was a girl." Jazz's voice was flat. "And she was Danny's friend. His…his cousin. I can't tell you what that means, though." A sharp smile was plastered on her face, too bright and wide to be seen as anything but false and a touch feral. In a cheery tone, she added, "But Vlad does, so why don't you tell us, Vlad?"
"I really don't see why you—"
"That's what I thought," interrupted Jazz. Her hand delved into her pocket and came out with a vial Maddie didn't recognize. One of Jack's forgotten experiments?
If Vlad's raised eyebrows were any indication, he had no idea what the threat was supposed to be, either.
And it was a threat, even though Maddie had no idea why.
"Blood blossom extract," Jazz hissed.
Vlad jerked away, only to be restricted by the Fenton Cuffs.
Maddie blinked.
Blood blossoms harmed ghosts, not humans. True, they might act as an allergen for some, but Vlad hadn't had a problem with them back in college when they'd studied the plants in preparation of being armed with some sort of weapon should the proto-portal prove a success. If he'd since developed an allergy, she didn't know about it.
And there was certainly no reason for Jazz to know about it if he had.
"Tell me who Danielle really is or I swear I'll—"
Maddie grabbed her daughter's hand, wrenching it behind her for leverage and then prying the vial free. She slipped it into her pocket lest Jazz get any more ideas. "That's enough!" She made no effort to conceal her anger. If Vlad had developed an allergy—and there was good reason to think he had, based on his reaction—it was beyond reckless to purposefully trigger a reaction. "Jasmine, we do not threaten our friends. I don't want you to talk to anyone this way, least of all Vlad when he's here to help us. Release him or I'll do it for you. And then you can go down to the lab and keep watch for your father while we work up here."
"Mom, you don't—"
"Now."
Jazz's mouth snapped shut and she stared at her mother. "You can't be serious," she whispered.
"Do I look like I'm joking?"
Jazz pursed her lips, but she knew better than to push back again. She reached into her pocket, pulled out the key, and unlocked the cuffs. She left Vlad to hand everything to Maddie as she stalked down the stairs.
"I'm sorry," Maddie said, flinching as the door slammed shut behind Jazz. "I really don't know what got into her."
Vlad's smile was thin as he rubbed at his wrist. "Teenagers."
"She's worried about Danny. You know how overprotective she can be. Sometimes, she just doesn't—"
"FentonWorks Anti-Creep Mode Activated!" Her husband's voice blared out of hidden speakers, clearly heard despite the shrill alarms, even as the flashing lights slid smoothly out of the walls.
Maddie heaved a sigh as the recording promised pain. She had no idea why Jazz was doing this, but it was easy enough to deactivate the alarm and return the Fenton Cuffs and key to the drawer. The wailing mercifully shut off and the red lights retracted, but for the next five hours, the house would automatically respond to any signs of ecto-activity—providing she didn't key in the appropriate code first. A code which needed to be re-entered within two minutes if no ecto-activity was detected before it automatically reset. It hadn't seemed like a flaw at the time, but now….
"I'll talk to her," Maddie promised. "If you'll just give me a moment." She flashed Vlad a smile and didn't wait for his permission before thundering down the basement stairs. "Jasmine Fenton," she hissed, "what has gotten into you?"
"We have to keep the Fenton Ghost Portal open for when Dad comes back," Jazz said from her chair at the computer desk. With her slightly furrowed brow and questioning tone, as if she were wondering how she could be in the wrong, she was the picture of confused innocence. "This is just a precaution, in case any ghost tries to sneak through in the meantime."
Maddie's eyes narrowed, but she couldn't guess at Jazz's true intention. She was fairly certain Jazz had one—her cleverness wasn't book smarts alone—but the only reason which crossed Maddie's mind was the one Jazz had given, and Jazz's manner convinced her it wasn't the truth. She decided to leave it for now and focus on the more pressing matter. "Why are you treating Vlad this way?"
Jazz stood and closed the distance between them, leaving her quizzical façade behind. In a quiet voice, she said, "Vlad isn't who you think he is. He's been lying to you for years. I don't know why it took him so long to reconnect with you and Dad, but I have my suspicions. It's…. The truth isn't pretty, Mom. You have to know that, and you have to be prepared for it."
Maddie sighed. "Give me some credit. I know you and Danny aren't fond of Vlad, but—"
"He's a creep who hates Dad and has a weird obsession with you and Danny," Jazz said bluntly. "You just can't see it."
"Jasmine—"
"He actually makes me think there's something to your whole 'all ghosts have an obsession' theory," Jazz continued blithely. "I mean, the Box Ghost and Skulker are obvious, but—"
Maddie scrubbed a hand over her face. She couldn't believe she needed to have this conversation with her daughter right now, when everything else was going on. "Honey, he's not a ghost." She was used to Jack jumping to conclusions, not Jazz. Jazz was one to sit down and think things through logically. "While he might be a little eccentric—"
"We used to call Plasmius the Wisconsin Ghost," interrupted Jazz. "Don't you think that it's weird that he's always spotted around Amity Park now? Ghosts aren't prone to move their haunts, are they?"
"Only when they're tied to something that's on the move," Maddie agreed, "but that's hardly evidence—"
The blaring ecto-alarm cut her off.
Again.
"Oh, I guess Vlad doesn't know about the primed sensor. How foolish of me."
Maddie could easily see that Jazz had planned this, but she didn't understand yet how it had worked. "We're not done here," she warned, taking the stairs back to the kitchen two at a time.
There was a scorch mark on the wall by the fridge and two more on the floor. An empty net was strewn across the open doorway by the living room, and—
Maddie stared at the shattered glass and smoking green splotches of one of their ecto-samples and then at Vlad, who was currently held in one of their vice-like traps in the centre of the room. Green ectoplasm dripped all down his front, and his hair was singed. "What were you doing?"
"An experiment, I'm afraid."
Maddie exhaled slowly, trying to steady her emotions, before walking over to the nearest hidden panel. She slid it open and keyed in the appropriate code to deactivate the alarm. Again. "May I ask what you were hoping to achieve?"
Vlad nodded at the Booo-merang. "I was hoping to recalibrate that completely. Blank it, if you will, before introducing the samples you've given me with the ghost's ecto-signature."
"And got targeted for your trouble." Their system would've picked up on the presence of ectoplasm the moment he'd opened the phase-proof jar. That, at least, explained what she'd seen. "I'm sorry about that. Once the system's primed, it searches out anything with an ecto-signature. We've recently introduced a way for it to ignore pre-programmed ecto-signatures—so that we can freely work on samples without compromising security—so you must have found a sample we haven't catalogued yet."
"Lucky me."
"Why don't you go upstairs and get cleaned up? I'll find you some clothes to wear and wash those in the meantime."
"Thank you, but it's rather fine material. It's best if I do it myself. I'll just run home and be back as soon as I can."
Maddie wasn't surprised, so she apologized again as she saw him to the door, and then she moved back to the kitchen and sat with her head in her hands.
"Mom? Is Vlad gone?"
Maddie looked up at Jazz's voice. "Yes, you were successful in driving him away," she said dryly.
Unlike Maddie had expected, Jazz didn't look the least bit contrite. Instead, her daughter looked grim. She pulled out another chair and sat opposed Maddie. "You need to understand something."
She needed to understand a lot of things, and right now, she wasn't sure she understood anything at all. "I'm quite aware."
Jazz wasn't put off by her tone. "What you showed me. About the blood."
Maddie frowned. "What about it?" She knew Jazz had wanted to find some ghosts to psychoanalyze for her ghost envy study, but she hadn't thought Jazz terribly interested in the hard science behind ghosts in general; she'd always been more captivated by the twists, turns, and perceptions of the mind.
"I've…. Mom, I've seen this before. Not with Danielle. I didn't know about her. I…I suspect why Danny never mentioned her, and I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but—"
"What does Danny have to do with this?"
Jazz's laugh sounded strangled. "Danny has to do with everything."
"He's helping the ghosts. You and Vlad both said he worked with them." She had no idea how Vlad had found out about it when she hadn't known, but at least Danny's behaviour made sense now. Not just how he'd reacted in the lab, but why he never wanted to go hunt ghosts with them and why he always seemed to disappear when there was an attack. She'd hoped he was hiding, not…. "You really think the ghost I had in the lab was his friend?" It sounded…wrong, the idea that a ghost could be capable of friendship.
But that was before she'd met a ghost that bled.
She and Jack had captured humanoid ghosts before. They'd taken samples of ectoplasm before. This had never happened.
If I show you, will you stop?
It had been a secret, a secret the ghost girl had been willing to give up in order to try to convince Maddie of her humanity, but…but her son had already been aware of it. Her daughter had already suspected it. It wasn't new.
"Friend. Family. It's…complicated, I think. Everything's complicated."
How could the ghost girl be family? Or even be close enough that Danny considered her as such? When had he managed to find the time to form such a close bond with her when they hadn't even documented a sighting of her in Amity Park before?
Maddie rubbed her temples for a moment before dropping her hands and looking Jazz in the eye. She couldn't answer those questions, and neither could Jazz, from what she understood, but Jazz could clear up some other things that didn't make any sense. "Who was the first?"
"What?"
"You said you've seen this before. The ectoplasm, the blood. So who was the first ghost you saw bleed? Why didn't you tell us? We have to completely revamp our working theories and—"
"Not a ghost," Jazz said slowly. "A…a halfa. It's a colloquial term."
"A halfa?"
"Half ghost, half human. A poor explanation for what it actually is, but—"
"Overshadowing," Maddie interrupted. "Long term." That actually made sense. Finally. "Constant exposure to ecto-energy can cause mutations, like what's happened with some of our dinners. But for ectoplasm to be masking blood, the changes would have to be—"
"Molecular," Jazz said. "Meaning it's not overshadowing."
"We don't know what long-term possession can do to living people," Maddie countered. "This could be our first evidence—"
"It's not."
"We don't know that without further study. Whichever ghost you saw before—"
"Mom. Just…listen to me." Maddie sat back at Jazz request and nodded, and Jazz gave her a thankful smile in return. "It was an accident. It wasn't your fault. Or Dad's."
Maddie frowned. "Jazz—"
"Don't blame yourselves, okay? For the accident or anything that's happened since. It's not your fault. I doubt you'll believe that, at least right away, but if you and Dad work with me, we can talk this out and figure out the best way to approach the situation, and—"
"Wait." This was about Vlad again, wasn't it? Maddie couldn't recall telling Jazz about the proto-portal incident back in their college days, but Jack had probably mentioned it at some point. "Vlad isn't a ghost, Jazz. Yes, there was an accident with the proto-portal, and yes, it was bad, but there hasn't been any lasting damage. He recovered." She'd always believed that, but even as she said it, she began to doubt.
Long-term possession, not simple overshadowing. What if something had escaped the proto-portal that day? What if that something was controlling her friend? She'd thought Vlad had cut them out from his life because they reminded him too much of everything he had lost with the accident and had only recently realized how much he'd missed their friendship, but if some ecto-entity had worried that they'd spot the change in their best friend….
"I'm not sure recovered is the word for it."
It explained Jazz's actions and Vlad's apparent aversion to blood blossoms. As Jazz had pointed out, it explained the former Wisconsin Ghost's move to Amity Park. It was tied to Vlad. He was one of these…halfas.
If the broken ecto-sample had been a cover, what else was he trying to hide from her? From all of them? Had he been hoping to contaminate her samples instead, so that she'd never be able to track down the ghost girl?
Maddie swallowed. They hadn't noticed. They should have noticed, should have questioned the years of silence if nothing else, but instead of giving a former friend the distance he'd seemed to need, they'd abandoned him. And now some ghost—Plasmius—was a part of him, controlling him, and she wasn't sure who the real Vlad was anymore. Or even if his true self had survived.
If I show you, will you stop?
Maybe not all the human halves were puppets. She wanted to have faith in Danny's judgement, for all that she had to question it if he were working with ghosts, but if this girl, this Danielle, was working with the ecto-entity that was using her as a host? If theirs was a symbiotic rather than a parasitic relationship? It could explain Danny's lapse.
I'm human, too.
Or perhaps the girl was fighting her possession and had simply had more success when Maddie had begun to disrupt its connection to her.
"Vlad's a halfa, Mom." The revelation should have her reeling, but after everything else…. "I'm pretty sure he's the reason Danielle is, too. I don't…. I don't know everything. Sam and Tucker don't, either. Danny never told them the truth."
"The truth about what?"
"Danielle," Jazz repeated. "Danny said she was our cousin. But she's not. And if anyone here knows the truth about who she is, it'll be Vlad."
"Plasmius, you mean."
Jazz pursed her lips. "There's no difference."
No, there likely wasn't. Not anymore. It had been so long. But there still might be, and she wasn't going to rule it out when Vlad was nice enough to help them.
Unless that had been a trick, too.
"Why do you think he knows something?"
Jazz snorted. "Halfas aren't exactly common. He knows exactly how they're created, and I have a feeling her name isn't a coincidence." Maddie opened her mouth to ask what Jazz meant by that, but Jazz continued, "That's not important right now. The point is…. You believe me, right? About Vlad being a halfa? About him being Plasmius?"
"There's still a chance," Maddie said slowly, "that this is all conjecture built around coincidences." She still didn't want to believe it, not really, not of Vlad, of all people, but she'd seen enough to understand where Jazz was coming from. And if Plasmius had overtaken Vlad and had done so years ago….
"It's really not. I can prove that. What will you let me shoot him with?"
Maddie frowned at Jazz's expression. "You don't need to look so happy about the idea."
"He has it coming."
Maddie couldn't understand the bitterness in Jazz's voice. If halfas were created by some sort of long-term possession, there was still a distinct difference between Vlad and Plasmius, at least if there was anything of her friend left after so many years hosting an evil ecto-entity. She would have thought Jazz would make that distinction. What else had happened between them that she didn't know about? There had to be something driving this conviction of hers. "He's helping us, sweetie."
Jazz crossed her arms. "Because he wants Danny and Danielle. And because it's an excuse to work closely with you. Was it his idea to send Dad off into the Ghost Zone alone?"
It had been. Not in so many words, not when Jack had already voiced the idea himself, but it was Vlad who had convinced her that it would work best for Jack to go in alone. He'd come over before Jack had left, when she'd been fretting over it again, and had wondered aloud about the complex capacities of the Spectre Speeder. Jack had happily rattled off its specs. Jack had been assuring her as much as Vlad that anyone using it would be perfectly safe. That if some ghost had taken Danny into its realm, he could be rescued. And then Jack hadn't been able to sit here and fiddle with inventions that had inexplicably tracked Danny in the past. He'd had to keep moving, keep searching.
"Yeah, that's what I thought." Jazz sighed. "Mom, you have no idea what Vlad's done in the past. Danny knows more than I do, and it's…. Trust me, you and Dad wouldn't be such good friends with him if you knew everything. I'll tell you what I can, but Danny doesn't exactly tell me details if he thinks I'm just going to worry. You're going to have to get the story from him."
And what a story it would be. Maddie still wasn't sure she entirely believed it—wasn't sure she could until she saw solid evidence of it—but she couldn't fathom why Jazz would lie like this. If it wasn't the truth, Jazz certainly believed it was, and something must have convinced her of it or she wouldn't have done the things she'd done.
But uneasy as Jazz's allegations made her, Maddie's primary concern remained Danny's safety. If Jazz was right, if he'd taken the ghost and fled rather than the other way around, then— "Are you sure you haven't any idea where Danny might be?"
"He won't be close," Jazz said softly. "Not if he doesn't want to be found. He'd want to make sure he's well out of range of the Fenton Finder. And I'd trust Tucker to increase the capacity of the Booo-merang before I'd trust Vlad. Not that it needs improving. I mean, I can understand why you don't have an idea of its true range or longevity, but trust me when I say that it works fine as is."
Maddie frowned. "Vlad wasn't trying to improve it. He was recalibrating it so it would effectively lock onto the ghost's ecto-signature. The halfa's, I mean. Danielle's." That's what he'd claimed, at any rate.
Jazz stared. "It's already locked onto Danny. You know that. And it's a safe bet that they're together, so what's the difference? Why waste your time on this when we could have been following it hours ago if that's all you were trying to do?"
"Sweetie, the Booo-merang might pick up Danny here at home, but I can't trust it'll remain that way when it's only done so because of a mistake on our part. Without an ecto-signature—"
"Mom." Something in Jazz's tone had the rest of Maddie's protest dying on her lips. "Danny has an ecto-signature."
