Jazz made her own breakfast and ate it without bothering to sit down at the table. Vlad never left her sight—or, more to the point, she never left his. With his powers, the reverse wasn't necessarily true. If they'd still been at FentonWorks, she could have had some peace of mind on that front, but even if he had ectoplasmic detectors in his own house, he would've ensured they ignored his own ecto-signature.

Vlad had finally quit it with the thinly veiled threats, at least, so Jazz had turned off the Fenton Phone's transmitter for now. She knew Danny and his friends usually left it on all the time, but she didn't want to chance this being the time the technology started to fail and having the transmitter on was the reason she wasn't getting a message from the Ghost Zone. Cross dimensional communication was tricky at the best of times.

Besides, she was pretty sure the only reason that Vlad hadn't sabotaged it—because he had to know what the invention did—was that he wanted to know when she found something out.

He wanted to know when she heard from Danny. (Hopefully he didn't realize she already had.)

He wanted to know when Sam and Tucker found Jack. (Hopefully they would soon.)

He wanted to know when he had to act to take her out so he could move on to whatever the next phase of his plan was without the risk of compromising it if he acted too early.

She didn't intend to let him find out more of their plans or news than he already had, but good intentions weren't going to trump ghost powers unless she had an unusual amount of luck on her side.

"Any luck, Tuck?"

Jazz took another slow sip of coffee to hide her expression as best she could as Sam struck up a conversation in her ear. Watching Vlad from over the brim of her mug wasn't very exciting, but it was the best she could do right now.

"Nada. You've covered everything from Dora's and the Carnivorous Canyon over towards Skulker's island, right?"

"Yeah." A pause on Sam's end. "You checked the River of Revulsion?"

"And Pariah's Keep. I can double back and look out beyond the Far Frozen if you think he'd have gotten that far, but…."

But that wasn't somewhere they knew well. Unless there was an update to their map of the Ghost Zone that Jazz hadn't seen (very possible), there might not be anything consistent enough for them to use as a landmark to put down on a map in the first place. If Jack had gotten lost (been lured) into the vast expanse of green and was left to drift aimlessly with the smaller rocks that passed through—

That was assuming he had made it that far, though.

Jazz still wasn't convinced that was likely, even though Sam and Tucker had already recruited more ghosts to the search than she'd met.

However many they knew, Vlad must know more.

And, assuming he'd gotten his portal working ages before her parents had (though she admittedly wasn't sure about that point), he'd know the Ghost Zone itself better than Sam or Tucker, too. The ghosts would know it best, of course, but the ones who knew Vlad well enough to know where he'd try to hide Jack weren't on their side.

"Maybe we should…." Jazz had never heard Sam sound so uncertain. "Should we go over where we've already been? In case we missed him? Even if it's…."

"Even if it's just a piece of the Spectre Speeder." Tuck's voice was quieter than Sam's now, more breath than words. "Yeah."

"Okay. Okay, we'll do that." Sam was starting to rally, but she still sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than she was them. "Jazz, I'm assuming you're hearing this, so answer when you can. Just— See if you can get anything out of Vlad. We could really use a lead here."

"Should I make another pot?" Vlad asked, nodding towards the coffee maker.

She wanted to snap at him. She wanted to demand he explain what he'd done. She wanted him to admit to everything he was trying to pull and give it up. She wanted to shake him until he told her what he'd done to her father.

Danny was good at getting his opponents to talk in a fight by antagonizing them, poking at their insecurities or making a comment they felt the need to correct.

She'd tried to get the fact that none of this would work through Vlad's thick skull, but he still had the luxury of ignoring her because—as far as he was concerned—it was working.

He might not have gotten to Danny, he might not have found Danielle, but Maddie was wavering more than she stood against him, and Jack was missing. It was enough of a win that Vlad felt confident pretending now, even with her, and she didn't know how to get something concrete out of him that Sam and Tucker could use.

Wasn't trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result the definition of insanity?

Jazz sighed and put her mug down on the counter. "Look. Mom's not here. You don't need to play up the caring Uncle Vlad schtick. I just…. They were your best friends back in college, weren't they? Doesn't that mean anything?"

Vlad raised his eyebrows at her and rose from the table. "More coffee it is, then."

"I'm serious. It was an accident, right, what happened to you? It was horrible, it was preventable, but it wasn't malicious. You don't need to k—" Her voice cracked. She knew it was a possibility, but it wasn't one she wanted to think about. "You don't need to get rid of my dad because of that." He had more reasons to want Jack out of the picture than that, but she knew he blamed Jack for the accident, and if she could just get him to—

"It was a horrible, preventable accident," Vlad agreed as he started to make a fresh pot of coffee.

He didn't continue speaking.

Jazz had to consciously unclench her jaw before she started grinding her teeth. "An accident isn't justification for what you're trying to do."

"Back to making accusations?" he asked lightly, instead of taking the bait like she'd hoped. If only he'd skipped straight to insisting what he was doing wasn't revenge for anything or that a past accident wasn't colouring his actions, then maybe she could've caught him out.

It was going to be harder than that, it seemed.

However much sleep he'd gotten, it had apparently been enough for this.

"You just—" Exploding at him would only make it easier for him to get her in trouble. "You know where I'm coming from, don't you? Or do you really not understand what I'm feeling right now?"

Vlad glanced back at her. "Anxious, angry, worried, scared, bitter, sarcastic— Though I suppose that's more of a family trait than a feeling. Tell me, do you know what I'm feeling right now?"

Jazz flinched. "Attacked?" That had to be the answer he wanted.

He sighed and turned away from the coffee pot as it started to percolate. "I'm feeling the same way you are. Anxious and worried about this whole situation when there's so little I can do to impact it, scared about how things might turn out because I don't know the answers and I can't control the outcomes, angry that you keep making accusations and refusing to listen to me, bitter that you are still holding the past against me—"

"The past? Even ignoring your involvement in this mess, you've been arming a teenager to fuel her vendetta against my brother and tried to beat him into submission yourself earlier this week. Or did you conveniently forget that?"

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "There are some things you don't understand."

"Yeah? Well, I think it's pretty clear. I know what you're really like. You can't just pull the wool over my eyes like you can with Mom. You know more about Danielle than you'll admit, and if Danny didn't even tell Sam and Tucker the truth, I know it's bad. And whatever you did to Dad—" Her voice betrayed her again, and she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Unsuccessfully, of course. "We're going to find him."

Vlad had the nerve to fix her with a disappointed look. "I didn't kill your father, Jasmine."

It didn't sound like a lie.

"So he's alive, then?" She tried to keep her voice light, like his words didn't matter to her as much as they did. She failed miserably, missing nonchalance completely and falling straight into a hope so desperate it hurt.

Alive was something.

Alive was enough.

Alive meant they would find him, eventually.

"I would presume so. You don't have evidence otherwise, do you? I was under the impression that, though you have people searching for him, it is possible to miss him if he's still moving—which he would be if he's looking for Daniel."

"No, but everyone—" Jazz broke off.

Vlad had just done to her what she'd been trying to do to him—except she'd wound up with nothing from her little fishing expedition except a statement that may or may not be a lie because she hadn't managed to catch him off his guard.

Crud.


Danny had said he'd needed time before walking out of the kitchen.

As Maddie eased the second batch of cookies off the tray and onto the cooling rack, she wondered how far he'd gone if the smell of freshly baked treats hadn't coaxed him back.

"What did I say?" she murmured to Alicia. "I'm only trying to get this straight, and I don't blame him for being angry and frustrated, but…."

"But as much as you say you want to listen, you're not. Not from his perspective, I'd wager."

Maddie frowned. "Come again?"

"Danny is telling you his side of the story, and most of what I've seen you do is take that, compare it to Vlad's, and ask Danny if he's sure about what he thinks. You think he's not going to hear you do that and think you're only listening to what you want to hear?"

The words stung.

She hadn't been doing that intentionally.

Making assumptions had gotten her into this mess; how come trying to be objective and make sure she had all the facts had only dug her in deeper?

"I imagine," Alicia continued as she walked over to snag a hot cookie from the baking rack, "he figures you trust Vlad more than you trust him. When it comes to whatever is going on between them, at least."

"That's why I'd like to talk to the two of them together—"

"Something you haven't brought up to him, by the way."

"But—"

"But even if they both agree to that, it still begs the question of who you do trust more." Alicia's voice was pointed enough that Maddie winced. "Your son or your old friend?"

"That's not fair." The words were a whisper, a familiar complaint from their childhood whenever Alicia had found a flaw in Maddie's careful plans.

"Never said it was. Life isn't a debate. Not like you of all people don't know that or you'd be spending more of it convincing the rest of the world of the legitimacy of what you study. Point is, you don't always get to hear arguments and rebuttals from both sides before you get to make your decision. And, sure, maybe you make the wrong choice, and you'll learn more later so that you can recognize that wrong choice, at which point you need to do what you can to correct it. If you're lucky, it's not too late."

"But—"

"But when it comes down to it, sometimes you just need to trust your gut. Your head says Vlad or you wouldn't keep questioning every word out of Danny's mouth, and I hope for the sake of your family that your heart wants to go with Danny. So, what does your gut say?"

Maddie sighed. "I do trust Danny."

"See, you say that, and then you act like you trust Vlad more. Do you?"

"I am not—"

"Did you question everything Vlad said like you are Danny? Because right now, to me, it sounds like you're putting more stock in his words, which means you trust his word over Danny's." Alicia's tone softened as she added, "I'm not saying it's something you're doing consciously, but I still think you're doing it. You want to see Danny as your little boy who needs your protection, your guidance, and he's not. You want to see Vlad as your old friend from college who decided to rekindle old friendships after realizing how much he'd missed at that reunion of yours, and he might not be that person, either. Take some more time to think this over while you have it, all right?"

Maddie wasn't sure time was going to help her.

What would help her would be having Danny and Vlad in the same room, answering her questions honestly, but Alicia was right: even if they both agreed to that, it might not help as much as she imagined. It would be entirely too easy for the contradicting claims to devolve into an argument, and she wouldn't be any further ahead. Jazz was hardly a reliable source on the subject, and Sam and Tucker wouldn't be, either. With Jack as in the dark as she had been, there wasn't anyone to ask who didn't have a stake in the situation.

Unless she asked a ghost.

Would one talk to her if she asked? Would it—would they—tell her the truth?

If Vlad had merely been acting this whole time, how could she ever convince Danny and Jazz of that? They'd want to use every excuse under the sun to dismiss any evidence she could provide. They might even claim that Vlad had paid off ghosts to repeat his story for him.

Yet if Vlad hadn't been acting—

What could she do then? What measures could she take to safeguard against Vlad's actions that wouldn't risk Danny? How should she break the news to Jack when he'd find the idea as horrifying as she had?

It was a bridge she would cross if she came to it.

Until that happened, she couldn't afford to worry about it.

There was too much else to do right now.

"I want to trust Danny," she admitted. "I just need to make sure Vlad isn't telling the truth about tricking him. Vlad is…. He's always been good at doing that sort of thing. I'm not sure Danny or Jazz would have realized the truth if this is all a misguided attempt of his to help. How we handle this if Danny's right about everything is very different than if Vlad is being truthful, and I…. I can't afford to get it wrong. I don't want to lose my children because of this."

"But you still can't trust that I know what I'm talking about." Danny's flat voice, entirely unexpected, came from one of the empty chairs at the kitchen table. As she watched, he flicked into visibility between one blink and the next.

She wanted to ask how long he'd been there. Listening.

She didn't.

"Look. I'm trying, too, okay? I'm trying because I'm not sure I want this to be the end. But you're not making it easy, and— And I don't know if I can do this."

"Sweetheart—"

"You have good intentions. I get that. But Aunt Alicia's right. You're letting whatever Vlad told you be more important than whatever I'm telling you. You think my judgement is compromised. I know me telling you it's not isn't going to help anything, but Dani— It shouldn't be up to her to tell you her story just so you believe me."

It was the truth, and it hurt.

It hurt even more because it felt like her relationship with her son—already distant, filled with secrets, and strained by everything that had happened in the last few days especially—was slipping away from her entirely.

She didn't want to let go.

She didn't want to lose him.

She was, however, unfortunately aware of the fact that he might not stay unless she gave up on Vlad entirely.

Vlad's friendship wasn't more important to her than her relationship with Danny—especially not if anything Danny and Jazz had told her turned out to be true—but she didn't know if she could throw it away knowing that Danny might be wrong despite his conviction that he knew the truth.

If Vlad had been putting up a front to turn her children against him, for one misguided reason or another, she could hardly be surprised that it had worked.

And Danny's reaction, convinced of the truth as he knew it, would be the same whether or not Vlad had meant well or really was plotting against their family.

She desperately wanted Jack's opinion on all of this, but she couldn't reach him while he was still in the Ghost Zone.

"I know, honey. I know this is hard for you, harder than I can imagine, and I really appreciate you trying—"

"But you won't cut Vlad off on my word alone. Because I'm a kid, because he was never like this back in college and you can't imagine him doing this now, and because he's convinced you that I'm wrong about him. Sound about right?" Danny's voice was tight.

"I won't trust him with anything important. I said I wouldn't. But—" But she couldn't cut him out of their lives before she knew the truth. How could she say that, though? Danny would insist he'd already told her the truth and that she'd refused to listen. "Given recent events, I'm more aware of inherent bias than I was."

She'd kept her tone carefully neutral, but Danny snorted. "You think I'm biased. Of course you think I'm biased. Vlad rigs the mayoral election so he wins, but I'm the biased one."

It seemed like every one of Danny's offhanded statements were concerning now, but this couldn't be the time to ask. Election fraud was hardly an insignificant claim and she doubted Danny would make it lightly even with his feelings on Vlad, which only made it more likely that it was true.

It made it more likely that all of this was true.

If Vlad saw no harm in interfering the election process to get the position he wanted, what other lines might he be content to cross?

Even if Danny were mistaken, even if Vlad hadn't lied to her about any of this, why would Vlad even want to give the appearance of rigging an election? There had to be other ways to teach Danny whatever lessons Vlad wanted him to learn, and if Danny had reported him…. It wouldn't be worth the fallout, would it? Even when disproven, the damage would be done. The memory of the accusation wouldn't have faded. Making Danny think he'd rigged an election, even one as small as their municipal one, wouldn't have been Vlad's best move. It couldn't have been.

So what did it mean that the claim—the complaint—rolled off Danny's tongue so easily?

"I'll tell you what," continued Danny, oblivious to her churning thoughts. "I'll ask Dani if she'll reconsider talking to you, but if she says no? I'm not asking again. If she changes her mind, she'll tell me."

"Are you sure you want to push her?" Alicia asked quietly, and Danny looked over at her.

"Vlad's up to something, and he'll track us down sooner rather than later. This'll be the only chance she has to talk things over quietly before something explodes in our faces." He blew out a breath and glanced back at Maddie. "I'm not making any promises, though. I don't think I'd want to talk to you if I were in her position."

If he'd been in her position.

They'd been trying to get him in her position, strapped to their table so they could take him apart molecule by molecule—

Maddie swallowed. "I understand. Thank you."

Danny's face twisted into a sour expression. "Don't thank me. I'm doing it for me, too, and Dani's going to know that. She left the person she'd once thought of as family and there is no way she's ever going back, but I haven't. Yet."

But he still might.

Because of what Maddie had done and because of who Danielle was to him.

Maddie recalled Jazz's various theories about Danielle, about how Jazz was convinced Vlad knew more than he'd admit, and how Vlad had said that the ghost girl had come to him for help he hadn't been able to provide.

That did hint at a past between them.

More of one than he'd told her about, anyway.

Otherwise, how would Danielle have known to come to him? He kept his passion for inventing tools designed to study, contain, and eliminate ghosts secret from the public, kept his lab hidden even within his own household, hadn't mentioned a word to his friends who were very much in the public eye when it came to ghost hunting— She couldn't imagine that Danielle had come across him by pure happenstance.

Maybe she and Jack would need to ask the ghosts to find out the truth about that, too.

They might be the only ones who knew it in its entirety—or, at least, knew an untainted view of events.

Danny jumped up from his seat at the table and walked over towards her. For a moment, she thought he might be coming to hug her, and tears filled her eyes in anticipation, but instead, he grabbed a cookie and shoved the entire thing into his mouth before picking up half a dozen more and vanishing.

Maddie was left staring at the spot her son had been, at the missing cookies that felt like the only evidence of his presence, and tried unsuccessfully to blink away her tears.

"Do you want me to stay or leave for a spell?" came Alicia's quiet voice, and Maddie wiped at her eyes before looking over at her sister.

"Stay, please. I…I don't want to be alone right now."

"You want to keep talking about it, me to talk, or silence for now?"

Maddie smiled. Alicia had always been good at hiding her emotions compared to Maddie herself, but she hadn't been this careful about dealing with everything when they were kids. It was something she'd learned since the divorce, once she'd begun taking a more active role in the community after being free of the man who had never been good enough to be her husband. (In Maddie's humble opinion, anyway; the man had nothing on Jack.) They'd always had heart-to-hearts on previous visits, but Maddie hadn't realized how much Alicia's skill had grown until she'd seen it on full display with this visit.

It made her think she should talk to her sister more often.

Maybe Maddie could build her a cell phone that would work despite Spittoon being a notorious dead spot.

If they modified the Fenton Phones—

Later.

She could experiment later.

"You can talk," Maddie said quietly. "I've learned a lot, but otherwise, nothing's changed. At the risk of admitting that you might be right about a few things, the truth is, I'd rather hear your opinions and advice than my own thoughts right now."

"Well, one other thing that certainly hasn't changed is my opinion about Vlad, but I reckon you could guess that." Alicia snagged another cookie for herself before adding, "I think it would be worth your while to let Danny talk and say whatever he wants to say before you ask questions or point out what else you've heard. I don't imagine this particular scenario is one he'd have rehearsed when he was trying to figure out how to tell you two about all of this."

"You— You think he would have? Told us? If this hadn't happened?"

Alicia shrugged. "Might've. Might not've. Either way, I don't see how it wouldn't've kept him up at night. It wouldn't exactly be an easy thing to tell someone like me, let alone someone like you with your profession being what it is."

Maddie remembered all the reports of Phantom out fighting ghosts at night and how often she'd seen him in the middle of the day.

She remembered all the phone calls they'd gotten from disappointed teachers—about Danny falling asleep in class or cutting it altogether, with or without a semi-feasible excuse; about his failing a test, be it of the pop quiz variety or one the class had known about for weeks; about his not handing in or not finishing a homework assignment….

Plasmius wasn't out half as often. Even if his rivalry with Phantom were entirely contrived, Danny was facing threats on multiple fronts.

From both ghosts and ghost hunters.

Maddie couldn't undo the past.

She could only do better in the future.

She started to nod, mouth moving to form words of agreement, when a flash of light caught her eye. Years of training had her turning her head to get a proper look, which is why she was staring at the green speck in the middle of Alicia's kitchen floor when it got bigger.

It grew from the size of penny to that of a gopher hole, and then it was the size of a badger hole and a dog was coming through, barking.

Maddie stared.

She recognized that dog, though she was more acquainted with its monstrous form.

"Danny?" Alicia called, her voice pitched to carry but kept short from coming out like a panicked yell. "I think your dog's here for you."

Danny did not reappear.

The dog noticed Maddie, though.

Apparently, it remembered her as well as she remembered it, and its memories were not fond ones.

Its growls deepened as it swelled in size, toppling chairs and pushing the table against the wall. With one hand, Maddie motioned for Alicia to go, get away, just don't run so it doesn't chase you, while the other groped for weapons she didn't have.

Alicia, stubborn sister that she was, moved closer to Maddie and stood by her side.

There was only one thing Maddie could think to do.

It was reckless, it was desperate, and it might very well result in the loss of her hand because the ghost was tangible and its teeth were sharp, but changing her ways had to start somewhere.

Besides, even if there were somewhere she could run, Maddie didn't make a habit of turning her back on a ghost.

Instead, she forced a smile on her face, grabbed a cookie, held it out before her, and asked brightly in the tone of voice usually reserved for babies and (living) pets, "Treat?"