Dani's To-Do List

- go to library

- find some treasure

- eat some food

- museum

- ghost tours

- dinner with pretty-cop

It takes about four seconds to escape the custody cop. She left Dani in her hot car to grab a coffee or something from a cafe with a stern look to sit tight.

Dani's not even phased. She immediately climbs to the front seat and gets out the driver's side, since the back doors predictably have the child safety locks engaged. The car starts wailing, but Dani keeps on her merry way. She doesn't even bother running. What's the lady gonna do? Chase her? Honestly, it'd be funny if she tried. Dani might even have to lengthen her stride a little bit.

Dani slips into the shadows of a nearby alley, ready for the next adventure; she'd already been set back several hours. First things first: she needs to establish some familiarity with the city.

Time to look for the city library.

As the sun climbs past the smog and starts heating up the city, more people begin pouring out into the streets. Dani sticks to the alleys for a while, but once enough people are out, she can safely join the throng without standing out. She doesn't have the money for a subway pass, so she wanders, aiming for older buildings and hoping it will eventually lead her to the city center.

After about two hours, Dani is getting hot and tired. She's hungry, too, but again, she doesn't have any money. For money, she needs to find the library, which she'd planned on doing by wandering the city all night.

She breaks around noon, asking a few people for directions. She's ignored by the first two she asks, given false information by the one after that, and finally gets the right directions from a nice homeless guy and his ratty but very cheerful dog. She pets the dog. It deserves good pets. When she's done with that important task, she thanks the man profusely and finds the library another half hour later (that misdirection from the third person she asked took her a dozen blocks in the wrong direction).

The library is a grand old thing, probably built in the mid-20th century. It has pillars stretching up to a domed ceiling, streaked with either rust or dirt. There are brass lions standing guard on either side of the large double doors made of glass. It's so old the library doesn't even have a title, just a metal plaque out on the sidewalk that proclaims BLÜDHAVEN CITY LIBRARY.

Dani opens one of the sets of doors to the side of the grand entrance, slipping past the circulation desk to enter the dimly lit room stacked to the ceiling with books, manuscripts, magazines, and newspapers. The room is set circularly, with a second floor leading to the higher sections of shelves. The middle is wide and open, a tacky chandelier hanging from the top of the dome. It's not enough to adequately light the place, so there are several floor and table lamps spread out on long study tables.

Dani loves it.

She roams the stacks, looking for city history. From what she's learned in her previous travels, the oldest library – usually the city's main library building – has all the good stuff. Building blueprints, old newspapers, first edition diaries, maps, that kind of thing.

She finds the right section in a sad neglected corner off from the main room. It's the size of a typical office, crammed with three old bookshelves, a small desk, and a single, creaky chair. The lamp buzzes when she turns it on.

Dani first looks for and finds their selection of maps. She loves maps. She needs to buy her own of the city, but first, like everything else, she needs money for them. For that, she needs a cemetery. In every city, at least a few ghosts are hanging around that took a secret stash of money or valuables to their graves. That's usually where she gets her funds, though it usually doesn't take long for her to end up donating or hoarding it in her room at the Keep. It's such a hassle to carry around cash like that.

It's not a perfect system. In fact, it kinda sucks, but Dani can't use a credit card since she'd need to open a bank account but she doesn't y'know, exist, and they kinda need proof that you do and stuff. She'd just run out of her last funds to get here. Could she have planned it better? Yeah. Would she plan better next time? Probably not.

She lays out the oldest map she can find, a weathered roll of parchment from 1982 with a few spots of water damage along the edge. It's protected with some kind of clear vinyl cover, making it hard to make out the faint pencil lines behind it, but she manages.

The oldest cemetery is just a couple of blocks from her, which is where she wants to go first, but she also mentally marks the clock tower, fairgrounds, and insane asylum. Those would be her next stops, once she gets some food in her. On cue, her stomach grumbles its complaint. She pats it absent-mindedly, cracking open an old book of history about the city written in the seventies. If she doesn't find some serious lore here, she is going to be so disappointed.

City history is mostly dry political stuff, but Dani is well-practiced at skimming over it to focus on the people and places behind it.

Blüdhaven was established in 1912. It was mostly a whaling town, with a few passenger docks for foreign visitors who used the city as a layover on their trip from Europe to various American cities. Casinos were built to increase population so that the city could become a commercial trading hub, but it mostly failed due to high rates of crime and –ah ha! – several urban legends that led to mysterious and unexplained deaths.

She couldn't find the details of the urban legends in that book, so she switched books a couple of times until she found a spiral-bound collection of news articles about some of them.

Let's see… Fire at the Flanders Hotel! from 1923. An oceanfront manor suffered a severe fire that killed the entire family but didn't damage the foundations. The article mentions a possible renovation in later years. Dani flips through to find the article about said renovation, which reported that the building was turned into a grand hotel but suffered serious setbacks throughout the building process. One worker was maimed when a support beam fell on him from above. Two additional fires broke out but were quickly contained. There was an attached police report that suggested criminal vandalism. Really, though, Dani was focused on the details about spontaneously locking doors, disembodied laughter, and reported visages of a young woman in mirrors and windows.

There's definitely a ghost there, but Dani has to put it aside for later when she has the money to stay at the hotel.

Ooh, one article is a report on a fisherman supposedly getting attacked by a 40-foot monster with a dog's head and a snake's body. She'll hit that one too, but she doesn't think there'll be much money to collect in that one.

She finds a few more interesting places she mentally marks for later, but her attention fully settles on an article that alludes to the still-unfound safe full of cash and bonds from a gangster in New York, rumored to be buried in the city limits for some kind of gang deal that went south and ended with the gangster shot in the head and facedown in the canal.

Score.

She does a quick search on one of the ancient computers in the main room to see if it has been found – it hasn't, but it had been searched for by dozens of different organizations.

After a quick verification of where she's going and how she's going to get there, Dani heads back out into the heat of midday, determined to find some buried treasure.

"...Let me guess, this is why they shot you?"

The ghost cackles from beside her, gleeful in his deception. Underneath Dani's mud-stained hands lays an open safe, rusted through and dented on one side, surrounded by dirt. She'd been searching for the treasure for the whole afternoon. After digging for an hour with a "borrowed" shovel from the cemetery, she'd finally unearthed the safe. She had to try the code Arneau – the gangster – gave her seven times before it finally clicked open, only to reveal…

A single dollar bill.

"No, they never found it!" the ghost laughs with pure glee, kicking his feet in the air like an excited child.

"I bet they knew anyway," Dani grumbles. She still pockets the dollar bill, since it's a cool souvenir, at least. "Now what am I supposed to use for food?"

The cackles peeter out and the ghost regards her with a searching gaze. "Oh, that's what you wanted? I'm sorry, Princess." He looks genuinely apologetic. "Here, I have a smaller stash somewhere in the city…"

"Smaller than a dollar?" Dani deadpans.

"Noooo," sing songs the dead man, booping her nose. He's way too cheerful for a ghost, in Dani's opinion. "It's a smaller container. I think it has… oh, a few twenties in there? It was meant for an emergency."

Dani eyes him critically. On one hand, he already tricked her once. On the other, it's not like she has a better lead. It was this or stealing, which Dani doesn't really like doing since it usually put a target on her back.

Oh, and because stealing is wrong, obviously.

Despite her skepticism that the gangster was actually going to lead her to cash, Dani doesn't have a better way of getting food for now. Once she stops being so hangry, she can focus on exploring more in the city and possibly finding other treasures.

Luckily, Arneau wasn't lying a second time. When she scraped out a small tin from some loose bricks in an abandoned building, she opened it to reveal three twenty-dollar bills, a box of very old cigarettes, and a comb. Dani raises her eyebrows at the latter, but given Arneau's immaculately styled hair and mustache, she supposes the gangster considered proper grooming essential even in an emergency.

Dani is quick to find a deli and order herself a family-size bag of chicken, two pasta sides, and a box of biscuits. She also purchases a big water bottle that she plans on refilling for the rest of her stay here. After collecting all her goodies, she wanders to the cemetery where she found Arneau's unmarked grave (and hadn't that been a pain to track down) and sits under a willow tree to eat her well-deserved meal.

After a few minutes of shoveling food into her mouth, Dani asks, "Do you actually have treasure?" She swirls her plastic fork in the mac n cheese thoughtfully. It's actually pretty decent, nice and creamy with a hint of crunch where bread crumbs were sprinkled on top.

Arneau is drifting around the tree, watching his incorporeal hand move through the swaying branches. "Yeah, but it's in the Catskills," he replies. "I heard people were looking for it, so I buried another here."

Dani rolls her eyes. "Will you show me where it is?"

"Of course not," the ghost scoffs. "Do you know how amusing it is that no one has found it yet? I've seen folks walk right over it without a clue!"

Dani hums, unsurprised. Not every ghost tells her where their treasure is. It's fun to look for it anyway. "Tell me a story," she says instead. "How did you become a gangster?"

The next hour she polishes off her meal while she listens to Arneau tell her about his deadbeat dad, schizophrenic mom, and his younger sister Bonnie with Down Syndrome whom he wanted to provide for. She didn't make it to adulthood, and when she passed, Arneau admitted that he lost all sense of morality and became a cruel man. He said he was glad he was put down when he was. He didn't want more sins to atone for; he just wanted to rest in peace with his sister. The details of how someone is punished or rewarded for their deeds in life isn't something Dani is privy to, despite her royal status, but she's glad it seems fair. Arneau even told her he had personally apologized to some of his victims and was making amends.

"Being dead is so funny, isn't it?" he pondered as the sun began to set. "Everything is so clear. You feel everything so profoundly. I can't imagine life now, especially without the perspective I've gained."

Dani listens to everything he has to say. People are so fascinating. It's so bizarre that every single person that's ever lived has a completely unique experience, with complex thoughts, feelings, and relationships. She wants to know it all. She wants to feel it all.

"Thank you for telling me your story," Dani says when Arneau trails off, looking exhausted from his time in the mortal realm. "Tell Bonnie I said 'hi'."

"Will do, Princess," he replies. "Thank you for the vacation. I'm sure she'll love to hear all about it."

With that, Dani releases her summons on him, and he gives a jaunty wave before his soul is drawn back to his own personal afterlife. She stretches out, feeling sleepy from her comfortably full belly and the drain of the summons. The young teen tosses her garbage in the nearby trashcan and leaves Arneau's grave with a small handful of dandelions she found (Bonnie's favorite, which certainly had some ghostly encouragement to grow nearby) and the packet of 1920s cigarettes. She knew they received her gifts through the presence of a crisp breeze that smelled faintly of cologne and mint. Ghosts have strange connections to their graves, but Dani has no idea whether they get the gifts or not.

Dani returns to the willow tree and stretches out in the grass. It's peaceful here, with the branches swaying in the wind and occasional stars peeking out between smog and leaves. She wonders if Danny is stargazing, or even visiting a distant galaxy like he does every so often.

Safe among her brother's subjects, Dani drifts off to sleep with the rest of the dead.

"Where's the social worker?" pretty-cop asks, breaking Dani from her trance. She startles a bit at his sudden appearance and begins folding up the city map. His eyes glimmer in amusement as he rocks off his cop car and comes closer to her.

It's been a couple of days since she first arrived in Blüdhaven, and she was just starting to familiarize herself with how the streets were laid out. She was planning on finding that lake with the supposed dog-monster, but she got distracted by the discovery of ghost tours. Usually they were only scheduled around Halloween, but this city had year-round ghost tours. She had just been trying to figure out where they were so she could find out the fee.

"Uh, I threw her off the pier," Dani blurts. "She became a buoy."

The cop smirks. "That's not very nice."

"Which part? The throwing, or the insult to her spray tan?"

"Ah, you were referring to her spray tan." Pretty-cop seems highly amused, and Dani doesn't move to run since he doesn't look interested in arresting her or calling backup. "How long 'til you escaped her?"

"Half a block and two minutes," Dani replies with a proud grin. "She left me in the car to get coffee."

"In August? In the afternoon?" His concern is touching, but annoying in its ignorance.

"This surprises you… why?" Dani flaps her map at him. "Don't tell me you thought she was a model employee."

He huffs out an irritated breath. "No, I just thought with their new policies… no, never mind. I'll have to call city hall again." He visibly shakes off the topic, then smiles more openly at her. "What have you been doing?"

"Treasure hunting," Dani replies. "But turns out, it's not as lucrative as it is in video games."

That earns her a chuckle. "Is that a treasure map, then?"

Dani glances at her city map. "No, it's the standard map you get at the visitors center. Treasure is almost never marked by a map. It's not supposed to be found, y'know."

Another laugh. He really is a bit too cheerful. Must be covering up trauma or something. People who smile the brightest have overcome their darkest, or something like that. "What about the Copper Scrolls?"

"Oh, I've seen those! They're in a museum in Jordan." She'd even gotten her own paper copy of the scroll, printed to look just like the real thing, with shiny copper foil and everything. It was one of her favorites.

"You've been to Jordan?" pretty-cop asks in obvious surprise. "Was it just to see the Copper Scroll?"

Dani scoffs. "Nah, but it was definitely pretty cool. Say, I should go to the Blüdhaven museums, I hadn't even thought of that! The ghost tours will have to wait!"

The young cop looks ready to tease her or further question her plans, but before he can do either, there's a blast of static from his radio and a near-incomprehensible list of numbers and words. Grayson listens with intent, then responds with a firm: "10-4. Grayson en route." He looks at her apologetically. "Sorry, I gotta run. Have fun at the museum! Oh, here." He digs into his belt and hands her a twenty. Dani accepts it with confusion, but he's already climbing into his squad car. "For the entrance fee!" He starts the engine and flicks on his lights, peeling out of the area in two seconds flat.

Huh. Dani likes him even more now.

She pockets the twenty and reopens her map, looking for the museum. It's much easier to find than the ghost tour place, and she heads out in its direction only a couple of minutes later.

Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of strolling half-hearted exhibits with zero interactive elements and poorly written plaques about whaling, Dani is thoroughly disappointed in Blüdhaven. Why even bother with a museum if you were going to make it boring?

She only has two dollars left after the entrance fee from the twenty pretty-cop gave her, but she forks over a few more of her own dollars for a sea chart from the gift shop. At least the map is pretty cool, despite the lackluster museum.

Time to find the ghost tour place? Yeah, Dani thinks it is. It better be more interesting than the museum, not that it should be all that difficult.

It's pushing six in the evening by the time Dani makes it to the ghost tour place, and they have only one tour on weekdays that was already sold out. She'd have to come back in a couple of days.

Tired from wandering, Dani collapses on a stone bench nearby and takes out her sea chart. It has some silvery filigree around the edges which augments the shape of the waves. Dani admires it in the golden light, debating whether she should add it to her favorites shelf back at the Keep.

There's the pounding of shoes on concrete that gets progressively louder as a runner approaches her, and Dani looks up in interest since it is weird to see anyone working out during rush hour and in the heat of the day.

It's pretty-cop, in plain clothes, a messenger bag crossing over his broad chest. He breaks out in a huge smile when he sees her and increases his speed until he reaches the top of the steps where Dani's bench is. "I'm so glad I caught you!" he says, panting a little. "I stopped by the museum, but the gift shop guy said you'd left an hour ago, so I hoped you were keeping to your earlier plan and went to the ghost tours." He's out of breath, though not nearly as much as he should be if he jogged here from the museum in about twenty minutes, which is easily five or six kilometers away.

"Uhm, hey?"

The smile doesn't dim. In fact, it grows. "Are you going on a tour?"

"They sold out," Dani answers, still confused. "Why were you chasing me down?"

Pretty-cop smoothly removes his messenger bag and sits on the bench next to her. "I wanted to ask if I could buy you dinner."

"I'm a little young for you," Dani observes skeptically.

The man shakes his head and waves his arms around violently, but he's laughing. "No, no, not like that! You remind me of my brothers, is all."

Dani continues to eye him with suspicion, but he looks sincere enough. Usually, bad people give off bad vibes, their soul leaking evil intentions into the space around them. She can only sense positive and energetic feelings from pretty-cop, as limited as her emotional sense is compared to, say, Jazz or Sam's. "Do you stalk your brothers too?"

"Absolutely," he responds without missing a beat. "They like to pretend they don't like spending time with me and always try to run away."

"All of them?" That's kinda hilarious. This guy is probably more embarrassing to have as a brother than a helicopter mom.

"Yep. Except for my newest one. He's an angel."

"How many do you have?" Dani asks in amusement.

"Four," he replies, "and two sisters."

"That's a big family," Dani states, despite it being obvious. "And you're the…"

"Oldest."

"Yeah, that tracks." Somehow, the idea of this sunny man being a younger sibling doesn't sit right. He has big brother energy.

"Did you like the museum?"

"It sucked," Dani deadpans. "It was barely a museum. It felt more like a storage shed with occasional labels of what stuff was. I'll never get that time back." She holds up her map to him. "I got this cool map though."

His eyes readjust on the map and scan the legend. "That's a really pretty map."

"Right?" Dani admires it again, tracking how the light bounces off the silvery lines. "I'm trying to decide whether I should keep it with my favorites or not. I mean, the measurements are off, and they're not in the metric system, which is a huge downside, but overall it's accurate, from what I can tell."

"You like maps, then?"

Dani slaps her hands down and looks at him with offense. "I love maps, thank you very much."

He holds up his hands in appeasement with an amused grin. "Of course, my mistake. How do you usually read these ones?"

"Nautical charts?" A nod. "Well, see this legend?" Another nod. "Well, it's mostly useless, so ignore it except for the scaling info. This whole area is just open water; there shouldn't be a need for ports and islands or whatever. It's these numbers on the edge that matter. They show latitude and longitude. You've got your basic compass rose here, but the real issue is positioning yourself, since if you're in the water, there won't be any landmarks. That's where a sextant comes in handy…"

She rambles on for a few minutes about how sextants work with the map. The whole time, Grayson pays rapt attention, even asking clarifying questions and pointing at things on the map for her to explain.

"You said the measurements are off? How do you determine that?"

"They put the shore here, but look! The shading here indicates deep water, but it shouldn't be this close to land if they're trying to show international waters. This indicates twenty kilometers when it should be closer to forty."

"Hmm. If you adjusted this line here by a couple of millimeters you should fix that issue." He points to the scaling bar.

Dani squints at the map. "Then the land dimensions would be off."

"Not if you just take out this landmark right here. And move the darker shade further inland." He taps what Dani guesses is supposed to be a lighthouse. She's inclined to trust Grayson's opinion more on the specifics given he lives in the city. "The shore will look a little weird, but let's be honest, with the way tides change year to year, that won't really be a technical issue."

Dani stares at the map, then at her companion, scrutinizing him in the now-dying light.

"What?" he asks, rubbing his face almost self-consciously. "Is there something on my face?"

"You can buy me dinner," Dani decides. He looks caught off guard but it quickly melts into a wide smile. "But I get to choose where."

Grayson nods eagerly.

They end up eating seafood and discussing which type of historic boat they would sail if they were pirates. Dani chooses a Brigantine. Grayson decides on a Sloop.

Dani orders lobster, just to be expensive, but she doesn't like it all that much and steals Grayson's seafood platter instead.

It's delicious.

Lol okay if you saw an update that I immediately deleted, whoops. I was trying to preview, not post haha. Anyway.

I love the characterization of Dani in this. She has so many interests, but the main ones are traveling, history, and geography. She loves stories, adventure, culture, and so on. She wants to experience everything, because at one point, she thought she wouldn't be able to (ooh, angst anyone?). Anyway, I figured she'd be obsessed with maps. So you can expect a whole lot of that. Oh, and also, notice how Dani's internal designation of Dick changes from "pretty-cop" to "Grayson" as she warms up to him. It's a small detail, but I think it's cute.

The ghost stories are random ones I looked up from New Jersey just because I didn't have the energy to dream up random ones. Does that make me a lazy writer? Eh, it's finnne. I'm so tired. Anyway, I also looked up some random famous treasure maps and how to read a nautical map, but I did it during class so if any of you guys actually know about this, I'm so sorry.

Thank you for the response! I'm so glad you guys are enjoying it so far... especially since we've barely gotten started! I actually wrote up to halfway through chapter 5, but I'm forcing myself to space out updates to weekly. Yes, this one is a day early, but that's because of my blunder earlier lol. So even if I don't write a single page in the next month (highly unlikely, given how hyped I am rn), you guys don't have to worry about missing updates until at least October!

I'm going to bed, lol. Signing off,

Starr