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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

"Has anyone told Alicia?" asked Maddie, after Mr. Kynbaz finished giving instructions to his team.

"A different team is handling her security, ma'am. Operational security."

Maddie nodded, but her expression was pinched and sour. "Your idea, or Matthew's?"

"Prince Matthew won't abandon family, ma'am."

There was tense silence.

"So," said Danny, interrupting, "what happens now? Are we going the usual way, or something else?" He'd said there was a charter, presumably a charter plane, waiting for them, but he'd like more detail. Was it going to take them to Britain, first, before the final leg? Somewhere else in Europe? One time, they'd spent a couple days in France, and that had been fun.

But they probably weren't going to do anything like that this time.

"This plane will take us directly to the islands," said Mr. Kynbaz.

"Isn't that risky if we want to lay low?" asked Maddie.

"We're hoping the speed will throw anyone with ill intentions off, ma'am."

"Well, I think no layovers will be great! What about you, kids?"

Danny and Jazz shrugged.

"Does the plane have phones?"

"And internet," said Mr. Kynbaz. "We intend to stay informed."

Jazz nodded, sharply. "Good." As if reminded of something, she pulled out her phone and started typing.

Danny leaned over to spy on what Jazz was looking at. The Missing Princesses: Whatever Happened to Princesses Madeline and Alicia of Avlynys? read the vividly colored tabloid cover. The picture was an old, grainy, photo of his mother and Aunt Alicia from before they went to college. The subtitle proclaimed One of the greatest mysteries of modern European royalty!

"Why are you reading that?" he asked.

"Forewarned is forearmed," said Jazz, grimly. "I want to know what kind of gossip we'll be facing when we show up."

"We already know about this, though," said Danny.

"It's a good thought," interrupted Maddie. "Goodness knows I try to stay away from it all. Are the Brits still speculating that Alicia and I were murdered?"

Jazz scrunched her nose up. "Unfortunately. It's so…" She trailed off, apparently remembering why they were leaving in such a rush. "Yeah."

"And… after the plane?" asked Danny.

"Straight to Kyr Argyn with the rest of the family. They're increasing security now. After that… I'm afraid I don't know much more than you do, at this point. There are the funerals, of course, and the Assembly will have to meet to discuss the, well, the throne." He gave Maddie a significant look. "It's something you should give some thought to, ma'am."

"We're not interested in that," said Maddie. "I haven't done the 'trials' and I don't want to. Matthew and Joanna are welcome to fight over it."

"They haven't done the trials, either. From your generation, only Prince William and Prince Martin had done them, and no one from your children's generation has tried them."

"Well," said Maddie. "That's… Maybe we can finally transition to a real democracy."

Mr. Kynbaz's expression was pained, but he didn't say anything else about the subject.

.

The plane broke through the high, wispy clouds, and Danny leaned towards the window, his breath just barely fogging the glass. Below was Avlynys. A small, often-forgotten archipelago in the North Atlantic, rising out of the Rockall Plateau, it was home to almost a hundred thousand residents, and had just over a hundred thousand citizens to its name.

The islands were speckled with white and gray, and it looked like an iceberg had grounded itself on Loryn Shoal again, a few miles past Myrgyn and Myrno, the two largest of the nine islands. The other seven, smaller islands - Myz, Gly, Glyteno, Glyton, Tyrono, Thyten, and Thytys - were almost invisible against the backdrop of the sea.

The plane rumbled and shook as it came down, the view rapidly going from map-like, to birds-eye, to skyscraper-high. Danny could almost feel Jazz's eyes on the back of his neck. She knew he could fly, and she was doubtlessly wondering why Danny was so entranced.

But this was different from flying around Amity. He didn't pull back from the window until the plane touched down. As soon as they came to a stop, the plane was swarmed. A population of a hundred thousand didn't support all that many security personnel, but it felt like they were all here, on the airstrip.

The rushing energy of the moment combined with air travel fatigue to make a surreal experience. Were all the police on the island here?

The Fentons were packed into much more obviously armored cars which hurtled to Kyr Argyn. The landscape flew past in a blur of white, green, and gray.

That's why Danny thought he was seeing things at first. Between the long day, the continuing emotional shock, and the speed they were traveling, falling prey to optical illusions, to pareidolia, could be expected.

But as he peered out his window, his breath began to fog up the window much more than it had back on the plane. His eyes weren't making up things out of nothing.

He was seeing ghosts.

Hundreds of ghosts. Maybe even thousands of ghosts.

They lined the road. Watching? Waiting? Danny couldn't tell. The conditions that made him think his brain was making things up were still there. They were whipping by too fast for Danny to make out any detail.

It was very obvious no one else was seeing what he was. If his parents were, they'd be freaking out.

There hadn't been anything like this last time he was here. Or had there? Had all these ghosts been here, present, just invisible to normal people?

Part of him hoped not. Part of him hoped so.

The former, because just thinking about this many ghosts in one place for so long was disturbing. The latter, because trying to imagine where they had come from was worse.

Were his grandparents and great-grandparents out there? His cousins? His great-aunt and uncle? More distant ancestors?

"This isn't the way to Kyr Argyn," said Maddie. "Why have we turned off?"

"Sorry, your highness," said the driver. "Forgot that you wouldn't know in all this. The Assembly is at Kyr Argyn with Prince Matthew, to try to figure out…" He trailed off. "The rest of the family is at Basym Hyws."

"That old ruin?" asked Maddie in surprise.

She wasn't the only one. The old manor and the overgrown vineyards had been striking, but not inviting to anyone but children wanting to explore.

"Prince Martin was restoring it, ma'am," explained Mr. Kynbaz. "It was his personal project, to get the vineyard producing again. Princess Joanna had a thought about exporting…" He shook his head. "In any case, it's entirely livable, and I suppose it is one of the few places on Myrgyn large enough to fit everyone without displacing someone else, or being…" He hesitated. "Politically inexpedient."

"No one wants the royal family in a hotel?" asked Maddie, wryly.

"I wouldn't put it quite like that, but, yes, ma'am. That's the long and short of it."

"What about Kyr Gly?" asked Danny. "That's big enough."

"And on the wrong island," said Mr. Kynbaz. "Although I suppose the Glyé would be happy enough about it."

There was something of a rivalry between the islands, although Danny had never been in Avlynys long enough to get a good grasp of who was on what side. Mr. Kynbaz was a Glytoné, and last Danny knew, all the islands that started with G were in it against everyone else, but especially the islands that started with M.

The road began to wind up a hill, and the car slowed. The grape vines had been cut back, and many of them had even been given new trellises.

There were ghosts here, too. And Danny could see, now, that the pale shades were watching the cars go by, heads turning to keep track, but not moving otherwise. Most of them weren't new, though, sporting obviously archaic clothing, and Danny was thankful for that.

Although, he couldn't call this, any of this, good. He shivered as the car passed by what looked to be an entire viking family, children included, standing on the side of the road. This was creepy for him, and he was a ghost, too, for goodness' sake!

The car pulled to a stop in front of the mansion at the top of the hill. Smoke curled weakly from one of the chimneys, the wind whipping it away into nothing.

"Alright," said Maddie, wiping the palms of her hands on the legs of her pants. Her expression was resolute, but Danny could see that she was still crumpled, inside.

"Mom," said Jazz, before trailing off.

Jack patted Maddie on the shoulder. "We can just… take it slow?" he suggested.

"How are we supposed to do that?" asked Maddie. "Out of everyone here, we're probably the least affected, and they're going to be–" She cut herself off.

"It doesn't do anyone good to compare grief," said Jazz.

"It isn't just that," said Maddie. "They're going to want to indulge their ridiculous belief that ghosts can do good and I just– I can't. I know they won't come back as ghosts, they were too good, but how can I take that- that comfort away from everyone? But I can't deal with it right now."

Danny saw Mr. Kinbaz and the driver exchange troubled looks.

"You don't have to," said Jack. "Just don't think about ghosts right now. Man! I can't believe I'm actually saying that. But don't think about them. No one will be thinking about that right now. It's barely been a day. Grief… it needs time to sink in."

"You don't know them like I do."

"And I'm sure you'll be able to handle anything they say, Mads," said Jack.

"Right," said Maddie.

"Are you ready, your highness?" asked the driver.

"One moment," interjected Mr. Kynbaz, putting a finger on his earpiece. "Yes, we're clear."

There was a brief moment of awkwardness when the driver opened the door for them, and Jack, Jazz, and Danny blanked on the proper etiquette for the gesture, but everyone seemed content to overlook it. They were escorted up to the manor with no more fuss.

Danny, however, couldn't help but look back before entering. The ghosts standing among the grapevines stared up at him.

He was stuck by the thought that he would find out what was going on here - but he might not like the way he did it.

Chapter Text

“Maddie!”

Danny saw Maddie go completely rigid just before Joanna - Princess Joanna, who was second in line for the throne after Matthew - slammed into her.  

Joanna was a few years older than Danny’s parents, and very pretty, in a sort of faded way.  Her hair was a slightly-graying strawberry blonde, and every part of her was thin in a way that spoke of chronic worry.  

“Thank all the ancestors that you’ve gotten here safely.  If something happened to you, too, I don’t know how I’d stand it, after everything else.”  She pulled back, tears glistening in her eyes.  “Do you know what happened?  No one will tell me anything , but I don’t know if it’s because they don’t know, or…”  She trailed off.  

Living so far away, and with Maddie intent on not getting involved in the family business, Danny didn’t know the details of family drama.  Maybe he could have at least gotten the outsider perspective from tabloids, but that seemed… wrong.  However, even he could do a little math and figure out that Joanna had only been seventeen when she had Eugene.  

The rest of the family not trusting her was… not reasonable, but not without a reason, even if that reason was twenty-six years old.  Mostly, though, he’d always felt that it was sad.  

“I don’t know, either,” said Maddie.  “Are you the only one here, or…?”

She looked around the foyer, as if expecting more family members to appear out of thin air.  In her defense, the foyer was rather large and had many expensive-looking pieces of furniture and art in it. 

Also, there were ghosts there.  Two of them, a man and a woman.  Watching.  

Danny caught the woman’s eye, and watched her twitch in surprise.  She tilted her head sideways, her braids swinging, the edge of her gown twisting like smoke, and pressed her hand against her chest, slowly, deliberately, as if asking a question.  

Can you see me?

Danny debated the merits of responding, but…  He didn’t think he could pretend not to see them the whole time he was here.  He nodded, minutely.  

The ghost frowned, deeply, and backed out of the room, through the wall.  

“... Sir John is in the hospital for shock, and we’re still waiting on Alicia,” finished Joanna, wringing her hands.  “But except for Eugene and I, I don’t think anyone has slept for well over a day, so they’re all in bed.  I’m worried about Matthew, honestly.  I think the Assembly is going to bully him.”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine,” said Maddie, who had stepped back out of Joanna’s hug range.  

“I hope you’re right,” said Joanna.  “I really do.  He’s not made for politics.”

From Maddie’s expression, she clearly didn’t agree.  “Joanna–”

“I know what you’re thinking, but those are businesses.  It’s different.”

“Hm,” said Maddie, noncommittally.  

“Oh, and you’re all probably exhausted, too.”  For the first time, Joanna acknowledged the rest of the Fentons.  “Your flight was just as long as mine, but I couldn’t calm down enough to rest.”

Maddie nodded.  “I can understand that.  Do you know where we’re staying, while we’re here?  Which rooms we’re using.”

“I think everyone just took what wasn’t already occupied.  Lewis and Leo are sharing, though.  I think with their sister missing…  I mean, if it was Matthew, I’d be beside myself.”  She swallowed.  “Maddie?”

“Yes?” said Maddie, with forced patience.

“Are you going to try the Trials?  Or are–  I suppose Jasmine and Daniel–”

“No,” said Maddie.  “You know how I feel about that– that nonsense.”

“But the ancestors–”

“Ghosts are no one’s ancestors,” interrupted Maddie, sharply.  She clenched her jaw.  “Six of the most protected citizens of Avlynys are dead–”

“Maddie,” Jack tried to interject.  

“-one is missing, and I’ll bet you anything they were poking around some ill-advised ritual when it happened, making nice with soulless abominations pretending to be ‘ancestor spirits.’  I warned them, after Mom and Dad–”  She cut herself off and shook her head.  “You’d think they would have learned!  That they would have listened.  Maybe then they wouldn’t be dead, too!”

Mr. Kynbaz entered the foyer, an attempt at a smile on his face.  “We’ve got all your luggage in your rooms if you want to–”

Joanna ran out of the room crying.  Mr. Kynbaz stared after her for a minute, then fixed a disapproving gaze on Maddie.  

“It’s the end of my shift, Princess,” he said.  “If I stay up much longer, my effectiveness will start to drop.  You know how to contact me.”

Maddie gave a brief, imperious nod, and exited through the door opposite the one Joanna had run through.  Jack 

Mr. Kynbaz looked conflicted, but in the end, he shook his head.  “Stay safe, Master Daniel, Miss Jasmine.”  He left.

Jazz sighed.  “Great.  So.  I’ll make sure that they don’t…”  she trailed off.  “You know what I mean.”

Danny did know what she meant.  Jack and Maddie could find trouble anywhere.  Or make it.  

“Will you look after…?” she tilted her head toward the door Joanna had run through.  

“Yeah,” said Danny.  He took one last look at the ghost man, and went to look for Joanna.  

Should he have told Jazz about the ghosts?  Yeah.  Maybe.  But he was coming off an eight hour long flight.  He was tired.  

He stepped into a hallway lined with landscape and still life paintings that were probably worth thousands of dollars - or maybe they were just random.  Danny didn’t know anything about Martin’s choice in decorations.  

The ghost woman from earlier stepped out of the wall, making him jump.  She pointed down the hallway, then flew away to point at a specific door.  Feeling cautious, Danny approached.  

“Anything you wanted to tell me, or…?”

The ghost pointed at the door again.  

Well.  If it was booby-trapped, he’d probably survive.  

He opened the door.  

Behind it, was a well-appointed and spotless kitchen.  And Joanna.  Who was still crying, even while attempting to make a pot of tea.  She seemed to be having trouble with the lid on the kettle.

“Here,” said Danny, “let me help.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I can at least boil water,” said Danny, taking the kettle from her.  “Why don’t you, um, sit down?”

Joanna blinked tearfully at him.  “Alright,” she said.  “Thank you.”  She sniffled.  “I know no one much cares for me.  They think I’m irresponsible and untrustworthy, and Maddie and Alicia have been nice about that, but ever since her parents died, she’s been so angry about ghosts.  I understand it, but…”  She looked at Danny beseechingly.  “The people we’ve lost watch over us.  Isn’t that something we should embrace?  Isn’t it a comfort?”

“Um,” said Danny.  “I don’t– I haven’t really thought about it, too much.”

“Oh,” said Joanna, disappointed.  

“I guess I don’t…”  He chewed over his words.  “Mom’s never really talked about what happened to her parents,” he said.  “Do you… know anything?”

“Oh,” said Joanna again, wiping away tears, “well, they didn’t die at the same time.  It was…  Are you sure you want to hear about this?  Now?”

“I don’t know when else I’d learn about it, honestly.”  Something about the way everything was going right now made Danny feel doubtful that they’d be visiting Avlynys all too regularly in the future. 

“Alright, well… I was pregnant with Eugene at the time, so I never really got all the details.  Uncle Leon was taking the Trials, and there was an accident…  It really was an accident, not- not– Some people said it was a sign of the spirits’ disfavor, but it wasn’t.  I think it was something about, um, construction materials that hadn’t been put away properly.”  She nodded.  “Yes, that was it.  We’re always fixing things, you know.  Someone had left construction things in Andyr, and Leon had run into them…  Because the Trials are supposed to take time, no one went looking for him until it was too late.”

“Where’s Andyr?”

“The tunnels beneath Kyr Argyn,” said Joanna.  She managed a very watery smile.  “There’s a legend that you can use them to get to the other islands, even.  I’d say I’m surprised you don’t know about them, but I can’t blame your mother for not wanting to talk about it.  They’re supposed to be haunted.  The ghosts…  I suppose you don’t want to hear about that, either?  You and your sister were very adamant that you didn’t believe in them when you were younger.”

“I don’t mind,” said Danny with a shrug, glancing at the other ghosts around the room.

“Well, they’re supposed to be closer to things down there.  Not that Uncle Leon got very far.”  She shook her head.  “Then, Aunt Maria walked off a cliff.”

Danny startled.  “She killed herself?”

“I don’t know.  She’d been saying things about seeing Uncle Leon…  I think Grandfather hoped it was a real vision, really his ghost, but…  In the end, I think she was just too lonely, without him.”  She shook her head.  “A terrible thing to do to Alicia and Maddie.  I wasn’t surprised when they decided to stay in America.”

Every part of that story was suspicious on so many levels, made worse by even more silent ghosts starting to show up.  Danny wanted to scream.  

“But Maddie was convinced that some kind of shape-shifting monster had- had stolen Uncle Leon’s face and lured her mother over that cliff.  I know spirituality isn’t for everyone, but Maddie’s doing more than rejecting it, she’s…”  Joanna trailed off, seeming to remember who she was talking to.  “I don’t mean anything bad by it.”

“It’s okay,” said Danny, starting to look for teacups or mugs in the kitchen’s numerous cupboards.  He decided to take a risk.  “I know not all ghosts are bad.”

“That’s a relief,” said Joanna.  

“You don’t think anything like that happened this time, though, do you?”

“Everyone’s been telling me they can’t even figure out a cause of death.”  She stared at the teapot.  “For six people… it has to be poison, doesn’t it?  Or some kind of miniature bullet.  I… can’t believe it was a ghost.  Our ancestors would protect us, if nothing else.”

The ghosts around her nodded.  

“Right,” said Danny.  He found the teacups and took two out.  “Do you… know what they were doing when it happened?  When they… died?”

“The tea is here,” said Joanna, lifting a package.  Once Danny took it, she answered his question.  “They were doing the planning for the Moon Masque, I think.  Martin… Martin had been texting me about it.”

“Moon Masque?”

“You haven’t been here for one since you were little, have you?  I forget…  A masque is a kind of costume party, but there’s a performance, too, and choreographed music and dancin…  A bit like a pageant.”

“Like a Christmas pageant?”

Joanna lifted a hand and tilted it back and forth.  “Somewhat.  It’s mostly a tourist attraction, now, but the Trials touch on it, too.  Vivian was thinking about taking them–”

The kettle began to whistle, and Danny quickly took it off the stove.  

“Do you know who else was there, at the… planning session?  Meeting?  Conference?”

Joanna giggled a little, but it was still very watery.  “Half of Myrgyn was probably there, between planners, nobles, and contractors.  It’s a big thing.”  She slumped.  “It probably won’t happen now.  There’s a lot of things that won’t happen now.”

Yeah.  Even when someone came back as a ghost, it wasn’t the same as being alive.  Danny sometimes, when everything was hard and terrible, felt like he’d rather have died in the portal… but the truth was that he’d been incredibly lucky.  Life - and the opportunities that came with it - was precious.  

He poured the tea into the cups.  Joanna took hers quickly.  

“I think,” she said, “that I had better get some rest myself.  Maybe then I won’t burst into tears at Maddie, hm?”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Danny.  

“I don’t think it was anyone’s fault,” said Joanna.  “Except whoever…”  She trailed off, shaking her head hard.  “You’ll be alright down here alone?”

Danny wasn’t alone at all.  “I’ll find my way to a bed when I need to.”

“Alright, then,” said Joanna.  “I’ll see you later.”

Danny watched her go.  

Now to solve the haunted house problem.  He turned to look at the ghosts.  “Hi." 

Chapter Text

Some of the ghosts flinched, straightened, or showed other signs of surprise when he greeted them. The woman from before, the one with braids, pushed her way to the front and gestured at him, presenting him to the other ghosts.

But none of them said anything, or made any other sound, much less started to explain anything to Danny.

"So," said Danny. "Why are you all here? Why are there so many of you?"

The ghosts looked at him. They did a lot of that, didn't they?

Finally, the woman with braids stepped forward and tapped her throat three times. Deliberately, maintaining eye contact, she shook her head.

"You can't speak? None of you?"

The woman nodded, the rest of the ghosts following suit.

"Could you maybe… try?" He winced. "I mean, you usually can't be seen, right? Maybe I'll be able to hear you, too."

The woman sighed, exasperation exaggeratedly clear on her face. She opened her mouth and closed it several times, her lips forming the shape of words.

"Okay," said Danny. "I guess not. Maybe you could write something?"

The woman pointedly swiped her hand through the kitchen counter.

"I could hold a pen and you could move my hand?" suggested Danny, miming the action, one hand 'holding a pen,' the other 'holding paper.' He didn't really want to do something like that. Not for very long, anyway, but it would be better than mime.

The woman took a few quick steps forward, and put her hands on top of his. She paused for a moment, and looked up at him, clearly surprised. Then, she pushed down. Danny couldn't feel it at all.

"Sign language?"

The woman raised an eyebrow.

"Alright, I don't know sign language, either," admitted Danny, defeated. Even if he did and they did, the ghosts here probably wouldn't have used American Sign Language. Or even, necessarily, a living sign language. "Charades it is. If you can tell me why you're all here, I'll try to figure out a way to help you out."

Assuming, that was, that what they were here for wasn't murder and mayhem. Then, the only thing that Danny would be helping them out of was the living world. Not in the sense that he was going to kill them, but in the sense that he'd be sending them back to the Ghost Zone. Somehow. All several hundred of them. Across an ocean from where the portal was.

At least he had the thermos?

The woman gave him a small smile. It was probably reading too much into it to interpret it as hopeful.

She turned away, and made a separating motion with her hands. The ghosts cleared a path, and she led Danny through it, to a door. Danny followed, a touch of ectoplasm tingling his fingertips, just in case.

The door led to a large, formal dining room. There were pictures on the wall, family pictures. Danny felt his breath catch in his throat as he saw one with him and Jasmine in it, sitting among the rest of the 'kids' of the family. Vivian, Lewis, Leo, Iris, George, and Eugene. He remembered Martin taking that picture, just a couple years ago.

He looked around at the rest of the pictures. There was one Fenton family portrait after that, and a few scattered photos of Maddie and Alicia from when they were younger. Of the others, most of the others were of Martin's immediate family. His parents, Theodore and Cathrine. His brother, William. His sister-in-law, Sophia. His nieces and nephews, Vivian, Lewis, and Leo. The rest were of Danny's other cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, great grandparents. All of them in casual clothing, in casual settings.

It… hurt. Martin must have done the decorating, or at least decided which pictures would be included.

Danny couldn't believe he was dead.

The ghost woman flitted from picture to picture, pointing at people in them. Martin, William, Theodore, Isabella, Alfred–

"Something about the– my– the people who died," said Danny. The woman nodded sharply. "Did you– Do you know what killed them? Do you know why?"

The woman raised a hand and tilted it back and forth.

"Kind of."

She shrugged.

"So, you know what killed them?"

Another hand wiggle.

"You know why they were killed?"

A sharp nod.

"Was it murder?"

The ghosts around them bared their teeth in a dozen silent snarls. Danny understood the impulse.

The woman nodded.

Well, it wasn't as if Danny hadn't expected it, but the information came as a blow. He let himself close his eyes for a moment to regather himself, a necessary habit when strong anger made your eyes glow green.

Someone was trying to kill his family. Someone had killed his family.

Well. Turnabout was fair play.

"Do you know who did it?" Danny asked.

The woman nodded, then touched her mouth and shook her head, then shrugged.

"You know, but you don't know how to tell me?"

The woman tilted her hand from side to side again. Kind of.

"Okay, maybe I can just go through letters, and you can tell me when to–"

The woman was shaking her head vigorously. She held her hand up, fingers splayed, and then brought them together. Then, she held up both hands and lowered and raised her fingers several times.

Danny glared at her hands, stumped and frustrated. She repeated the motion, then threw back her head in a display of frustration that echoed what Danny was feeling. She strode over to the other ghosts and gathered up a group of them. She made an open-handed motion at them, then another as if lassoing them together, then that earlier motion, of raising and lowering fingers.

"There's more than one. It's a group."

The woman snapped her fingers - there was no sound, of course - and nodded.

"But do you know who they are?"

Shuffling. Some nods, some shrugs, some shaken heads.

"Could you point them out to me?" asked Danny.

The woman shrugged.

Danny pulled a chair out from the dining room table and sat down. "Do you at least know some of them?"

Nods.

"Okay, I can work with that," said Danny. "But… why are all of you here? Were you killed by these same guys?"

The woman laughed, soundlessly, pointed at herself, and shook her head. A moment later, her clothing rippled, shifting from something fairly modern to something a viking woman might have worn. A long smock dress with a strap dress over it, a belt, a cloak, and brooches and beads tying it all together. Golden clasps glittered in her hair.

She looked familiar like this. Like someone Danny had seen in a picture somewhere, once. He frowned trying to think of where, and only stopped when he noticed her frowning back at him.

"Sorry," he said. "Just thinking about about something. So… You've been around for a while? Viking times?"

The woman made the 'kind of' signal again.

"Can you - Do you know the year? I know the calendars changed, but…"

The woman held up nine fingers, then three, then two, then signed 'kind of' again.

"That's a long time," said Danny. "But, then what do you get out of this? What do any of you get out of this?"

The woman walked across the room, straight through the table, and pointed at another picture. It was of a young William and Sophia sitting on a picnic blanket in the middle of a flowery field, but Kyr Argyn was clearly visible in the background, and that was what the woman was pointing at.

"Under the castle… is it related to what happened to my grandparents? Or are you buried there or something?"

The woman froze, then nodded, once, twice.

"Is it… for you, specifically, just that you saw… whatever happened to my grandfather? To Prince Leon?" That didn't explain all the other ghosts, or why they were ghosts in the first place, but it would make sense as a motivation for the woman. If someone had been murdered on top of his grave, he'd want to do something about it, too.

The woman's face twisted up, as if she were trying to figure out what, exactly, to say, and how to say it, but then all the ghosts went stiff and turned to face the door. Danny felt it, too. An approach. A newness. Mist dribbled sluggishly from his lips.

He stood, turning as he did so to face the dining room door. Vivian was standing there, her face pale. Right next to her, on the wall near the door, was a photo of her, and it struck Danny that she was dressed just like she was in the photo - business casual, large colorful barrettes, the lesser seal and key on the bracelet on her wrist.

The expression she wore now couldn't be more different, though. In the photograph, Vivian was laughing. Here, in the dining room, her face was twisted with despair.

Danny saw her mouth the words oh, ancestors, but she didn't say anything out loud. She couldn't.

After all, Vivian was quite dead.

Chapter Text

Danny didn’t know what to do for Vivian.  Not being able to really touch her took away a lot of options, and she didn’t seem to be listening to him.  She kept trying to say something - or maybe a lot of things - but Danny couldn’t hear her, and–

His cousin was dead.  She’d been twenty-five.  

She was dead, and she was here, a ghost, having a breakdown.  Danny sat down on the floor in front of where she was kneeling, hoping he could at least remind her that he was here that way.  

The ghosts were watching, their eyes bright pinpricks as the sun went down and the dining room was cast into shadow.  They kept a respectful distance.  

“Vivian,” tried Danny again, once it seemed that Vivian wasn’t shaking quite so much.  “Vivian, I know this is- this is scary, and you probably don’t understand what’s going on.  I don’t either, all that much, but…  Can you try to tell me what…  Tell me how you got here?  What happened?”

Slowly, Vivian looked up.  When she had been alive, her eyes had been that soft, almost violet blue that was common in the royal family (which, yes, was because of inbreeding; just because it was true didn’t mean Danny liked to think about it).  Now, they were a watery, faded, but somehow still cutting magenta.  Their weak glow glittered on the tears she’d shed.  

She hugged herself.  

“I’m sorry,” said Danny.  “I’m so sorry.  If I had–”  If he had what?  He’d only just gotten here.  Vivian might have been dead since she went missing.  “I’m sorry you’re dead.”

Vivian flinched.  

“I’m sorry,” whispered Danny, miserable.  “But, maybe, if I can figure out what happened, we can stop whoever it was from doing it again.”

Vivian chewed her lip, then nodded.  She held out her right hand, the one with the bracelet.  Vivian was in the direct line to the throne.  Prince Theodore, her grandfather, had been the heir.  In the normal course of things, Vivian would have eventually taken the throne.  She’d even been preparing for the trials.  

Her position came with certain traditional roles.  One of those roles was keeping track of the Lesser Seal of Avlynys and one of the Great Gate Keys.  William had kept them on a necklace, when it was his turn.  Vivian tended to switch them between a necklace and her bracelet.  

Spectral copies of both hung from Vivian’s wrist.  The usually-emerald gem on the key - the central element to an eye design - had gone as pink as Vivian’s eyes, the pond-and-tree design on the seal wavered as Danny looked at it, and both items looked as pale and washed out as Vivian, but they were recognizable.  

More importantly, Vivian’s wrist was torn and bleeding under the bracelet.  Her skin was bruised, a sickly greenish color.  As Danny watched, the damage swept up her arm and over her whole body.  Her clothing was torn.  One of her eyes was swollen shut.  Her jacket and shoes were missing.  Her skirt was– 

Danny returned his eyes to her face, then her hand.  

Despite all her other injuries, Vivian’s hand and wrist showed the most damage.  It looked like someone had been trying to rip the bracelet off of her, and had been willing to break her arm to do it.  

“They wanted the seal?” asked Danny.  “Or the key?”

Vivian nodded, and the signs of her death bled away.  Did Vivian even know she’d done that?  Danny wasn’t exactly an expert on ghost formation, but it seemed a bit early for shapeshifting, even with something minor.  

“And then you came here?” asked Danny.  “Or did you form here?”

Vivian sucked her lips in.  She looked like she was trying not to start crying again.  

“Sorry,” said Danny, quickly.  “Sorry, was that insensitive?  That was insensitive, I won’t–”

Vivian shook her head and looked away for a moment, seeming to survey the other ghosts.  Some of them waved at her, others tapped their own wrists or pointed at Danny.  The woman with braids pointed at her eye, then Danny, then her wrist.  

There was something else.  Why wouldn’t Vivian show Danny?

Vivian turned back to him, shoulders slumped.  She mouthed something at him.  The only words Danny could make out were don’t and you.  And he could only figure out that last one because Vivian reached out to him when she said it.  

“I’ll be okay,” said Danny.  “Promise.”  And then, because Vivian was family, not a stranger, and she wasn’t going to rat him out to his parents or the GIW, he transformed.  

The ghosts went completely and utterly still for a moment, then exploded into motion, some of them grabbing onto and shaking each other.  They seemed excited.

Danny still couldn’t hear them.  

Vivian stared, eyes wide and stunned.  

“See?” said Danny.  “I’ve– It’s like I have super powers, right?  I’ll be okay.  Really.”

Vivian nodded slowly.  She raised her hand again and flipped over the key, to face the decorative gem away from Danny.  A simple compass was engraved on the head.  Vivian then adjusted her grip on the key until it was horizontal.  

The spoke of the compass nearest Danny lit up.  

Danny had seen more impressive ghost powers before, but he was still curious.  “So, does it show you where you need to go, or…?”  Despite himself, despite knowing that he wouldn’t be able to touch, he reached for the key.  His fingers brushed against it, and the key dropped to the floor with a clatter.  

“What? ” hissed Danny.  He’d been pretty sure he’d been figuring out the rules to this, but what?

He picked up the key.  It felt solid.  It looked real, not immaterial like it had been on Vivian’s bracelet, and the gem was green again.  

Vivian tried to take it, but while her fingers stopped against it, she couldn’t get any purchase, and when Danny tried to put it in her hand, it fell through her palm and onto the ground again.  

“That’s… weird,” said Danny.  He held the key horizontally.  The compass didn’t light up.  “Great.  I’m sorry for breaking…  I don’t know.  I don’t know what’s going on.”  He ran his hand through his hair.  Maybe if he knew more about Avlynys, he’d at least have some context.   “Is this the original?  Did we teleport this here?  Is it a copy?”

Vivian shrugged at him.  She didn’t seem any happier… of course, she wouldn’t be happy anyway.  Dying was… bad.

The sound of a door opening startled Danny, and he snapped back to his human form, suddenly paranoid about being seen, and shoved the key into his pocket.  The ghosts must have heard it too, because, except for Vivian and the woman with braids, they all flitted through the walls, towards the front of the manor.  

“I’m going to see who that is,” said Danny, quietly.  He backtracked through the kitchen, not wanting to use his powers in an unfamiliar environment unless he had to.  He didn’t know where the bathrooms were, for one.

Yeah.  Better safe than sorry.  

“--can’t just decide things unilaterally!”  A pause.  “Of course I still support you, I’ve always supported you in this, you know that, but we need to do things the right way, and that hasn’t.  Changed. ”

Danny peered around the doorframe into the entryway.  Matthew was standing there, in a long coat and rather rumpled suit.  There was a pin on his lapel with the same eye design as Vivian’s Great Gate Key, but it was cracked clean through, part of the enamel falling out.  His hair looked like it had been slicked back with product sometime in the last few days, then not cared for since then.  A series of pimples lurked in the stubbly beginnings of a beard.  At least one of them had been scratched through and was still sluggishly bleeding.  He was speaking into a phone, trying to get his shoes off one-handed.

“Yes, we do need stability, but upending our rules isn’t the way to go about it– We need to modernize, not turn ourselves into another tax haven for– If you haven’t noticed, I’m not king.  And even if I were, I wouldn’t make upending–  You do realize my position as a prince is different from that of a common business owner–  No, I’m not calling you common, I’m talking about my own business interests.  I’m well aware that you have a ti–  Ancestors watch me, Skyppa, are you really going to take offense over thinking I called you a commoner?  Which one of us is living in the fifteen hundreds now?”

A movement caught his eye, and Danny watched one of the ghosts double over in laughter.  Maybe it was funnier in-context.  

“Do you actually have any relevant Assembly business to talk about, or are you just trying to use a national and personal tragedy to promote your own interests?  Which is something I wouldn’t appreciate even if I did agree with you wholeheartedly.  Which I don’t.”

Danny could hear someone, presumably Skyppa, shout, “I’ll remember this!” on the other side of the line.  Then there was a protracted moment of silence, and then Matthew pulled his phone away from his face, looking at it with clear disgust.  

“I’ll remember this, too,” he muttered.  

“Matthew?” Danny called, stepping into the room.   “Are you okay?”

Matthew stared blankly at him for a moment.  “Oh,” he said, blinking.  “Danny.  Does that mean your branch of the family is here?”

“Not Aunt Alicia, yet,” said Danny.  

“She would be hard to get a hold of,” said Matthew.

Danny nodded.  Spitoon wasn’t an easy place to get to.  “What was that?” he asked.  “With the phone.”

Matthew grimaced, the motion putting on the dark circles under his eyes.  “Julius Skippa.  Member of the Assembly.  Wants me to change the throne’s requirements for foreign businesses so we can ‘start fixing things.’  Usually I’m sympathetic - I want more international business - but it isn’t as if this happened because we don’t have Walmarts…”  He rubbed a hand over his face.  “I’m sorry you had to see that.  Have you seen Iris and George?”

“No,” said Danny.  “I’ve only seen Joanna.”  And Vivian.  And dozens of ghosts.

Oh, god, no one else knew Vivian was dead.  How was he supposed to let everyone know?  He had to let everyone know.  They still thought she was just missing.  

“Have you heard anything about Vivian?” he asked, timidly.  

“No,” said Matthew.  “We–  It’ll be best to get the whole family together to explain.  Can you help me find everyone?”

“I think they’re mostly asleep.  In the bedrooms,” he added.

“Alright,” said Matthew.  “Could you get them?  And then…  I think the dining room would be best.”  He forced a smile.  “I need a… moment.  And I don’t think I’d survive waking Madelin up like this.”

“Sure,” said Danny.  

When he looked away from Matthew, it was to see all the ghosts, except Vivian, pointing at their eyes and their hearts.  That was incredibly ominous and also incomprehensible.

“Is something wrong?” asked Matthew.  

“No,” said Danny.  He walked through the ghosts.  He’d have to figure out what was going on there eventually… But first he wanted to hear what Matthew had to say. 

Chapter Text

No one especially wanted to be awake - sleeping was a great way to avoid feelings - but, equally, no one wanted to miss anything, and they were all on edge, so it wasn’t difficult for Danny to wake them up.  

The remaining Royal Family of Avlynys, descendants of Queen Gwensyvyr the Great, scions of the House of Dyrys, members of one of the oldest noble lines in the so-called global west, gathered around the dining room table in their pajamas or rumpled travel clothes.  Iris and George - who were twins, like Prince Theodore and Princess Isabella had been twins - were wearing matching monogrammed bathrobes.  Irene, their mother, Matthew’s wife, had only a short nightgown on, and kept her arms crossed firmly over her chest as she moved.  Eugene’s eyeliner had smeared over half of his face, and a packet of airline peanuts was sticking out his front pocket.  Leo didn’t have a shirt, but was making up for that by dragging his comforter downstairs.  Jazz was wearing a full set of button down pajamas - and Danny was glad he hadn’t had a chance to change, because his set was the same, and that would just be embarrassing.  Jack hadn’t changed out of his jumpsuit.  The circles under Maddie’s eyes made her look like she’d just gotten out of a fight.  

Very regal of them.  Really.  

They shuffled into place around the table, as if every motion pained them.  The ghosts flowed around them, making room, filling in gaps.  The ghost with braids stayed by Danny, standing to the side of his chair.  Vivian went to stand near her brothers.  

“So, what did you need to tell us, Matthew?” asked Maddie.  

Next to Danny, Jazz visibly winced.  Maddie and Matthew hadn’t always gotten along, but they’d hoped that, given the circumstances, things wouldn’t immediately dissolve.  

Matthew sighed.  “The Assembly has been debating our next steps.  Considering what’s happened…”

“What has happened?” asked Eugene.  His eyes flicked around the table.  “We didn’t get a good explanation at any point.  Have any of you?”

There was a murmur of negation.  

“There–” started Matthew.  He looked down at his hands and closed his eyes.  “At the planning session for the Moon Masque, Grandfather - King Alfred - started to…”  He trailed off.  “Sorry,” he said.  “I don’t think I can be detached about this.  We thought he was having a heart attack.  Then Grandma fell over and…  We called 112, and while they were trying to do CPR, Mom started to- started to- it was like an allergic reaction, she just–”

“Matthew,” said Joanna, “don’t.  You don’t have to- to describe it.”

Matthew nodded.  “At that point, we thought it might be poison or- or some fast-acting disease, so we were all taken to the medical wing - haven’t actually brushed my teeth since they gave me that charcoal drink…  And about a dozen shots…”

No one said anything, but they leaned forward to listen as Matthew’s voice grew quieter and quieter.  

“They said Mom and Uncle Theo just… swelled up and stopped breathing.  Like it was anaphylaxis.  But it wasn’t as if we were around anything we weren’t around every day.  And Grandma is completely unrelated to Grandpa, so.”  He stopped, biting his lip.  “They sent us to the hospital once they ran out of things they could do.  They gave William so much epinephrine…Or maybe that was the normal amount, I don’t know.”  He scrubbed his face.  

“What about Vivian?” asked Lewis.  “Have you found her, yet?”

“No,” said Matthew.  “The call that the Home Guard couldn’t find her came in about the same time…  It was about the same time William- that your father was…  His heart just gave out.  Then Martin, he held on the longest, but…”  Matthew shook his head. 

Vivian was crying again.  Heck, everyone was crying again, including Danny.  

“Then it was just me, Dad, and the in-laws.  And Dad started to…  He’s still at the hospital, for his heart.  And…”  Matthew blinked, as if only now remembering something.  “And where’s Sophia?”

“Mom’s upstairs,” said Lewis.  “She didn’t want to come down.  Vivian wasn’t at the planning meeting?”

“No,” said Matthew.  

“She said she was going to go,” said Lewis.  

“You need to tell the Home Guard that.  Do you have the non-emergency number?”

Lewis pulled out his phone in response and started typing on it in lieu of an answer.

“The doctors are running tests for everything, but they haven’t found anything, yet.  They still might.  It hasn’t been long.  But, for now, that’s it.  That’s all I know.”

That wasn’t a lot to go on.  Danny looked up at the ghosts.  They hadn’t seemed particularly excited at any part of the story, which would seem to imply that it was accurate enough and didn’t contain any new information for them.

“After I was released, I went back to Kyr Argyn - that whole wing is blocked off, by the way - and I’ve been with the Assembly since then.  Trying to figure out… trying to figure out where to go from here.”

“And what did they decide?” asked Maddie, significantly more softly that the first question she’d asked Matthew.  

Matthew flexed his hands before laying them flat on the table.  “They declared a state of emergency.”

“Of course,” said Maddie.

“And… They want me to take the throne immediately, so we have a full government.  To… deal with whatever this is.”

The ghosts exploded.  Figuratively.  Not literally.  They stayed human in shape.  But the news agitated them, and they gestured wildly to one another.  

Meanwhile, Joanna was the first of the living to respond to the news.  “But you can’t!  The trials–!”

“Couldn’t be held until the next full moon, regardless.  We don’t have time.  And I don’t see you volunteering for the job, Joanna.”

“Honey,” said Lady Irene.  “Are you sure?”

Matthew nodded.  “Someone needs to do it.”

“But the spirits,” tried Joanna, “they won’t–”

“I don’t think the spirits are watching, Jo, and even if they are, they don’t care. ”  He pulled the cracked green eye pin from his lapel and tossed it on the table.  “It might as well be an omen.”

“If you’re finally moving past the superstitions, we could all just… not,” said Maddie.  “Avlynys doesn’t need a monarchy.”

“But they’ve made it quite clear that they want one.  The Assembly isn’t chosen by lot, Maddie.  They’re the voice of the people.”

“Did you even bring up the option?”

“Of course I did.  Believe it or not, I am also a human being living in the modern world.  They want our family to maintain its traditional role.  And they want me to be crowned tomorrow.  Are you all prepared to be witnesses?”

.

“Vivian’s dead,” said Danny to Jazz the moment he got her alone.  

“What?” said Jazz.  “But- You- She’s just missing. ”

“Her ghost is here,” said Danny.  “I guess- I guess most of the ghosts here are too weak to manifest fully, but… She’s here.”

“She’s… here,” repeated Jazz.  She sat down on her borrowed bed.  “She’s dead?”

Danny nodded.  Jazz closed her eyes for a long moment, then seemed to pull herself back together with an expenditure of will.

“Does she know where she was?  Where her body is?  Even if she doesn’t know where, exactly, maybe she could describe it?”

Danny looked at Vivian.  She opened her mouth, closed it, and gave Danny an apologetic and miserable look.  

“Maybe,” said Danny.  

“Maybe?”

“They can’t talk.  None of the ghosts here can.”

“There’s more ghosts here than Vivian?” asked Jazz.  “William?  Isabella?  Grandma and Grandpa?”

“Not that I’ve seen,” said Danny.  “There’s just…  There’s  a lot of them.”

Jazz rubbed her eyes.  “Maybe you ought to start from the beginning.”

.

They didn’t enter through the front doors.  Even before cars, Kyr Argyn had an area to discreetly offload nobles from carriages, and the whole area had been secured, so it wasn’t as if anyone was there to see them ‘sneak in through the back.’

They weren’t the only ones coming through this way.  The Assembly, formally the Assembly of One Hundred, was in full attendance.  The Assembly was, as far as Danny knew, unique in how its members were chosen.  

Every citizen of Avlynys had a sponsorship.  They could give their sponsorship to any other citizen of Avlynys, or keep it for themselves.  Four times a year, sponsorships were tallied, and the one hundred citizens with the most sponsorships became the Assembly, and the number of sponsorships they had at the last tally was their voting power.  Geography wasn’t taken into account.  

The government of Avlynys maintained a website that kept active track of sponsorships, and a citizen could change who they were sponsoring at any time.  Danny understood that it made for some interesting politics.  He also understood that, previously, in an effort to have as many people as possible represented, the requirement had instead been a certain threshold of sponsorships, but that had somehow managed to be even more chaotic.  

In any case, Kyr Argyn was busy, even outside of the more public hallways, and the family was most definitely not traveling down the more public hallways.  

This part of the palace was sort of a museum that wrapped around the doorless back of the Assembly Hall and radiated outwards into the rooms that sprang from it.  There were Avlynyse artworks here that dated back to Roman rule.  It was open to public viewing, on sparse but regular occasions, but the rest of the time the hall and its artifacts were the domain of those who worked in Kyr Argyn and the odd archaeologist.  

Today, they were just using the museum as a way to cut past the crowds.  

“I hate this place,” whispered one of the security personnel escorting them.  “It always feels haunted.”

The ghost woman rolled her eyes.  Danny was highly tempted to do the same.  This place?  Haunted?  Sure.  Was that significant in comparison with everywhere else Danny had been in Avlynys since landing?  No.

“Focus,” snapped Mr. Kynbaz.  He’d been on edge all day.  Probably because he was currently in charge of the safety of the entire remaining royal family.  

“Remember,” said Maddie, leaning down to her children and whispering.  “We’re only witnessing.  You don’t have to say anything.  You don’t have to answer any questions.”

Danny nodded… and was immediately distracted by the ghost woman stopping in front of a door.  When he looked over his shoulder to try and see why she had stopped, other ghosts started to join her.  She looked at Danny, pointed at the door, and stepped through.  

Danny looked up at Vivian, hoping to get a better explanation, but she was too focused on staying near her mother who, to be fair, looked like she was suffering from a major depressive episode… which she probably was.  

Mr. Kynbaz would probably kill him for this himself, if Danny got caught, but…  When no one was watching, he let himself fade to invisibility and backtracked to the door the ghost woman had gone through.  He phased inside, and let go of his invisibility.  He must have tripped a motion detector, because the lights in the room came on.  

The ghost was standing in front of a large, Roman-style floor to ceiling fresco, next to a placard on a small pole.  The fresco depicted a woman in ancient armor holding a spear and scroll.  The fresco was an unmistakable likeness of the ghost woman, right down to the braids.  

The placard in front of the fresco read ‘Gwensyvyr Dyrys Avlynyse I, also known as Gwensyvyr the Great, Gwensyvyr the Enchantress, and Gwensyvyr the Phantom, First Queen and Monarch of Avlynys.’

Gwensyvyr waved at Danny. 

Chapter Text

For the record, Danny wasn’t surprised by Gwensyvyr’s titles.  He might not be up to date on what was going on with his extended family at all times - he was a teenager living on another continent - but he wasn’t an idiot, and he’d been here before.  He’d seen this mural before.  Which at least explained why the woman looked so familiar to him.  

No, the part that surprised Danny was that she was Gwensyvyr.  

(Or a ghost pretending to be Gwensyvyr.  He’d met shapeshifters before, and a thousand years was a long, long time for someone who just looked like her to be born and die.)

Heck, half the reason Danny had picked the name ‘Phantom’ was because of her title, the other half being the pun of it all.  

What do you do when you find out that your most famous ancestor, whose life history was mythologized to the point where people debated whether or not she even existed, is the ghost you’ve been playing charades with since yesterday?  Freak out?  Realize that, in hindsight, her life might not have been all that mythologized, considering that ghosts and magic exist and have messed up your life repeatedly in the past?  Ask dumb questions?

“Are you really Gwensyvyr?”

Ask dumb questions it was.  

Gwensyvyr smiled, broad, smug, catlike, and pleased, and flicked her hand back and forth between herself and the mural before pressing her fingers against her chest and posing.  Every inch of her body language suggested that, yes, Danny should be impressed.  Flattered even to be in her presence.  

At least this explained her stake in all this.  Even if she didn’t have a soft spot for her very distant descendants, she’d founded Avlynys.  People didn’t like to see their work destroyed.  

Vivian walked through the wall and shook herself all over.  Danny sympathized.  Being intangible was a lot to get used to.  Once she had recovered, though, she started pointing frenetically at the door.  

Oh, no, he was going to be missed.  He’d been here too long.

He slipped back through the walls and used a bit of flight to catch up with the group, inserting himself next to Jazz.  She gave him a look.  Past her, he saw Gwensyvyr laughing.  

Being laughed at by your long-dead culture hero ancestor was… an experience.  Yep.  That’s sure what he’d call this whole thing.  An experience.  Mostly a bad one.  

He watched Gwensyvyr out of the corner of his eye.  Which of the stories about her were true?  They’d been compared to Authurian myth in terms of how warped they’d gotten… at least by people who weren’t from Avlynys.  If there was even a grain of truth to them, though, her life had been tumultuous.  

Even the most straightforward reckoning… born on Myz, sent to Myrgyn to become a priestess tending the ‘sacred pool,’ kidnapped by viking raiders who also desecrated the pool, won free, returned with a husband, who was killed by invaders from either Brittain or mainland Europe, united the islands to drive them off…  It wasn’t a wonder that some people called her the Avlynyse King Arthur and accused Avlynys of stealing ideas.  Idiots.  Gwensyvyr was much better documented than Arthur.  

And now she was a ghost.  Some of the stories had ghosts in them, didn’t they?  Like that one about her husband…  Most people thought it was just a story, a way to deflect blame about her getting pregnant as a widow, but…

But it could be true.  Danny was living (sort of) proof that humans and ghosts weren’t completely incompatible, and ghosts could have children with one another.  So.  Ew.  He didn’t want to be thinking about this.  This was gross.  

They entered one of the Assembly Hall antechambers.  Matthew was already there, having left hours before everyone else.  He was wearing clean clothes, but it didn’t look like he’d actually slept since yesterday.  His lapel was conspicuously bare.

“You all know what to do, yes?” asked Matthew.  “You just have to step forward and agree to act as witnesses under your names as members of the royal family.  A show that you aren’t contesting my coronation.”

There was a smattering of ‘yeses’ and nods.  

“Danny, Jazz… I didn’t think about this before, but do you two know enough Avlynyse?  There’s still time to–  We could get you a cheat sheet or something.”

Danny crossed his arms.  “We knyw gynoug, keswyn.  It isn’t as if we’ll miss our names. ”  

“I did teach them, Matthew,” said Maddie, pinching the bridge of her nose.  “They were born here, for goodness’ sake.”

“Right,” said Matthew.  “Of course.  It’s… been a long day, Maddie.  Give me a break.”

One of the security personnel raised their hand to their earpiece.  “Your highness?  There are a couple Assemblymen who would like to speak with you before the ceremony starts.”

“Oh.  Do I–  Oh, alright, then, send them in.  Might as well get it over with without offending anyone.”

Danny rather thought he might be offending Maddie, but he didn’t say anything.

A pair of men were shown into the antechamber a moment later, both of them looking like they were seconds from picking a fight with one another.  The sight of it was enough to make Matthew sigh heavily.  

“Julius, Richard, what is it this time?”

“Your Majesty,” said one of them, a tall, handsome older man that felt far too much like Vlad for Danny’s peace of mind.  

“I’m not king yet,” said Matthew, crossly.  “And I’m fully prepared to abdicate in Vivian’s favor, when she’s found.”

Vivian cringed.  Danny managed to suppress his reaction, at least.  

“Matthew,” said Joanna, “if you’re planning that, maybe you shouldn’t–”

“We’ve been over this,” said Matthew.

“Your highness,” started the man, again, “I’m here to offer my condolences again and apologize for my conduct yesterday.  I should have asked to visit the matter at a later date, not when–”

“No,” interrupted Matthew.

“I’m sorry, your Highness?”

“No, we aren’t going to revisit the foreign businesses policy,” said Matthew.  “My goal has always been to give businesses the tools to meet the requirements, not overthrow them altogether, and I– I don’t know why we’re still having this conversation.”  Matthew bit out a short laugh.  “You can take that to your foreign lobbyist friends.  And don’t you look too smug, either, Richard.  I know you’re here to stir up trouble.”

The rather nasty grin on Richard’s face slid right off.  “I’m actually here to talk to you about a different matter from Julius altogether, your Highness.”

“Right,” said Matthew.  “Julius, you can go.”

Julius twitched and looked aghast, even as Matthew gestured over security to take him away.

Matthew turned to Richard.  “What do you want?  If this is about Revyvtech, I don’t want to hear about it today.”

Richard laced his fingers in front of himself, and looked for all the world like a rather round rumpled owl.  “I…  No, your Highness, nothing about the company.  I was sent by the stability faction–”

“Which Julius is also part of,” Matthew pointed out, irritably.  

“Yes, well, Julius is Julius, and he’s not especially… welcome.  We would like to ask you to reconsider your decision regarding abdication… or at least the public announcement of your decision.  We know you feel Vivian should be the one receiving the crown, but her credentials aren’t any better than yours, and you are much more experienced.  And she is not here.”

Matthew inhaled deeply.  “I appreciate the concerns of your faction, but remember, I am only accepting the crown at the strenuous urging of the Assembly.  The plan was always for Vivian to succeed William.  If this isn’t a temporary measure, it will only be because tragedy has struck yet again.”

Sophia made a squeaking sound and gripped her sons’ shoulders until her hands went white around the knuckles.  Vivian’s death scars were starting to show through again.  

“Now, I must ask you to leave so I can prepare myself.”  He smiled thinly.  “In absence of the traditional vigil, I would like five minutes to myself and my family.”  He looked away from Richard and gave them a very brittle grin.  “Where was I?  The ceremony!”

.

Vlad, being the owner of an multinational business, habitually surveyed the political landscape of foreign countries.  At least, that was his excuse for his guilty pleasure of reading royalty-obsessed tabloids.  With a cup of wine and Maddie the Cat on his lap.  

Today’s point of interest was a succession crisis in a tiny frigid archipelago in the North Atlantic.  It might, possibly, have some bearing on his businesses.  Their government was currently rather hostile to foreign businesses, and one of their home-grown companies, Revyvtech, had some interesting medical patents…

He turned the page and spat out his wine as he registered a picture of a much younger Maddie - or Princess Madeline of Avlynys, also known as Pyrs Madlyn Loryn Dyrys Avlynyse, as the caption read.  

He stood up immediately, displacing Maddie the Cat, and stalked to his phone.

“I need a flight to Avlynys - No, I didn’t sneeze.  That’s the name of the country.”

Chapter Text

There were two more visitors after that.  The Speaker for the Assembly, a woman whose popularity had been derived from her position as poet laureate many years before, and Father Gylefa, who wasn’t quite the head of the rather informal Church of Avlynys.  Like Matthew, they wanted to go over coordination and what, exactly, would be said.  

“Are you sure you want to do this before Alicia gets here?” asked Father Gylefa, tugging at his cross-and-eye necklace in a familiar nervous gesture.

Matthew gave him a long-suffering look.

Father Gylefa raised his hands.  “It would be a reasonable excuse.  I stand by what I said about you needing time to process .”

“The country can’t afford it,” said the Speaker.  “We only stayed out of the economic crisis the Faroes are having by the skin of our teeth and the efforts of the School of Heroes.”  She curled her lip.  “And I just heard from the First Shadow that we have some billionaire tech mogul trying to bully his way through the flight lockdown.”

Danny felt his stomach drop.  Vlad.  Couldn’t he mind his own business for five minutes?  The list of things that Danny didn’t want was very, very long at this point, but he had the impression that Vlad coming to Avlynys would be explosive one way or another.  

(Especially given that harassing a princess was technically still on the books as a capital offense.)

The Speaker looked apologetic, but she continued.  “We need a king.  Or a queen.  And a Secretary, which we can’t elect without a monarch.  I’m a legislator and advisor, I’m not supposed to be directly receiving spy reports.”

“I know,” said Matthew.  “God and all those gone before help me, but I know.”

Father Gylefa patted his shoulder, then looked past him at Danny and Jazz.  “Ah,” he said, “it has been a while, Danny, Jazz.  You’ve grown.”  His expression grew a touch colder.  “Madeline.”  Then, frostier still.  “Mr. Fenton.”

The Church of Avlynys came into being when, upon being given the cover of Henry VIII’s founding of the Church of England, the entire archipelago leapt gleefully into open heresy.  As such, in addition to being only loosely organized, it was also distinctly heterodox… and had been a staunch opponent of witch trials.  

That wasn’t to say it didn’t have problems and had never, ever, participated in any form of religious oppression (it had, sadly).  But it could pull out a very plausible moral high ground now and again.

No one in the family had really approved of Maddie marrying Jack, a ghost hunter.  The extensive background check turning up witch hunters in the family tree hadn’t helped.  

Most of the family had… lost some of their hostility towards Jack over time.  Father Gylefa hadn’t.  

And, unlike the situation with Vlad, Jack was very aware of it.

“Mr. Gylefa,” replied Jack with the exact same intonation.  

“Haha, yeah,” said Danny.  “That’s us, just shooting up.  Maybe we’ll beat the family height record, yeah?”

One of their medieval ancestors was supposed to have been seven feet tall, so…  that was unlikely.  But Danny wasn’t sure what else to say.  

The Speaker sighed.  “I’ll go get things started.  It won’t be long before we call for you, your highnesses, lords and ladies, Mr. Fenton.”

Jack watched her go with an expression of resigned offense.  From there, Father Gylefa made small talk with the rest of the family while Matthew fretted, Maddie watched silently, and Jack attempted to make friendly overtures.  

It was so painful that Danny was almost glad when they were called out into the Assembly Hall, leaving Sophia, Irene and Jack to watch from the doorway.  

The huge room resembled an amphitheater in some ways.  There were seats in curved tiers around the sides of the room, and in the center was a circular raised dais with a small moat-like channel cut between it and the first rank of seats.  The dias had a mosaic map of Avlynys set into it, the nine islands picked out in surprising detail.  

The Assembly itself didn’t take up all of the seats.  In less grim circumstances, the upper ranks would be filled with a wide variety of observers, from schoolchildren, to lobbyists, to would-be politicians, to ordinary citizens there on a whim.  Right now, the only observers were local journalists and a singular camera crew.

(Danny hoped that no one he knew back in Amity watched the governmental news channels of tiny nordic countries as a hobby.  This was the first time he and Jazz were publicly appearing as part of the royal family, and he hadn’t really thought through what that entailed.)

Behind the seats, the walls of the hall were filled with traditional Avlynyse heraldry.  The Tree and Pond, nine stars picked out among the curling branches and reflected in the blue-green waters.  The Ancestors’ Eye, bright green and multiplied.  The Nine Sisters, standing on the islands they anthropomorphized like stepping stones.  The Hero’s Arms, rendered variously as a spear and scroll or a knife and a book.  

It was an impressive room.  Not as big as parliament, or congress, but still impressive.  

Also very intimidating.

The family gathered around the edge of the dais, with Matthew standing tall in the middle of their line.

The Speaker walked out along the walkway to the center of the dais and began to speak.  “Hyr, todag, sy folk sal coronyn Mathyw Alfryd sy Bisige yf sy Hys Dyryse Avlynyse, Sunn Ynyse…”

Danny mentally translated for himself: Here, today, the people shall crown Mathyw Alfryd the Diligent of the House of Dyrys of Avlynys, Son of the Isles, Blood of Kings and Heroes.  Are there any of the House of Dyrys who would oppose this?  One who speaks would call those of the blood to bear witness.

There was a beat of silence.

“Athlyng Yonna Loryn Dyrys Avlynyse, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Lovely thing about Avlynys was that everyone born there had a completely legal English name, and an equally legal Avlynyse name.  

Joanna stepped forward, spine ruler-straight, hands clasped in front of herself.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”  I bear witness and say nothing in opposition.

“Athlyng Madlyn Myra Dyrys Avlynyse, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Maddie took her place next to her cousin.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Yugyn Kartyr Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Eugene took his place significantly more gingerly.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Lwys Theydyr Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Lewis nodded before answering.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”

“Ledyn Irys Yvlyn Dyrys, Ledyn Georg Lyk Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

The twins moved forward together.  Born at the same time, they had the same rank in traditional rituals.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” they said together.

“Ledyn Leo Alfryd Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

“Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” said Leo, his voice cracking.  He looked past Lewis and the twins to where Vivian would usually stand during something like this.

“Ledyn Yazmyn Roz Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

There was some whispering from the Assembly, but Jazz stepped forward, leaving Danny alone at the edge of the dais except for Matthew, apparently unaffected.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn.”  She broke protocol by just a hair to look back at Danny.  

“Ledyn Dannyl Ymaz Dyrys, do thou beryn wytnes?”

Danny, full of nerves, almost tripped over his own feet, but he managed to reach his assigned place.  “Yn beryn wytnes ekyn sagyn no agyn,” he said, echoing all the others, but very aware of how American his accent was.  What else was he going to say?  That he should be declared king?  

That was ridiculous.  

The Speaker bowed to them, “So, kumyn, Athlyng Mathyw.  Syon thy folk.”

Matthew walked past them, to the opposite edge of the dias.

“Athlyng Mathyw, wel thou sweryn…”  Prince Mathyw, will you swear to your people to serve and defend them, in all ways written in the law, in body and spirit?  To lead them in the dark and the light?”

As far as binding oaths went, Danny thought it was simple and elegant.  The metaphor might be used by someone being a literal genie like, say, Desiree, but as far as humans went, it was understandable and clear.  

“Yn wel sweryn so,” replied Matthew.  

The Speaker nodded sharply, and called for the Cup of the Oath.  The Cupbearer - yes, it was an official position, but it didn’t hold all that much responsibility… or at least, it hadn’t - hurried in from the wings, holding up the ancient gold goblet.  Other aides followed in his wake, moving to distribute more modern glasses among the Assembly.  

Danny hardly noticed them, however.  His attention was on the furious and frightened-looking ghosts following the Cupbearer.  Danny hadn’t even noticed when Vivian and Gwensyvyr had slipped away, too caught up with his own nerves, but now…

Vivian flew up into his face, teeth bared, cuts on her skin bleeding pink.  Danny looked at her, looked at Gwensyvyr’s broad and exaggerated pointing at the goblet, looked at Matthew, who was even now reaching out to take it, reached a conclusion, and made a decision.  

“Wait!” he said, stumbling forward, one hand raised.  “Stop!”

One of the servers dropped a wineglass.  Matthew turned to face him, every inch of his skin drenched in consternation.  Maddie grabbed his elbow and dragged him back into line, albeit in the wrong spot.

“Don’t,” said Maddie, quietly.  “You don’t want to expose yourself to the pol–”

“I’m probably just being paranoid,” said Danny, loudly, clearly, projecting his voice.  He tried not to look at the ghosts, more than one of whom had taken on a distinct posture of relief.  “But, cousin…  Will you test it?  Before you drink?  Just in case.”

The Cupbearer’s mouth, already open, dropped even further.  “I tested it!” he objected. 

“Danny,” said Matthew, quietly, clearly trying to salvage the situation.  “Dannyl, we’ve tested everything here dozens of times, after what… happened.  It’s fine.”

The ghosts seemed to think otherwise.

Danny pulled away from Maddie and took a couple quick steps forward, wanting to make his case again - or be in a position to knock away the cup if Matthew suddenly grabbed it - whereupon the Cupbearer threw the contents of the goblet at Danny.  

Wine dripped down his face.  

Matthew inhaled deeply and pressed his hands together as if praying for patience.  Danny wasn’t paying too much attention, having noticed something much more disturbing than Matthew reaching the end of his rope.  

“Your Majesty,” squeaked the Cupbearer.  “I’m so sor–” 

“Not crowned yet,” said Matthew.  “Danny–”

“I can’t feel my skin,” said Danny.  Belatedly, he remembered basic lab safety - a common problem in his family, apparently - and started stripping off the clothes that had been soaked by the wine.

“Oh, god,” said Maddie, barely audible.  

“What?”  

“I can’t feel my skin,” said Danny.  “I’m going numb.  I can’t - ow, heck.”  Formal clothes were hard to get off when your vision was doing funny things.  

“Medics!” snapped Matthew and there was a small commotion that Danny could hear but not see.  “Security, arrest this man!”

“Sir, we have to move you to a safer location.”

“I will not–”

“Danny–”  

“Don’t!”  Danny told Jazz.  “I don’t want you to get any of this on you.”

“Danny, are you–?”

“Dad, don’t!”  The words came out slurred.  The wine was still on his face, on his hands, dripping and dribbling down his neck.  Was it safe to use his clothing to try and wipe it off?

Danny could feel his heart and breathing start to slow.  Not to the point where it was dangerous to him, but he didn’t like the implications.  

“Jazz,” he said, “my kit–”

“I’ll bring it to you, as soon as I can.”

“Sir?” said someone.  “My name is Emily, and I’m trained in first aid.  If you could turn towards me…”

Chapter Text

“ So.  Aconite?” asked Danny during a lull in the stream of treatments and tests.  “Isn’t that wolfsbane? ”

"Yes," said the doctor, looking rather nervously at Matthew.  

At least, Danny thought she was looking at Matthew.  His vision was still kind of blurry, a reasonable side-effect of having poison splashed into them.  She could have been looking at the family in general, all of whom were squeezed into the room.  Apparently, as long as they stayed out of the way of the doctors, it was best for security purposes to have them all together.

“Both the tests on what was recovered from you and what was recovered from the cup indicate that the wine was dosed with massive amounts of aconite, and your symptoms match.  It’s a very, hm, traditional poison, so treatment is well known.  We’re monitoring both your blood pressure and your heart rate, and you’ve been given an activated charcoal treatment and atropine.”  She paused.  “You seem to be recovering, although your heart rate is still much lower than we’d like.  I’m actually surprised you’re still conscious…”

“That’s normal for Danny, now,” said Jack.  “Well, maybe not this low, but his heartbeat is pretty slow all the time, now.”

“It isn’t in his medical records,” said the doctor.

“Had him checked back in the US.  I guess it never made it here.”

“We had other concerns at the time, Jack,” said Maddie from where she was sitting in a chair next to Danny’s bed.

Oh, yeah, Danny had the impression he was missing a metric ton of significant looks.  

“Well,” said Danny, “I feel… not great, but okay?  Like, my skin is still pretty numb, kind of like when you get an anesthetic from the dentist.”

There were, however, significant looks that Danny wasn’t missing.  Apparently, he wasn’t seeing the ghosts with his physical eyes, but with something else, because they stood out sharply from their blurry surroundings.  Right now, they were looking at him like Jazz did, when he said he wasn’t hurt after a fight.  

Really, he was fine.  Spooked, but fine.  

(In some ways, it was sort of a relief to know that he was human enough to be affected by poison.  Being half dead had a tendency to make you hyper aware of your own mortality and dubious of it at the same time.)

“But, back to it being wolfsbane.  Why wolfsbane?  You’d have found that if that was why everyone else…  I mean, they don’t think you’re a werewolf or something, do they?  Is that a thing?”

Matthew sighed.  “No, I’m not a werewolf.”  Another sigh.  “Unfortunately.  I’d love to only have to worry about wolfsbane and silver”

“No, that’s not what’s going on,” said Maddie.

“So what is going on?  I think I deserve to know, having been almost killed and all.  Are you going to try again with the coronation?  And- And has anyone found Vivian yet?”  He tried to send an apologetic expression Vivian’s way, for using her as a conversation pivot.

“Doctor Hys,” said Matthew.  “This discussion is about to touch on both family matters and those of state, so if you can continue your monitoring else where…?”

“Of course, your highness.  May God and the ancestors bless you.”  Danny saw the door, briefly, as a rectangle of slightly dimmer light, and then the doctor closed it behind herself, and the family was alone.  

“The Assembly is discussing regency,” said Joanna.  

“Which they really should have since the beginning,” added Eugene.

Danny wasn’t so sure of that.  He wasn’t clear on all the details, but regents had fewer powers than a sitting monarch.  They couldn’t change throne policies - like the one about approval of foreign businesses, Danny realized - or appoint new Secretaries - which would leave the Speaker hearing spy reports.  Great-Grandma Rose had been Alfred’s King’s Secretary.

Other countries would probably have a conniption about the conflict of interest.

“It makes more sense than declaring one of us king or queen without the trials,” agreed Joanna.  “They were set on it, but now they think the poisoning is a… bad omen.”  There was a guilty sort of satisfaction in her tone.  

Maddie scoffed.  “Can you not?” she asked.  “Here, with my son seriously injured, can we discuss this like rational human beings who live in this century?”

“If we were dealing with rational human beings,” said Irene, “we would.  But a person willing to commit so many murders isn’t rational.  Nor are… humans in general.”

“Mom,” said George.  

“I want to know about Vivian as well,” said Jazz.  “There has to be something about where she went.”

“The investigation there is ongoing,” said Matthew.  “For the rest of Danny’s questions… To start at the beginning, you wouldn’t know this, but in the very distant past, there was a legend that members of the royal family with the favor of the spirits and the ancestors were immune to wolfsbane poisoning.  So, of course, any member of the royal family who was successfully poisoned didn’t have their favor.”  His blurry form made a shrugging motion.  “It’s been discredited nearly that long - there were herbalists back then who were occasionally able to use belladona to counter some of the effects of aconite poisoning - but that particular method of assassination has become traditional for signaling certain grievances.”

“Did Lord Kyppe have those grievances?” asked Iris, darkly.  

“ He’s maintaining that he had no idea.  Which, considering his position, is very nearly as bad,” said Matthew.  “Even if he turns out to be innocent, the traditionalist faction will be out for his blood.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Jack.  “Forget them!  Maddie and I are out for his blood!”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” said Matthew, dryly.  “And, then… You are right that we’d be able to tell if- if everyone else died of aconite poisoning.  It decays quickly, but not that quickly.”  He shook his head.  “We–”

He was interrupted by a phone ringtone, a high-pitched electronic version of the Avlynyse national anthem.  

“Hello?” answered Sophia tremulously.  There was some shifting as she moved through the room.  “Alright,” she said, voice already cracked and tearful.  “I’m sitting down.”  There was a beat, and then Sophia made a high, keening sound.  

“Mom?  What-  What’s wrong?”

Another phone started to ring (still with the national anthem, but a slightly more traditional version), and Matthew swore.  “What?” he snapped.  “Oh, God.  Are you sure it’s her?  Yes.  Yes.  We’ll make the announcement… shortly.”  Matthew took a deep breath and closed his phone with a snap.  “They found Vivian’s body.”  

There was quiet.  Danny was sure everyone had already at least suspected that Vivian was dead.  Having it confirmed was something different.  

“Oh,” said Leo, weakly.  “Oh.  Do they… do they know how…?”

“You don’t want to–” started Matthew.  

“She’s my sister. ”

Matthew exhaled slowly.  “She was beaten to death.  They stole her Key and the Lesser Seal.”  He inhaled again, loud enough to be heard.  “We’re going to need to make a public statement.  And–”  His phone tweedled.  “And the Assembly wants to have a special session to hash out a regency decision, and–” another tweedle, “and, ancestors.”  More tweedles.  “It’s going to be never ending.  My family is dying, and–”  He fell silent.  

“Matthew?” asked Irene from the same general area Sophia was in.  Were they hugging?  Maybe?  “What’s wrong?”

“Investigation just found that someone replaced the contents of Grandma’s capsule pills with nitroglycerin,” said Matthew, tersely.  “Matches with her symptoms… heart stopped, but not the other signs of anaphylaxis, darn it.”

“That’s… three different causes of death, isn’t it?” asked Jazz, thinly.  “Four different methods, if you count the wolfsbane.  That’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” said Matthew.  “It could be six , for all I–  Nevermind that.  We need to get back to Kyr Argyn, for the special session, and ‘figure out what the future will look like.’”

“We who?” asked George.  

“Adults,” said Matthew.  “Anyone eligible for regency.”

“Not me, then,” said Eugene.  

“You, too,” said Matthew.  “Just because some idiots in the newspapers called you a bastard a few times doesn’t mean you aren’t perfectly legitimate, legally speaking.”  

“Wait, what do you mean I’m legitimate?  I thought–”

“You can’t expect me to leave Danny,” interrupted Maddie.  “He was just poisoned .”

“Legally, everyone currently in the country–”

“I can stay, Mads,” said Jack.  “Me’n Jazz’ll hold down the fort with Danny here.”

“We really do need you to come,” said Matthew.

“Fine,” said Maddie.  “Danny, I–”

“It’s okay, Mom.  I’ll be fine.  I am fine.”  

Maddie patted his hand.  “We’ll have to disagree on that.  Jazz, if you notice anything unusual, let your father and the doctors know right away.  And– Who from security will be staying with them?”

Matthew rattled off a list of names that Danny instantly forgot.  

“Right,” said Maddie.  “Let them know, too.  Danny, just… try to be safe.”

Well.  Ouch.  Danny would have everyone know that he always tried to be safe.  And careful.  And a lot of other things.

It took a few most of a half an hour for everyone to move out.  Apparently they had to coordinate with the security team, get everything lined up beforehand, etcetera.  

“I think,” said Danny, “that I’m in shock.  Emotionally speaking.”

“That makes all of us,” said Jazz.

.

Jazz couldn't give him the kit until they were alone and Jack had dozed off.  

"Security took me back to the house to get some of your clothes and things.  You're going to have to help me, though.  I don't know what's best for poisoning."

Neither did Danny, really.  Surprisingly, poison, contact or otherwise, wasn't something he had to deal with all that often.  Except for blood blossoms… and whatever was in Vlad’s stupid knockout gas, and those spiders that one time… did Spectra’s weird ghost mosquitoes count as poison?

Next chance they got, Team Phantom would have to look into poison remedies.  

“Energy tablet for now,” said Danny.  “Then, um.  The little jar of eyewash.”  The eyewash was a dilute solution of ectoplasm and salt, usually used for eye injuries, or the irritation that he sometimes got from his eyes deciding to be flashlights, but it could help. It’d be nice to be able to focus his eyes again.

Jazz passed over the tablets almost immediately.  The eyewash, however…

Danny sniffed at the jar.  “This isn’t the eyewash.”  It was, in fact, the blood blossom cream.  After a few additional natural portal related journeys, Danny had found that while just being near blood blossoms in ghost form was agony, touching them in human form gave him a nasty, itching rash.  And hives.  And… And there was a thought there, but it wouldn’t come loose.  

“It’s the only jar you have,” said Jazz.  

Danny frowned.  “Oh,” he said.  “I might have…  Not brought the eyewash, I guess.”

“Why?”

“It’s liquid.  You’re not supposed to bring liquids on planes.”

“We had a private charter flight.”

“I didn’t know that when I packed .”  He handed the cream back to her and chewed on the energy tablet.  Ecto-dejecto and weird dehydrated orange juice powder.  Yum.  

Not.  

“I brought something else as well,” said Jazz, pulling something small and square from her purse and unfolding it.  

Danny squinted.  “Jazz,” he said, his whisper dripping with as much disappointment as he could squeeze in, “is that a ouija board?”

“I thought it could help with, you know.”  She leaned in, and if the only witness wasn’t dead asleep, she would have definitely given them away.  “With communicating with your invisible friends.”

“Can we not say things that make me sound crazy?” asked Danny.  “And I know you can’t be serious.  Ouija boards are trademarked by Hasbro.  Nothing trademarked by Hasbro can possibly be spiritual.”

“I don’t mean like that,” said Jazz.  “I mean, regardless of what it’s supposed to be used for, it’s still got the alphabet on it.  If the ghosts here can’t write anything out, they can at least point and you can read what they’re saying.”

Good idea, except… “I can barely see, Jazz.  Everything is little blobs of color.”

“Okay,” said Jazz, “but you can still see well enough to point where they’re pointing, right?”

“Well… yeah.  I can see them pretty well, actually.”

“Great,” said Jazz.  “Then, I’ll read off what you’re pointing at, okay?”

Danny looked up at Gwensyvyr, who shrugged, then nodded.  “Okay, yeah.”

“Then let’s start with Vivian–”

“She’s not here.”

“What?”  

“She went with Aunt Sophia and Lewis and Leo.”

“Oh.  Well.  That makes sense.  Who’s here, then?”

“Uh,” said Danny.  “A whole bunch of people.  And Gwensyvyr.”

Silence.  

“As in, the founder–” started Jazz.

“Of Avlynys Gwensyvyr?” they finished together.  

“Yeah, that Gwensyvyr,” said Danny.  

“Okay.  Um.  Nice to meet you…?”  Jazz paused for a long moment.  “This is really weird.  Did you see who tried to poison Matthew?”

Danny followed Gwensyvyr’s finger.  

“Hm,” said Jazz.  “That’s a yes.  Do you know their name?”

Gwensyvyr shifted.  

“No.  So.  That’s too bad.  Anyone else here know their name?”.

.

Matthew’s would-be poisoner, as it turned out, was a young, red-headed man with a press badge that said his name was Wallace Hadryn.  Right before the ceremony, he’d had a quick interview with the Cupbearer, and dropped two pills into the cup while distracting the Cupbearer ‘masterfully’ in the words of one of the ghosts.  

The pills had been red.  All but invisible against the dark wine.  They’d dissolved slowly, and the Cupbearer’s high-tech tests and traditional sip hadn’t affected him.  

“At least,” said Jazz, “not at the time.  I wonder if he might start feeling some symptoms anyway.”

Before that, none of the ghosts had been particularly paying attention to the young man, so they didn’t know who he’d talked to before, if anyone.  

As for who had killed the others…  The ghosts had no real idea.  They’d been repelled from the area, and had only seen ‘suspicious figures’ at a distance.  If that.  

That was bad.  It was very bad that whoever did this knew the ghosts were there and could get rid of them.  Or that whoever had killed them had coincidentally stumbled on something that could banish ghosts.  Even if they were weak ghosts.  

Gwensyvyr had suspicions, though.

There have always been those who seek to tear power from this land and all kinds of people leave ghosts , Gwensyvyr had picked out, letter by letter.  I fear this is a plan long brewed.  We have been growing weaker for some time, even before your grandfather’s death.  Cut off from allies.  Many of my kin have only woken for this latest tragedy, and will sleep again, perhaps forever, and some sleep still.  No hope for the future.  

At least, that's what Danny and Jazz had eventually puzzled out.  Wonderful their ancestor might be, it was clear she'd never practiced the art of spelling.  In any language.  

“You think the ones doing this are ghosts?” asked Danny.  

Perhaps.  Or they are guided by ghosts.  Look to the death of your grandfather, of your grandmother.  Look at those who preach progress and stability, but only think of paper gold.   She bared her teeth.  Look at their corporations and businesses.  These worms in the Assembly.  I call especially for you to look on Julius Skippa.  His father brought in that vile construction business.

“But why would they do it?” asked Jazz.  “Apart from the usual mundane reasons, I mean.  It seems like all they’d have to do is wait.”

There are sacred things our family has long been charged with, older than this kingdom.  Things that have been desecrated and not restored.  Things that I may not speak of.  Your grandfather was the last to attempt the trials.  Vyvyan was preparing for them.  

“They would have noticed something,” said Danny.  “Or the trials would have fixed some of it.”

Gwensyvyr nodded and pointed at yes.  I think, too, that the monsters wish to return.  To take more than what they have taken already.  Thus the seal.  Thus the key.  Would that I were stronger!  I would tear them to shreds if they tried.  

“But Matthew wasn’t going to do the trials,” said Jazz.  “Not right away, at least, and with everything else, it would have been easy to distract him from ever taking them.”

But Mathyw denied them.  On the phone, and later, in the halls of Kyr Argyn.  And I am not certain sure that we face only one enemy.

A ghost phased through the wall and made gestures at Gwensyvyr, who nodded.  

Keep safe, little syvyrys.   The title - applied to both him and Jazz - made Danny blink, then flush.  His numbness must be getting better, for him to feel that.   With you here, there is hope for the future after all.   Then Gwensyvyr took a step back from the board and made a closing motion with her hand.  

Jazz hastily closed and put away the ouija board.  Just in time.  Matthew had returned.  

“Jazz, Danny, how are you?”

“Fine,” said Danny.  

“As well as can be expected,” said Jazz.

Matthew smiled tightly.  “Jack,” he said.  “Maddie wants to talk to you.  Jack!”  He nudged Jack’s shoulder.  

“Whazzat?”

“Maddie wants to talk to you.”

“Alright, then,” said Jack.  “Will you–”

“I’ll watch the kids, yes.”

“Okay!  Stay safe, kids!”

“That was fast,” commented Jazz.  

“It didn’t seem that way,” said Matthew.  “You two didn’t realize there were monitored security cameras in here, did you?”

Danny’s heart leapt into his throat.  From the way Jazz froze, he suspected hers had done the same.  

It made sense that there would be, of course.  In retrospect, security wouldn’t have left them alone like this otherwise, but that meant…

“How long,” asked Matthew, voice trembling with some emotion Danny couldn’t place, “have you been a syvyr?”

Chapter Text

‘Syvyr’ wasn’t an easily translated word, for all that it was an important word.  Viable translations included priest, seer, enchantress, fairy, sorcerer, spirit, ghost, scholar, doctor, and phantom.  Avlynyse dictionaries often rendered it as ‘a person possessing magical powers, especially one capable of communicating with both the living and the dead, or with spirits.’

But any word that bound up in a culture had connotations and denotations aplenty.  Gwensyvyr had been a syvyr; it was in her name.  Being a syvyr was one of the possible admissions criteria for the College of Heroes.  In the Reckoning of Titles practiced by the court, Syvyr was equal to Knight or Doctor.  Avlynyse children’s fantasy often featured syvyrys on quests.  The forests of Myrgyn were called the Wyduys Syvyryse.  

Danny… fit the definition.  It was, again, part of the joke behind his chosen name.  

Being called a syvyr, being recognized as a syvyr, especially by a member of the royal family, was an honor.  

That wasn’t why Danny’s still-slow heart rate had just sped up.  

“You can’t tell our parents.”

Matthew’s brow crumpled.  “What?  Why?  I know Maddie hasn’t been receptive to… anything traditional in a long time, but she’s doing that awful ghost hunting thing.  She wouldn’t deny it out of hand.”

“That’s the problem,” said Jazz.  “She wouldn’t deny everything, she’d just think that Danny was overshadowed.”

“Over– I’m sorry, is that a direct translation of avyrsydod?  The direct inbryth gyse?  Why would that be a bad thing?”

“Because they really hate ghosts.”

“They use it more like possession than spiritual inspiration,” explained Danny.  “They’d want to drive out whatever ghost was doing it.”

Matthew sighed.  “Of course they would.  Have you, ah.  Which of the honored dead is speaking to you now?”

“Speaking is… a strong word,” said Danny.  Danny shifted back against the bed, unsure how much he should say.  He’d spent so long keeping everything secret.  

He felt the slightest breeze play across his knuckles, and looked down to see Gwensyvyr’s transparent hand resting on his blurry one.  

“Okay,” he said, slowly.  “Here’s what we know.”

.

Danny didn’t tell Matthew everything.  He wanted to keep his ghost half, at least, a secret, and Matthew was being an adult and keeping things from them as well.  

“We will have to do the trials after all, then,” said Matthew, rubbing his temples.  “That’s going to be… Dangerous.”

“I assume you mean from something other than the murder attempts?”

“Yes,” said Matthew.  “Andyr was supposed to be renovated, back when we were kids, but it never got finished.  Grandfather kicked the company we’d contracted with out after your grandfather died.  They were blamed for what happened to Leon.”

Gwensyvyr nodded sharply.  “Rightly, it sounds like,” said Danny.  

“Yes, well.  The renovation was still never finished.  I know that William was trying to convince Grandfather to change his mind about it before Vivian took the trials.  Managed to get him to say maybe to this tiny company staffed by, uh, you won’t know them, distant cousins of ours, they clean up European castles, but…”

“But then this happened,” finished Danny.  “Do you think the people from the renovation company, the original one, might be behind this?  They could be trying to cover up something they did down there.”

“Possibly.  Most of them would be quite old at this point.”

“Dead doesn’t mean gone,” reminded Jazz.  

“That’s true,” said Matthew.  “I’ll have to look into it.”  His phone beeped, and he looked down.  “It looks like our time is at an end.  Your parents are coming back.”

.

“Did you notice,” Jazz asked Danny, later, “how he didn’t tell us the name of the company they contracted with?”

“Sure did,” said Danny.  “But we didn’t tell him about the key, so that’s fair.”  There was a feather-light tap on his shoulder.  

Gwensyvyr smirked at him and started to trace letters in the air.  

SKYPPA WYKBYLDYN GRUYP.

Skippa Construction Group.  

“What, like the guy who was angry at Matthew earlier?”

Gwensyvyr nodded.  

“Okay,” said Danny.  “That’s a place to start.”

.

VIVIAN DYRYS FOUND DEAD, PRINCE MATTHEW DYRYS DECLARED REGENT, and JULIUS SKYPPA, ASSEMBLYMAN AND NOTED IMPORTER, FOUND DEAD IN ARGYNTYN HOME AFTER WARRANT FOR ARREST, read the headlines on the newspapers the next day.  

SKYPPA SUICIDE NOTE CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR ROYAL POISONINGS, SOME OFFICIALS SKEPTICAL, read the headlines later that evening.  These headlines were followed in smaller print by CUPBEARER INNOCENT, HEARING TO FOLLOW.

At least Danny could read them.  He rather wanted to break something.  

.

Danny was allowed to return to Basym Hyws the next day, his vision mostly back to normal.  The arguments made Danny wish the doctors hadn’t let him go.  

Maddie and Jack were unmatched in the stubborn argument category, with Maddie believing that all ghosts were evil against all traditions of her home culture and Jack believing ghosts existed despite the general consensus of his.  Then, too, there was the annual Christmas Debacle to consider.  

On the other hand, Matthew had quite a bit of authority on his side, accompanied by faith, and the ever-infuriating thing known as ‘unsharable proof.’

Except, ghosts in general weren’t the main thing they were arguing about.  

“I’m not saying they have to actually attempt the trials,” snarled Matthew.  “They just have to be there to start with, because all available members of the royal family have to be there.”

“It wasn’t going to be like that for Vivian’s trials!”

“That’s because we had a reigning king!  Having only a regent changes the rules!  They can sit in the first room off the hallway for all I care, but they have to be there or else it won’t be considered legitimate!”

“None of us want to have anything to do with your government–”

“It’s your government, too!”

“-- why can’t we just sign something saying that?”

“Because I can’t change the law at a drop of a hat, Madeline!”

.

“I’m sorry,” said Danny, “we’re doing what?”

“We’re holding the Moon Masque next week,” said Irene, “in the Wyduys Syvyryse.  Ah, that’s the ‘Sorcerers’ Woods–’”

“We do speak Avlynyse,” said Maddie, testily.  “I think what Danny wants to know is why we’re holding a masquerade party in the woods while all these murders are still being investigated.”

Danny winced.  He did want to know just that, but he didn’t mean it so… aggressively.  

“It’s part of the preparation for the trials,” said Irene.  “Some of the Assembly wanted to waive it, but after the aconite… the traditionalist faction was worried it was a bad sign.”

“Are you serious.”  It wasn’t a question.

Irene pressed her lips into a flat line and met Maddie’s eyes.  “Yes,” she said.  “I am serious.  There is some sentiment that the attempted poisoning was a reaction to trying to crown Matthew while skipping the trials.  A bad omen, or a warning.  Do I believe it?  No.  But that’s the way it is.  You don’t have to jump down my throat about it.”

Danny saw his mother’s eyes flare, and braced himself for another loud argument. 

Chapter Text

The elaborate tableaux and plays that would generally be planned for the Moon Masque… hadn’t been.  For obvious reasons.  

Obvious reasons being that said planning was what the family had been about to do when most of their older members were killed.  Moon Masque continuing in any capacity was nothing more than an attempt to ensure that all requirements for the trials were fulfilled.  

Opinions on whether or not that was necessary varied.  

"Mom," said Danny, leaning backwards over the arm of the chair he was sprawled in, "if you're really that worried about it, and hate the idea of it that much, we could just… not go."

Gwensyvyr, standing just behind Maddie, made the near universal hand gesture for are you crazy?

Danny scowled at her.  As far as he'd been able to determine, there wasn't anything actually vital or fundamental about the Moon Masque.  

Now, Danny did plan to sneak out to it, regardless.  So much of the family together would be a tempting target for the murderer (or murderers).

Maddie sighed.  "I might not see eye-to-eye with my cousins, but I'm not going to abandon them to some murderous ghost."

Right.  Sometimes it was easy to forget, but he had learned his morals from his parents.  

"That's right!  Especially with us being the ghost wrangling experts!  No one better to protect everyone and show that ghost what-for!" 

… ghost-related biases notwithstanding. 

"Why are you so sure it's a ghost in the first place?" asked Jazz, resting her elbows on the back of the couch.  "Humans commit murder, too."

"Of that many people all at once, with no method immediately apparent?  Don't be ridiculous–"

"Of course it isn't a ghost," said Iris, entering the sitting room with a pronounced frown on her face.  George followed in her wake, holding an open book in front of him.

"Why, because ghosts are so well known for their benevolence?  Nearly all cultures agree–"

"No," interrupted Iris.  “Because ghosts don’t exist.”

“Pardon,” said Maddie, “what?”

“I mean,” said Iris, sitting down on the couch.  “There have been so many studies, so many tests and experiments, and how many ghosts have people found?  None.  It’s a scam,” she finished, staring directly at Maddie.  

“Haha,” said George.  “Yeah, evidence of absence isn’t absence of– No, wait, I’m saying that backwards.  Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence.”  He nodded and sat down next to iris.  

“Huh,” said Jack, emerging from the little side room whose original intent had been to serve as a butler’s nook but which currently contained a large amount of coffee-making paraphernalia.  “I thought all you people believed in ghosts!  Got an awful wrong idea about them, though.”

Jazz bit down on her lower lip.  “Dad,” she said, finally.

“What?  It’s true!  Now, who wants some FUDGE espresso?  It’s a Fenton family specialty!”

Danny had never heard of FUDGE espresso before.  Then again, both his parents had seemed rather sleep deprived lately.  Not that Danny was doing much better in that department, what with being constantly haunted.  

Your ancestors (hopefully your ancestors - it’d be even weirder for unrelated ghosts to be doing this) silently staring at you while you lie in bed is not conducive to peaceful sleep. 

Oh, well.  Danny was used to it.  

“I don’t drink coffee,” said Iris.  “Caffeine is a drug.”

“A delicious and legal one!  If you guys don’t drink coffee, then why’s all this back here?”  He hooked a thumb towards the nook.  

“Martin,” said George, shortly.  

There was a moment of silence, broken only by Jack sipping his espresso.  

“Have you heard from Cousin Alicia?” asked Iris.  

“Not yet,” said Maddie.  “But Alicia has always been… very independent.  She’s– She’s probably fine.  Running would-be bodyguards all around Spitoon and all that.”

“Spitoon?” asked George.  

“The name of the town,” said Maddie.  

More silence.  

“So, what have you two been doing?” asked Maddie.  “How have you been… holding up?”

“Fine,” said Iris, hands clasped tightly in her lap, back entirely straight.  

“We’ve been working on finishing our premed requirements,” offered George.  “We’re taking online courses to fill in the gap, since we’ll probably be out for the rest of the semester.”

“Oh,” said Maddie, “that’s nice.  Are you planning to become surgeons, general practitioners…?”

“Pharmacologists,” said Iris.  “Medicine is Avlynys’s biggest export, and we want to contribute.”

Not said, but heavily implied: the Fentons weren’t contributing.  

“What about you, Danny, Jazz?” asked George.  “You two must be thinking about what you’re going to study in college.”

“I was also thinking about going into the medical field, but I hadn’t decided which part,” said Jazz, picking at one of the couch’s seams.  

“We could make it a thing- a family thing, then,” said George, attempting a smile.  It didn’t quite fit on his face.  It dropped quickly into something more contemplative as his gaze shifted to Danny.  

Danny fidgeted.  “I haven’t decided yet,” he said.  

“Maybe you could go into security,” said Iris.  

“What?” 

“You noticed the poison.”

“I was just lucky to be paranoid and right,” said Danny.  

“Hm,” said Iris.  “Lucky.”

Danny turned his flinch into forward momentum and stood up.  “Speaking of schoolwork, I’ve got some things to take care of.”

He fled.  

.

The costumes for the Masque were simple, and the same for both sexes.  A white domino mask and layered white robes over black clothing.  

Wearing this in the woods in the middle of the night was going to make them look like cultists.  

Still, it was better than past costumes.  Danny looked at the album Jazz had unearthed from somewhere, and the elaborate, almost Venetian, and completely anonymous masks that had been popular at previous events.  

No, that wouldn’t be good to wear now, when recognizing each other, and keeping out others, was so important.  

There was also, of course, the ritual knife.  Six inches of steel forged with traditional - and traditionally secret - techniques.  Members of the royal family, unlike everyone else who would be attending, were expected to be armed and dangerous.  Danny rather expected that Matthew would also be bringing a gun, and that his parents would have ecto-weaponry, even beyond Spector Deflectors (that Danny absolutely wasn’t wearing, even if it would ‘be invisible under the robes’).  

Danny put away the album, and started to figure out how much of his first aid kit he could carry under his robes.  

.

Part of the original idea of the Moon Masque - overgrown as it was by decades and sometimes centuries of cross-cultural exchange and superstition - was that it gave citizens the opportunity to speak directly to the nobility without fear of being recognized, censored, or punished.  

That, of course, wasn’t happening this time.  Not physically, in any case.  What was being done instead was a sort of anonymous social media mailbox that would be randomly drawn from at different points during the Masque for the royal family to read and respond to.  

The elder generation seemed positive it would be a hit.  

The younger generation was equally sure it would simultaneously be a hit and a disaster.  

Danny, for his part, eyed the cameras dubiously.  Matthew had made the members of the press who were attending undergo even more rigorous checks than at the aborted coronation, but they made Danny feel uncomfortable anyway.  He knew that the papers, in absence of other information, even their English names, were calling him and Jazz ‘the mysterious young Lord Dannyl Ymaz’ and ‘the mysterious young Lady Yazmyn Roz,’ and, well, speculating a lot.  

The woes of being a public figure.  He probably had another wikipedia page at this point, to match his Phantom one.  He’d been too shy to check.  

Beyond the cameras…  The Masque was sparsely populated by Assembly members, members of the College of Heroes, Avlynys’s few non-royal nobles, and security personnel.  

They really did have to be pulling people from the police force to staff these things.  That was the only explanation.  

Simple decorations - lengths of white cloth, mirrors, and lights - hung from the trees.  There were small tables and chairs, also white, set up wherever there was enough room.  The largest clearing was set up for dancing.  Music played over high-quality speakers.  There was no food, due to concerns about another poisoning attempt.  

It was all sort of surreal.  The sort of environment that made everyone look like ghosts.  Except the ghosts, who, for the most part, were wearing regular clothes.  

Matthew and Irene were making a good show of dancing, although they were the only ones.  Joanna and Eugene were also dancing together, but… it honestly couldn’t be called good.  Jack was bouncing on the sidelines, looking like nothing so much as a giant, jiggly marshmallow, while Maddie stood watch, arms crossed.  

Everyone else was… around, Danny supposed.  The identical costumes actually made everyone much harder to recognize from a distance than expected.  

Danny skirted the fringes of the party, trying to keep an eye on everyone while staying out of the cameras’ line of sight.  Nothing seemed out of place, despite the eerie atmosphere, but…  Danny couldn’t help but be on guard.  

Rather, he had to be on guard.  He wasn’t going to let any more of his family be hurt.  No matter how ridiculous they were being about ghosts, traditions, language, or loyalty.  

A not quite natural flutter of white caught Danny’s eye, and he spun to see Gwensyvyr, and, behind her, Vivian, with a long-suffering expression on her face.  Gwensyvyr had used her…  Could Danny call it shapeshifting when she only used it to change her clothing?  Anyway, she was dressed in the same clothing as the living, which would probably do wonders for public perception of his sanity if he mistook her for someone else.  

She smiled and made finger guns at him.  Because of course that’s what she’d picked up over the centuries.  Finger guns.  

Other than that, though, she looked as uneasy as he felt.  

A bell tone rang through the woods, making Danny jolt.  He was going to destroy his neck at this rate.  

Reluctantly, he walked back to the central clearing, where the news crew had set up.  The interviewer, a black woman with red-dyed hair, beamed at the family, then at the cameras.  “Hello,” she said, “and welcome, everyone, to the first round of questions with sy Hys Dyryse!  With us, we have Regent Matthew and Lady Irene, their children, Iris and George, Lady Sophia and her children, Lewis and Leo, Princess Joanna and her son, Eugene, and Princess Madeline, her husband Jack, and their children Jasmine and Daniel.  Say hi, everyone!”

Danny waved desultorily.  

“Thank you,” said the interviewer.  “Now, every half hour of the Masque, we are going to have a question and answer session!  If you have a question for the members of sy Hys Dyryse, please send it to our website, listed at the bottom of the screen.”  She raised a finger and pointed down.  “And onto our first questions!”  

The interviewer accepted a tablet from one of the producers, and her face instantly froze into something that couldn’t more clearly indicate ‘ this has swearing in it’ if she’d written it on her face in sharpie.  

“Ahem,” she said, after a too-long pause.  “The first question is, what is your…” a pause to edit out a word, “stance on gay marriage?”

“On- I’m sorry, what?” asked Matthew.  “Is that- Is that a joke?”

The producer who had handed off the tablet made a slightly dismayed face.  Danny couldn’t help but wince as well.  This was… not off to a good start.

“Did an Englishman write that?  Do we have the English writing in?  No, you wouldn’t know,” said Matthew, making a short, dismissive gesture.  “Marriage is a religious affair.  The institution isn’t recognized by the government of Avlynys in any official capacity.  People can do what they want with their free time.  Why should I care who is married?”

Joanna, Danny noticed, sent Matthew a mildly affronted look at that.  

The next three questions (‘Princess Yazmyn, are you single?’  ‘What is your quest?’ and ‘Can your country answer for the damages done by offshore oil drilling?’) didn’t go much better.  As the interviewer retreated, Danny heard her asking the producers if they could limit the website availability to people actually in the country and, possibly, put on a profanity filter.  

Danny felt like he was retreating, too.  But he needed a moment to gather himself.  He leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.  

His moment was interrupted first by a spectral hand on his arm, and then by the cold chill of his ghost sense.  Gwensyvyr had her hand on his arm, and was staring back towards the central clearing.  If his ghost sense was going off, that meant there was someone here who wasn’t before.  Someone stronger than the dozens of silent spirits that had haunted him since the plane landed.  

He reached inside his robes, fingers finding the hilt of the ritual knife.

And then there was a scream.  A shout.  A “No!” and the sharp zing! of an ectoblast and a grunt of pain.

Danny sprinted back to the clearing, and, oh, if anyone wanted a tableau–

There was Maddie, there was Jack, blasters in hand.  There was Matthew, standing in front of them, arms outstretched, a greenish, smoking singe on his shoulder.  Behind him, Sophia, who was, in turn, shielding–

Vivian?

No, definitely not Vivian.  Vivian was standing next to Danny, looking absolutely horrified, Gwensyvyr gripping her arm with teeth bared and sharp, eyes glowing fiercely.  

The cameras were watching.  

“ Move, Matthew!” said Maddie.  “I know what you think, but that’s not Vivian!”

Matthew barred his teeth, looking, for a moment, remarkably like his ancestress.  “Can you not accept the proof of your own ey–”

“She’s right!” shouted Danny.  “That’s not Vivian!”

Matthew’s gaze snapped to Danny, widening in shock, and he started to twist, taking a step to the side and away, but the thing wearing Vivian’s face was moving, too.  A long, narrow knife flicked first across Sophia’s face, then dove for Matthew’s side.  

Danny threw his knife, then wished he hadn’t a split second later.  Something physical like that would just pass through–

But it didn’t.  The thing was hit in the lower chest and wrenched sideways, its knife skittering across Matthew’s shoulder blade.  Dark green dripped from its wound.  

It looked up at Danny with sharp red eyes, face warped into something unrecognizable, then melted, ectoplasm sublimating in seconds.  Danny’s knife hit the ground with a ringing sound.  

“Ancestors!” hissed Matthew.

Sophia started to wail. 

Chapter Text

The sudden dissolution of 'Vivian' and Sophia's howl seemed to be enough to finally spur security into action.  Danny could understand why they didn't act, and in some respects he was glad they didn't, because it would have been even odds what side they would have jumped in on , but still.  

Maybe he would have been less exasperated if an angry-looking group of them hadn't started to box him in.  What?  Did they still think that had been Vivian after it attacked both Sophia and Matthew with a knife?

"What are you doing?" asked a harried Mr. Kynbaz, interrupting what was probably going to be an interesting fight.  "You were supposed to take him to the rest of the family.  Danny, Matthew wants to speak with you before he gets sent to the hospital."

"Right," said Danny, going to his side.  "What about Mom and Dad?"

Maddie and Jack had been separated from Matthew and Sophia, and, more notably, the vehicles the rest of the family had been hustled off to.

"They did shoot at Matthew with live ammunition."

"Yes," said Danny as they walked, "and I threw a knife in his general direction.  What's the difference?"

"You didn't miss."

“That can’t be it.”

Mr. Kynbaz glanced down at him, then took to scanning the surroundings again.  “Regent Matthew trusted you.  When you said it wasn’t Vivian, he moved.  He didn’t even trust Princess Madeline that much.”

Well, yeah.  Matthew knew Maddie’s opinion on ghosts.  Of course he wouldn’t trust her on anything about them.  

Except… most people would assume Danny and Jazz were the same way, wouldn’t they?  Matthew knew better, because he’d been spying on them, but other people?  Not so much.  He worried at the bottom of his lip.  That would be… complicated.  It was already complicated.  

On the same subject, there really wasn’t a lot to distinguish… whoever had been wearing Vivian’s face from a regular ghost.  So maybe there were more people who’d assume that was Vivian’s ghost and that she was… really mad at her mother and Matthew for some reason.  

Hopefully, most people would realize that didn’t make sense.  Mad enough to pull a knife on them.  Did Vivian know how to use knives?  She probably had some combat training; Danny wasn’t sure how codified into the law it was, but the royal family had a thing about being able to fight…

Security around Matthew parted and let Danny walk by.  

There was something strange about the air.  A sort of electric weight.  Danny breathed in, deeply.  He couldn’t smell any ozone.  

“Dannyl,” said Matthew, eyes flicking up and to the side.

Danny followed his gaze.  Cameras.  Danny hadn’t realized Matthew had let them get so close.  “Regyn Mathyw,” Danny replied, having to take a moment to remember the proper term for regent .  What was Matthew planning?  Belatedly, he tacked on a tiny bow.  

He was very bad at this.  

Matthew held out his hand, and Danny took it, hoping he was reading the signals right.  It’d really suck if Matthew had been going for some other gesture.  

“Keswyn,” said Matthew, then he looked at the cameras.  “We knyw…” We know that there are many questions, and some of them are ours as well.  Even so, let us answer a few before we must depart.  It is clear, now, that in our midst was a false face, come to beguile us and sow discord.  Even so, I was fooled, and who could trust the council of those who raise weapons against a loved face, when they in turn have proved false before?  But we are blessed in this, that we knew we had been blessed with–

Danny tensed, realizing what was about to happen, and Matthew paused, looking only slightly apologetic.  

“We knywet that or kynekyn…” We knew that our family had been blessed with a true syvyr.  

Damnit.  

.

Needless to say, everyone wanted to ask Matthew and Danny questions after that.  He didn’t particularly feel like answering them.  Matthew answered some before the medics finally insisted on taking him away.

Danny returned to Basym Hyws over half an hour after everyone else, in a different car.  Armored, of course.  

.

“...viously some kind of propaganda stunt, ” said the woman on the British news program playing on the TV in the media room in Basym Hyws as Danny walked into the room.  All eyes turned to him, then away, back to the screen.  “I don’t know what the state of education in Avlynys is, but for Matthew Doris to try something like this, it must be atrocious.”

“Sweet Jesus’s Ghost,” muttered Iris.  “Try that one out when you can pronounce our last name right, British hag.  I know dockworkers better educated than you.”

“Taking a look at their social media,” said one of the other person on the screen, “it appears that many Avlynians believe that Prince Daniel–”

“Oh my gosh, why are they calling me that?” asked Danny.  “Don’t they have title attenuation over there, too?”

“Hush,” said Jazz, tossing a pillow at him.  

“--slew a creature out of local folklore, something called an ‘evil face.’”

There was a collective groan.  

“I can’t believe the international press is judging our family over this,” said Iris.  “They caught that– that thing on camera.”  She stilled, then twisted to stare at Danny, who was picking his way through the chairs to the seat next to Jazz.  “Do you know what it was?”

“Uh,” said Danny, “other than a–”  He stumbled over terminology for a second.  Most people here would consider ghost to mean dead person, which wasn’t always the case.  “--spirit,” he finished with a shrug.  

“How’d you know it wasn’t Vivian?” asked Leo.  He looked, and sounded, like he’d been crying.  

“Um,” said Danny, floundering.  He’d never had so many people aware of his powers before.  It was uncomfortable.  He didn’t know how much to say or not say.  “Because I’d seen Vivian.  Earlier.  That wasn’t her.”

“You saw her?” asked Lewis with a sharp intake of breath.  “Is she here now?”

“No,” said Danny, “she went with your mom to the hospital.”

“Did she say anything?”

“No,” said Danny.  “They can’t– None of them can really talk.”

“There’s more than–”

“H-hey,” said George, running worry beads through his fingers.  “Are we– Are we really believing all this now?  This is kind of… No offense, but this is all kind of… wild, isn’t it?”

“Are we doubting the proof of our own eyes now?” asked Iris.  There was a slight waver in her voice.  

“Mass hysteria is a thing.”

“Yeah, for the nocebo effect and dancing mania.  Not for your dead cousin showing up and starting to stab people while your lunatic cousins shoot sci-fi laser guns and your baby cousin turns out to be psychic.  That’s not mass hysteria, that’s a– a full blown break with reality.  I’m not sure that’s even psychosis anymore, George!”  At this point, Iris was on her feet, screaming, looming over her twin.  

“Iris,” said Jazz, “are you–”

“I’m not okay!  God!  Dad almost died again, and you’re going to pretend we hallucinated it?”  She whirled and stabbed a finger at Danny.  “You!  Did Vivian tell you who killed her?  Was it that spirit?  What about the poison?”

“You don’t ask ghosts how they died,” said Danny, vaguely disturbed, inching away.  “That’s dangerous.”

“Did you find out, then?”

Danny raised his hands defensively.  “What do you think I’ve been trying to do?”

“Try.  Harder. ”  Iris spun and stalked out of the room.  There was the sound of a door slamming and something glass breaking.  

“I’ll go talk to her,” said George, quickly getting up.  

“And,” said the TV, which hadn’t been turned off, “ get this.  The Fentons are ghost hunters. ”

“Seriously?”

“One hundred percent.  Jack Fenton is actually descended from a witch hunting family that made a name for themselves in the sixteen hundreds.”

“Wow, a whole family of crazy murderers.  They’re letting these people run a country?”

Danny stared up at the ceiling, begging for patience.  “Why are we even watching this?”

“Intel,” said Eugene.  “Pays to be informed.  And it’s the most watched foreign news program in the country.”

“Great,” said Danny.  “Where’s your Mom?”

“Sleeping,” said Eugene.  “Tonight was a bit much for her.  What about your parents?  Jazz was really nervous about that.  And you, of course.”

“I wasn’t nervous,” said Jazz, who indeed appeared to be rather relaxed, compared to how tense she sometimes got.  “Just concerned.  But Mr. Kynbaz kept me updated about you.”

Danny sighed.  “They’re at the security checkpoint down the hill.  Apparently firing weapons at the acting head of state is frowned upon in this country.  Matthew has to get some paperwork together to officially pardon them or something.”

“But you did see them?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  He didn’t like them being so far away, but he’d be downright anxious if he hadn’t seen them there.

“Good,” said Jazz, relaxing… Well.  Not the rest of the way, but a hair more.  “I’m exhausted.”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  He rubbed his eyes.  The night might have been a disaster, but no one had died and everyone was accounted for.  

Except for Aunt Alicia, but she might just be refusing to come before her harvest was put up or something like that.  Or maybe the people they sent couldn’t find Spitoon.  The town was barely larger than a postage stamp.  

“The whole thing reads like something out of a fantasy novel.  The estranged prince no one knew about until this year saves the king and is knighted.”

“Is that what syvyr means?  It’s untranslated on most of the sites.”

“More or less,” asserted the idiot they’d gotten on the show.  

“Okay,” said Danny.  “I’ve already had enough of this.  I’m going to bed, too.”

Everyone’s phones cheeped or rang or beeped.  Danny pulled his out of an inner pocket and opened the text he’d just received.  It had been forwarded from Matthew’s phone, as he was apparently out of commission.  It was from one of the security teams in America.

Located Princess Alicia in St. Southern Hospital.  Staff claims she’s been in a coma since mid-January.  Please advise.

Chapter Text

“Oh, ancestors,” breathed George.  “They tried to kill Cousin Alicia, too.”

“We don’t know that, yet,” snapped Iris.  She had stormed right back into the room after getting the text, albeit with all the fingers of her left hand bandaged.  No one asked her what she’d punched.  

“But that is the most likely thing, isn’t it?” asked George.  “It’d be one hell of a coincidence, otherwise, for her to fall into a coma at the same time as half the family was murdered.”

“Except it wasn’t at the same time,” said Jazz.  “ Mid-January.   I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t call the seventh mid-January.  Why didn’t they send an actual date?”

The phones buzzed again.  

Lwys: Confirm exact date and cause of coma, and send visual confirmation.  

They all looked up at Lewis.  

“What?” he said.  “No one else was doing anything, and there’s a reason it’s being forwarded to us.”

“Yes,” said Iris, “but–”

The phones buzzed again.  

Hospital reports that many of their recent records were corrupted by a computer glitch, making the exact date and circumstances of Princess Alicia’s admittance uncertain.  We are currently investigating.  

As they looked, a picture was uploaded to the conversation.  

“That does look like Aunt Alicia,” said Danny.  She looked… bad.  Alicia wasn’t bouncy like his dad, but whenever they’d gone to visit her, she’d been… vital.  Strong.  There had been a feeling of solidity to her, like she’d drawn up all the best qualities of her adopted home.  Now, she was washed out and pale under hospital lighting, hooked up to dozens of machines that Danny didn’t even know the names of.  

“Yeah,” said Iris.  She brought the phone up to her face and squinted at it.  “Hey, George, does this look right to you?”

“Hmm,” said George.  “Maybe it’s an American thing?  Oh, no, that is a bit weird.  But maybe she was dehydrated or they have her on antibiotics or something?”

“What is it?” asked Jazz, looking at her own phone.

“IVs,” said Iris.  “Look at the IV tree.  Generally speaking, if you have an ongoing coma with no known cause, and there’s nothing else wrong with the patient, you don’t use that many medications.  There’s, like, half a dozen bags on there, and they’re all weird colors, on top of that.”

The colors didn’t seem all that weird to Danny, but maybe his perspective was skewed by Frostbite being his main doctor since he’d become a half ghost (or syvyr; if Gwensyvyr thought it was okay for him to call himself that, then it was), and his parents often taking care of his medical stuff before that, except when they came back to Avlynys.  Bright apple green, sapphire blue, and neon red were all normal medicine colors, weren’t they?

Lwys: What medications is Princess Alicia on, and why?

Everyone looked at Lewis again.

“It’s great to have questions, but if you want to know the answers, you have to actually ask,” he said, peeved.  

Unclear.  Hospital staff unwilling to share medical details, as we are not listed as ‘next of kin.’  

“We’ll need Mom, then,” said Jazz.  “Danny, did you hear anything about when she and Dad will be back?”

“No, but I’m sure Matthew will tell them about this, when everything is sorted out.”

“Why isn’t Dad answering this, anyway?” asked Iris, deep lines etching themselves into her brow.  “You don’t think…”  

This time, everyone looked at Danny for answers.  

Danny looked at Gwensyvyr, who had, of course, been following the whole conversation while draped languidly over the back of the couch.  Gwensyvyr tilted her head thoughtfully, looked at the other ghosts in the room, then shook her head.  

“I think he’s probably alright.  None of the ghosts here are saying otherwise, anyway.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” said George, “but I liked it way better when all of the ghost and spirit stuff was pseudoscience and outdated occultism.” 

“All occultism is outdated,” said Iris.  

“Eh,” said Danny.  

“No,” said Iris, “I don’t want to hear it.  I refuse to hear it.”

“I’m just saying, never say the W-word.  You never know if there’s a genie around to hear it.”

Leo choked back a laugh.  “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah, she sucks by the way.  I also got mind controlled by a clown one time.”

“Next thing, you’ll be saying that the stupid secret society stuff that some people get into is for real,” said Iris.

“I’m not saying it is, but I’m not saying it isn’t, either.”

Iris let out a long, barely controlled breath.  “I can’t believe you’re joking around at a time like this.”

It was because if he didn’t, he’d start screaming and crying.  Aunt Alicia had been attacked, and he’d had no idea.  He hadn’t even been on the same continent.  Or maybe he had!  He didn’t know, because he didn’t know when it had happened!  

“Bit of graveyard humor never hurt anyone,” said Danny, brightly, instead.  

“It is a little funny,” said George, hesitantly.  “I mean, you remember when we walked in on those guys trying to summon a dark demon or something at our internship, right?  In that one meeting room?  Imagine if they’d actually gotten something.”

Iris glared up at George from her curl on the couch, but then her face softened and she put her phone aside to start rubbing her eyes.  “Yeah, that’s Revyvtech for you.  Cutting edge medicine, weird ancient superstitions.”

“I think you said Revyvtech when you mean Avlynys. ”

Iris froze, then snatched up her phone again.  

“What is it?” asked Danny, slipping around to sit on her other side.  

“I don’t know yet,” said Iris.  “George.  George.  What logo would you say this was?  On, like, everything.”

“Um.  It’s sort of blurry…”

“Guess,” demanded Iris.  

“Well…”

“The rest of you, what logo is this?  On all the stuff?”

Danny frowned at his phone.  In the pictures, the logos on the equipment were small and blurry, but…  They did look familiar.  

“Is that the Revyvtech logo?” asked Jazz.  

“It could be something else,” said George.  “The picture is–”

Lwys: Please send pictures of the medical equipment in Alicia’s room.

“It’s not like they aren’t there, ready to do whatever we tell them,” said Lewis, more aggravated than before.  

“I was right,” said Iris, as the pictures started coming in.  “I was right.  All this stuff is Revyvtech.”

“Which means… what?” asked Danny.  “I mean, like you said, Revyvtech is big, and cutting edge, and from Avlynys, so why wouldn’t they…”  He trailed off.  “Did the hospital even know who she was?  They didn’t contact anyone.”

“Yeah, and even if Revyvtech is big, other than here, and a few places in Britain and on the Continent they have special deals with, no one just has that much stuff from them concentrated into one room.  They’re expensive.  Trust me, George and I have toured enough hospitals to know.”

“We have,” said George.  “Half the time, the tour guides wanted us to recommend their hospitals for discounts or something…  We don’t do that here…”

“So,” said Jazz, “this is weird.  The whole situation is weird, but all the Revyvtech is especially weird?”

“Yeah,” said Iris.  

“Okay,” said Jazz.  “The other man who was with Skyppa, he was associated with Revyvtech somehow?”

“Assemblymember Richard Bytras,” said Leo, speaking up for the first time that night.  “He used to be the CEO of Revyvtech, and he’s still a major shareholder.  Right now, he’s the ‘in-between’ for the stability and progress factions - the factions are unofficial, by the way, doesn’t mean they don’t exist - in the Assembly.  Last time I checked, he had about fifteen-hundred sponsorships, but that number was dropping, because of his association with Skyppa.  The anti-corporate traditionalists have been picking up some of those sponsorships, but most of them are going to Speaker Melissa Myrynoe and Assemblymember Aneirin Kymb, who are more centrist.”  He wrapped his blanket more tightly around his shoulders.  “Sorry, analyzing intra-Assembly politics was going to be my semester project for the honors college.”

“Right,” said Danny.  “He’s rich, then?”

“Oh, yeah.  One of the richest people in the country.”

Danny was about to say ‘ except for Vlad,’ but Vlad wasn’t in the country.  

Heh.  

Sucked to be him.  

“Rich people are always up to something.”

“We’re rich,” pointed out Leo.  

“Yeah, and are we, or are we not, up to something?”

“Alright, so we need to figure out the relationship between Revyvtech and this hospital, and Revyvtech and Skyppa…”

“ And Skyppa Wybyldyn Gruyp,” said Danny.  “Gwe– Uh.”  No, he didn’t want to deal with that revelation right now.  “The ghosts think that whatever happened to Prince Leon and Lady Maria is related to what’s happening now, and Skyppa Wykbyldyn Gruyp was involved.”

Lewis sighed heavily and started typing on his phone.  “Even if I’m the only one who can text, apparently, I don’t know anything about corporations or businesses or whatever.”

“I do,” said Eugene.  “My dad’s in finance, and I have some contacts, even if, ah…”  Eugene very delicately didn’t mention that he was an unemployed dilettante trust fund baby who spent most of his time writing poetry under a pen name.  

(Everyone knew about the pen name.)

“The serial number on this IV bag doesn’t match the product name,” grumbled Iris.  “Or product appearance.  What the heck is this?”

“It could be an international thing,” said George.  “Like, regional names.”

“Shut up, I know what Rezymatykka is supposed to look like, and this isn’t it.  And you know it, too!”

“It could be a tracer dye or something–”

“It isn’t!”

“What’s Rez, uh,” said Danny.  “What’s that?”

“Rezymatykka is one of Revyvtech’s ‘wonder drugs,’” said George as Iris typed furiously on her phone.  “It has a lot of minor health benefits, like improving wound healing, boosting the immune system, reducing headaches, stuff like that.  But it also walks back some types of brain damage and lets new connections be formed across damaged areas.  They figured that out when they were testing it out as an anti-aging medicine.  It’d be normal to prescribe it to a coma patient.”

“It’s not even approved by the US drug board!” hissed Iris.  “It can’t be imported!  Whatever that is, it’s something else.”

“I think I’m going to have to talk to some of these people somewhere else,” said Eugene, looking up from his phone.  “Excuse me.”  He walked out of the room, a small handful of ghosts anxiously following him. 

“Maybe, said Leo, if Eugene is doing that,” said Leo, “then maybe I’ll… put together a list of people politically associated with Bytras and Skyppa?”

Leo was a full four years older than Danny, but in the moment he just looked… young.  Out of his depth.  The thought crossed Danny’s mind that Leo had probably never been in life or death situations before this.  He certainly hadn’t had someone like Skulker chasing after him.  

Although politics by themselves could be deadly.  Case in point, Danny’s still-blurry vision.  

“That sounds great,” said Danny, giving him a thumbs up.

“And I guess I’ll be the go-between,” said Lewis.  

“Do you… Have something else you want to do?” asked Jazz.  

“No,” said Lewis.  He sighed.  “I work for an art museum, I don’t know anything.”

“Right,” said Jazz, “so, I’ll–”

Danny saw the moment that Jazz realized she didn’t really have anything to do, and he cleared his throat.  “Iris?” 

“What?  I’m kind of busy.”

“Do you think Aunt Alicia is in any danger?  Because if she is, the security team needs to get her out of there.”

“I don’t know,” said Iris.  “All I know is that half of this stuff is unidentifiable, and half of it would make more sense if she was having a continuous allergic reaction.  Like this, this is a tank of oxygen, this is an intravenous antihistamine, this I think is super diluted epinephrine, but I could be reading some of those numbers wrong.  I don’t know what taking her off any of it would do.  Maybe it’s what’s keeping her in a coma.  Maybe it’s keeping her from dying.  All I do know is that it’s weird, and it’s not the way it should be set up, and because of that, we can’t trust anyone there to actually get rid of the weird stuff.”  She swiped her hand roughly under her nose.  “And I can’t even figure out what the weird stuff is numbered as, because I can’t get into that part of Revyvtech’s systems.  So unless you can do something about that–”

“I might be able to,” said Danny.  “Just.  Give me a minute.  A few minutes.”

Danny grabbed Jazz’s wrist and pulled her back to the bedroom they shared and Danny… stopped. Very slowly, he sat down.  

“Danny?” said Jazz.  

“Sorry,” said Danny.  “I’m sorry.  Is it bad that I’m tempted to fly out of here and find Mom and Dad?  But I don’t want to leave everyone else and - Aunt Alicia is in a coma, and sometimes those are permanent - and all I can think about is that I was right about that Richard guy being a knockoff Vlad, and that the stupid meeting room cult is probably going to come back to haunt us, and that other than Mom and Dad’s shields, the only thing I can think of that really keeps ghosts away like that is blood blossoms and those are extinct, and–”

“That’s a lot for ‘all you can think about,’” interrupted Jazz.  She sat on the floor next to him.  “Why don’t you just… breathe for right now?  Okay?”

Something cool whispered over his shoulders, and Danny turned to see that Gwensyvyr - famous ancestor Gwensyvyr, founder of the nation, that Gwensyvyr - had put her arm around his shoulders and looked worried.  For him.  

“I’m okay,” said Danny.  He rubbed his face.  He could already feel the salt crystals where the edges of his tears were drying.  “Really.  Sorry.”

“It’s alright.  I’m pretty sure everyone’s had at least one breakdown by now.”

Gwensyvyr shrugged, then nodded judiciously in response to that.  

“What, you, too?”

Gwensyvyr’s next gesture conveyed the sentiment of ‘Who, me?’ perfectly.  

Jazz glanced at Gwensyvyr - or, rather, at the empty space she guessed held Gwensyvyr.  “What is your plan, here, anyway?  Tucker?”

“I don’t want to involve him and Sam in something that’s already killed seven people.  Nine, if you count Mom’s parents.”  He smiled thinly up at Jazz, then at Gwensyvyr and the other ghosts that had floated into the room after them.  “No.  I’m going to see if we can pull a Technus.”

Chapter Text

Being an ocean and a good bit of a continent away from Amity meant that Danny didn't have his usual go-tos, his unusual go-tos, his emergency plans, or his acts of blatant desperation. 

Well, no, that last one wasn't quite true.  He could still call Vlad, but the idea of Vlad having any access here made Danny feel faintly ill.  Maybe after this, he could get Matthew to put Vlad on a no-entry list.  

Anyway, if this was happening in Amity, he'd have different options.  He wouldn't worry about involving Sam and Tucker, because they'd already be involved.  He could recruit Frostbite and the Yetis for medical opinions.  He could bribe Technus to do this.  He could hide everyone in the Ghost Zone.  He could talk to the ghosts.

But he wasn’t in Amity.

“When you say ‘a Technus’ what do you mean exactly?” asked Jazz, reaching into her bag for the ouija board.

“Well,” said Danny, “I guess it depends, but basically?  Using ghost powers to hack into computers and get Iris the stuff she needs to help Aunt Alicia.”  He looked at Gwensyvyr.  “So.  You know about computers, right?”

Gwensyvyr held up a hand and tilted it back and forth.  

“That’s okay, you don’t need to know a lot.  Anyway, there’s this guy I know who can sort of… go into them and do stuff to them.  Change how they work and what they’re doing.  That’s Technus.”

Gwensyvyr nodded slowly.  

“So, my first idea is that I could do that.  The problem is, then I wouldn’t be here.   I'd be spread out through cyberspace and whatever servers Revyvtech has."

Gwensyvyr shook her head, vehemently.  

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.”

Jazz, put the board down on the bed.  “What did you think?”

“That it wouldn’t be a good idea.  We still don’t really know who or what, um… killed everyone,” he said, quickly, “and not to brag, but I’m the best line of defense we have.  Even if all I could do was see Gwensyvyr, I’d still be the best defense.”

“Because when everyone died, the ghosts were pushed away,” said Jazz.  

“Exactly.”  Danny nodded, and pretended not to notice that Gwensyvyr mirrored him.  

… Gwensyvyr was something like forty generations removed from him.  Even pretending Gwensyvyr was alive and taking into account the sometimes-circular nature of royal family trees, the amount of DNA shared would have been tiny.  Any resemblance was coincidental.  

Probably.  

Danny could admit that once he got past the hysterics required by the situation, sharing things with Gwensyvyr - even if they couldn’t be considered flesh and blood by any stretch of the term - was really cool.  

There might have been just the tiniest bit of hero-worship there.  Who could blame him?  Even if his parents had edited out the ghost parts of her story, he and Jazz had still heard it for bedtime, and none of his other relatives, Alicia included, felt the need to remove those parts.  

"But I'm not the only ghost here."

Gwensyvyr nodded, and turned to the ouija board, the other ghosts crowding around.  Tell us what we must do.  If we cannot, we will find those who can.  

"Okay," said Danny, "so, for me, it works like this…"

.

"Hey," said Danny, coming back down into the living room.  "Does anyone have a computer or a phone they don't care if it gets trashed?"

"Mom has the worst laptop known to man," volunteered Leo.  

Lewis elbowed him in the ribs.  "She keeps her photos on it.  Her family photos.  You can have my crime phone, I only use it when I'm in Britain, anyway." He tossed what was apparently his non-crime phone to Leo.

"Your what?" yelped Jazz, behind Danny.  Danny frowned at her.  She couldn’t be reacting to the idea of a burner.  She’d helped him get one for Dani.  

"My crime phone," said Lewis, passing them.  "Do you have any idea how sketchy the art world is?  Especially when you're dealing with antiques?  I've been trying to get the Kyp Styrryse back since I was a student."

"You graduated last year."

"It seems so long ago."

"You're still in grad school."

Lewis disappeared around the corner without saying anything else.

“You’re a ledyn!  You can’t run around committing crimes in other countries!” Jazz shouted, as if she didn’t do just that whenever she helped Danny.  She turned to the cousins. “What’s the Kyp Styrryse?”

“The Cup of Stars,” translated George.  

“I know what it means, not what it is.”

“It’s… a cup,” said George.  “With stars on it.  It’s, you know, artistic.”

“It’s an important cultural artifact that was smuggled out of the country by a British art dealer in the eighteen-fifties,” said Leo.  “It’s an exemplar of High Middle Age Avlynyse metal working, and features the fully developed versions of both the four and five pointed Avlynyse star knots.”  He shrugged.  “Lewis talks about it all the time at home.  I used to tease him by saying he was going to marry it when we were younger.”

“It’s better than some of the girls I’ve dated,” said Lewis, returning.  He handed Danny a phone which was, it had to be said, much nicer than the burner they’d gotten Dani.  

(... Danny wondered if Matthew and Irene would be up for adopting a ‘syvyr.’  A thought for later.)

“What are you going to use if for?” asked Lewis.  

“I’m going to see if I can get the ghosts to hack into Revyvtech for you,” said Danny, as he navigated to the corporate website.  “I mean it might not work, they could have the data you need stored offline or something…  I was also thinking about asking them if they could go check on Aunt Alicia through the phone lines, but I don’t even know if any of them can do that trick, yet, and it’s really far away, so…  What?”  He looked up from the phone, feeling stares.  “I thought we were all on the same page with the ghost stuff?”  That was a lie.  He had not, in fact, told them the most important part of the ghost stuff.  The part of the ghost stuff where he was also a ghost.  

“Yeah,” said Leo, “but that’s, uh.  We just learned about it a few hours ago.  There’s a learning curve to this kind of thing.”

“Do you have, like, a computer genius ghost on call or something?” asked Iris.

“Uh,” said Danny.  He looked over at the ghosts who had followed him, the primary one of which was, again, his thousand-plus-year-old ancestor.  “ Are any of you secretly computer geniuses?”

Gwensyvyr gave Danny an incredulous and unimpressed look, and the other ghosts either shook their heads or raised their hands in full-body expressions of absolutely not.  One or two slipped out through the wall, but ghosts were always coming and going, so Danny didn’t question it.

“No,” he said.  “It doesn’t look like it.”

“So they’re going to hack things how?”

“Um,” said Danny, who hadn’t expected to have to explain this part to his cousins.  “You know, how in the stories you have the inbryth gyse?  It’s like that, but with computers.”

Iris squinted.  “I’m not sure that means what you think that means.”

Danny sighed.  “An gys magyn styw hyra sydo avyr an myn, swa magyn hya styw it avyr an thing - lyk Swyrd Grynnaé - yr an lekgytol, ekyn an kompytyr yst an lekgytol, ekyn an lekgytol yst an thing.  Or– our vocabulary might not be great, but Jazz and I are fluent.  Is this the right webpage?”  He showed Iris the phone.  

“Yeah,” said Iris.  “There’s a login here.”  She leaned forward, tapping a few times on the screen.  “But even when I was an intern and sort of had access, there was a bunch of stuff I didn’t have access to.”

“That’s okay,” said Danny.  He looked at the ghosts.  “You guys remember what we talked about?  Don’t push yourselves if you get stuck somewhere.”  He didn’t want any of the ghosts to fall apart trying to do this.

Gwensyvyr stepped forward first, regarding the phone with a quizzical expression, then she touched it.  Nothing happened.  A few other ghosts also tried, but couldn’t enter the phone.  Gwensyvyr shrugged at him and flexed her hand, as if it were sore.

“Okay,” said Danny.  “I guess that brings us to option number two.”

“Which is?” asked Iris.  

“Send the ghosts to look over people’s shoulders and steal passwords.”

.

The problem with this plan was that it took a long time.  

“Does this still count as pulling a Technus?” mumbled Jazz as the pair of them laid on one of the couches.  “Since they’re not going into any tech.”

“Still using ghosts to hack, so, yes,” said Danny, who was using Lewis’s crime phone to look up random facts about Revyvtech and the Assembly.  He maybe shouldn’t have been doing that, but he was feeling antsy.  Something that might have to do with the way the sun was now peeking up over the horizon.  Or all the murder.  “Yes it does.”

Eugene shuffled back into the room.  Danny perked up.  “What did you find out?” he asked.

Eugene sat down heavily.  “I don’t know if it’s anything useful,” he said.  He rubbed his eyes.  “But apparently a lot of the kids of people who worked for Skyppa Wykbyldyn Gruyp when it was still big work for Revyvtech now.  Julius Skyppa’s and Richard Bytras’s grandfathers were friends, like, all four of them.  But the old lord Bytras threw Skyppa Wykbyldyn under the bus–"

"Yeah," said Leo, "that's more or less public record.  Old Lord Bytras was the one who recommended Skyppa Wykbyldyn, wasn't he?"

Eugene gave Leo a suffering look.  "If you knew that, why didn't you say something before I spent hours on the phone?"

Leo shrugged.  "I didn't know you were looking for that.   I thought you were doing, like, financials, not basic information about one of the biggest political messes of the last fifty years.  They've got some cousins in common, too, if that helps?"

"Basically everyone has cousins in common," said Iris.  "This country isn't that big."

"Okay," said Eugene, still obviously ruffled.  "Anyway.  Skyppa Wykbyldyn also built Revyvtech's original factory - not that weird, it's hard for foreign companies to do business here, and Skyppa Wykbyldyn was pretty popular.  Lots of more modern buildings were built by Skyppa Wykbyldyn. But after your grandparents died," he nodded at Danny and Jazz, "Skyppa Wykbyldyn was broken up.  The Skyppas kept the part of the business they'd used to import materials and renamed it Skyroad Imports, but the rest of it was eventually bought by Ryv Ynvestynys."

"Dream Investments?" asked Jazz.

Eugene nodded.  "And Ryv Ynvestynys is also heavily invested in Revyvtech.  They have the same board of directors.  Again, that might not mean anything, Avlynys is small, and foreign companies are the same way, but–"

"But it's weird that Skyppa was working so closely with a guy who screwed his family over so often," said Leo.  "Especially given his personality."

"People do stranger things for money," said Eugene.  "Or to cover up crimes.  Which brings me to the thing that actually took me all that time, because Dad only noticed it when he was looking at both companies side-by-side."  He licked his lips.  "Revyvtech's always been big here, since it was founded."

"Yeah, it was actually founded by one of our great-great-great-great aunts - Doctor Cynthia Dyrys - and her husband, but it didn't get much traction on the continent for years, because they were super publicly into the occult, and not even our kind of occult."

Eugene gave Leo an outright pained look.  "Can you let me finish?  Please?" 

"Sorry."

"Like I was saying, Revyvtech’s always been big, here, but it hasn't always been bigger than the other pharmaceutical companies we have, like Avl Ayg and Modron.”

“We could’ve told you that,” said Iris.  

“Come on, you guys,” said Eugene.  “Not everyone here knows every political and medical thing that’s happened in the last fifty years.  Or every art thing.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” said Lewis, mildly offended.  

“Revyvtech only started to outcompete Avl Ayg and Modron after Skyppa Wykbyldyn and Ryv Ynvestynys started working with them.  More specifically, after Skyppa Wykbyldyn finished their factory, they had this big breakthrough for treating necrotic tissue and started filing some of their discoveries under the trade secrets laws rather than the patent laws.  Then, when Skyppa Wykbyldyn got the contract for restoring Andyr?  More breakthroughs.  Steadier breakthroughs.  Until Great Uncle Leon announced he was going to attempt the Trials.  Then they went silent until Grandpa Alfred announced the moratorium on taking the trials and they started announcing new medicines again.”

“So… you think that Revyvtech is stealing medical breakthroughs from the thousand-year-old underground tunnels?” asked George.  “That all seems a little coincidental.”

“I don’t know,” said Iris.  “I don’t know.  Most of our pharmaceutical industry is based on how strange our plant life is, compared to Europe and Britain.  Maybe there are, like, mushrooms growing down there that don’t grow anywhere else.”

“They could have found a way down into Andyr when they were building the factory,” said Jazz, thoughtfully.  “Then expanded their access when they got the restoration contract.  Which means everything else is just… a cover up?”

“That doesn’t feel right,” said Danny.  “How do you explain what’s going on with the ghosts?  And the spirit that took Vivian’s face?”  There had to be more to it than just corporate greed.  Human money didn’t spend well in the afterlife.  “What’s even in Andyr?  What happens during the Trials that’s so important?”

“Well,” said Leo after a moment, hesitantly, “they’re supposed to show that you have the favor of the ancestors…”

“The original spring of Gwensyvyr’s sacred pool is supposed to be down there,” added Lewis.  

No one else volunteered anything.

“That’s it?” asked Danny.  

“It’s not something anyone talked about,” said Eugene.  “Whatever Revyvtech found down there, it isn’t something any of us know about.”

“Are we– are we really believing this, though?” asked George.  “I mean, Iris, we worked for Revyvtech.”

“Yeah, and we did walk in on that demon summoning thing, so for all we know, Revyvtech is stuffed full of evil syvyrys who were just waiting for an opportune moment to kill us all.  We don’t know, and this, ” Iris waved her phone at George, new texts from Aunt Alicia’s security team clear on the front, “this is weird.  Even you think it’s weird.  Danny, have any of your spirits come back yet?”

“Or Vivian?” added Leo, hopefully.

Cold mist wisped over the back of Danny’s tongue, and he looked up, sharply, as a large group of ghosts, far larger than the group that had gone out, flew in through the wall.  

“Yes,” he said, standing.  “Yes, actually.  No Vivian, still, though.”

The ghosts seemed to be arguing with each other, loudly enough that Danny almost thought he could hear harsh whispers and hisses.  They seemed angry.  They seemed scared.

“What happened?” he asked, worried.  

The ghosts looked at him.  Some of them outright glared at him.  But then they parted, revealing Gwensyvyr.  

The first thing Danny noticed was that she’d returned to her more elaborate, archaic mode of dress, this time complete with a crown and a very practical-looking sword.  

The second thing he noticed was that her arm was burned red all the way up to her shoulder, her sleeve absolutely obliterated.  

In a human, that would have been a potentially fatal injury.  In a ghost… For the ghosts Danny was most familiar with, it would have been painful and difficult to heal, but not something that would destroy them.  Danny didn’t know what it would do to a ghost like Gwensyvyr, who was so weak she could barely interact with the world to begin with.  

And there was only one thing Danny knew of that could make wounds like that.  

“Jazz!  Get the blood blossom cream!”

Jazz didn’t hesitate.  She ran for the room they shared.  

Danny turned the keyboard on the phone on and tilted it towards Gwensyvyr, approaching her, but not touching.  He only got burns like that from blood blossoms when they were directly smeared on him and he was in ghost form.  He didn’t know if Gwensyvyr had inadvertently brought any traces with her.

“What happened?” he asked.  

Gwensyvyr gave him a thin, pained smile, and began to spell out a message letter by letter.

Chapter Text

We traveled to the Revyvtech offices.  At first, it seemed not unlike when we shadowed the young twins.  There were places we could not go, then, too.  

"Well," said Iris, as Danny translated, "Why didn't they investigate then?"

Do not think us incurious.  There are many things that can turn aside such weak spirits.  Not all of them are sinister, or even purposeful.  Some of our number cannot be far from their kin.  Some, their loves.  Some may only walk the paths they walked in life–

"Are you saying that there aren't any ghosts here who used to work for Revyvtech?" asked Iris.  

Gwensyvyr looked amused despite the horrific damage to her arm.  There are, but in their own accounts, they were not highly ranked, and are quite sure their passwords will no longer work.  

Danny wasn't so sure of that.  He wasn't a computer genius, as indicated by his 'plan' to hack Revyvtech, but he'd spent enough time helping Tucker to be embarrassed he hadn’t thought of asking.  He looked up hopefully at the other ghosts.  

“Sometimes people don’t change things like that right away,” he said.  Jazz came back in as he spoke, and Danny set the phone on the floor while he took the jar and a pair of plastic gloves from her.  “Maybe if we can find some people who only died recently, we could try out theirs?”

Some ghosts left the room.  Others engaged in hearty bouts of mime.  Others glared at him.

Gwensyvyr touched his arm with her uninjured hand, and gestured back at the phone.  They glare because they are troubled by my injury.  Danny was fascinated by the fact that Gwensyvyr seemed to have spontaneously reinvented texting lingo.  Although, it was possible that her current batch of spelling decisions just happened to look like that.  They should glare at me instead.  

The ghosts looked more or less appropriately chastized.

“Right,” said Danny.  “Okay.”  He unscrewed the lid of the jar.  “That doesn’t explain how you got hurt.”  He frowned at the cream.  “This works for me, but you’re intangible…  I don’t know if I can even put this on you.”

Gwensyvyr shrugged, then held out her arm.  

“Yeah, I guess there’s only one way to find out.”  He pulled on the gloves and scooped out a small amount of the cream.  Then he reached out, and to his surprise, was able to smear it on Gwensyvyr’s arm.  

Although, maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise.  Ever since that first day, she and the other ghosts had been growing stronger.  Just now, she’d been able to touch him, and he’d been able to feel it, and she had at the Masque as well.  

“Oh,” said George.  “That’s– That’s really weird to look at.  Sorry, honored ancestor, but it is. ”

Danny didn’t stop applying the cream.  “Do you see her?”

“Not.  Not really.  More like, I can tell there’s… something.  Like heat over a sidewalk.  Where you put the cream.”

“Are you seeing the cream?”

“I don’t think that’s it,” said Iris.  She sounded fascinated.  “It’s like looking at glass in water.”

Danny was honestly just relieved that it was working.  He took some more cream from the jar and continued up, past Gwensyvyr’s shoulder.  

It felt as if Danny were on the verge of a revelation.  As if he had the end of a string in his hand, and all he had to do was pull it to unravel the knot of this mystery.  But he was missing something.  Some puzzle piece, some scrap of information that would make this all make sense.  Or maybe what he was missing was perspective.  

Gwensyvyr had run into blood blossoms.  Probably at Revyvtech.  Blood blossoms hurt ghosts and half ghosts.  Gwensyvyr was growing stronger.  She was stronger than she’d been when Danny had first arrived.  

He finished rubbing in the cream and started peeling off the gloves.  “Can you tell us what happened now?” 

Gwensyvyr reached over and tapped the phone, which had gone dark.  It turned on.  

“Huh,” said Danny.  “Okay.”  He unlocked it and brought up the keyboard.  Gwensyvyr began to type.  

The building was largely empty, and we became frustrated.  I saw movement and light behind a door, and became convinced that secrets were being spoken of within.  But the space beyond it was one that was barred to us.  Once, before we grew so weak, I could defeat such barriers, push them aside.  I pushed.  The barrier defeated me, however.  Gwensyvyr gave Danny a wry smile.  Yet, in harming me, it revealed its nature.  Although it seems that you already know the name of the scourge.

“Blood blossoms, yeah,” said Danny.  

I thought them eradicated, or nearly so, wrote Gwensyvyr.  I must ask, how did you encounter them?

“One time was a fluke,” said Danny, not wanting to get into the time travel thing, “leftovers from the sixteen hundreds.  But then Mom and Dad found some old seeds and got them to grow.  They put them all away when they realized I was allergic, but–”

“Wait,” said Iris, “it’s something you’re allergic to?  The ghost you’re talking to was hurt by something you are allergic to in Revyvtech?”

Gwensyvyr nodded.  

“Yes?” said Danny.  

“What happened to–”  Iris swallowed.  “What happened to everyone but Vivian and Grandma Rose looked like an allergic reaction.”

Danny nodded.  He’d already been solidly convinced that Revyvtech was up to no good (see: the Vlad look-alike), but he knew that the others might have needed more convincing.  

They didn’t anymore.

But– Wait.  Wait.  “I’m pretty sure my reaction to blood blossoms is more of a syvyr thing than a family thing,” said Danny.  “Jazz didn’t react like I did, when we had them in the house.  Neither did Mom.  There’s nothing to say that anyone else is going to be allergic.”

“We didn’t try to eat them, though,” said Jazz, “and regular things like that - allergens - can be concentrated, can’t they?  Why not more supernatural allergens?”

“There’s another factor, if we’re taking all the, ah, magic to be true,” said Lewis.  “If this thing works on ghosts.”  He waved in the general direction of Gwensyvyr.  “Maybe it’s more myth than fact, or an artifact of someone screwing up a timeline, but Gwensyvyr was supposed to have had children with her dead husband.  A ghost.  Unless there’s some kind of nasty scandal lurking unknown in the family tree–”

“There definitely is,” said Eugene, “there are always scandals.”

“--we’re direct descendants of that union.”

“Do you think any of your ghosts know, Danny?” asked Iris.  “Any of them know Gwensyvyr when she was alive?”

“Um,” said Danny, looking sideways at Gwensyvyr.  “Yeah.  I mean, there’s probably someone.  Around.”

The door to the room opened up, which was a shock, because everyone was accounted for, except–

Oh.  It was Joanna.  She was still in her pajamas, but she had her phone in one hand.  

“What have you kids been doing?” she asked.  

Iris looked down at her phone, which she had, up until that moment, been using to interrogate Aunt Alicia’s security detail.  Everyone else looked at Lewis’s crime phone, which still showed the last thing Gwensyvyr had typed out.

“Investigating?” suggested Jazz.  

“Have you been up all night?” Joanna asked in faint horror.  Danny realized belatedly that most of them were still wearing pieces of their Masque costumes…  They were kind of surreal in the early morning light streaming through the windows. 

“We couldn’t sleep after hearing about Alicia,” said Eugene.

“And why did none of you wake me when you heard about this?”  Joanna waved her phone, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.

“You seemed really tired,” said Eugene, lamely.  

The more accurate answer, as far as Danny went, was that they were really tired, and then forgot.  

Joanna looked back at her phone and rubbed her eyes with her free hand.  “Why all these questions about Alicia’s medication?  I don’t understand–”

“We’re pretty sure that Revyvtech was involved in the poisoning,” said Danny.  “The first one.”

“Probably they were involved in the second one, too, with those special release capsules,” said Iris.

“I don’t know that they were that special,” said George.  

“Pretty sure?” asked Joanna.  “How sure is pretty sure?”

Danny turned to Gwensyvyr.  “Would blood blossoms have affected them like that?” 

Yes.

Which, of course, begged the questions of why– especially given that only some family members had been affected, and they’d apparently all been eating the same thing.  Still, details like that could be worked out later.  

“We know they at least have something that would act like the poison that killed everyone but Vivian,” said Danny.  

“The spirits…?” asked Joanna, not finishing the phrase.  

“Yeah,” said Danny.  

Joanna took a deep breath.  “Thank you, honored ancestors.”

Gwensyvyr gave Joanna a thumbs up.  Joanna jumped.  “Oh!  For a moment I thought–”  She shook her head and started pressing buttons on her phone.  

“What are you doing?” asked Eugene.  

“I’m calling your uncle,” she said.  

“He wasn’t picking up for us or for security.”

“He wasn’t being called on his personal phone.”

The phone rang, tinny and distant to Danny’s ears.  And rang.  And rang.  Joanna sniffled and switched to a different number.

“Who are you calling now?” asked Eugene.  

“Mr. Kynbaz - yes, on his personal phone.”

Oh, so everyone just had two phones, now, huh?  Good to know.  

This time, the phone was picked up.  Danny heard a tired “ Joanna?” from the other side of the line.  

“Kevin,” said Joanna, “I need you to authorize an extraction for Alicia.”

Chapter Text

The room was silent as everyone listened intently, straining to hear Mr. Kynbaz’s (his first name was Kevin?) response.  

"An extraction? Why?  Isn't she in hospital for a medical condition?"  There was a pause, not quite long enough for Joanna to interject, but long enough to hear.  “ How do you even know about that?”

“You left the team on read and the emergency system kicked it to Matthew and your second, but Matthew has it set to forward things to family members if he doesn’t answer and it’s flagged as an emergency.”

Another brief pause.  “Why do you want Princess Alicia extracted?”

“We think that–”  Joanna visibly collected herself.  “There’s evidence that Revyvtech is involved in the poisonings and responsible for Alicia’s condition.”

“Joanna–”

“My judgment was poor as a teenager, but don’t you dare hold that over me when my family is in danger!” snapped Joanna.  She closed her eyes.  “I– I’m sorry, that was inappropriate of me.”

“What kind of evidence?  Would it hold up overseas?”

Joanna’s eyes flicked over Danny, Jazz, and their other cousins.  “No.  But that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. ”

Mr. Kynbaz hissed softly, the sound barely transmitted by the phone speakers.  “I’ll get back to you.”  

“Kevin, wait, I–”

The end-call tone played.  

Joanna let her hand drop to her side.  Her eyes flicked over Danny, Jazz, and their other cousins.  “How many of you have prescription medication?”

Everyone but Jazz and Danny raised their hands.  Jazz elbowed Danny.  “You have that stuff you were prescribed for your eyes,” she said.  

“Oh, yeah.”

“Danny–  Danny.  Do you think you could tell if this… if this poison - blood blossoms? - was in something?  Like you did with the aconite?”

“Um,” said Danny.  “Maybe.  That was mostly Gw– the ghosts, though.  They saw the poison being added.  If it is blood blossoms, though, I think I should be able to.  Or- or they should be able to," he added, glancing at the ghosts.  He didn't want to ask them to, though.  Not after what had happened to Gwensyvyr’s arm.  "I should be able to." 

“Good,” said Joanna, “good.  Everyone, go get your medications, and bring them here.”

.

"Why are there so many?" asked Danny, intimidated.  The little bottles practically surrounded him.  

"We're part of the oldest royal lineages in the world," said Iris.  "It'd be weirder if we didn't have any weird genetic disorders."

"What even are all of these for?" asked Danny, knowing it was rude, but not being able to help himself.  It was his family medical history, anyway.  

"Blood disease," said Iris and George simultaneously. 

"Specifically anemia," said Iris.

"Specifically Avlynyse recurrent macrocytic anemia," said George.  

“Called that because normal macrocytic anemia is supposed to be caused by something else, like hypothyroidism or alcoholism, but we don’t have those problems and it always comes back.”

“You guys probably have it, too,” added George.  “It’s super common in the family, but it.”

“Along with Avlynyse defective melanin syndrome,” said Iris.  “Purple eyes are pretty, but they come with problems, you know?”

“I knew about that,” said Danny.  “But you don’t take medicine for that, do you?  Mom has that, and I don’t think she takes anything for it.”

“Usually you don’t,” said George, “but melanin has a lot of functions beyond just skin, hair, and eye color, and sometimes ADMS affects those things as well.  You remember how Iris and I would, ah, shake a little, all the time?  And our eyes would scan back and forth?  We couldn’t stop it.  That’s what we take medication for.”  He made a face.  “We actually first got this in a drug trial from Revyvtech a few years ago.  It’s new…”

“Oh!  Don’t forget the epilepsy,” said Iris.

“Yeah, can’t forget the epilepsy.”

“You have epilepsy?” asked Danny.  “But I’ve sent you flashing videos… Memes…”

“No, no, Lewis is the one who has epilepsy.  I’m just saying it’s relatively common.”

Lewis made a face.  “I could have told him myself.  They’re only focal seizures, anyway.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Danny.  “I’ve sent you flashing videos, too.”

“It’s fine,” said Lewis.  “Focal seizures don’t make you lose consciousness all the way, and I’ve got a filtering program on my phone.”

“Mostly he shows them to me, first,” said Leo.  “I have the anemia and a heart condition and low blood pressure and poor circulation and also eczema, which sort of makes my skin break out in hives if anything is touching it the wrong way for too long.”  

“Still not a good reason to not wear shirts,” muttered Lewis.  “Eugene?”

Eugene blushed, then looked down at the medicine bottle in his hand.  He looked back and forth between Danny and the bottle, then the bottle and Jazz.  The bottle was a slightly different color than everyone else’s.  

“Um,” he said.  “I have bipolar disorder.  And I have auditory hallucinations.  It’s not– It’s not schizophrenia, though.  I don’t have the other symptoms.”

Joanna put her hand on Eugene’s shoulder.  “I also have bipolar depression.  And anemia.”

Now Danny just felt bad.  “Sorry.  I shouldn’t have asked.”  (Also, wow , why was he suddenly thinking about the time his parents tried to ‘spin the crazy’ out of him?)

Eugene laughed a little.  “It’s fine.  I mean, we’re showing you all our medications.”  He held out his bottle towards Danny.

“Still.”  Danny took the bottle.  “But… have you ever considered that the hallucinations could be…?”  He trailed off as Gwensyvyr and the other ghosts started shaking their heads.  

“Oh,” said Eugene.  “No, definitely not.  There are ways to check if you’re hearing ghosts, assuming they’re cooperating.  We tested it.”  He sat down on the floor across from Danny.  “So.  How are you going to do this?”

“Um,” said Danny.  “I was just going to phase my hand through each of these and see if anything happened?  That way, I’m not screwing up good medicine by taking it apart or anything.”

“Is that safe?” asked Jazz with a slight frown. 

“I– Nothing has ever happened to the stuff I’ve phased through before?”

“For you,” clarified Jazz.  

“Might give me a burn,” said Danny.  “But the blood blossom cream is already out, so…  I’ll be okay.”

“If you say so,” said Jazz.

Danny nodded and held up Eugene’s bottle with his right hand and swiped his left hand through it.  

(It was so strange to just do that in front of so many people, and in human form.)

“Nothing,” he said, handing the bottle back to Eugene.  

“That makes sense,” said Eugene.  He turned the bottle so Danny could see the logo imprinted on the bottom, a simple eye with an apple in place of a pupil.  “Avl Ayg does more psychiatric medicine than Revyvtech.”

Danny nodded, and hunted through the bottles to find Joanna’s.  It also didn’t have anything in it that Danny could detect.

Then, he started working through Leo’s medication.  The heart stuff was fine, but when he passed his hand through the anemia medication, he flinched back, hissing.  

“Blood blossoms?” asked Jazz.  

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “Ow.”  He shook out his hand.  

Jazz held out the cream to him.  

“It’s such a tiny amount,” said Danny.  He examined his hand.  It wasn’t even red.  “It was just, like, touching something too hot, rather than all-consuming agony.”

“Your standards for all consuming agony are off,” said Jazz.  “Put on the cream before you do more.”

Danny grumbled but did what Jazz said.  Then he tested the eczema medication, and…

“This feels weird, but not like blood blossoms,” he said.  There was something ectoplasmic in it, but only in trace amounts.  “Could be ectoplasm contamination?”

“Could you tell how even it is?” asked Jazz.  

“No,” said Danny.  “Do you think…  If they are getting things for their medicines from Andyr, do you think that there could be ectoplasmic stuff down there?  From the ghosts, maybe?”

He saw Gwensyvyr’s face screw up, and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but then shook her head.  

“That would make sense,” said Jazz, slowly.  “But that would be incredibly dangerous.  Ectocontamination made a cooked turkey come back to life.”

“What,” said Lewis, flatly.  

“Never mind,” said Jazz.

Danny moved on to Lewis’s.  His anti-seizure meds were fine, but he had a jar of anemia supplements, just like Leo.  Again, there was something in it.  He set it aside.  

He moved on to Iris and George’s.  They had a larger number, but theirs were largely identical, so he did them all at once.  Again, most of them were fine, one of the melanin ones was weird, and the anemia supplement had blood blossoms in it.  

“These actually have more than any of the others,” said Danny, nodding at the bottles while rubbing more cream into his hand.  “It’s still tiny, the ghosts aren’t even affected by it being near, but…”

“But we’ve been getting slowly poisoned for who knows how long,” said Joanna.  “All of us.”

“It does cast some doubt on it being what killed everyone, though,” said Iris.  “Since none of us have keeled over in anaphylactic shock any of the times we’ve taken these.  It’s possible that there’s a legitimate medical use.”

“I don’t know.  I guess there are some things… Mom and Dad wanted to use it to purge ectocontamination.”  Danny looked up.  “Did Martin have this?  Do you think any of his medication is still here?”

“Maybe,” said Joanna.  “If he did have any here, it would probably be in his room, or the master bathroom.”

Getting everyone into the master bathroom was a squeeze, but no one wanted to be left out.  Joanna opened the cabinet and moved aside a woebegone toothbrush and a few boxes of band-aids before pulling out three bottles and a weekly pill organizer.  The organizer was mostly full, with only Sunday morning empty.

“Ferromultyx, melanyorata, and escitalopram?” she read from the bottles.

“Huh,” said Iris.  “I didn’t know his melanin defect was bad enough to take melanyorata.”  She sounded a little congested. 

Danny, not quite in arms’ reach of Joanna, between all the people in the room, made grabby hands.  “Let me see.”

Joanna passed them over, and Danny phased his hands through.  The melanin deficiency drug had the same weirdness as Iris and George’s.  The anemia drug on the other hand…

“There’s nothing here,” he said.  “It’s clean.”

Iris chewed her lip.  “None of this makes sense.”

“I think it does, actually,” said Danny, turning the bottle over and over in his hand.  He wriggled his way out of the bathroom.

“How?” asked Lewis, who managed to get out before the others.  “Why poison us just a little bit, and kill everyone else?”

“I don’t know that it’s just about that,” said Danny.  He put Martin’s medication on a nearby shelf and pulled the small bottle of the medicine he’d been prescribed from his pocket and passed his hand through it.  It burned.  Badly enough to make him hiss and drop the bottle.  

“Danny?” asked Jazz, alarmed.  

“I’m fine.  I just had to check something.”  He cradled his hand near his chest.  “I don’t think they want you dead.  They want me dead.  They don’t want you ectocontaminated.”  

“You guys keep saying that,” said Leo.  “What is it?”

“Ectoplasmic contamination.  Ectoplasm.  Ghost magic.”  Danny licked his lips, then stepped sideways to get a better view of Gwensyvyr.  “That’s what’s actually in Andyr, isn’t it?  There’s a source of ectoplasm.  There’s a portal.”

Gwensyvyr gazed at Danny for a long moment, then nodded.

“There’s something that happens in the Trials that makes you… more spiritual.  Or something.  More like a syvyr.”  And Danny hoped beyond hope that ‘something’ wasn’t dying like he had in the portal.  He could almost imagine it, all of them, all his family, walking, practically dancing down into the dark, into glowing, deathly green.  A tableau.  A danse macabre.  A memento mori.  Except no one really died…

… until now.  

“That,” said Danny, “that’s what they’re trying to stop.  They’re trying to keep that from happening.  Because if it did– if it did…”  He trailed off, unsure, then looked at Gwensyvyr.  Her eyes were sharp, expectant.  “Well, what we thought before, about them using stuff down there for medical research is probably still true, but…  There are probably parts of the Trials you can’t do without having ectoplasm.  Things for the ancestors.  Things for…”

If there was a portal beneath Avlynys, the ghosts here should be as strong as in Amity Park.  They weren’t.  But they were gaining strength from Danny’s presence.  

“Things for the portal,” Danny continued.  “Like, unblocking it or something.  Fixing it.”  He shivered, remembering the last time he’d tried to fix a portal.  

“A portal?” asked Joanna.  “To where?”

“The, you know, the afterlife,” said Danny.  

There was quiet.  

“Unfortunately,” said Joanna.  “We can’t do anything about that until we take the Trials.  Except for not taking any more of these things.”  She snatched up Martin’s medication and put it back in the cabinet.  

Leo groaned.  “Fainting town, here we come.”

“For now…  I think all of you need some sleep.”

Chapter Text

Sleep all too often came with dreams.  That was probably why none of them had really wanted to go to bed.  

Along with the anxiety, the revelations, the threat to all of their lives, etcetera, etcetera.  No one was really counting all that.  Much.  

Danny dreamed.  He knew he dreamed.  

Well.  Sort of.  This was really more of a nightmare.  Even though nothing bad had happened yet, the whole atmosphere of the classroom was steeped in unease and tension.  

" Ryv is one of the few Avlynyse words borrowed directly from French, without first passing through English," said Mr. Lancer, as he wrote on the board in Esperanto.  "Most likely due to the popularity of Marie Thérèse of France, who married Prince Alyn, later King Alyn, in sixteen eighty-eight pursuant to the agreement of marriage negotiated when she was five between her father, the Sun King, and Dr. Kahysy Wyrtmyn Royne Tyronoé, when the later saved her from dying of consumption.  Yes, Mr. Fenton, this will be on the test.”

“I didn’t say anything,” said Danny.  

“Queen Marie Thérèse was often quoted as saying ‘Parfois, j’ai l’impression que ma vie ici n’est qu’un beau rêve’ or ‘Sometimes I feel as if my life here is nothing but a beautiful dream.’”

“You don’t even speak French,” said Danny, despairingly.  

“Compare and contrast ryv with the thirteen other common Avlynyse terms for dream, such as ayslyn, traym, and revo.”

“That last one isn’t even Avlynyse,” protested Danny.  “It’s Esperanto.  You’re writing in Esperanto.  I don’t think you know that, either.”

“Compare and contrast King Georg Gyvry’s attempts to acquire royal spouses for his children, thereby securing alliances and diplomatic ties, with Queen Arynryd’s foundation of the School of Heroes.”

Danny stood up.  He couldn’t take any more of this.  He felt like his heart was about to beat out of his chest, and all that was happening was Mr. Lancer giving a lecture on Avlynyse history.  And getting things wrong, but that wasn’t really relevant.  

“Mr. Fenton, this will be on the test.”

“What test?” asked Danny.  “This is a dream.”

“But you have to pass,” said Mr. Lancer, not looking away from the blackboard.  “You have to pass.  This will be on the trial.”

“What?” asked Danny, unable to help himself.  

“You have to pass the Trials.  Dr. Kahysy Wyrtmyn Royne Tyronoé was born in Royn on the Island of Tyrono, to the herbalists Byryta and Yud Wyrtmyn, also of Royn.  He was later sponsored by a client of theirs, Dr. Uwyn Font, to attend Argyntyn College.  While there, his ideas were instrumental to the resolution of the sixteen sixty-nine Argyntyn Cholera epidemic, and he was inducted to the School of Heroes.”

Danny turned away.  He already knew all of this.  Except where it was wrong, which was annoying.  He hated it when his dreams were wrong, especially when they’d be so interesting otherwise.  Like, one time, he’d had a dream about Jupiter, but it was way too close to Earth, and there was just no way the GAV could fly up there that fast, so, there.

Behind him, Mr. Lancer - that is, dream Mr. Lancer - had stopped speaking.  Danny felt certain that if he were to turn around now, Mr. Lancer wouldn’t even be there.  No.  He’d be replaced by something much worse.  Something terrible.  

He hunched his shoulders and covered his face, then froze as his fingers encountered something around his eyes.  The mask he’d worn the previous night, for the Moon Masque.  Had he even brought it home, after everything?  He didn’t remember.  He had been given back his not-so-ceremonial knife, and it was resting on his bedside table.  His fingers itched for it now.  Normal weapons, even Danny’s normal weapons, wouldn’t do anything against what loomed behind him, but maybe that would.  It had already banished one monster.  

There was only so long he could delay.  He turned.  The tunnel was long and dark, with no forks or turns.  He walked.  Fire and flowers licked from the walls, horribly red, ready to burn, ready to bleed, but did nothing to provide light.  

There was an end.  It was covered in metal instead of stone.  Dull green lines traced between metal panels and wires sprawled loosely over the floor.  He put his hand against the wall as he walked.  If he was right, this was where he would slip–

– click.

Remembered agony shot through his bones and heart and brain and he spasmed.  Through the green he could see Jazz.  Leo.  George.  Iris.  Vivian.  Lewis.  Matthew.  Joanna.  Grandpa Alfred.  Martin.  William.  Aunt Alicia.  Great Aunt Isabella.  Great Uncle Theodore.  

All of them dying.  All of them screaming, dying, melting.  

There was a sensation of cold in his chest and he choked himself awake, his ghost sense slipping past his lips.  He reached for the dagger instinctively, ready to fight.

“ Fryth, myne yfyor.  Peace, Danny.  Dreams, only, have troubled you.”  

“Danny?” said Jazz, blearily, from the other side of the large bed.  “What’s wrong?”

“Um,” said Danny, staring.  Gwensyvyr had her hand phased partway into his shoulder, and that was clearly what had triggered his ghost sense and woken him up.  But, more importantly…  “You talked!”

“Yeah?” said Jazz, who was still not entirely awake.  

“Yes,” said Gwensyvyr at the same time.  “Although it would, ah, appear that you, only, can hear me.”  Her accent was strange and heavy, but still familiar and homey in a way Danny couldn’t properly identify.  

“Danny?” said Jazz, again.  “Did you have a nightmare or something?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “Yeah, I, um, nightmare.  Portals and murder plots, you know?  Ah.  Ha.”

Jazz was sitting up, now, and peering at the clock.  “It’s two,” she said, making a face.  “The sun was just barely up… What’s that at this latitude?  Nine?  So, five hours?”  She sighed.  “I feel like we just got over jet lag…”

“Mhm,” said Danny.  He wasn’t entirely awake either, and his brain wasn’t up for returning anything but exclamation points on the subject of Gwensyvyr talking to him.  

(And, as a point of fact, they’d been recovered from jet lag even before Matthew’s attempted emergency coronation, and that had been on the… The ninth?  The tenth?  And now it was…  Danny wasn’t entirely sure, actually.  Preparations for the Moon Masque had been a whirlwind.  Late January, anyway.)

(Maybe Jazz was right and they weren’t all that recovered from jet lag.)

“Should we go back to sleep?  I don’t want to throw my sleep schedule off too much, though…”

“Jazz, I don’t… I don’t think that’s really important.”

Jazz made a disgruntled noise, looked back over at him, and abruptly propelled herself off the bed.  “What–”

“Oh,” said Gwensyvyr.  “It might be that she might see?”  She pronounced the ‘gs’ in each ‘might.’ 

“Ohh,” said Jazz.  “She– That–  Hello, Gwensyvyr?”  Then she blinked.  “She’s gone?”

“No,” said Danny.  “Still here.”

“ I just–  I don’t see her anymore.”

“Alas,” said Gwensyvyr.  “A moment, only.  Yet still better than not at all.”

“Y-yeah,” said Danny.  He looked Gwensyvyr over.  “Your arm is better?”  It was, at least, covered in clothing again.

“It appears.”

“This is good,” said Jazz.  “This is good, right?”

“I mean, I don’t think it could be bad,” said Danny with a shrug.  “I can hear her, now.”

“Can you hear the others?” asked Jazz, climbing back onto the bed.  “Vivian?”

“I’ve been awake for a minute,” said Danny.  “And Vivian’s still with Matthew.”

“They have returned,” said Gwensyvyr.  

“Really?” asked Danny.  

“Three, four hours after you began to, ah…  Slevyn?”

“Sleep,” provided Danny.  “But they’re back?”

“I always forget that one,” said Gwensyvyr, mildly.  “Matthew still is awake.”

Danny rolled out of bed.  

“I guess we’re getting up, then,” said Jazz.  She brushed her hair out with her fingers as Danny hunted for something slightly more acceptable to wear downstairs than his pajamas.  Then, Danny remembered that Leo had come down that first day in pajama pants, a blanket, and no shirt, so it wasn’t like it mattered. 

The other ghosts, as silent as ever, pointed Danny and Jazz in the direction of the dining room, where Matthew, Irene, and Joanna were talking quietly and intensely.  They all stopped immediately when the door opened.  

Matthew and Irene looked absolutely awful.  Irene was still in her Moon Masque costume, and it was rumpled and stained.  It looked like she’d been pulling at her hair, with how it had come out of its earlier neat style.  Matthew had changed into a t-shirt and ratty jeans, and his arm was in a sling.  He looked pale, and his other arm had IV tape and various medical bracelets.  His nose was crusted with blood, and he had a black eye.  

“Is Sophia asleep?” asked Jazz, when no one else seemed ready to say anything.

“Sophia is still under medical care,” said Matthew.  He rubbed his eyes with his free hand.  “Nervous breakdown.  Grabbed a syringe from one of the doctors and tried to stab me with it.  Punched me really good, too.”

No wonder he and Mr. Kynbaz had been too busy to answer the phone.  

“Then, I had been given some Revyvtech drugs, because the knife,” he gestured at his shoulder, “had belladonna extract on it.  So I spent three hours after Joanna called getting all my blood replaced , just in case Revyvtech was also poisoning me.  Luckily, Physostigmine is produced by other companies, so Sophia and I were able to take that, and the amount of atropine that got into our systems really wasn’t enough to kill us, anyway.”  He sighed.  “I’m tired of getting poisoned.”

Irene patted his shoulder.  

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “So.  What are we doing about that?”

“Which?”

“The– The thing with Revyvtech.”

“We’re investigating,” said Matthew.  “Unfortunately, you can’t just accuse an entire company of murder.  You have to find the people responsible.  And you need evidence.  Security brought the medicines you tested to a forensics lab, so we’ll see if anything turns up there.  I don’t know what else to do.   I don’t even know if it’s safe to take the Trials, if these ‘blood blossoms’ bioaccumulate, if we’ll all drop dead the minute we finish them, the same way everyone else did.  I don’t know.”

“I don’t think they do,” said Danny, thoughtfully.  “I mean, I had a friend eat some for me, once, and I was still able to do things like phase through him afterwards.”

“There’s that, at least,” said Matthew.  He rubbed his eyes again.  

“You should sleep,” said Joanna.  

Matthew shook his head.  

Jazz cleared her throat again.  “Mom and Dad?” she asked.  

“Kyr Argyn, under house arrest in the Late Wing,” said Matthew.  “Pending an investigation, but of course all the investigators are busy…”  He stood up.  “We’re doing what we can do.  If the spirits are able to give you anything else…?”  He trailed off, hopefully.  

“He should sleep,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I do not believe anything I have to say to you will change that.”  She paused.  “Vivian’s story might. ”

Danny shook his head.

“Let me know if that changes,” said Matthew.  He took a breath and held it for a second.  “Joanna, can you–?”

“I’ll keep everyone to the schedule as best I can,” she said.

“Good.  Good,” said Matthew.  He hobbled around his chair, towards the door, Irene helping him.  

“What schedule?” asked Danny, after they had left.  

“To prepare for the Trials,” said Joanna.  “We’re going a little fast, but… the full moon is soon. ”  She smiled shakily.  “So!  Since you two are up, why don’t you get breakfast - or lunch, I suppose - and we can talk about personal seals.”

Chapter Text

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.”

Chapter Text

The moment didn't last.  

Danny could almost feel Gwensyvyr fade from the sight of the others.  Not all at once, but not slowly, either.  

Matthew made a sort of wounded sound in the back of his throat.  “Danny,” he said.  “Danny, I was dead asleep a minute ago, but that–  That wasn’t–”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  There had to be some sort of protocol for situations like this, some sort of etiquette for introducing an honored ancestor to their living family, but Danny didn’t know what it was.  Any ghost-related formalisms he knew were, after all, learned in spite of his parents.  

“It was that thing again,” said Vivian.  “How did it get in?”   

It was the first time Danny had heard her speak since…

Since she'd died.  

“Technology,” said Gwensyvyr, grimly, “a road we could not take.”

Right.  The thing.  “Jazz, could you…?”

“Yes, sorry,” said Jazz.  She stepped forward and, when Danny relaxed the shield, used the thermos to suck up the remains of the ghost.  Danny would have to see if he could steal some of his mother’s gloves to wash that out.  He wouldn’t put any ghost in such a small with blood blossom residue if he could help it.

The weaker ghosts started to come forward again, surrounding the family closely.  None of them, to Danny’s relief, seemed to be hurt very much.  

Irene took a deep breath.  “I will set the table.  Danny, how many of our honored ancestors will sit with us?”

“Um,” said Danny, looking at the packed room.  

“Vivian and I, only,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I think that should be easier, yes?  Your other relatives here are closer than I, yet still distant.”

“Two,” said Danny.  “Queen Gwensyvyr and… and Vivian.”

“Former queen might be a more apt title,” said Gwensyvyr, as Vivian winced.  “I am queen only among the dead.”

“Two,” said Irene.  “Two.  That makes twelve of us.  Twelve.  Twelve place settings.  Do we even have anything decent to serve…”  She walked away, towards the kitchen.  “Iris, George, come help me.”

Everyone else sort of shuffled into place around the table, zombie-like.  Except for Lewis.  He picked up one of Joanna’s heavy heraldry books and started using it to smash his phone.

"I could have handled it," murmured Danny as he bent to pick up his bowl of cereal.  He’d knocked it to the floor at some point during the very brief fight.  “The ghost.  You didn’t need to– You could have been hurt again.”

“And you could have been hurt.  For what reason do you think I have stayed, except to watch over my cherished descendants, hm?”  

Leo walked over with a wad of paper napkins and handed them to Danny.  “Is Vivian really here?”

“I’m here,” said Vivian, her voice so faint and distant it could have been carried from miles away by an errant breeze.  

“She’s here,” Danny said.  

Leo’s face crumpled.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “I’m sorry.  Vivian.  I don’t– I didn’t–”  He shuddered.  “I’m sorry.”

Vivian didn’t say anything, but she was crying.  

Irene and her children came back into the dining room with plates and sandwiches.  They set the table in a precise way that felt strangely familiar, as if Danny should recognize the ritual they were following.  When they were done, there were twelve place settings, and each of them had a sandwich, a glass of water, a folded napkin, and a sharp knife.  

“Honored ancestors, I invite you to our table,” said Matthew, with a small bow.

There was a long awkward silence as Gwensyvyr and Vivian maneuvered around and through two of the chairs to ‘sit’ in them.  The silence only grew longer and more awkward still afterwards.

“Danny,” said Matthew, “where are they?”

“Oh,” said Danny, realizing the problem.  “Those two chairs.”  He nodded his head towards them.  

Matthew sighed in relief and shepherded Danny to the chair right next to Gwensyvyr before taking his own place on the opposite side of the table.  

No one touched their sandwiches.

“Please, honored ancestors, we are ready to receive your wisdom.  

Gwensyvyr folded her hands in front of her, and her clothing began to blur and fade into something simpler and more modern. 

"Perhaps these things are ones I should have spoken to you earlier," she said.  "I will not ask you to forgive me for my lapse in judgment if so.  I had my reasons.  First, I could not, then, I was unsure, after that, there was too much to explain by spelling each word out letter by letter.  And two of those three ran out today, yet I thought, 'What difference an hour?  Two?'" She shook her head minutely.  "Urgency is difficult when one has practiced patience for so long."

"Honored ancestor," said Vivian, quietly, interrupting even as Danny hurried to relay what Gwensyvyr had said to everyone else.  "I think.  I think I should say… what happened to me.  First."

"If you think that best, granddaughter, then I shall not stop you."

Vivian nodded, then turned to Danny.  "You can hear me, too, can't you?"

“Yes,” said Danny.  “Yes, I can hear you.”  He rubbed his eyes.  “I can hear you.”

Vivian nodded.  Briefly, her form flickered bleeding and bloody and bruised, the scars of her death apparent just for a moment.  

“I didn’t die at the same time as everyone else,” said Vivian.  She was using the cadence that Danny knew had been trained into her as a future heir to the throne.  She’d complained about it to him and Jazz, once, when they were all younger.  “I didn’t even die the same day.  They killed me the night before.”  She paused and Danny finished repeating what she had said.  

“That… matches the coroner's report,” said Matthew, slowly.  

It took Vivian another minute to speak again.  “When I’m stressed, I like to walk through the university park.  It’s near my flat.  It’s–  I was stressed that afternoon.”

Leo hiccuped.  

“It isn’t your fault,” Vivian reassured him.  “I would have been stressed anyway.  I went out.  I wanted to get a walk before the sun set.  I had energy, I had…  A man came up to talk to me.  That’s not so unusual.  I wasn’t worried.  I had my taser, I had my panic button, security knew where I was, more or less.  He asked me questions about religion.  About modernization.  I thought he was a reporter.  But then I saw him at the coronation, and–”  She broke off, biting her lip.  “Bastard.”

“Wallace Hadryn?” asked Danny.  “That guy?”

Vivian nodded once, tightly.  “He wanted to know what I thought about the progress faction’s proposal for bringing in overseas business.  Wanted to know if I’d consider ‘canceling outdated traditions’ and make a stand for ‘real progress.’  Just– You know how it is.  It was offensive, but normal.”

Danny didn’t know how it was, but it didn’t matter.  His cousins seemed to.  

“I told him to get lost.  And he said something about trying the nice way one last time.  And then he changed.  He was the same as that thing.  Maybe he was even the same thing.  I don’t know.  I ran.  I hit my panic button.  But then all the lights went off.  All of them.  It was dark.  It was like anything with any electricity just stopped.”  She breathed in deeply, her chest rising in remembered motion.  

“That happens, sometimes, with ecto-energy,” said Jazz.  “But if it was from the same ghost, you’d expect it to break the phone before coming out of it.”

“It might have been the same one, I don’t know.  It could have been something different.  But I was getting away, I was– Then there were the lights.  They were the only lights I could see for at least a mile.  I thought they were normal people .  But you know those stories about not following lights.”  She covered her face.  “That thing was just chasing me towards them.  Herding me.  Ancestors.”  

Gwensyvyr patted her gently on the back.  

“They didn’t want to kill me, at first.  They wanted the Key and the Seal.  They– After, one of them said something about my Key being the last one.  I don’t know what they meant by that.  There were– There were five of them.  Mostly men, I think.  At least one woman.  They had their faces covered.  They didn’t want to kill me, at first.  They said they had a way to make sure I was thinking about the right things, when I became queen, but they needed to put me somewhere safe , first, and they needed the Key and the Seal.  They tried to take them.  I fought.  I fought.  Just like we’re trained to do.  And I–  One of the new ones, the one in charge, not Wallace Hadryn or whatever he was, they weren’t human, either.  I managed to scratch them, and they just…  Just…  They didn’t stop hitting me.  And the other four started in, and I…”  

And she’d died.  

“I was… there.  For a while.  Afterward.  They started talking about damage control.  Changed plans.  One mentioned a backup.  The one in charge told them to be quiet and leave.  They took.  The body.  Then I was there.  And I.  I couldn’t do anything.  For a long time.  The lights came back on.  And I saw…” she trailed off again.  “I had…  There was something like the Key.  It looked wrong.  It was the wrong color.  Everything was the wrong color.  But I could… there was something…  You know that story, about using the compass on the Key?  The one with Prince Yon?  It’s real.  And it brought me here.  And I saw Danny.  And he touched the key, and it…  Turned back.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Danny.  “I still have that.”  Because it wasn’t like he was just going to leave that lying around.  He took it out of his pocket and laid it on the table.  Everyone looked at it.  “I don’t know why it did that.  I’ve never touched part of someone’s, um, skyn skryth,” he settled on, finally, not having another good term for the clothing that a ghost wore because they’d worn it when they’d died or when they were buried, “and had it turn real.”

"Oh, yes," said Gwensyvyr as everyone leaned in to look at the Key.  "That is, as they now say, a feature, not a bug.”

Both Vivian and Danny turned back to Gwensyvyr to blink slowly at her.

Gwensyvyr tilted her head.  “What?”

Chapter Text

“What–  How?  How could you possibly do that?” asked Danny.  “How could you even be sure it’d show up on a– In a ghost’s clothing?”

“What?” asked Matthew.  “The Key?”

“Yes, the Key,” said Danny.  “It’s supposed to do that?”

“Yes,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I helped create the enchantment myself.  It isn’t the only one on the key.”

“The compass part?” guessed Danny.  

Gwensyvyr nodded.  “There is already a construct of magic in it, and that makes it so that it stays with the one who carries it, if they should become a ghost, until it is touched by a syvyr of our line.”  She shrugged.  “I could show you the schematic, but I fear it would not mean much to you.”

“I mean…”  Danny trailed off.  “Probably not.  I guess.  But… why?  And is it a new key, or–?”

“Oh, we could have done that.  In some ways it would have been easier.  But, no.  This is the same key, brought from a distance.”

“But… why?”

“Because it is in the nature of those who fight to die, and sometimes far from home,” said Gwensyvyr.  It would be… ill advised to leave any Key in the hands of the enemy.”

“Danny,” said Jazz.  “What are they saying?”

“Oh,” said Danny.  “Oops.”  He quickly summarized the conversation from the point where he’d stopped acting as a go-between.  

“What did they mean by the ‘last Key?’” asked Jazz.  She seemed to be the only one put together enough to really ask questions.  “Vivian, do you know?”

Vivian shrugged and shook her head.  “That’s just what they said.”

“I don’t like that,” said Matthew.  “There are other Great Gate Keys, but they should be… they aren’t out and about where anyone could get them.”  He bit down on his lip then started typing on his phone.  

“So,” said Eugene.  “Who were they?  The people who…”

“I don’t know,” said Vivian.  “Evil bastards.”  She blinked tears from her eyes that vanished as they fell.  

“I have a thought of who they might be,” said Gwensyvyr.  “Or who they might originally have been.  It is suspicion, only, mind, and to understand you must learn a history that has been forgotten.”

Everyone leaned in again, as if that would make them hear better, faster.  Danny saw hands on knife hilts and fists bunched in clothing.  

“You remember, Dannyl, Yazmyn, what I have said before: all kinds of people leave ghosts.  The House of Dyrys has old enemies.  Enemies as old as I am.”

“The viking kings,” said Lewis.  “The ones who killed your husband.”

Gwensyvyr raised a finger.  “A little too fast, grandson, but, yes.”  She let her finger fall back to the surface of the table with a tap.  One that, by the flinches, everyone heard, not just Danny.  “It is difficult to speak of even now, and there are rites older even than myself which I have tried to follow, though the years flow like sand in a glass.  Needs must.

“You know some of my story.  I was born on Myz, near what is now Sy Roch.  Then I was called only Gwenn, for my hair was as white then as it is now.”  She touched one of her braids, pulling it back behind her ear.  “We were not one country, then.  Nor were we even nine countries.  There were few raiders in those days, and no one desired to be beholden to another.  Yet even so, there were things we had in common.  Language, names, rites, knowledge, and the knowledge that is beyond knowledge.  So when a priestess of the sacred pool came from Myrgyn to seek a successor for one who had passed, it was considered a blessing and an honor.

“There were nine of us.  Three for the pool itself.  Three for the spring that fed it.  Three for the apple tree that grew on its banks.  They were wondrous things.  Their magic was apparent by sight alone.  They glowed with it.  Some days, when the stars were right and the correct sacrifices were made, the surface of the pool would glow green, and become a door to the beyond.  A drop of the water of the spring in the mouth of the living might cause one to see spirits.  A drop in the mouth of a dead body might cause it to seem to live again for a time.  A drop in the mouth of a spirit - or mere proximity - might cause them to be seen and heard and other things besides.”

Definitely a portal, then.  

“The tree bore red apples and green, as you might see on any tree, but it also grew apples of gold and silver.  The silver apples could heal any ailment.  The gold granted power.”  

Gwensyvyr paused.  “It was a matter of great importance that the pool and its gifts be guarded.  Some few could be granted to any who asked.  But even something as small a bird or a fly that fell into the pool, or a worm that ate of an apple, could become a horror.  Evil, vile things would come from the pool as often as the good, or they traveled from elsewhere to seek it out for their own ends.”

“You were doing what I do in Amity,” said Danny, before he could stop himself.  “You were guarding a portal.”

“I’m not altogether sure what you are doing in Amity,” said Gwensyvyr, “but it would not surprise me if it were so.”  

Danny ducked his head, feeling eyes on the back of it.  Everyone was looking at him.  He knew it. He was going to have to explain that in more depth before too long.  

“But when I was not much older than you, the vikings came.  They came with great ships, with weapons, and with their own magic-weavers.  And, of course, we fought back.  We had our own weapons, we had our magic, and the sacred pool at our backs.  For some years, this was enough.  And yet even these things could not stall our enemy forever.  Not when he had been eying the riches of Myrgyn and the bounty of the sacred pool.  One by one, my sister-priestesses were killed, and I ran to the only escape I had available.”

“The portal,” said Danny, starting to see where this was going.  He swallowed back nausea.

“Yes.  The pool.  I was not fast enough.  With one foot in the pool and one on the shore, I was felled by an ax.  But I fell forward, and that was sacrifice enough.  The pool granted me its gifts, and by extension, life.  But I was so very weak, and when I crawled from the pool, the raiders were still there.

“They did not recognize me as one they had slain - who would?  They had not even truly seen my face.  Instead, they took me as a slave for themselves, and took me to the one who had led them.  The one who, in those days, thought to make himself a king.”

“He called himself Erik the Dark in those days, though I learned enough of him later to know that had not always been his name.  But Erik was a name for kings, and so he took it.  In this age, you might know him by another.

“Pariah Dark.”

Chapter Text

Somehow, Danny wasn’t even surprised at this point.  

"Yeah, I, um.  I met the guy, once?"

"Sorry?" said Gwensyvyr.

At the same time, Jazz asked, "Who?"

"Pariah Dark," said Danny.

"He is supposed to be sealed."  Gwensyvyr's form briefly flickered back to her battle regalia.  This close, Danny could see that each of her braids had a spiked chain woven into it, starting low enough down that the spikes would bounce off the back of her armor, not the back of her head.  

"He was," Danny hastened to reassure her.  "He is.  He just.  Got out for a little bit.  Last year."

Gwensyvyr leaned back, her elbow phasing slightly through the chair.  She covered her mouth with her opposite hand.  "It seems my suspicions might not be as far-fetched as I thought before.  If he was out at all, they might have–" She stopped.  "You still need to know the whole story."

Matthew's phone began to tweedle.  He snatched it up with a look of panic on his face.  "Sorry!  I need to take–" The panic transformed into a kind of exhausted horror as he stared at the phone.  "Does our honored ancestor know about phones?  I mean…"  He looked back and forth between Danny and the phone, which was still ringing.  

"She knows about phones," said Danny, unsure whether to be amused or not.  

Matthew seemed to take this as permission, because he answered the phone.  “Yes, did you find it?”  He was silent for a moment.  “No?  Do you know what happened?  Could he have moved it to some other spot?  No, no, I understand.  If possible, please keep looking.  It’s very important.  Goodbye.”  He put down the phone.  “That was Aldryk Wylfred, his father was one of grandfather’s close friends.  He’d been named a Knight of the Key, and given one of the Great Gate Keys to safeguard…  His key is missing.  I’m waiting on the other Knights of the Keys.”

“I had hoped it was not so.”

“Is… no one going to ask why Danny knows someone that Queen Gwensyvyr fought?” asked Leo.  “Or how?”

“Well, he was a ghost at the time,” said Danny.  “But we really ought to…”  He waved at Gwensyvyr.  “Listen.  And stuff.”

Yeah, he wasn’t going to be able to get away with that for much longer.  

“Thank you,” said Gwensyvyr.  "But if you met Pariah Dark, you know what he became."

"King of Ghosts."

"He thought of himself that way, yes," said Gwensyvyr.  "It is not something Artyr and I considered, when we killed him.  Nor did any of the ghosts and spirits who haunted him and wanted him dead as badly as we did."

“His name really was Arthur, then,” said Lewis, who had taken out a notebook at some point.  "Your husband."

“In his birthplace, perhaps.  He was named after a famed king of that land, long dead, as I understand it, then and now.  It has made our respective legends rather confused, at times.  

"With me, he was always Artyr.  He was trained as a blacksmith, which was why they kept him.  Such skills are valuable still, as you well know.”  She nodded to the ritual knives many of them had set on the table, and then again to the knives Irene had set the table with.  "He made the very first of those.  To kill Pariah."

"Why?" asked Danny.  "Why did you need that?  Wasn't he human, then?"

Gwensyvyr shook her head.  "Not entirely," she said.  "Not anymore.  He had his men desecrate the pool.  Mine was not the only blood spilled in it that day, and they did more than that.  They threw trash into it.  They blocked off the spring.  They did things in it too foul to speak of.  They cut down the tree and burned it.  But not before Pariah and his sons ate every single apple that grew on it that year."

"They were syvyrys," said Danny.  "That's why you needed a knife that could cut a ghost."

"Not like I was and not like you are, but, yes.  They had already had some measure of magic to them - that is how they cut down the nine of us priestesses.  Numbers alone did not do that.  But the apples gave them terrible power.  

"They took me and the others they had chosen as slaves - beautiful girls and men with valuable skills, for the most part - back to their homeland.  The islands were not the only place he had taken slaves from, though they were always quite careful not to ever take so many as to be outnumbered.  So, there, I met Artyr.  There, we plotted.  There, I came into my powers.  There, I killed Pariah Dark.

"But to my continuing regret, I did not kill his sons."

"You think they have something to do with all this," said Matthew.

"Or their descendants," said Gwensyvyr.  "They are the only syvyrys I ever knew of who could use blood blossoms like that.   They were always doing some new, terrible thing.  We had more spirits on our side than they did, even with their ridiculous cult, so they spent much of their time making new weapons against them.  They had ways to keep themselves and their spirits safe from blood blossoms that we never learned.  They had ways to imbue objects with their powers.  At one point, they used some alchemy to make this sphere of red glass that could control most ghosts and even tugged on my mind…"  She trailed off.  "You've encountered that, too, haven't you?"

Danny squirmed.  "Maybe."

"How?" asked Gwensyvyr.  "Why?"

"It was–" He looked at the rest of his family.  "It was– This crazy circus ringmaster had it and was using it to make ghosts rob banks and jewelry stores for him."

"Are you talking about Freakshow?" asked Jazz.

"Freakshow?"

"His real name was Frederick Isaac Showenhower," offered Jazz.  "At least, that was his pen name."

"Amazing," said Gwensyvyr.  “We ought to sit down and talk about all of the history you managed to run into despite living an ocean away and under a different name.  But– Showenhower.  That has a German root, doesn’t it?  There was some suspicion that the younger son had fled to that area after betraying his brothers…  I’m getting ahead of myself.  

“While Artyr and I worked at cleansing the sacred pool, reviving the tree, and healing the other damage done by Pariah’s attack, Pariah’s sons built up a cult around their father’s ghost.  A group of fanatics that stayed loyal even in death.  

“They attacked Avlynys again when I was pregnant with my second daughter, seeking revenge and the power of the sacred pool.  Imagine for a moment, such a battle between syvyrys and spirits.  The sky was shattered with lightning, the air green with power.  Trees uprooted themselves to take part in the fighting.  The dead sacrificed themselves to take up their buried corpses.  I myself fought Pariah in his glory, bolstered by prayers and sacrifice, wearing a crown of fire and a ring forged from the souls of a hundred berserkers.  I banished him through the pond, whose door had been stuck open since it drank of my blood.  

“It broke the ground beneath the pond and spring, and the spring sank deep underground where, to the best of my knowledge, it still rests.”

“That’s the portal in Andyr?” asked Danny.  “Just checking to make sure.”

“The pond, yes,” said Gwensyvyr.  “Kyr Argyn was built on the rift - we also used it as a silver mine for a while.  Very useful, for a newly-formed country.”  Her lips twitched up.  “Artyr also enjoyed the chance to learn silversmithing.  I do appreciate your attempts to get back the Kyp Styrryse, Lwys.  It took him a hundred years to get that good.”  She made a face.  “It was also a great aid when maintaining the pool.  Having it again would be very good.”

“Oh,” said Lewis.  “I, well, I’m working on it.  But– A hundred years?”

“Artyr died in that battle, but he did not leave .  We had three more children, after, though they were… strange.  Even now, he has not left, though he sleeps with many of the other spirits of this land.

“After we had driven off Pariah’s sons, we found the pool again.  It took time and a great deal of effort even with magic, and once we did, we were determined that no one should use it for evil ever again, and that even if all of us should die - me, and my children, who numbered three, only, at the time, and my closest friends - it should be safe.  But we could not simply bury it and leave it.  It was not yet clean and still too powerful.  So, we made nine Great Gates and nine Great Gate Keys, to guard all the paths that could reach it.  We pledged our family to the cause of safeguarding it and tending it, and we named ourselves after those gates, those doors, so we would not forget.”

Gwensyvyr paused significantly.  

“We’ve done that, haven’t we?” asked Matthew.  “Even before Uncle Leon died.”

“It was a good while before that, too, to be fair,” said Gwensyvyr.  “In truth, I think it started as early as my great-grandchildren’s time.  A hundred years of fighting with the sons and grandsons of Pariah…”  She trailed off and shook her head.  “Alys wanted peace, and thought that both sides were worn down enough that she could get it.  She married her daughter, her only child, to one of Pariah’s scions.  But Kythrin chose never to have access to the sacred pool, or take up her duties to it, and so never to become queen herself.  The throne and its duties went to her cousin, and her husband killed her and took their children to Britain, where he made a pest of himself for the rest of his natural life, despite efforts to end it prematurely.  

“One of the children came back.  We were overjoyed, but…”  Gwensyvyr’s face soured.  “Once welcomed, they used the pool to try and call up Pariah once more.

“That is when the pool and the journey andyr Kyr Argyn became so entwined with the succession.  Before that, we had helpers, who came freely.  They were not the priestesses of old, but they had some knowledge, and it made the burden easier for the family.  After… we did not trust so easily.  

“Later, many years on, Queen Arynryd saw the danger in this and founded the School of Heroes in an attempt to gather those that could be trusted.  That was the original point of it - not to be a pre-approved pool of heroic suitors to pick from to prevent inbreeding in the royal line.”  She rolled her eyes as a faint susurrus of ohs rose up around the table.  “Although, I will grant that it has been useful for that, on occasion.”

Gwensyvyr shook her head.  “After that incident, though, many of us were worried that Pariah might return, so I and some others went through the pool, and directly into a war.  I am not sure how long it lasted.  Time was strange, there, in the otherworld.  But it was Pariah and his fanatics against all other spirits, and we felt that, as his old enemies, we must join in.

“When Pariah was sealed, we returned, but we found that more than a generation had passed, and Pariah’s brood had made war on us again, and that they had even roused the Normans to do the same.  A whole…”  She paused, looking away.  “While we were gone, a whole branch of the family had been wiped out.  Only the youngest, one too young to go to war, survived.  And though King Ydmynd completed the trials, and as an adult, with a child just born, he decreed restrictions, and that no one should go into Andyr or to the pools except for the Trials.”

Gwensyvyr stared at the table.  “I did not intervene.  I thought it would be enough, as people had children, and those children wanted to take up the family task.  I thought the pool healed enough, and the gates strong enough.  It was not Ydmynd’s fault, mind.  He was young, and he’d had a harrowing time of the trials, with so many of us gone to fight Pariah in the beyond, and all his family dead.”

She paused again, giving Danny time to catch up and think about what that must have felt like, for Edmund.  To think about how every day they seemed to be getting closer to that point themselves.

“There were some benefits to the developments as well.  The decrees were not because of fear, only,” said Gwensyvyr, softly.  “Athlyng Elysyvyt was kidnapped young and educated by the Danes, who wanted to put her on the throne, but without the Trials, she had no claim to it.  We avoided long periods of regency, and the crises that come with child monarchs.  A few times, Pariah’s living fanatics were caught trying to get into Andyr.

“Then, too, not everyone followed King Ydmynd’s decrees, especially after he, in turn, died.  There were strong syvyrys in those years, too.  Even so… even so, we thought it might be best to let the living find their own way, in most cases.  There is a reason I did not stay queen after my death, though I was, clearly, still there and still visible, as magic had suffused Avlynys through the sacred pool far more in those days than it does now.  

“There were things to do, regardless.  Even in death, even with the pool behind the Great Gates, we still had to protect the island and the pool from enemies.  And…”  She sighed.  “When there were no more enemies, and we found ourselves growing weary, many of us chose to rest.  Even I cannot be everywhere at once.  I often chose to shadow my family, rather than any greater purpose and as time passed, and the pool wasn’t tended to, its power faded.  I thought that a good thing, that it was finally returning to how it used to be before my first death, but lately we find we cannot even go there, and…  Now we are here.  A thousand years of attrition and inattention later, we are here.”

“And… that’s it?” asked Danny.

Gwensyvyr spread her hands out.  “I am not going to attempt to recount the entire millennia, much less the portions of it that are in living memory.  Although maybe I should.  I always thought the nationalist movement had a little too much in common with some of the things Pariah’s fanatics got up to.”  She tapped her lips.  “And the Germans sent us a remarkable number of curses during the second of the Great Wars, despite how terrible they were at it, and despite hardly anyone being able to do that at all in the twentieth century.”

“We expelled the nationalist movement.  Their whole organization was outlawed, after the Brygytyn attacks.”

“Matthew, you know as well as I that you never entirely get rid of people like that.”

Iris raised a hand.  “So, our consensus here is that our premier pharmaceutical institution is run by deranged cultists who specifically hate our family for killing their, what, their god?  And they might be Nazis on top of that?”

“Not Nazis,” said George.  “Those were specifically German nationalists.”

“There are American Nazis, too,” pointed out Iris.

“I wouldn’t call it a consensus,” said Gwensyvyr.  “But they must, at least, be involved, and I find the timing suspicious, if he was out of that sarcophagus for any length of time.  I would say that the spirit who attacked just now was one of them, likely being punished for failing to kill you earlier, Matthew.”

“So, what do we do?” asked Danny.  He was, personally, all for going out and beating up whoever was behind all this, but he didn’t know who was behind all this.

“The Trials,” said Matthew.  “If we did them, if we got rid of whatever was blocking you, could you…  How many of our ancestors are here, awake?  Could you help?”

Gwensyvyr smiled, teeth sharp, ghostly fangs.  “We would like nothing better.”

Chapter Text

“Then we need to get ready for the trials,” said Joanna.  “We need to prepare for anything that could be down there.”

“Yes,” said Gwensyvyr, “and anything that could be missing.   The Kyp Styrryse wasn’t the only tool made to help service the pool, and many of them were kept Andyr.”  She pressed her lips together and shrugged.  “Last I knew, anyway.”

“Is there anything we could use as a substitute?” asked Matthew.  “Anything in Kyr Argyn, or the National Archives?”

“We can bring things in?” asked Eugene.  “I thought we couldn’t bring anything except the key and a ritual knife.”

“Oh, there are other things,” said Matthew, distracted.  “You could bring any weapon you want, for example, so long as it was made by a proper blacksmith with the proper methods.  There are some other things on the allowed list, too, but no one’s brought them on trial for ages.  They’re antiques, and we didn’t think they were necessary…”

“Some things,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I wouldn’t be opposed to a MacGyvered solution, either, but I think not for the trials, hm?”

Matthew shuddered.  “The traditionalists would have our heads.  Or, at least, they’d have a thousand objections to our eligibility.”

“Which, if things keep going like this, might as well be the same thing,” said Vivian, wringing her hands.  

Gwensyvyr patted Vivian on the shoulder.  “I can give a list of things that might be useful,” she said, before rattling off a list of names that Danny dutifully conveyed and Matthew wrote down on a sticky notepad he pulled from his pocket.  “Everything else has been destroyed or far misplaced.”

“Or stolen,” said Lewis, sourly.  

“Entropy, they say, it is always increasing, no?  I sit in on classes at the college, on occasion,” she added.  

“What else can we do?” demanded Iris, leaning forward, her eyes darting between Danny and Gwensyvyr - although, to her, Gwensyvyr's chair would be empty.  “There must be something else we can do.  Something for Alicia, or for–”  Iris glanced over to Vivian, but it was clear she couldn’t actually see her, either.  “Or for Vivian.  Or something we can do to fight.”

“Not… really,” said Danny.  He couldn’t think of anything short of physically going to the Revyvtech buildings and starting a fight, which he couldn’t do without leaving his family vulnerable here.  “Not other than what we were already doing with research?”

“I could show you how to use the Ghost Peeler, but I only have one of those,” offered Jazz.  

“Mom and Dad probably have other weapons,” said Danny, “but, um.  There's– there's kind of a dense population.  Out there.  Of ghosts.  So.  You'd need to clear a firing range.”

“If you tell me where, I can get everyone to move,” said Vivian.  “Or, at least, I can ask.  The vineyard, maybe?”

Danny relayed this.  

“I don’t really think we should be going out,” said Jazz.  

“Mr. Kynbaz will have a fit if we so much as step outside without forward notice and his approval,” said Matthew.  “So.  No.”

“I do believe I speak for all of us when I say we would prefer to not be shot by the kinds of things your parents were waving around during the Moon Masque,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I have no personal experience with guns.  But while they may slap, they aren’t allowed in the Trial.  Save if I have missed a great deal more change than I thought.  Only weapons made by proper smiths are allowed in.”

“That’s right, and Jack is…  Ahem.  Not that,” said Irene, primly.  “Other qualities aside.”

Danny bit his lip.  This wasn’t the time for an argument.  

“I can talk to the museum - my museum, the public museum, not the one at Kyr Argyn - about some of these things,” said Lewis, pointing at the list Matthew had written up.  “They’re mostly technically on loan from our family, anyway.”

“You would?  That makes things easier,” said Matthew, sliding the list over.  “I’ll also send notice about what we’ve learned to the First Shadow and the other investigators.  But other than that…  Honored ancestor, what can we do?”

“Prepare for the Trials the best you can,” said Gwensyvyr.  She folded her hands and propped her chin on them, smiling with a bit of mischief.  “I hear that some of you have yet to make your personal seals.”

Danny made a face at her.  “Is that really necessary?”

“As necessary as having all of the family present,” said Gwensyvyr.  “Even if it didn’t have ritual significance, it is tradition.  Even I had a sigil.”

“What is it?” asked Matthew.  

“Personal seals,” said Danny. 

“Already have one sketched out,” said Lewis, quickly, with a vague air of panic.  “Northpoint compass circling, with eye, lesser cup, with two paintbrushes in it, with a door on a half-checked half-lozenged background, split vertically.  I’d kind of be a terrible excuse for an artist if I didn’t, right?”

“George and I do, too,” said Iris, with the sort of tone someone might take if confronted with a chore they’d been nagged about.  “We were waiting to earn apples before we registered them officially, but we can just replace them with apple blossoms.”

“Oh, that sounds wonderful,” said Joanna.  “Wonderful.  Wonderful,” she repeated for a third time.  Then, she turned her gaze on the rest of them.  “You all still need personal seals.”

“If you are settled there,” said Gwensyvyr, floating up from her chair.  “I must go, to rally the rest of the family, and any who will come to our banner.  I will return before your trials, never fear.”

“Oh, wait,” said Danny, “I need to ask you something.  Um.  In private.  If that’s okay?”  He looked at the rest of the family, cringing slightly.  “It’s a personal question.”

“That’s alright,” said Joanna.  “I think we have our own chores.  Eugene, will you help me put the books together again?  After that– that thing, in the phone, I’m not sure where they went…”

Matthew sighed.  “We do all have our own things to do.”

“The museum,” said Lewis, raising a phone.  And– Danny wasn’t actually sure he’d seen that one before.  “It’s my work phone.”

“We can help you three come up with ideas,” offered George.  “And Danny, when he comes back.”

“Sure,” said Jazz.  “Do you need me…?” 

Danny shook his head.

“There’s your answer, then.  Come along then,” said Gwensyvyr, taking loose hold of Danny’s wrist and leading him away, to a smaller room.  It looked like it might have been Martin’s office, when he was living here.  “What is wrong?  Eyes less sharp than my own may not see, but you’ve been sweating bullets since I mentioned ritual significance.  Is that a problem?”

“It was before that, actually.  I, um.  So.  What you said about, um.  Okay.  All of the family?  How important is it that all of the family is here?  And is it…  Does it count, like illegitimate children?”

It was hard to overstate just how dead-eyed a stare a ghost could give, especially one who’d been dead for most of a millenia.”

“Dannyl, beloved descendant…  Do I have another descendant I do not know of?  Has dear Madlyn had another child and us all unawares?  Or dear Alysha?”

“What?  No way, Mom loves Dad,” said Danny.  “They’re crazy, but they’re crazy together, and if you were watching, you know what Aunt Alicia was like during the divorce.”

“Then– You are rather young, I think, especially in this day and age, but–”

“No,” said Danny, quickly.  “No.  Nothing like that.  It’s just.  It’s hard to explain.  That’s just.  That’s the closest analogy I could, you know, come up with.”  He paused, trying to figure out how to explain.  His eyes slid away.  

Gwensyvyr leaned forward, floating slightly, and took Danny’s face in both hands and gently turned his face so he was looking her in the eye.  “Dannyl, love.  What is it you do not want to tell me?”

Danny swallowed, feeling cornered.  “I–  What do you know about clones?”

Gwensyvyr blinked.  “My.  The future is an amazing thing, isn’t it?  You’ve been cloned?  Did Madlyn…?”

“What?  No, they wouldn’t do something like that.  It was this guy who–  Well, he’s sort of a syvyr, too, I guess, he’s like me, but he’s a total fruitloop.  He’s crazy.  Wants Mom to leave Dad and marry him, have me as a son…  It’s a whole stupid thing.  And he cloned me.  Sort of cloned me.  The science is–  I don’t know.  Her name is Danielle.  I’ve… We’ve sort of been calling each other cousins.”

“That… That is quite a…”  She fell silent.  “From a legal point of view, she has not been officially recognized by an adult…   This is true?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  

“Then, from a legal point of view, there is no problem.  From my point of view…  Where is she now?  Still with this strange man?”

“No, she left him, but, um, I’m… not completely sure where she is now.  She kind of ran off and didn’t tell us where she was going.”

“She… ran off.”

“She’s fast, okay?  And I didn’t expect it.”

Gwensyvyr tugged at the end of one of her braids.  “You will bring her here, yes?  After this is done.  We shall not have a member of Hys Dyryse without a house.”

“Right,” said Danny.  “I wanted to, it’s just…”

“She ran off.  Yes, yes,” said Gwensyvyr.  “What did you say this man’s name was?  The one who cloned you?”

Chapter Text

“I only just made my seal,” Vivian was saying, when Danny came back to the dining room.  Matthew, Irene, and Lewis had left.  She was leaning over Leo’s shoulder.  “It’s part of the reason Uncle Martin had the books here.”

“What was it?  Your seal.” asked Danny.  

“Scroll wrapped around the trunk of the sacred tree, nine eyes in the branches, for the island, violets below, bracketing doors, ascending slashed background.”

“She h-has Sy Syga Arynryde ekyn Yneé written on the scroll,” said Leo, his voice only wavering a little.  

“Only the first part,” said Vivian.  “The first sentence.  A signet ring isn’t big enough for more.”

“She’s a nerd.  She’s still a nerd.”  He was tearing up.  Danny averted his eyes.  

“Alright!” said Joanna, reentering the dining room.  Eugene began carefully shuffling a stack of loosely bound papers into the center of the table, spreading them out evenly.  “Now, this is a rush job, so I took out some of the pre-made bases - we commissioned them for emergencies, or grandfather did - and we can customize them… personalize them…  Your next version, you can make them just how you like, if there’s a particular tree you want to model… Or a pond…”

Jazz picked up one of the pages.  “How are we supposed to customize them?”

“Different outlines, different backgrounds, different symbols.  All of them have different meanings.  I thought I wanted to study this, once, you know,” she said, almost wistfully.  She pushed a book over to Jazz.  “When I was younger.  In middle school, I think.  It didn’t work out.”

“Some seal symbols are regulated,” said Eugene.  “Anyone can register a personal seal, but if you try to claim a symbol that you aren’t entitled to, you’ll be rejected.”  He tugged on his ear a little sheepishly.  “I never really put together a seal because I don’t have much to put on one.”  

“Like apples,” said George.  “You need to be a medical professional to have apples in your design.  If you’re a medical student, or premed, you do apple blossoms and replace them later.”

“Yes, exactly,” said Joanna.  “The base you have now, Jazz, the branches are arranged like this so that you can put various things in the gaps.  Traditionally, if you have a flower name, you put one of them in your design, somewhere.  So, you’d do a jasmine flower, at least.  Then, anything else you’d put in would be related to your interests, values, or accomplishments.”

“Or things that represent the family,” said Eugene.  “Like, we usually put at least one door outline in the background.”  He traced a shape in the air, a vertical rectangle with a half circle on top.  “Some people use them as rays from a sun or moon, or they do a row of doors all together.  Grandpa did that.”

“There’s a list of symbols here,” said Joanna, pushing Herydy Avlynyse across the table to Jazz, “and this” she said, indicating Catalogue of Personal Seals of the House of Dyrys, or, Lyst Sygele yf sy Hys Dyryse, “is examples from our family in particular.  Oh, Iris, George, you two should have ascending slashed backgrounds, shouldn’t you?”

“That’s a little premature, don’t you think?” asked Iris, raising an eyebrow.  “Besides, we’re mirroring.  We’re twins.”

“Ascending–?”

“Represents royal majesty, sovereignty, and justice,” said Eugene.  “Judges use it, and lawyers, but so do the heirs, sometimes.”

“Danny,” said Joanna, “you have some interesting options, since you, well.  You’re a syvyr.  Publicly recognized.  That means you’re entitled to use a star.  Four, five, or seven-pointed, not six, those are for Avlynyse Jews.”

“I thought the four-pointed ones were for, like, the poet laureate,” said Iris.  

“And the five-pointed ones were for scientists,” said George.  “I know that Dr. Fyr had one when I interned with them.”

“The rules for using them have changed,” said Joanna.  “I suppose it just seemed like a shame to have them and not use them.  Writing and science are…  not magic, I suppose, but…  You can see where they were coming from.  No one has used a seven-pointed star since then, though.  No Avlynyse astronauts, I’m afraid.”

“It’s– It’s for astronauts?”

“It would be for astronauts, if we had any,” said Joanna.  

“I couldn’t.  I–”  He really wasn’t much of a scientist or a poet.  “I wouldn’t want to claim something I’m not.”

“You wouldn’t be, the stars were for syvyrys before they were for anything else.”

“You’ve technically been to space before, anyway, haven’t you?” asked Jazz from behind the book she was looking at.  

Iris looked up from the piece of paper she was doodling on to stare.  “What is your life?”

“Complicated,” said Danny.  

“When did you go to space?  How did you go to space?”

“I–  Okay, so it was sort of illegal,” said Danny.  “I don’t–  It’s a long story.”   A long, embarrassing story.

“You’re going to have to tell some of these stories at some point,” said Iris.  “It sounds like you’re running around doing, I don’t know, superhero things.”

“I mean, you get superpowers…”  Danny shrugged.  

“You’re also entitled to a dagger - you used it in a real fight and defeated your foe.”

“Jazz should have the Ghost Peeler, then.” 

“I’m not putting the Ghost Peeler on here.”

“There has to be some kind of record of use, too, I’m afraid,” said Joanna.  “I’m sure you’ve done it, I’m sure, but if there’s no record…”

“It’s fine,” said Jazz.  “Iris, do you have a pencil?  I have some ideas.  A moon, I think.”

“That can have a number of meanings,” said Joanna, brightly.  “Serenity, imagination, entry to another world.”

“I know,” said Jazz, “but I think I like the secrecy one the best.  Here, Danny, I think you’d like this one.”  She snagged a design from the pile.  It was minimalist, the base of the tree merging straight into a spiral that represented the pond, the branches splitting to cup the top quarter of the circle.  “You could put the star up here and then bells on the branches.”

“Bells?”

“For spirituality,” said Jazz.  “Lanterns can also be about spirituality, but they’re also about leadership, metaphorically showing the way.”

“I’m not really… okay, I’m spiritual, but is that part of my personality?”

“Does… it have to be?”

“I… don’t think so?” said Joanna.  “It can be about personality, but it’s more about what you can do.”

“You should both do a ring compass around the outside,” said Joanna.  “Since you live outside the country, usually, and all our backgrounds should be half-checked for grief.”

“Hm,” said Danny, picturing that.  “I still don’t know about the star…”

“You want it,” said Jazz.  

“Well, yeah, but do I deserve–?”

“Yes,” said everyone.

“You can do eyes on the compass points,” suggested Vivian.  “The checks can be on the bottom half, but not behind the pond’s spiral, then it’ll look like the ground.”

“You should have a door, too,” said Leo.  “At least one.  Maybe radiating doors from the star?  I think that would look good.”

“And you should have at least one of the secondary symbols doubled, because you’re the second child,” said Vivian.  “The bells, probably?”

“And you can have them hanging from ribbons - the knots can mean different things, too, can’t they?”

“Yeah!” said Vivian.  “They can, if you can make them clear enough on a seal.  You could have the dagger hanging from the other branch, like this.”  She took the pencil from Jazz and started laying out lines.  “You could have a shield, too, for defense, to even it out.”

“Oh, that looks cool!” said Leo.  

“Wait,” said Danny.  “Here, wait a second.  Let me put together some parts of this.”

“It– The– The final part will be put together by– By the artists we’ve commissioned,” said Joanna, sounding faint.  

Danny looked up, concerned.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” whispered Joanna.  “I’m fine.”

Danny followed her gaze.  Straight to Vivian.  “Oh,” he said.  He looked at Leo.  He was staring through Vivian with a crushed expression on his face.  Vivian herself was looking down at her hand as if it had betrayed her, the pencil lying underneath it.

“She was there for just a minute,” said Jazz.  “That was…  Different.”

Danny licked his lower lip.  “I’m– We’re going to fix this.  Once the portal in Andyr is fixed, you shouldn’t have such a hard time being seen.”  He looked over to Jazz.  “Are there any symbols that mean determination?”

“I’m sure I can find one.”

“Crossed ribbons,” said Vivian, “and if you want to make a promise, you use a ring.”

Danny looked her in the eye.  “I’ll do that.”

Chapter Text

Danny wound up picking a different base, in what might have been an attempt to reassert some control over what was going on.  It was still on the simpler side, with the pond represented by gentle spirals that reminded him of the swirling surface of the portal back home, and the ring - Jazz said the proper term in English was annulet - rested on the surface of the water, around the central spiral.  

He’d made one other change to the design the others had suggested.  Amity Park was too important to him to leave it out entirely - even if he still hadn’t given Sam and Tucker a full explanation of why he hadn’t come home yet.  

(Thank goodness they didn’t watch news about royalty in small Northern European countries.  Although, he normally would have expected Sam’s parents to have heard something…  He wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.)

So, he’d put a raven on the fork of the tree’s branches.  It was the mascot for Casper High, after all.  Then, while Leo attempted to draw a fiddly little ‘friendship knot’ in its beak, Jazz had looked up what ravens actually meant in Avlynyse Heraldry.  Learning that the more common meanings included ‘spiritual messenger’ and ‘oracle’ almost made him back out, but he liked ‘trickster’ and ‘watchful for friends’ meanings.  

Then, Joanna told Leo to stop trying to do the knot, since it would be too small on that scale, anyway and… it was done.  Finished.  

“Yours looks good, too,” said Danny, pointing at Leo’s.  He’d drawn a lion and a goat in stylized profile to either side of his tree, and a skyline of Argyntyn in the background.  

“Thanks.  It’s not too much?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve always worried about the lion, but it is part of my name, isn’t it?”

“Okay, is everyone ready?” asked Joanna.  “We’ve got to send them off as soon as possible.”

Danny passed his paper over, and after a moment of agonizing, so did Leo.  

“Thank you, thank you, and we ought to start thinking about dinner,” continued Joanna.  She gathered the rest of the papers and hurried out of the room.  

“Where,” said Danny.  “Where is she going, if we can’t leave right now?”

“There’s a basket for mail near the front door,” said George.  “Mr. Kynbaz sends someone to fetch it in the mornings.”

“There is?” asked Iris.  

“You’d know if you didn’t make me do the mail all the time.”

“It isn’t as if there’s a lot of it,” said Iris.  

“Mhm,” said Danny, whose thoughts had already skipped ahead to dinner.  “So–”

“Hello, everyone,” said Matthew, who looked much more tired than he had a few hours previous.  Lewis trailed behind him, just as worn.  “Made any progress?”

“Yes,” said Jazz, standing.  “We all just finished, Joanna’s putting them in the mail.  Where’s Irene?”

“She’s talking to her sister on the phone,” said Matthew.  “Her side of the family is worried, too.  She’ll be out in a moment.  Or an hour.  I’m never quite sure…”  He shook his head and sat down.  “Jack and Maddie will be back tonight.  I thought I should, ah, warn all of you.  They’ve satisfied security that they aren’t going to draw weapons, but they’re still upset.”

“If you want to make sure that they aren’t going to draw weapons, you’re going to have to search their room and the luggage,” said Jazz.  

“We did,” said Matthew.  “Right after the masque.”

“They’re good at hiding things,” said Danny.  “That’s why the security system is the way it is.”

“I hate to ask,” said Iris.

“It’s hidden in the walls and floors,” said Jazz.  

“Well, if you think it will help, feel free to look, but Mr. Kynbaz is very thorough.”

Danny made a face.  “Help is probably the wrong word.”

“Mm, so it is,” said Matthew, pinching the bridge of his nose.  “I’m sorry about the situation I’ve put you in.  It wasn’t strictly fair to Maddie, either.  In other circumstances–  But they shouldn’t have brought all those extra weapons, and I was worried about how they would react to you.”

“They wouldn’t hurt me or anything,” said Danny.  

“But you’re still afraid of telling them.  There’s always a reason for things like that.”

Danny shifted uncomfortably.  “What are we going to do for dinner?” he asked, instead.  

Matthew sighed.  “We can order take out,” he said, “but considering that someone is trying to poison us…”

Iris, who had started to slouch, sat up straight.  “Danny, did you check the food?  After you did the medicine?”

“Crap,” said Danny.  

.

Members of royal families rarely made good chefs, no matter how many of them there were, and the addition of Danny phasing his hands through everything as various ghosts watched didn’t help matters all that much.  

“You know,” said Danny passing over a hunk of cheese, “there’s a nonzero chance that me doing this so many times will make something come to life.”

“Like what happened in the pond?” asked Leo.  “In Gwensyvyr’s story?”

“Yeah, something like that,” said Danny.  

“It’s not very likely,” said Jazz, glaring into the fridge.  “I can do something with this.”

“This isn’t poisonous, but it is kind of moldy,” said Danny, throwing the next thing into the trash.   

“We haven’t really done a real clean-up since we got here,” said Matthew, who was more supervising than helping.  Danny didn’t blame him.

“Listen, George and I cook for ourselves all the time, at school.”

“Do you, though?” asked Lewis.  “Look, we haven’t been poisoned by what we’ve been getting all month, and we knew that poison was involved then, too.”

“But we didn’t know it was in our medicine before,” pointed out Iris.  “Doesn’t make you feel just a little more cautious.  Just, you know, follow our lead.”

“What are you all doing?” asked Joanna from the doorway.

Danny looked down at the orange juice in his hands, then looked up, just in time to join the chorus of, “Dinner?”

Joanna sighed.  “Eugene, help me.  Danny…”

“I’m checking for poison.”

“Keep going, then.  The rest of you, you don’t need to be here.  I’ll take care of dinner.”

“Jo–”

“I’m not able to do anything with politics or investigation or–”  Her hands fluttered.  “But I can do this.  Go on, then.”

.

Danny finished setting the table and glanced in the general direction of the entryway. Any minute now, his parents would come through the door.

Any minute.

Vivian flew through the wall.  “They’re coming,” she warned.  

Danny braced himself.  In the front hall, there was a bang as the door slammed into the wall, with force.  

“Danny!” called Maddie.  “Jazz!  Get packed, we’re leaving.”

Danny exchanged a glance with Vivian, then they ran towards the entryway.  

“What do you mean, we’re leaving?” demanded Jazz.  “Leave and go where?”

“A hotel, for now,” said Maddie.  “Jack, will you–?”

“Right-o!” said Jack, bounding away for the second story.  

“What are you talking about?” said Irene.  “You’re leaving to go to a hotel when there’s someone picking our family off one by one?”

“We’d be leaving for America, if the airports weren’t closed,” snapped Maddie. 

“I can’t believe you–”

“I can’t believe you,” hissed Maddie.  “I can’t believe any of you.  Danny, Jazz, go get packed.”

Danny looked at Jazz.  Jazz had her jaw clenched and her shoulders squared.  “No,” she said.  

“Jazz–”

“I’m not going anywhere, and you can’t make me,” said Jazz.

“I’m your mother, so I can.”

“Maddie, the trials–” started Matthew.

“I don’t care about the trials.”

“Please, be reasonable–”

“A ghost attacked you, and you arrest me and my husband?  You separate us from our children?  You fill their heads with nonsense?  You– You expect me to be reasonable, Matthew?”

“It’s not nonsense,” said Irene.  “The ancestors–”

“It’s nonsense.  I’ve had enough of this.  Jazz, get packed or we’ll leave it behind.  Danny, you too.”

“Maddie, we understand your beliefs are different from ours,” said Matthew, “but this isn’t about just belief, this is for the good of our family and country–”

“If you cared about our family, you wouldn’t go on about the so-called ancestors.  You wouldn’t let your children believe this?”  She gestured at Iris and George, who had come to stand in the doorway.  “God, Matthew, what if they died and came back as ghosts?  What if they come back like Vivian did, ready to kill you?”

Matthew stiffened.  “What do you mean ‘like Vivian?’  Vivian didn’t try to kill me, that was a false face–”

“They’re all false faces.  This is what I’m trying to tell you!”

“What, that Vivian - that any of us - would become evil just because we died?  Ghosts aren’t like that–”

“Which of us went to school for ectology?  Not you!

“Neither of us!  That’s not a real thing you can go to school for–”  

Maddie threw up her hands.  “This– This is what I mean, you don’t listen, you don’t see, you don’t care, you’re just regurgitating lies because they make you feel better.  This is just like Great Uncle Charlie’s last rites–”

“You weren’t even at Uncle Charlie’s last rites–”

“Talking about joining the ancestors– It isn’t true, it just makes it easier for ghosts to get to you, lowers your guard–”

“You wouldn’t stay in the room, and he kept asking for you–”

“He wasn’t asking for me, he was asking for Great Aunt Magda–”

“How would you even know, you left–”

“I couldn’t stand listening to that drivel for one more minute.  He was dying, and you were wasting his last minutes.  And you’re trying to– to lure Jazz and Danny into that, too.  Into doing these stupid, dangerous things, believing these things about ghosts that will get them hurt, the way my parents were hurt, the way that everyone has been hurt, and you want them down in those tunnels?  Of course I left.  Of course we’re leaving.”

Matthew took a deep breath.  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, into the dead silence.  “But this isn’t about that.  We haven’t been trying to–”  He groped for the words.  “Convert anyone.”

“You went on national television and told everyone that Danny could do magic, Matthew.  How do you think that’s going to affect the rest of his life?  Danny, Jazz, get packed.  Jack!  What’s taking so long?”

“I can’t find our stuff!”

Maddie looked sharply at Matthew.  “Did you–?”

“When would I even have the time?” asked Matthew.  “I’m trying to run a country from my bedroom.”

“Then you had Kynbaz do it.  Don’t play with me.  Jazz–”

“We aren’t going.  The trials–”

“Don’t talk to me about the trials!  You’re not doing the trials!”

“I’ve been reading the laws, you can’t make us leave when we’re preparing for the trials, even if we’re minors.  It’s to prevent regents and other guardians from keeping heirs from qualifying for the throne in the favor of other candidates.”

“Iris and George are the heirs.”

“We’re just as close to the throne as they are,” said Jazz.  

“You–”

“Maybe you would know that, if you hadn’t left,” said Irene.  

“Irene!”

Irene didn’t look sorry.  

“You–” said Maddie.  “You don’t have any right to talk to me like that.  You only married into this family!”

“And you tried to marry out of it,” said Irene.  “Not that you had very far to go, if you were walking out in the middle of your uncle’s last rites!”

“Maddie–  Irene–”

“Maddie, can you help me find everything?  I’ve only got three of our blasters!”

“Oops,” muttered Jazz.  

Maddie sent a glare at Danny and Jazz.  “You had better be ready to go when we get back downstairs.”  She pushed past Matthew, then Irene and the twins.  

Joanna, standing a good ways down the hallway, near the kitchen doors, raised a pot, a strained smile on her face.  “Dinner?”

Chapter Text

Danny followed Jazz’s example and didn’t get packed.  

They sat down for a very uncomfortable dinner.  The soup was nice, but the possibility of Maddie and Jack coming down the stairs cast a pall over whatever enjoyment they might have derived from it.  So did the bumping and scraping sounds from above.

“I think they’re in the bathroom,” said Leo, looking up.  

“Just ignore it,” said Lewis.  

“What if they just leave?” asked Danny.

“Well, like Jazz said, they can’t just take you,” said Irene.  “Not now.  But, honestly, Matthew, they’re so unstable.  There are procedures for this.”

“They’re not unstable,” said Danny, unfortunately used to this kind of thing.  “They’re just– They have different opinions than most people.”

“I’m not calling CPS on Maddie and Jack,” said Matthew.  “It’d be an abuse of power, first of all.”

“It’s a stressful situation,” said Jazz.

“Yes,” said Iris, “and look at all the rest of us, not freaking out.”

“Secondly,” continued Matthew, “Maddie and Jack aren’t going to leave.  It’s a security risk.”

“So?” asked Jazz.  “I don’t think that will stop them.”

“Maybe not,” said Matthew, grimly.  “But Mr. Kynbaz will.  He won’t want to split his people anymore more than they already are.”

Danny wasn’t surprised.  It was the same thing he was worried about.  If his parents really went to a hotel, with or without him, he couldn’t protect both groups.  Although, maybe Gwensyvyr or Vivian could help, if they kept growing stronger.  

“I’m kind of surprised that he isn’t worried about us all being in one place.”

“Oh, he is, but he’s run a risk assessment, and since it’s all been poison so far, and not things like dropping bombs, he thinks this is better.”  Matthew waved his hand and then laid down his spoon to run a hand over his face.  “I still have work.  Thank you, Joanna, for dinner.  Please get me if anything happens with Maddie…  Although I suppose I’ll hear it, if it does.”

He stood up and left the room.  He didn’t seem to go up the stairs, or at least he went too quietly for Danny to hear.  The office, then.

“We won’t be bothering him,” said Irene.  “Ancestors grant that he’ll take a nap in there.”

Danny looked around the room at the ancestors that were present… and who seemed just as at a loss as the living.  

Then, there were footsteps on the stairs.  Familiar ones.

“Where’s Matthew?”

“Working,” said Irene.  “Running a country and keeping a family together is hard work, you see.”

Maddie scoffed.  “It is, but that’s not what he’s doing.  Jazz, Danny…”  She looked angry enough to spit.  “Unfortunately, the hotels won’t take us, so we’re stuck here until the airports aren’t blocked by dictatorial fiat.”

“Didn’t America close its airports during nine eleven?” asked Iris.

“That’s a bit different,” said Jack.  

“I think the total population percentages work out about the same, actually.”

“No they don’t.”

“Lewis, can you look it up?”

“But while we are stuck here,” Maddie said, loudly, “our children will not be talking to any of you.  You are not to speak to any of them, especially not about ghosts or trials, which they will not be taking.  You won’t even look at them.  Not if you still somehow think ghosts are good after they’ve killed half our family.”

“Maddie,” said Joanna, doing a valiant job of holding back tears, “Maddie, the house isn’t big enough.”

“This place is huge.  I’m sure you’ll figure out a way.  Danny.  Jazz.  Bed.”

Danny and Jazz exchanged a glance, during which they decided that it was better to just go along with what their parents wanted.

With awkward shrugs, they left the table and followed Maddie up.  

“I'm serious about not talking to them,” said Maddie.  “I know they're family.  I know.  But their ideas are dangerous, and you've already been hurt.  As soon as we can, we're going back home where no one knows who we're related to.”

“That didn't help Aunt Alicia,” Jazz pointed out.  “We’re in danger at home, too.”

Maddie didn't answer right away.  “Fentonworks has better security.  And no one in Amity is pressuring you into participating in some dangerous superstitious ritual.”

“You haven't heard about what the ectology club does at school, then,” said Danny before he could stop himself. 

“There's an ectology club?” asked Jack.  “Why haven't we heard about it?!”

“Because of their questionable research practices obviously.  Don't try to distract us.  I'm sure Matthew has good intentions,” she continued, sounding like she'd rather pull her own teeth than admit anything of the sort, “but he's been brainwashed and I refuse to see you two dragged into it.”

“We aren't being brainwashed .”

“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to call it, when they’ve convinced you to do this, to fight with us over this, after you’ve been alone with them for only a couple of days!”  She turned around in the hallway and threw her hands out to either side.  “I’m not even saying they’re doing it on purpose, but they’ve bought into hundreds and hundreds of years of lies, and I refuse to let them infect you, too.  If they give it up, then– Then we’ll see.”  She turned around again and, with her back to them, she rubbed her face.  “Just, go to bed.  We’ll talk more about this in the morning.”

“Mom–”

“You should probably start spending more time on your homework than socializing, anyway,” Maddie said, speaking over Jazz.  “Especially you, Danny.”

“I’m keeping up,” muttered Danny.  At least, he was keeping up as well as could be expected. 

“This is ridiculous,” said Jazz.  “We’re all going to be in the same house.  All our food is in the kitchen.  There has to be a way to compromise–”

“Don’t argue with me about this,” said Maddie.  “Your father and I are the experts.”

Jazz pursed her lips, then shook her head and went into her room.  Danny followed suit, unwilling to stick around and wind up in another argument. 

Well.  

He wasn’t going to go to bed now.  It was too early.  He sat down on the edge of his bed and picked up his phone.  At that same moment, it started ringing.  Sam’s name came up on the screen.  He winced.  He’d been checking in regularly… or at least he thought he had. 

“Hello?”

“Where are you right now?”

“Uhh, my room in the family house?”

“Which country?”

Oh, Danny didn’t like where this was going.  “Avlynys.  You know that.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.  “My parents think that watching news about foreign royalty is passé, but they have friends who do, anyway.  It’d be hypocritical of me to be mad about you keeping it a secret, considering, but why didn’t you tell us after?”

Danny didn’t ask her if she meant after his Accident, or after he and Tucker found out that she was wealthy.  It didn’t really matter, anyway.  “Because it wasn’t just my secret,” said Danny, “and because Mom never did anything with her trusts or the family money after college.  We were normal, except for who we’re related to.  Normal-adjacent.  You know what I mean.”

“You’re part of a country’s royal family.”

“A small country’s royal family.  And because of title attenuation, my grandchildren won’t even have titles.”

“I don’t think that changes anything.”

“Sure it does.  They won’t be noble at all, technically speaking.”

“You’re dodging the point.”

Danny let himself collapse backwards onto the bed.  “Yeah, I guess I am.  It just wasn’t all that important to me when we met,” he said, finally, “and then it would’ve been weird to bring up.  It still wasn’t all that important until this.  Everyone has relatives with weird jobs.”

“Being king is more than just a weird job.  It’s– this isn’t why I called.  Did your cousin really out your ghost powers on television?  Because I’m willing to believe that the captions here are wrong.”

“Well, I wouldn’t describe it like that, exactly…”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.  It’s fine.  It’s just that the situation over here is really complicated and–”

“Dannyl.”

Danny yelped as Gwensyvyr phased through the wall.  He fumbled his phone.  “Sorry, sorry, one minute.”

“Danny?  You okay?  Danny?”

“I’m fine, just jumpscared by the ghost of a relative.”

“One of the ones who died?” asked Sam.  

“I mean… Not recently?”

“Sorry, stupid question.  Are you–?”

“Yeah, I have to go.  But I’m fine, everything is fine, I’m working things out, things will be fine.”

“That doesn’t sound fine.”

“Really, I have to go.”

“Okay, but I do expect an explanation at some point.”

Danny turned towards Gwensyvyr, dropping his phone on the bed next to him.  “Sorry,” he said again.  “What is it?”

“I have been thinking,” said Gwensyvyr, “about this rich man, your enemy, Plasmius.”

“What about him?” asked Danny.  “He’s probably not going to get into the country.  I mean, he could, he could fly across the ocean, but he likes throwing his money at things, so he probably won’t.”

“Not that,” said Gwensyvyr, her braids swaying as she shook her head.  “It has occurred to me, an enemy like this, like him, can be turned into an asset.”

Danny frowned, but leaned forward.  “How?”

Chapter Text

Because Danny's life was a joke, he had Vlad's number saved to his phone.  

The man had beaten him up, kidnapped him, tortured him, cloned him, and had professed a strong desire to kill his Dad - not to mention a desire for homicide in general - but there he was on Danny's contact list.  It was ridiculous.  But having a way to contact the fruitloop was too useful for Danny to just delete or block him.  

For example, this situation.  

“Are you sure about this?” asked Danny scrolling down to ‘F’ for ‘Fruitloop.’  “He's kind of like rats.  Once he gets into somewhere, he's a pain to get rid of.”

“I'm unclear what is stopping him now, if so,” said Gwensyvyr.  “As you said, he can fly, can he not?”

“I…”  Danny frowned down at his phone.  “Personal comfort?  Here to Britain is pretty long.  And cold.  And he might want to be here in his civilian persona, not just as a ghost.  I think that's most likely, really.”

“Ah, he keeps that secret, then?”

“Yeah,” said Danny.  “Otherwise my parents would probably kill him, and he loves flirting with Mom.”

“Then I think he should not be so hard to handle, after all.  We shall use him.”  She nodded decisively.  “And if he should forget his place and proposition your mother so brazenly, we shall simply kill him.”

“Okay,” said Danny, looking up from his phone.  “I think- I think that's going a little far, actually.”

“As short-sighted as Madlyn is, she is a lady, and one of my descendants,” said Gwensyvyr.  “No one should take liberties, unless she wills it.”  She paused.  “But the killing was, in this case, metaphorical.”

Danny squinted at her.  He couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.  

“Go on, then.  Call this poorly behaved and very wealthy lunatic of yours.”

“He’s not my anything.  He’s not even my archenemy.”

Gwensyvyr, floating as if lying down on something, propped her head on her knuckles.  “Oh?  Who is?  Pariah Dark?”

“That, um…  No.  I only fought the guy the one time, so…”  He shook his head, suddenly embarrassed by the whole thing and not wanting to admit that his archenemy was Dash .  “It’s not anyone you’d know.  It’s stupid.”  He pressed the call button, then the speakerphone button, so Gwensyvyr could hear.  

The phone rang.

.

Vlad Masters was not a man used to being stymied. 

What few doors his prodigious wealth could not open, his ghost powers allowed him to bypass entirely.  Not to mention his dashing good looks and charming personality.  

And yet, stymied he was.   

He shouldn’t have been, by his own calculations.  Avlynys wasn’t any richer than any other tiny European country, and should have been just as ripe for bribery.  However, it seemed impervious.  At least, on the part of official channels that would have allowed him to exist within the country publicly - and pursue his courtship of dear Madeline.

(Surely, her family couldn’t approve of Jack.  The man was a boar.  A common boar.  Meanwhile, Vlad had both refinement and wealth.)

There were likely dozens of smugglers of the underclass that would take him to the islands, of course, as even under the current circumstances people still needed to eat and other necessities still had to be imported or exported.  He didn’t care about those.  If he wanted to get to Avlynys on the sly, he could just fly over on his own.

He was tempted to overshadow the officials involved, but considering that the injunction on travel came from the highest levels of the Avlynysan government, and that the Avlynysan government was very small, and also in regular contact with the few people who could reliably identify an overshadowing… and although Vlad was seventy percent sure that the heir presumptive to the throne, Matthew Dyrys, didn’t truly believe that Daniel had any special powers, well…  There was always the chance that after the incident with the ghost, he would take Daniel more seriously than most adults would take a teenager.  

But he wasn’t entirely out of options.  A man like himself never was.  As he’d said, certain necessities were still moving in and out of the country, and Avlynys had businessmen as well.  People who could make the argument that he could provide vital services, and who could pressure the appropriate politicians.  However, the price was sure to be steep, and the process would be a lengthy one.  

It was annoying.  

More annoying was the fact that his contact, a representative of the French branch of an Avlynysan company, was late.  They should treat someone like Vlad with more courtesy.  He wasn’t at all used to being kept waiting.  

He checked his watch again and wondered, with a malice so practiced that it was almost idle, if the man was conducting some sort of power play, or if he was just incompetent.  Perhaps, after this, he would put some effort into ruining him.  

“Excuse me, Mr. Masters?”  The one asking was a relatively young blond man with flyaway, slightly thinning hair, broad shoulders, and an accent Vlad was coming to recognize as Avlynysan.

“Ah,” said Vlad, looking up and smiling politely.  “You must be Mr… Ambeej?  Am I pronouncing that correctly?”  His eyes slid pointedly to the blond man’s companion, a middle-aged woman with pearly white hair and watery eyes.  

“Ymbyge,” said the blond man, who flashed a quick smile back at Vlad.  “But don’t worry, no one gets it right on the first try.  Please, call me Christian  I’m sorry for how late I am, but I was consulting with my German counterpart, Ms. Shoenhauer.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said the woman.  Her accent was German.  

“You’re not Avlynysan?”

“Avlynyse,” interjected Mr. Ymbyge. 

“We are an international company, Mr. Masters,” said Ms. Shoenhauer, sitting at the table and smoothing the tablecloth in front of her.  “But my family has had much to do with Avlynys in the past.  It is very important to us.”

“I see,” said Vlad.  

“So!” said Mr. Ymbyge.  “What did you want to talk about?  There’s been a lot of interest in our little country recently, but you stand out even with that…”

Of course Vlad stood out.  His business had nothing to do with the assassinations and the recent international commotion and everything to do with his long-standing personal interest in Maddie and Daniel.  

“I was close with Princess Madeline in college,” said Vlad.  It was something that anyone with a brain should have researched already, but he knew that it would also make helping him a much more attractive proposition for people like these.  “I want to offer her all the help I can during this trying time, whether it be emotional, financial or political, but as it stands, it is very difficult to offer such things when I am stuck here.”  He shrugged, projecting - literally, with ghost powers - an air of self-depreciation.  

“Wow, that’s sure something,” said Mr. Ymbyge.  “But–”

Vlad’s phone rang.  “A moment.”  He could make power-plays as well.  They were, in fact, his favorite game.  Besides, it would do well for these two to know where they stood.

The caller ID displayed the words ‘LITTLE BADGER.’  What was Daniel doing, calling him?  Based on Daniel’s normal behavior, Vlad would have expected Daniel to practically forget that Vlad existed.  

Unless, of course, he’d gotten in over his head.  

“Excuse me,” said Vlad, barely glancing at Mr. Ymbyge and Ms. Shoenhauer.  “I have to take this.”  He stepped away from the table and towards the restaurant's lavish bathrooms.  As soon as he was out of sight, he turned invisible and flew up.  No need to risk eavesdroppers.  

He let the phone ring a third time.  No need to let Daniel think he was rushing.

.

Vlad picked up the phone.

“Oh, Daniel, to what do I owe the pleasure?  Now that you’re an internationally renowned prince and sorcerer–”

While syvyr could be translated as ‘sorcerer,’ ledyn absolutely didn’t mean prince.  At all.  But Danny knew that if he let himself get sidetracked, he and Vlad would wind up arguing about toilet paper or something equally banal and ludicrous.  “Listen, I know you’re trying to get into the country legitimately, and–”

Vlad sighed loudly.  “And you want to stop me, I suppose?  You’re as predictable as always–”

“I can get you in, but you need to do something for me first.”

There was a pause.  “Pardon?”

“I want to make a deal with you.  You do something for me, I do something for you.  You do know how making deals works, right?  You can’t have overshadowed people for everything.”

“I’ll have you know that most of my business arrangements are perfectly legitimate.”

“Doubt,” said Danny.  “But do you want in?  Because otherwise I don’t want to waste my time listening to your voice.”

“What guarantee do I have that you would keep your side of the bargain?  You and your sister haven’t been entirely honest with me in the past.”

“Well, first off, that was when you kidnapped me; secondly, we didn’t have a deal, then.  I was just lying to you.”  He saw Gwensyvyr’s eyebrows go up and winced.  Hopefully, that didn’t lower her opinion of him.  “I’ve kept every deal we’ve made, even when you haven’t.”

Vlad made a disgruntled noise.  “How would you even accomplish such a task?  You’re a teenager and–”

“I’m currently living in the same house as the next ruler of Avlynys,” said Danny, which was a true statement no matter who wound up taking the throne, “and like you said, I’m an internationally renowned sorcerer.  Besides, when I tell you what I want you to do, you’ll understand.”

“What is it, exactly, that you want me to do?  You’ve never asked for my help with any ghosts before, and considering your performance against the ghost at that Moon Masque, I can’t imagine that you would start now.”

“Yeah, well, what I need right now doesn’t have to do with ghosts.”

“Well,” said Vlad, “I’d have to hear what you want before I can agree or disagree to anything.  You understand.”

Danny looked up at Gwensyvyr, who was frowning down at the phone.  She glanced back at Danny, then spoke to the phone.  “As one of your standing ought to–”

“Who is that?  That isn’t Jasmine.  Daniel, you didn’t–”

“She’s a ghost,” said Danny before Vlad could work himself into a fit, as funny as that would be.  “Most people can’t even see her.  She’s not going to go around spreading your secrets.”

“A shade, then,” said Vlad, dismissively.  “What does she have to do with this?”

“She’s a relative.”

“One of the dead ones?”

“No,” said Gwensyvyr, sarcastically, “despite being a ghost, I am, in fact, perfectly alive.”

“It has happened before,” said Vlad, equally snide.  “What do you have to do with this?”

“I should expect that it would be self-evident that I want my relatives safe,” said Gwensyvyr.  “I am here to facilitate this negotiation.”

“I suppose it is more convenient to speak to an adult.  So, what is it you want?  A power boost?  Some final request that dear Daniel cannot fulfil?  I suppose he is rather limited.”

“As I was saying,” said Gwensyvyr, rather frostily, “one such as yourself should know the value of information by itself.  We will explain, but we require something in exchange.”

“Yes?  What’s that?”

“All your records of little Danyel.”

“Daniel’s records?  What makes you think–?”

“No, not Dannyl’s.  Danyel’s.  The girl’s.”

“Danielle’s,” said Danny.  Gwensyvyr’s pronunciation wasn’t that far off the English, but it wasn’t like Daniel and Danielle were all that different as names to begin with.  

“Fine,” said Vlad.  “But I won’t be able to do anything about it until I return home, and I’m in France at the moment.  So if what you want from me is time sensitive in any way, you should tell me now.”

Gwensyvyr nodded.  “Right,” said Danny.  “Well, have you ever heard of Revyvtech?”

.

Vlad raised an eyebrow, then looked down at the restaurant where two Revyvtech employees were currently waiting to speak to him.  “A time or two.  Why?”

“We’re pretty sure they’re behind the assassinations, and they used something like blood blossoms to do it.”

“Blood blossoms?  They don’t work on humans.”

“But they do work on liminals.  Do you think I just happened to have a knife that worked on ghosts with me at the Moon Masque, or that Mom just threw darts at a board to decide what she was going to do with her life?  Avlynys is a thin spot.”

Vlad pressed his lips together.  It wasn’t as if this would be the first time he used people who wanted to do him harm - the GIW were one such example - but it did make things so much more difficult.  “And you want me to what?  Investigate them?  Fight them?”

“No.  Aunt Alicia is in a coma, back in Arkansas.  We can’t check her out of the hospital she’s at, because her security team doesn’t count as family and the rest of us are all the way over here.  They’ve sent us pictures of her hooked up to a bunch of Revyvtech stuff, though, so we’re pretty sure they’re keeping her in a coma even if we don’t know why.  We want you to figure out what they’re giving her and get her to Avlynys.”

“And how do you expect me to do that when the hospital will only discharge her to family?” asked Vlad. 

“I don’t know, money boy.  Bribe them.  Or overshadow everyone in the hospital.  It’s what you did to get elected, isn’t it?”

“That part will be easy, yes, but I was talking about determining what medicines she’s on, Daniel,” said Vlad, rubbing the bridge of his nose.  

“Hey, you’re the one always bragging to me about how much you know about ghosts.  Use some of that.  None of us here know exactly what they’re using or what they’re doing, which is why we want you to look into it.  Or at least get Aunt Alicia.  Either way, if you show up with Aunt Alicia, you’ll be let in.”

To be fair, Daniel had been right when he said that it would be clear why they would let him in if he completed ‘his side’ of the deal.  Vlad considered his options.  On one hand, he would very much prefer not to do anything Daniel said, simply on principle.  On the other, the business with Revyvtech sounded potentially dangerous to him as well, especially if they were going around poisoning people with blood blossoms.  Retrieving Alicia would likely gain him the favor of Maddie as well.  She did love her sister, for reasons that, quite frankly, escaped Vlad.  

And being trapped in a hospital like that was a fate he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy.  

“Very well,” said Vlad.  “May I assume you’ll be telling this ‘security team’ to expect me?”

“Yeah, fruitloop.  I’m not trying to get you killed.  I want Aunt Alicia to get here safely.”

“That’s hardly what I’m worried about, Daniel.”

“Well, I am.”

Vlad smiled.  “Oh, really?  I’m flattered, Daniel.”

As expected, Daniel hung up.  Vlad shook his head.  Teenagers!