A/N: A sequel to my one-shot, Shift, but posted as a separate story because it's an optional sequel; Shift stands well on its own. This is just how things could have developed, given the circumstances of that story. As always, standard disclaimers apply. And happy Dannyversary!

Maddie stood frozen as her son deactivated the bonds on the examination table, releasing the ghost she'd been examining. He hugged the phantom to his chest, heedless of the ectoplasm staining his shirt. He didn't look at her, but she knew how angry he was. She'd never seen such cold fury in Danny before. She opened her mouth to call his name, but she couldn't find her voice.

And then she blinked and he was gone.

Maddie reached for the counter to steady herself and suddenly realized she was taking in huge gulps of air. Danny—! Surely she'd imagined that, imagined all of it. Except how could she imagine seeing him? Even if, in some feverish state, she'd freed the ghost herself, it wouldn't have been able to go anywhere. It would've been too weak. She could discern that much, even knowing how much it would have been trying to manipulate her.

It.

She?

Her name is Danielle.

There was no reason for Danny to know that.

But there was no reason for ectoplasm to bleed, either.

Maddie reached out a shaking hand and knocked the wire rack as she tried to pick up the centrifuge tube containing her precious sample. It fell to the floor, and she dropped to her knees in a scramble catch it. It was capped plastic, not open glass, so it wouldn't shatter on impact or scatter across the floor, but—

Somehow, numb fingers snatched the tube before it could roll beneath the cupboards. Maddie sat back against them, still trembling, and stared at the sample. The solid ectoplasm was starting to fully degrade now, and even as she watched, the liquid began to sort itself into phases.

Phases.

There shouldn't be phases.

Liquid ectoplasm wasn't as dense as blood. The pool of red at the bottom of the tube was topped by a glowing layer of green scum, bubbling with energy. It was such a small thing, but it had the potential to do so much damage. If she were foolish enough to discard her gloves, she would already feel heat from the tube.

But as far as she was concerned, the damage had already been done.

Ectoplasm didn't bleed.

Human boys didn't disappear in the blink of an eye.

But she'd never seen a ghost produce a spark like the phantom had. Bright and burning and white, powerful but not necessarily controlled; it had seemed more instinctual than planned, some sort of reflex. And Danny's eyes….

Even when she closed her own, she could see the impossible green fire burning within Danny's eyes.

"Mom?" It took her a moment to place the voice as Jazz's, and a few more seconds for her vision to focus on her daughter. She had no idea when Jazz had come down to the lab. "What happened here?"

Jazz was looking at the dulling stains of ectoplasm that remained on the examination table and Maddie's HAZMAT suit, at the toppled rack that had held her centrifuge tube, at the dirtied tools. She looked, and Maddie knew how much her daughter could discern. Jazz knew she'd captured a ghost. She knew her mother had begun examining it.

She didn't know what had happened beyond that. Didn't know of the blood in her ectoplasm sample, of Danny's…of Danny's…. Of Danny.

"Mom?"

Maddie slid the centrifuge tube into her pocket, a movement Jazz only missed because her eyes were fixed on Maddie's face. "I'm okay, sweetie."

Jazz frowned, not buying the lie for a moment. "You're covered in ectoplasm," she said, "and you're pale as a sheet. What happened?"

Something I can't explain. "I'll be fine, honey." Just not fine enough to get up right now. She wasn't sure she could trust her feet. Even if she could, she doubted she would be steady enough to fool Jazz.

Funny, that. She'd had so many years of training; she'd thought she had her nerves under control, that even the paranormal couldn't throw something at her that she hadn't been expecting on some level. How wrong she'd been. If she so much as lifted a hand, her body would betray her.

"Mom, you can tell me." Jazz crossed her arms. "I'm not a kid anymore. However bad it is, I can take it. I can help you through whatever this was."

Maddie forced a smile on her face. "It's nothing like that. I thought I had the ghost better contained than I did, that's all." It was closer to a lie than the truth, but Jazz didn't call her out on it. "I'm not hurt; just a bit surprised, that's all."

Jazz pursed her lips and, after a moment of silent deliberation, left with some mutters about tea. Maddie heard her calling for Jack and Danny to meet her in the kitchen. What would Jazz think when Danny didn't turn up? What would she tell Jack? Had she seen anything that didn't make sense?

Maddie took a slow, deliberate breath. "You're overreacting," she told herself, but she didn't believe that. She had the proof in her pocket. This went against everything. Ectoplasm and blood were like oil and water. They didn't mix. And one couldn't come from the other. They were entirely different things.

Except….

Except the centrifuge tube had been sterile, and she herself wasn't cut; there was no way she'd inadvertently mixed her samples. The blood had come from the sample she'd taken.

From the ghost.

From the girl.

From Danielle.

I'm human, too.

That simply wasn't possible. It defied everything. Humans were alive; ghosts were not. Sentience alone did not constitute life, not where ghosts were involved, and the very idea that there could be such a thing as a living ghost or something that was partially ghost, partially human—it wasn't even worth considering. It couldn't be done. She had years of research behind her to support that conclusion. Death could not coexist with life within the same being. It just wasn't possible. Whatever this was…. It was something different. It had to be.

The ghost, if not outright lying as ghosts were wont to do, was just misinformed. Convinced of something that wasn't the truth, perhaps. It had looked and acted young for one so strong, so perhaps it truly was naïve and ignorant of its true condition. Perhaps it had told her the truth as it had seen it. Perhaps it actually did believe it was human. But its belief hardly constituted truth.

And none of that explained Danny.

It didn't explain what he had done or the knowledge he'd had. It didn't explain why he was on such familiar terms with the ghost or why he cared for it. And as for what he'd done…. Even if she attributed his disappearing act to the ghost (which should have been too weak to vanish in its own right, let alone take Danny with it), she couldn't explain his eyes.

She knew what she'd seen. She'd like to attribute it to shock or some trick of the light, but she knew that wasn't the case. She hadn't imagined it.

Maddie forced herself to get to her feet, and then she stood there, staring into the stainless steel even though the examination table hardly offered her any answers. The ectoplasm stains on it were a dull green, but she could already imagine them turning red. And what story would that tell, blood on the table in their basement?

She grabbed some paper towel and began wiping it up, trying to hide the evidence. Trying not to cry. What was this? How could ectoplasm turn to blood? Even a shapeshifter couldn't mimic something like that on a molecular level. There were no accounts of delayed changes like that and certainly nothing that could be sustained once the sample had been separated from the ghost. It didn't make sense.

She threw the stained paper towels into the garbage and then stripped off her HAZMAT suit and stuffed that in, too, stopping only long enough to remove the centrifuge tube from its pocket and tucking it into her jeans. She washed her face at the sink and slipped on a fresh HAZMAT suit—she and Jack had plenty both upstairs and down—before checking herself over. She wouldn't let this tear her apart, have her fall to pieces in front of her family, when it might merely be a ghost's trick.

Maddie smoothed her hair down and adjusted the goggles on her head before heading upstairs. She was confident that Jack, at least, wouldn't be able to guess her distress. Jazz and…and Danny…. They would be a different matter, each observant in their own right, but she wanted to figure out how to frame this before she shared her findings with Jack.

Jazz was setting a steaming mug of tea on the table as she entered the kitchen. It was placed in front of her usual spot. Maddie gave her daughter a weak smile and accepted the offering for what it was.

Jack bounded in as she took her first sip. "Mads, have you seen Danny-boy? He was going to find you. We had a great time. Restocked the Fenton First Aid kit, tweaked some of the Auto-Jack's commands—"

"That's nice, honey," Maddie said.

By now, Jazz's brow was also knit in confusion. "Where is Danny?" she asked. "He should be back by now. I didn't think…." She shook her head and forced a bright smile on her face. "He must have decided he couldn't wait another moment to tell Sam and Tucker everything."

The worry hadn't left Jazz's eyes, and Maddie wondered how many times she'd seen the same look before and never noticed. This couldn't have been the first time Jazz had done this. She must have missed dozens of little things like this if Danny knew the ghost by name and she herself had never seen the phantom before.

Jack said something else, and then Jazz, but Maddie buried herself in her tea as much as she dared and hoped Danny would come back before supper.

Jazz didn't expect Danny to tell her whenever he ran off to fight a ghost, but it was rare for the fight to last long. Even if Danny wasn't able to defeat the ghost immediately, he would usually get out of the fight long enough to regroup and— Not plan, not really, but at least gather his resources. So for him to disappear for hours? She worried. He wasn't answering his phone, and as far as she could tell, he hadn't even looked at the text messages she'd sent him.

When they ate supper without him, she cheerily reported that he'd told her he'd been invited over to Tucker's house, and as soon as she was done with the dishes, she headed to her room and phoned Tucker to fill him in.

As it turned out, he was over at Sam's.

Danny wasn't.

"He came by earlier to grab my first aid kit," Sam said, "but before you panic, it's not for him."

"Yeah, sounds like your cousin got the worst of it."

Jazz frowned. "Cousin?" she repeated, not sure who Tucker meant. "What cousin?"

"You know," Tucker said unhelpfully. "Your cousin. Danielle."

"Dani," added Sam.

Jazz swallowed. "We don't have a cousin named Danielle," she said slowly. "We don't even have any first cousins. Aunt Alicia doesn't have any kids, and the closest Dad has to a sibling is Vlad."

Silence on the other end of the line. Then Tucker's voice, saying, "Uh…but we've met her. Danny said she was your cousin, and the family resemblance was there."

Danny lied. But Jazz didn't say it. There wasn't any point. Especially when she couldn't explain away any supposed family resemblance. "Do you know where he is? He's not answering his phone." Silence stretched again, and she could imagine Sam and Tucker just looking at each other and deciding how much to tell her. "Please, guys. I need to know if I'm going to help. If I can't come up with anything better than him being with you guys, again, Dad will think a ghost has kidnapped him or something."

From the groans on the other end of the line, they remembered what had happened with Amorpho. She hadn't needed to be caught in the middle of that one to figure out, more or less, what had gone down. "I offered to help," Sam finally said, "but he said he needed to do this by himself. I'm sorry, Jazz. He didn't even tell us where he went."

"Tell them Danny's spending the night at my house. That'll buy you some time."

"I don't want to do that unless I can actually get a hold of him," Jazz muttered, but Tucker would know that she'd take him up on his offer if Danny didn't show up soon. She would try the Booo-merang if her dad hadn't been in the middle of taking it apart and putting it back together again in a vain attempt to fix it. "Thanks. Let me know if you hear anything." They agreed, and Jazz hung up, biting her lip.

Danny hadn't just disappeared. That was something, at least. But who the heck was Danielle?

Danny had never talked about her, never even mentioned the name as far as Jazz could remember, and had apparently told Sam and Tucker she was their cousin, so she couldn't get the truth out of them. Claiming family resemblance with a supposed cousin was easier than with a sibling, so they wouldn't have reason to question him, but what would prompt him to do that? That's what she didn't understand.

Except.

Except Tucker had said that that this Danielle had gotten the worst of it, the worst of whatever this was, and he'd gone to Sam's to fetch a first aid kit. That might have made sense if he'd been closer, but not when she knew he'd started from here; if he'd gotten a call that Danielle was hurt, he could have grabbed their first aid kit before flying off to meet her. (Jazz had no doubt this Danielle also knew Danny's secret.) It would have been easy enough, and they'd just restocked all their kits.

But he hadn't done that and he hadn't taken up Sam on her offer of help. He was playing his cards close to his chest, even from his friends.

Jazz swallowed. She'd thought Danny had gone down to check the lab when they'd gotten back home. Well, what if he had? What if he'd found—?

I thought I had the ghost better contained than I did.

Danny would lie to protect a friend. He would lie to protect family. Why wouldn't he lie to protect a ghost, too? It wouldn't be much different than what she did every day when she tried to protect him, and she already knew he had friends among the ghosts.

That didn't explain the lie to Sam and Tucker, though.

Then again, it might not be a lie. Jazz wasn't exactly overly familiar with their family tree. What if one of their relatives had ended up in the Ghost Zone at one point and Danny had met them? Danielle could be a cousin, then—just a cousin many times removed. It would certainly explain why Danny had been so protective of her.

Jazz sighed and buried her head in her hands. She hated guessing like this. She much preferred being in control of the circumstances; that just almost never happened, so she'd gotten very good at adjusting on the fly. Well. She'd gotten better at it, at any rate. And she'd gotten better at lying, just like Danny had.

So maybe she didn't know exactly who Danielle was, and maybe she didn't know exactly what had happened, but she could guess. And if she was even partially right…. Well, if she had any of that right, then it explained how shaken her mother had seemed. But depending on what had happened, it could also mean—

"Jazzy-pants," bellowed Jack from downstairs, "where's your brother?"

I don't know. "He's spending the night at Tucker's!" she yelled back, hoping this wasn't the time they were going to be caught in a lie.

Danny didn't come home the next morning. Maddie hadn't been able to stomach the thought of speaking with Tucker's parents to confirm Jazz's story. If it were a tall tale, that meant even Jazz didn't know where Danny was, and if it weren't, it likely meant Danny didn't want to see her.

She wasn't really surprised that she never heard from him during the day, but Maddie wasn't sure what to think when Danny didn't turn up that night, either.

Jazz couldn't keep the worry off her face, and Jack commented on Danny's absence. He seemed to believe the excuse that fell from Jazz's lips, but Maddie couldn't, not anymore. Not with that tube still in her pocket.

Not when its contents were completely red.

She drew Jazz to the side when Jack went downstairs to tinker. "Have you spoken with your brother today?"

Jazz frowned. "He's hanging out with Sam and Tucker. I just told you that." She must have read Maddie's expression because she added, "Mom, Danny's fine. I don't know what you're worried about. He's fourteen, not four."

Maddie suspected that Jazz knew exactly what she was worried about, but she withdrew her hand and let Jazz pass.

She managed to wait half an hour before phoning Tucker's house, but no amount of preparation could keep the vice from tightening around her heart when it became clear Tucker's mother had no idea what she was talking about; Tucker was in his room doing his homework and had been since supper.

She phoned Sam's house, with the same result.

As far as Maddie could tell, Danny had been missing for a day. He'd run away from home, run away from her, and now….

Maddie closed her eyes, took a breath, and tried not to sob. They could get through this. She could get through this. But if Danny wasn't coming back, she couldn't risk keeping the truth from Jack any longer. He might be in trouble. He might be hurt, unable to get back to them. That ghost could have done anything to him. That ghost….

That ghost….

He had left because of that ghost. He'd…he'd cared for it, been concerned about it, and because she'd treated it as she'd treat any ghost….

Maddie shook her head, opened her eyes, and went to find Jack. He'd put the Fenton Booo-merang aside for now and was adjusting one of his new inventions—she couldn't remember the name of this one—when she found him. He began talking to her about it excitedly, all bright smiles and wide gestures, but he caught her mood quickly enough and quieted. "What's wrong, Mads?"

"I'm worried about Danny." She hesitated. "It's…it's just a feeling, but I think he's in trouble." Swallowing, she added, "I've talked to the Foleys and the Mansons; Danny isn't with either Sam or Tucker right now."

Jack's face hardened. "Maybe some good for nothing ghost scum thought they could get back at us by kidnapping our Danny."

Something like that. He had disappeared with a ghost, after all. "I think we should go look for him. But…not like last time. We don't want to give the ghost—if it is a ghost—reason to hide Danny from us further."

Jack looked disappointed but nodded. "No bazookas until it's in our sights," he promised. "I'll grab some extra weapons, and you can tell Jazzy-pants to meet us in the GAV to rescue her brother!"

"Jazz is already looking for him," Maddie said. She wasn't sure if it was a lie; she doubted it. "I'll help you load." She picked up the pieces of the Booo-merang, thinking she might be able to figure out how to reprogram it using the ghost's…the ghost's blood.

Ghosts don't have blood.

Humans do.

Girls do.

She still couldn't explain it. She couldn't explain Danny's behaviour, either. But it was more than just his behaviour that needed explaining. What she'd seen….

Overshadowing. Possession. It was such a safe, comforting thought. It would explain so much. It would explain almost everything. It would be so easy, to simply think her son possessed.

Possession would explain how he knew of and cared for the ghost girl. Possession would explain his disappearing act and the way his eyes had burned an unearthly green before that. Possession would explain why she hadn't heard from her baby boy since he'd found her in the lab with the ghost.

But possession wouldn't explain the blood that had been the ghost's ectoplasm.

The truth wouldn't be so easy.

She wasn't even sure she had enough of the pieces of the puzzle to figure it out on her own, but she wanted to let Jack live in bliss just a little longer, in case she was overthinking things, in case there was a simple explanation that she was missing. In case they hadn't had something terribly wrong for years.

The sun set while they were out on their search. She took the wheel first, carefully creeping past every alley as Jack tracked their progress and worked on expanding the range of the built-in Fenton Finder. By the time its radius encompassed half the town (and by the time they'd captured an ectopus, three ghost vultures, and the Box Ghost, none of which knew anything), they were searching by starlight and streetlight, and Jack was on his third circuit of their nonsensical route.

Maddie noticed when the vehicle turned where it hadn't before and looked up; they were driving up to Vlad's mansion. "What are you doing?" she asked. "The blip on the Fenton Finder is only going to be the experiments you asked Vlad to look after last week."

"I know," Jack said, "but Danny's missing, and ol' Vladdy will want to help, even if he does want to put ghost hunting behind him."

Maddie knew how much Jack wanted to pull Vlad back into the fold, but she was also quite certain Vlad's resistance was more than just a distaste for the science after that accident with the proto-portal back in their college days. While he had rolled his eyes, he had still agreed to babysit—his word, not theirs—their experiments to see how they did in a setting with low ecto-contamination, and she was certain he was still interested in it. She feared his reluctance to fall back in line with them had as much to do with public image—he was the mayor now, after all—as it did with their different stations in life.

Not to mention his desire for control, which had served him well (Vlad always had been ambitious) but which had always turned her off. Jack was excitable, but he was willing to work with her. Vlad…. Vlad had always liked being the one calling the shots, never quite trusting them to do the job as well as he himself might. She knew he'd tried—he'd always asked her to double check his calculations or to go over one thing or another with him—but he never liked leaving either of them to figure something out on their own.

"You stay here," she said, unbuckling her seatbelt. "I'll fill him in. It won't take long." She slid out and walked to the door, rubbing her arms as she did so. It wasn't enough to stop the shivers, but the chill in the air wasn't the only reason she was shaking.

She didn't know if he'd hear the knocker, so she rang the bell and waited.

It was a few minutes before Vlad appeared, wrapped in housecoat and wearing fluffy slippers. He hadn't been able to clean all the white cat hair from his robe, and she allowed herself a small smile before she raised her eyes to meet his glare.

Anger was already melting into confusion. "Maddie?" he asked. His eyes saw the Assault Vehicle behind her, and—no doubt—Jack still inside. "It's three in the morning. What is this about?"

"Danny's missing," she said quietly. "We aren't sure, but we think he's with a ghost. Jack's ready to dive blind into the Ghost Zone with the Spectre Speeder, and I think that might be our only option, but I just…." Her throat closed. "I don't…." How could she explain any of this to Vlad when she couldn't bring herself to tell Jack? "I think it might be my fault."

Vlad pulled her into a hug, and she couldn't bring herself to mind. "Oh, Maddie, don't fret. I'll personally search with you. We'll find the little badger. I'm sure Daniel will turn up faster if we split up. Why not let Jack search the Ghost Zone while we expand our search here?"

Maddie pulled back and wiped at her eyes. "I don't want to send Jack in alone. Maybe you could go with him?"

"As much as I'd love that, I'm afraid I'm more useful out here; I don't have any resources in the Ghost Zone. But hasn't Jack built an exploratory vehicle for just this purpose? I'm sure it's well equipped. You mustn't worry about him, Maddie. He will be as capable in the Ghost Zone as he is here."

Vlad was right; he had connections he could use here, and if anyone could hold their own against ghosts, it would be her Jack. She'd go with him if she didn't have this compulsion to be here in case Danny came back, so that at least one of them was here to welcome him. Jazz would be home, of course, but Jazz….

Maddie still had the awful feeling that her daughter knew more than she did, and if she allowed Jazz to become too involved in this, she'd never find out the truth. She'd merely uncover another set of lies cleverly crafted to appease her.

She didn't want more lies.

She'd seen too much of the truth now.

"You're right," she whispered. "Thank you. I'll go talk to Jack. Come over to our place when you're ready."

She turned, but he caught her arm. "Maddie," he said, "we'll find Daniel. Don't worry."

She smiled, but it was merely one which acknowledged that she'd heard him. She was a mother; she'd be a fool not to worry. "Thanks." The word was empty, as meaningless as her smile. His words were no comfort; his promise of help was worth more, and she'd already secured that.

Maddie pulled her arm free and went back to Jack. "He'll be over as soon as he can," she reported as her seatbelt clicked.

Jack didn't shift the Assault Vehicle back into gear. "I still think we need to expand our search, Mads. If a ghost took him…."

"I know. You're right. I should have listened to you earlier. I just don't like the idea of going into a place like the Ghost Zone blind."

Jack reached over to put his hand on hers, letting their fingers intertwine before he gave them a gentle squeeze. "We've wanted to do this since before we built the Fenton Ghost Portal. I went over the Spectre Speeder yesterday, and she's ready for the trip. It's time to stop putting it off. Danny will show up if I search for Real World Objects. If he's in there, I'll be able to find him, and the ghost scum that took him will pay for messing with our family."

Maddie leaned over to kiss him. "Just remember to set the homing beacon so you can find your way back."

"What's Vlad doing here? Where's Dad?"

Maddie handed her daughter a mug of hot coffee. "Sit down, Jazz. We need to talk."

If it weren't for the situation, Maddie might have laughed at Jazz's horrified expression framed by frizzy strands of red hair and a fluffy teal robe. As it was, hysteria still made her smile. "Vlad's going to help me search for Danny out here, and your father went through the por—"

"Dad actually took the Spectre Speeder?" Jazz interrupted. "Into the Ghost Zone? They'll kill him!"

Maddie saw Vlad smile at that remark—she thought the idea was ludicrous, too; Jack Fenton wasn't easy to kill—and put an arm around her daughter to lead her to the table. "You don't seem surprised that we're looking for your brother."

Maddie felt Jazz's shoulders stiffen and then slump under her touch. "I…I haven't heard from him in a while, and he usually checks in when he can."

Maddie wasn't sure anymore where the lies stopped and the truth began. "Vlad, do you mind giving us a moment?"

Vlad had been looking over the Booo-merang; she hated to admit it, but she still couldn't see where Jack had gone wrong, and she wasn't having any luck getting its tracking system to latch onto the ever-weakening ecto-signature of the ghost blood. At her request, he gathered its components and stood. "Of course. I'll continue my examination in the living room."

She might still end up telling Vlad what she was going to now tell Jazz and she would have to tell Jack, but for now….

Maddie and Jazz watched him leave. "Danny wouldn't want his help," Jazz muttered.

"Danny will be thankful if we can save his life," Maddie pointed out as they took their seats at the table.

Jazz was quiet for a moment, warming her hands on the coffee and staring into it. "Is this really about Danny?" She met Maddie's eyes then. "What happened in the lab? When we got back from our trip?"

Maddie took a slow, measured breath. "I managed to capture a ghost, and I brought it back to the lab," she said. Jazz knew this part already, but Maddie felt that she had to start from the beginning. "I wasn't very far into my examination when…when Danny walked in."

Jazz's eyes narrowed, picking up on her hesitation and possibly suspecting her substituted words, but she didn't comment.

"He released the ghost, and that's the last time I saw him."

She waited for Jazz to draw the obvious conclusion—and that's why we think a ghost took him—or to point out the seemingly obvious error in Danny's judgement—why would he release a ghost?—but she didn't. Instead, she asked, "Why did you let him free a ghost?"

Jazz didn't find the idea that Danny would do such a thing remotely unthinkable; she wondered why Maddie had allowed him to do it.

It lent even more credence to the idea that there was much more going on than Maddie had ever suspected. Jazz's lies were coming with an ease that suggested routine, but the lack of them now made it clear that they weren't wrong in thinking that Danny was gone. Jazz was just as worried about her little brother as they were.

But whatever sneaking around Danny might usually do, however much it involved ghosts like the phantom she'd captured…. That didn't matter now, in light of what had happened. Danny was too young to fend for himself. Even if he'd run away, she had an obligation to find him and care for him. She loved him, even knowing he must still be furious with her. She had to try to make amends. She didn't know how, but she couldn't even begin if she couldn't find him. She hoped…she hoped they could begin by understanding. By listening. By explaining.

Jazz, knowing the little bit more that she did of Danny's life, might be able to help with that more than she realized. But she, too, would have to know everything, hard as that knowing may be.

Maddie swallowed, reached into her pocket, and put the centrifuge tube on the table between them.

Jazz's brow furrowed as she picked up the tube for a quick examination. One eyebrow rose in disbelief. "This is just blood."

She didn't understand.

Maddie hadn't expected her to.

But she needed her to.

"It used to be ectoplasm."

Jazz went white and the tube dropped from her fingers. Maddie caught it before it bounced and rolled onto the floor. She hid the evidence back inside her pocket, and she waited.

It took Jazz a long moment to compose herself. She clenched the mug as if it were a reminder of simpler times. Slowly, she opened her mouth, but her question wasn't one Maddie had anticipated: "Do we have a cousin named Danielle?"

Maddie stared at her, wondering if she'd heard that right. "Come again, sweetie?" Had she really just said—?

Jazz was shaking her head. "No, we don't. I didn't think so. I…." She cursed and stood. "Danny's keeping secrets," she said abruptly, "and I don't think he's the only one."

Maddie stood, too, if only so she would be ready to intercept her daughter. "Jazz? What do you know about this?" She had to know something. Danielle. That was the ghost girl's name. Whatever would possess Jazz to ask if she were a cousin? She didn't even know that was the phantom Maddie had had on the examination table!

Jazz's expression had morphed into one of determination. "Not enough," she bit out. "And Dad? Did you tell him this yet?"

"I was hoping to come up with a feasible theory first—"

Jazz held up one hand, and Maddie stopped. "No, it doesn't matter. You won't just figure this out. It's not something that can just be figured out. It's…. Look, I'm sorry. Danny really isn't the only one who's been keeping secrets. I just wasn't about to tell you when he wasn't ready. But if…." She trailed off, turned her head toward the living room, and yelled, "Vlad?"

He reappeared, hovering at the entrance to the kitchen. "Did you need something? I haven't quite figured out—"

"Forget the Booo-merang." Jazz stalked over to him, drawing herself up to her full height. She was still shorter than him, but her ire made up for that in spades.

But her ire was one more thing Maddie couldn't understand. Why did she seem to think Vlad had something to do with this? He didn't know where Danny was any more than they did, and he wouldn't know anything about this mysterious Danielle.

And since he hadn't continued his paranormal research as they had, he wouldn't know about the ectoplasm undergoing its impossible shift to blood.

But Jazz seemed to know more about this than Maddie did, even if she clearly did not know everything, and Maddie couldn't find the voice to stop her.

Not when she knew her daughter had a nose for the truth.

Vlad looked amused. "Did I say something to upset you, Jasmine?"

"It's what I think you did that upsets me," Jazz spat. "We're past the point of secrets." She looked back at Maddie. "Danny freed the ghost, right? And then disappeared?"

Now Vlad looked uncomfortable, but Maddie couldn't blame him for that. She hadn't exactly given him the whole story yet. "They vanished, yes."

But Jazz was shaking her head again. "No, Mom. I doubt that ghost had much energy to do anything if you had them strapped down and were taking samples."

Vlad took a small step back. "Perhaps I should just—"

"No." Jazz grabbed his arm, ignoring Maddie's admonishments. "Danny wasn't taken. He ran. If he didn't tell Sam and Tucker where he was going, that means he doesn't want to be found."

"I can assure you, Jasmine, that I'm doing everything—"

"I don't care about that right now!" she burst out.

"Jazz!"

Jazz turned back to her. "You don't understand yet, Mom, so just trust me, okay?"

"Jazz, your brother's in trouble—"

"I don't think he is. Not from what you've told me. But I can't be sure until I find out one thing." She looked at Vlad. "I need the truth."

"Oh?"

Vlad's amusement had returned, but Maddie watched it slide off his face with Jazz's next question: "Who's Danielle?"