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The pool tasted like vanilla. A lot like vanilla.
Danny took another taste. That was vanilla? He picked out one of the flowers. It was vanilla.
He waved the flower, confused. “This can’t be vanilla. Sam?”
Sam crept closer, as per the warning about sweet snowdrops, but what she smelled was unmistakable. She took the flower from Danny. It didn’t hurt her at all.
“It is vanilla,” she agreed. “Why is it vanilla? Is this all fake?!”
Goodwife Gardener motioned to another one of the Puritan ghosts. They brought forward a bag much like the one that Gardener had brought. Gardener opened it and took out one of the smaller circle of blood blossoms, which she brought over to Danny.
His mouth was open to scream, but he only blinked when she dropped the flowers on his head.
It didn’t hurt.
“So vanilla works for this? Just like wolfsbane and werewolves?”
“Tucker!” yelled Sam.
Danny’s head whipped around the other direction – the other ghosts, they weren’t in the pool. How had he forgotten them? He grabbed a handful of the wet flowers, about to throw –
Pandora was grinning. Frostbite looked a bit sheepish, trying to blend in with ice and snow that wasn’t there. At some point the cat had left.
“Ghosts don’t like blood blossoms,” Gardener said. “It is very painful. At first.” She walked over to Danny, knelt by the edge of the pool closest to him.
“Young or new ghosts would be burned, associate the pain with the living, and stay among the Infinite Realms. Both achieved their goal: the mortals kept the ghosts from their homes and the more vulnerable ghosts were kept safe.”
Danny grabbed her wrist, where the pale pink line was. It rubbed off easily.
“The most feared was not the keen living hunter or the talented dead ghost. But the ones that could go between both worlds.”
She laughed, rusty as water pouring out of old rusty watering cans. “You didn’t really think that your parents invented the very concept and execution of the half-ghost? That in the scale of human history, no priest or witch or hunter or chief or wanderer, never entwined their fates with their beloved dead?”
“Wait, just wait a minute!” Tucker wasn’t laughing. “I ate them all for nothing?”
“How were you exposed, young prince? As mortal or ghost?”
“Ghost,” Danny answered.
Gardener looked directly at Danny, not Tucker. “Make no mistake. Blood blossoms can destroy ghosts, that is no lie. Young ghosts are at most made of belief. Time, and strengthening their powers, will reinforce themselves with all the power of ectoplasm around us.”
“Pain can cause panic. A cornered shade, still clinging to parts of its mortal life – can be ended by such.”
Sam cleared her throat. “You were going somewhere about halfas?”
Gardener nodded.
Then she took one of the blood blossoms from on Danny’s head and put it in his mouth. So it was there, and he couldn’t help but bite it.
“It’s kinda bland?” he said slowly.
“The ghost wants to flee from the pain, but the mortal is unharmed. Thus the ghost learns how the body stores and keeps pain inside, trapped in the physicality of flesh.” Deep pause, in one that does not need to breathe. “Sometimes another ghost can push the transformation, with knowledge of the situation and the trust of the ‘halfa’ but that is quite uncommon.”
“Vlad was surprised that you made it,” Tucker said.
Sam added, “And he was in his human form the whole time.”
“So what’s the fruitloop gonna do when he finds out?” Danny asked, after eating some of the ectoplasm to wash the taste out of his mouth. It didn’t hurt but that didn’t mean he wanted to taste it.
Gardener laughed again. “That the young prince went through a private ritual involving a plant that he cannot find any mention of? Which is centered on a dangerous ghost plant that many think was made up, a botanical boogeyman?”
“If he has any sense at all, he would keep his knowledge and his questions to himself.” Pandora’s voice still contained some humor, a sliver flavoring her words. “His decades do not impress those who count by centuries. Or millennia.”
“Now you have the true blessing of Salem Anew, young prince. Use it wisely.”