Wolves, Witches and Ghosts

Chapter 2: Family of Friends

Danny spent that evening reading the Encyclopedia of Magical Beings, the rest of his books stuffed in the walls and floor. It was a surprisingly good read, and soon Danny found himself engrossed in the book. He was just skimming the section on gnomes when he heard a knocking at his door. Stuffing the book into his matress, Danny called out "come in."

Jazz opened the door, and walked in, eyeing Danny suspiciously.

"Hi, little brother," she greeted, and Danny returned it, cautious about what she might be here to talk about. She couldn't have worked out his secret already, right?

"I just wanted to check on how you're doing, since Mom and Dad are spending all their time in the lab."

Oh, that was a relief, she was just being her usual overbearing self.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I've been spending lots of time with my friends, and I got all my homework done," Danny replied cheerfully.

Jazz gave him a quizzical look. "Fine, as in, actually fine, or fine, as in, actually struggling with something but being too stubborn to admit it?"

Danny scowled in return. "Actually fine. Seriously, I'm not a little kid, Jazz."

"I'm not suggesting you are, I just know you tend to hide things until you can't deal with it any more, and I want to make sure you're doing okay." Jazz's tone was genuine, and now Danny felt a little bad for being snappy with her.

"Thanks," Danny said. "And you can always talk to me if you need to too."

"Love you Danny," Jazz walked back over to the doorway.

"Love you too," Danny replied, watching as she closed the door on her way out.

He fished the book out of the mattress, making a mental note not to touch a gnome's hat as he read. Danny was jolted out of his monotonous reading by the title of the next section: 'Halfas'. His heart leapt at the prospect of finding out more about other halfas and their abilities. Of course he'd been expecting a section on halfas ever since they were mentioned as distinct from ghosts earlier in the book, but it made him anxious and overjoyed all the same.

'Halfas are commonly defined as hybrids of humans and ghosts (see page 113), and as such share traits of both, such as a lower heart rate, body temperature and breathing rate than a regular human, while a ghost would not have heart rate at all and would not have to breathe. Halfas have ghost cores, however the way in which they are stored within the body is yet to be known due to the rarity of the beings. Due to their cores, halfas possess the powers of a ghost, and their human form allows for more stability and core growth than in a ghost, resulting in a wide variety of powers and significant strength, including, and not limited to invisibility, intangibility, flight, ecto energy manipulation, shape shifting, elemental powers (determined by core types, as described in the section on ghosts), telekinesis and telepathy. In addition to this halfas are able to change their appearance outside of typical shapeshifting abilities between human and ghostly forms, each of which has a distinctive appearance, and have more access to their powers in their ghostly form, but this is reportedly able to be circumvented by intensive training (noteably the case of Isabella Ingram, who is said to have despised the appearance of her ghost form so much that she refused to ever use it).

Halfas can be born either from a human and ghost procreating, two halfas having offspring (which is only assumed, as it is yet to be documented) or by a human having ectoplasm bond to their DNA. Typical ectoenergy exposure has not been found to lead to a person becoming a halfa, and as such the conditions required for the ectoplasm to fuse with the human body are unknown.

Being hybrid beings, halfas borrow traits from both humans and ghosts and their individual socialisation is dependent on whether they were primarily raised by humans or ghosts.