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“I wouldn’t get excited yet.”

“I’m not easily excited.”

“Good. Neither am I.”

She smiled as though I had just proved whatever point she’d already made in her head. “My name is Miss Veda.”

I waited for more.

She glided through the room with an ease that told me she didn’t have the same problem I did. Miss Veda wasn’t fighting against invisible boundaries or concentrating just to move from one side of the room to the other. Wherever she wanted to go, she simply went.

That irritated the hell out of me on principle.

“And before you ask,” she continued, “I am not a ghost in the same sense that you are. Think of me as an intermediary between this world and the one beyond it. I assist spirits who have remained behind when death did not separate them cleanly from the life they left.”

That got my attention.

Miss Veda folded her hands loosely in front of her.

“Some souls move on immediately. Others remain because something about the life they left behind—or the way it ended—still holds them here. It could be an unfinished connection, a place, a person, an obligation, or something unresolved that refuses to let go. My responsibility is not to force those spirits to cross, nor is it to interfere with the natural course of what comes next. I help them understand what they have become, what boundaries exist around them, and, when circumstances allow it, I can help them accomplish certain things they cannot accomplish alone.”

I stared at her for a second. “Is that so? So basically, you’re the afterlife’s version of a social worker.”

She sighed. “That is an extremely crude interpretation of what I just said.”

“But accurate.”

“Unfortunately.”

I nodded. “Good enough for me.”

“And since I can already see where your mind is going, let me make something very clear.” Her expression sharpened. “I am not a genie, God, or your personal miracle worker. I won’t be granting wishes, producing money from thin air, resurrecting you because you find death inconvenient, making people fall in love with you, or appearing every time you yell my name because you want something.”

I frowned. “Damn. You could’ve left me at no wishes.”

“With you, I felt clarification was necessary. Besides, I have met men like you before.”

“Dead fine?”

Miss Veda stared at me. “What?”

She shook her head, but I caught the smile she tried to hide.

Funny shit aside, I couldn’t stop looking at her.

She could hear me.

That alone was enough to make me forget half the smart shit sitting on the tip of my tongue.

Almost a year had passed since I’d had an actual conversation. I had spent all that time talking to Mama and anybody who entered my house, knowing none of them could hear a damn word I said. Eventually, talking out loud had started feeling stupid, so I mostly stopped unless I was pissed off.

Being dead was lonely as fuck.

I hadn’t realized just how lonely until somebody finally answered me.

Miss Veda’s expression softened, like she had heard the part I hadn’t said. “Well, I’m sure you have questions.”

“Hell yeah, I got questions.” I moved closer to her. “Starting with why the fuck I can’t leave this house. I’m clearly a ghost. Ain’t ghosts supposed to float through walls, fly across town, haunt whoever they want? Why I can barely get past my own damn driveway?”