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Nate smiled. “You really found a way to make this my fault. That’s kind of impressive.”

“Everything is your fault. Obviously.”

“Sure.” Nate got up, hair still flattened on one side. He looked at the open notebook, and then at Leo, and whatever he was thinking, it didn’t show on his face. He reached over and turned the notebook toward himself. “It’s better in daylight,” he said. “But it isn’t perfect.” He paused, turned to Leo. “I could do a better one. If you sat for it.”

Leo stared at him.

“Drawing from memory only gets me so far.” Nate set the notebook down, and dug through a duffel bag for fresh clothes as if he hadn’t just said anything at all. “If you could sit still for a bit while I draw it would turn out better.”

Sit still and have Nate study him… “For how long?”

“A few hours,” Nate said, picking out a shirt. “But I’d have to take breaks.”

“Hours!” Leo echoed, knowing exactly how much work Nate had piled on his plate. “Why would you want to waste that much time on this?”

“It’s not wasted time.” Nate stood there with a bundle of clothes and a towel in his arms. “If you can remember yourself, other things might come back. This will help with restoring you.”

Aha! “So you can exorcise me.”

“Yes,” Nate admitted. “But…” He hesitated. “That’s not the only reason I want to do this.”

Leo’s suspicions heightened. “What’s the other reason?”

Nate shrugged. “Simply because I want to. I said I wasn’t going to lie to you, so I’ll say it how it is. You’ve got a nice face, and no one’s seen it in fifty years, and that seems like a tragedy. Your face should be remembered. Maybe someone in town will.”

Again, Leo found himself staring at the medium.

“I’m going to take a shower,” Nate said. “You think about what you want to do.”

With that, Nate left him standing there.

For a full minute or two, Leo didn’t know what to do.

Upstairs, pipes knocked, and the shower started its rattle. Nate had rigged something up in the clawfoot tub his first week, all hose and hardware, an insult to a beautiful fixture. Leo had complained about it extensively. Nate had ignored him, just as he was ignoring Leo now.

You think about what you want to do.

Leo drifted to the toolbox and looked at the drawing again.

The stranger looked back. This was how Nate saw him. Nate who was standing in the shower at this exact moment, water running over his⁠—

Leo stopped.

What was he thinking?

Nate showered all the time and usually Leo spent those minutes patrolling, or arguing with Marvin, or thinking about the shutters, and not once — not once — had his mind wandered up the stairs and through that door and⁠—

It wasn’t wandering there now, either.

It absolutely was not.

He was simply aware, in an absolutely factual way, that Nate was up there.

Naked.

And wet.

And if Leo’s face had had any blood in it, it would have been doing something embarrassing right now. Thank God he was dead.