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Leo remained quiet for a moment. “So you don’t admit to anything,” he said after a moment.

“What?”

“You say they like speculating, so let them speculate. I could make a door close in the background, or make a paintbrush float, and you just don’t cut those things out and let them discover them. You’d just keep talking about your studs, and something would simply… happen. Behind you.”

“No.” Nate refused without thinking, much in the same way—he thought—as Leo reacted to suggestions of exploring the basement.

“Why not?”

“Because…” Nate stopped. “Because…” Because this doesn’t fit the life I meant to build. “I don’t want to lie to my audience.”

“You’re already lying.”

“Keeping something private isn’t the same as lying.”

Leo frowned. “What if we just record something and then you decide if you want to show it?”

Nate glanced at the camera too.

“You’re helping me,” Leo said, a little more softly. “Let me try to help you.”

Nate rubbed a hand over his face. The extra views had made a difference already. He’d looked at the numbers often enough to know that. And if some of those people stayed to watch the actual restoration…

“One recording,” he said. “We see how it looks. I’m not promising to post anything.”

“All right.”

“And if I decide against it, I don’t want an argument.”

Leo hesitated just long enough to suggest he’d been planning one. “Fine.”

Nate let out a breath. “My family is going to hate this.”

“From what I’ve gathered, that hasn’t stopped you before.”

“True.” Nate blew out a breath. “If we’re doing this, I’ll never say the word ghost. I never look at you on camera. If someone asks, it’s a draft, or the house settling. We keep things deniable.”

“Okay,” Leo agreed.

“And if I say we stop, we stop.”

“Fine. Then I have a condition of my own.” Leo crossed his arms. “No corpses. If they ask about the cellar, the answer is no. I’m not a corpse in the basement.”

“You won’t be anything but a draft.”

Leo considered that. “A draft,” he said, “that closed a door in front of thousands of people.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

“We have work to do.” Leo actually sounded excited now. “I’ll get practicing.” He flew up through the ceiling, leaving Nate standing by himself in the wrecked dining room.

Somewhere in the house, a door creaked experimentally.

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

Leo’s excitement carried him through the next two days—which he spent practicing. He had a new self-elected purpose and he was giving it everything he had.