Page 14

The medium looked back at him.

Not past him. Not through him. Not at the cold spot where a living person would feel something wrong and flinch away without knowing why.

At him.

The ghost couldn’t remember the last person who had really looked at him. Not felt his presence, not reacted to the cold or the sound or the wrongness of the air. This medium was looking at his face, seeing the shape of him. Meeting his eyes.

Something cracked open in his chest. Something ignored and starving and so desperate it terrified him.

He stepped back.

“Easy,” the medium said as if the ghost were a startled dog. “I’m not here to fight.”

“Then leave.”

“I’m here to help you move on.”

Move on. As if it were that simple. As if the ghost were a tenant overstaying a lease and this could all be solved if he just walked into the light. If he just let go of whatever sad little attachment was keeping him tethered to a rotting house with an aggressively green kitchen.

Right.

“No,” the ghost said.

“It’s not a negotiation.”

“I said no. I don’t need your help.”

The medium pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, checked the seat for dust, and sat down. “Look, it’s simple. You’re stuck, and the house needs to sell, and if you’re still here when the next buyer moves in, it won’t go well for anyone.”

“I am not stuck. This is my home. I live here.”

The medium held his gaze. “You don’t live anywhere.”

The ghost’s hands clenched at his sides. If he’d been alive, his nails would have left marks in his palms.

“What’s your name?” the medium asked.

“What’s yours?” the ghost fired back.

“I’m Nate. Who are you?”

The ghost opened his mouth, but he didn’t have an answer. “None of your concern,” he said.

The medium, Nate, because of course the medium had a name, studied him.

“I don’t give my name to mediums,” the ghost added.

“Sure.”

“Or to anyone who breaks into my home through the back door like a common thief.”

Nate looked at him for a moment longer. “It’s unusual for a ghost with your presence not to remember their name.”

The ghost glared. He did remember his name. It was right there, right at the edge of everything, on the tip of his tongue. He could almost feel the shape of it, the weight, the first letter almost forming, and then…

Nothing.

The kitchen felt very large and very quiet and very uncomfortable.