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The hallway video opened. Nate muted it before his own voice could fill the room. Onscreen, a strip of wallpaper peeled away from the wall behind him. Nate turned toward it, watched it settle, and said something.

Behind him, Leo had taken a bow.

Nate remembered it. The little idiot had bowed in the middle of the hallway like he’d just received a standing ovation, and Nate had wanted to look at him.

He hadn’t.

On the screen, his eyes went to the paper. The wall. The camera.

Everywhere except the place where Leo stood.

Nate paused the video.

The frame held a man smiling in a hallway by himself.

He looks so happy, the comments had said.

He had been happy. That was the annoying part. The smile was real. So was the work, and the stupid joke about the glue, and the pleasure he’d felt when Leo pulled off something he’d practiced.

None of that had been fake.

But looking at it now, Nate could hardly stand any of it.

He scrolled to the comments.

@ghostwatcher_kel: clearly ghosty and nate are in this together

They were.

He’d let people argue about that too. They could be as close to the truth as they liked, as long as he never confirmed it.

Nate moved the cursor toward the reply button.

What would he say?

Thanks for watching.

That was easy. He’d typed it hundreds of times.

He left the comment alone.

Underneath it, somebody had written a long explanation involving magnets. Someone else wanted to know why Nate never seemed frightened.

Nate looked toward the doorway.

He wasn’t scared of the ghost in his house. He only wanted him to come back upstairs.

A few minutes later, Leo did.

“You should be asleep,” he said, drifting through the wall beside the doorway.

Nate turned so quickly the laptop shifted on his knees. He caught it before it slid.

“What are the strangers wrong about tonight?” Leo asked.

“Everything,” Nate said.

Leo came closer. His gaze moved over Nate’s face. “Does your head hurt?”