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“Where is it?” Nate demanded.

Caleb reached into his coat pocket and brought out a small cloth pouch. He held it for a moment before loosening the drawstring.

A ring slid into his palm.

It was a plain metal band, nothing Nate would have looked at twice if he’d found it on a bathroom sink. But now he knew what to look for, and when he let his attention settle on it, he could feel something familiar.

Leo.

Nate leaned forward before he meant to. Caleb’s fingers began to close.

“Don’t.”

Caleb opened his hand again.

Leo stared at the ring. “That’s me?”

“The part I took. Yes.”

Nate looked from the ring to his cousin. “Does it work?”

Caleb didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Yes. I use it for the difficult cases. I can do things with it that I couldn’t do before. I’ve helped so many people, you have to understand that.”

Leo glared at Caleb. “How could you come here and pretend you want to help me when you had that in your pocket the whole time?”

Caleb looked at the floor for a moment before he was able to face Leo again. He wasn’t quite squirming, but almost. “You were getting better.”

“What?” Nate asked.

“He was.” Caleb looked at Nate. “He was stronger, and he’d started remembering things. I thought you might be able to finish restoring him.”

“Without that?”

Caleb glanced down at the ring. “I hoped so. That’s why I wanted to examine him.”

Nate couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “This whole time, you were just hoping you could keep what you had stolen?” He snatched the ring from Caleb’s palm. “This belongs to Leo. You can’t keep it. Goddammit, Caleb. Of course you can’t keep it.”

Caleb didn’t try to take the ring back, but he glared at Nate. In a low voice he said, “You wouldn’t give a shit about any of this if you weren’t in love with him.”

Nate’s mouth opened, but his cousin’s words struck him speechless.

“You’re such a hypocrite, you know. You buy houses and force the ghosts out so you can sell them. You don’t care who they are or where they go. And now you’re sitting there judging me when I only took this power to help the spirits you walked away from.”

There wasn’t much Nate could say in response to that. He’d moved in here intending to get rid of Leo. He’d wanted the house empty so he could get on with the renovations, and when Leo had refused to go, he’d been furious.

The ring pressed into his palm. He hadn’t realized how tightly he was holding it.

“I left to build a life for myself,” he finally said. “I exorcised ghosts, but I didn’t hurt them. You came here and tore a spirit apart.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“But you did! And then you kept the part you tore off.”

“Enough,” Leo said. He focused on Caleb. “Can you undo it?”

Caleb shook his head. “Not safely.”

Leo’s brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”