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It smelled of earth and musk. The fox set him down, nosed him twice, adjusted his angle against the wall, and then turned to face the entrance, ears forward.

The ghost took stock of his surroundings.

A garden glove. A tennis ball. A length of hose. A child’s shoe, covered in dirt.

He had not been taken as food.

He had been taken as treasure.

“Oh, you have got to be—” he started, and then Nate’s face appeared in the den’s entrance, upside down.

“There you are.”

“NATE. It has a SHOE in here. A child’s SHOE.”

“It’s a stash.” Nate’s arm came in, reaching. “Foxes collect things.”

The fox growled.

The arm stopped.

The fox had placed itself between Nate’s hand and the treasury, low on its haunches, and the message required no translation.

Nate withdrew the arm.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay? OKAY? This is not okay!” the ghost protested.

“Everybody calm down.”

“I AM CALM.”

Nate’s face disappeared from the entrance. For one terrible moment the ghost thought he’d left, but then he stuck his hand in the den again, holding something rectangular.

It was one of those protein bars.

“You cannot be serious,” the ghost said.

Nate peeled the wrapper halfway down and laid the bar on the dirt just inside the entrance. Then he pulled his hand back and waited.

The fox looked at the bar.

“It smells like glue,” the ghost noted. “This is never going to work.”

The fox picked up the protein bar, moved to the far side of the den, and began, with great contentment, to eat.

Nate’s hand closed around the ghost’s middle and drew him out into the light.

The sky was very bright. The ghost hung in the medium’s grip, damp with fox saliva and covered in dirt, while Nate turned him over in his large, callused hands.

“Anything torn?”

“My dignity.”

“That was already torn.” Nate’s thumb stopped moving.

“What?”