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Nate stared at him.

The ghost stared back.

“I’ll figure this out,” Nate said, flatly. “Whatever’s wrong with you.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Nate held the stare for another moment. Then he turned, picked up his flashlight from the table, and walked out through the back door.

A moment later the ghost listened to the sound of tires on the gravel road and then everything went quiet again.

He’d won.

Good.

He drifted to the sitting room. Then to the foyer. Then to the staircase, where he sat on the third step and listened to the house settle back into its silence.

The medium had called him Leo.

Leo.

Ridiculous.

He didn’t look like a Leo. He didn’t look like anything. He was a dead man with no name and no memory and a house that he needed to protect from intruders.

Leo.

He said it out loud to the empty foyer.

“Leo.”

It was stupid. It wasn’t his name.

It was better than the nothing that sat in his memory where his real name should have been.

He said it again, quieter.

Then he didn’t say anything for a long time.

Chapter

Three

Nate had tried to leave the family group chat three times. His brother kept adding him back without comment.

Now, two days after his failed exorcism, the phone was buzzing beside his laptop again.

He ignored it. The timeline on his laptop needed him more than anyone in his contacts did. He was stitching together a bathroom renovation’s before-and-after sequence, and the color was too warm. He adjusted it until the walnut vanity looked the way it had when he’d installed it.

The phone buzzed again.

Nate set the video exporting and checked his phone.

Mom: Does Saturday work for everyone? I’m thinking pot roast.

Jonah: works for me. sophies bringing that potato thing

Aunt Claire: That potato thing?