Page 162 of The Internet’s Most Haunted Influencer

Leo missed him so much it was stupid. Nate was right there. Ten feet away, every night, and Leo missed him like the man had moved to the other side of the ocean.

And now there was someone.

Some stranger with a pulse and solid hands, who hadn’t been there when the painting got scratched, who didn’t know about the duty or the wall or the fox, who could sit in a diner and be seen by everyone, and Nate had never said a word. Not one word. Leo had stood in that garden three feet away and heard it at the same time as Jonah. Like he was nobody. Like he was the vacuum.

They were supposed to be a team — strangers on the internet knew they were a team — and yet…

Nate had simply gone and met somebody else. Easily. The way living people did. It had cost Leo everything to be fine with one night, and it had cost Nate nothing at all to move on from it.

“No,” Leo said, out loud, to the room. “Absolutely not.”

He crossed the room and grabbed Nate’s shoulder to shake him.

His hands went through.

Of course they went through. He stood there with his hands inside a sleeping man’s shoulder, being nothing, and it made him so furious he wanted to scream.

The lamp in the corner flickered on and off by itself as Leo seized Bartholomew instead of Nate and yanked.

The seal flew out of Nate’s arms.

Nate came awake swatting. He sat halfway up, and blinked at the dark, bewildered.

“Leo? What—” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Is something wrong?”

“When did you meet him?”

Nate stared at him.

“It’s a simple question,” Leo said. “Was it in the diner? Is it someone from the diner?”

“What time is it?”

“Don’t change the subject!”

“I don’t know the subject!” Nate was fully awake now, propped on one hand. “Who am I meeting at the diner?”

“Your someone. The one you told Jonah about. The one everyone in your family gets to know about while I float around this house like a — like the furniture. When were you going to tell me? Were you going to tell me? Or was I going to find out when the car came up the drive? I hear a car sometimes at night, is that your paramour?”