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“Spite is honest.” Leo drifted past him through the fender. “It’s easier to fight.”

Nate decided not to examine that, and got in.

Bartholomew rode on the dashboard. Leo had refused to share the bench seat with, quote, that thing, and there was only so much truck.

They drove.

The road unrolled gray and empty. Fields, fence posts, a crow that couldn’t be bothered to move until the last second.

“You owe me something,” Nate said, a solid ten minutes into their ride.

Leo didn’t turn from the window. “I owe you nothing. If anything, you owe me. The list of your transgressions is long.”

“No, you do owe me,” Nate reminded him. “When you got stuck in the seal you said you’d tell me your name if I got you out.”

“Did I?”

“You did.”

“Well.” Leo lifted his chin. “Your mother said my memory was poor. You can’t hold me to a promise I can’t remember.”

Nate let a fence post go by. Then another.

But he couldn’t stop himself.

“You remember the promise. What you don’t remember is your name.”

“Of course I remember my name,” Leo snapped.

Nate had only known this ghost for a short time, but already, he recognized that tone of voice. He wasn’t going to get anything if he pushed now.

So he said nothing.

It took about half a mile for the ghost to speak again, much more quietly. “It’s mine. Whether I can reach it or not is nobody’s business. Least of all yours.”

Whether I can reach it or not.

“Okay,” Nate said.

“That’s it? Okay?”

“Yes.”

Leo finally turned from the window. Nate could feel himself being studied — checked for the trap, the smugness, the follow-up question waiting in ambush. Nate kept his face on the road and his hands lightly on the steering wheel.

“I suppose Leo is a fine name,” the ghost said finally.

“You hated it when I gave it to you.”

“It’s grown on me.”

Nate wasn’t going to fight him on that. “All right,” he said. “Leo.”

Leo faced the window again, chin up. “To you, it’s Leonard.”

“Leonard,” Nate repeated.

“Yes.”