Because I (rather unintentionally) dissolved into nothing but warmth after Kasey announced her search for me, I lost the apartment I’d been summoned to. I never saw the outside, only barely caught a glimpse of the interior: all I know is that there was a great deal of verdant greenery, in pots and hanging things. This is not enough information for me to locate the place again, but I think that everything will be alright. Kasey is looking for me, and she’s already found me multiple times without even realizing it. Not to mention that I can be summoned now, evidently. I will be found again - I hope. So I return to Benton Street and sit there, waiting for Kasey to come for me.

Two days after she spoke my name and changed everything, she returns to Benton Street, just as I’d hoped. I rush to meet her at the corner, where she stands in her halo of toasty warm light.

“Hullo, Ms. Lavoe!” I call, waving my arms as I jog across the street towards her. A car rushes through me, but it’s no matter. I hop up onto the sidewalk next to her, beaming. I’ve spent the last two days trying to find a solution to the puzzle: how can Kasey, Jamie, and Aiden know that a second ghost exists in this town, and furthermore, how do they know my identity? But seeing her, it all falls away. What does the how matter, when the result is this?

I wish I could make warmth without temporary self-destruction. I want to touch her hand and let her know that I’m here, without having to sacrifice the rest of our night for it.

She leans against the fence that borders the garden of the nearest house. It’s late enough that most of the houses have gone dark, but she picked one where the inhabitants are still up, squares of orange light marking every window. It adds to the glow emanating from her, and she is a brilliant thing against a brilliant thing, a small oasis of light in the darkness.

“You look lovely this evening,” I tell her. “If you don’t mind my saying.”

She tucks her raven hair behind her ears and stuffs her hands back into the pockets of her jacket. I get the feeling that she’s deep in thought, so I wait, reveling in the warmth that radiates around her.

“These moments.” She speaks suddenly, quietly. I move to stand in front of her, instead of at her side. It makes it feel more like we could have a two-way conversation. “This heat. I only feel it here, on Benton Street, and the one time in Jamie’s apartment when I spoke right to the ghost. Which I think means…” She takes a deep breath. “It’s you, isn’t it, William? You’re here, aren’t you?”

I could melt right into the floor.

“Good Lord in heaven," I whisper. She always takes me by surprise. I love hearing her say my name, knowing now that she really means me. “You have no notion of what it feels like to hear you say that.”

“Maybe this is pointless,” she murmurs. “I could be completely wrong and talking to myself.”

“No, no!”

“Or you could be some terrible mean old man mentally stuck in the early 1800s.”

“Excuse me!”

“Or I could be right, and you exist, but you’re not here tonight.”

“I’m here every night. Every night, I come back and I wait for you.”

“But I just feel like it’s you,” she says. “I can’t shake this feeling, like I’m sure it’s you.”

“Yes,” I answer, my heart doing leaps and bounds of joy. “Yes, yes!”

Kasey pushes up off of the fence.

“Jamie says that you’re incorporeal. Is that why you don’t answer? Can you speak at all?”

Incorporeal. Is that the word for it?

“I can speak, just no one ever hears me.”

“Or do you answer? Have you been answering the whole time?”

“Yes,” I tell her desperately. “Listening, answering. All of it.”

“Jamie and I, we’ve been trying to do some research, figure out how this happened. I mean, I’m a fucking historian. I should have answers. I know the mythology and beliefs surrounding death from cultures all over the world. Do you know who the Ancient Sumerians were?”

“No.” Kasey likes to talk about history, and even though I’m a piece of it, there’s so much I don’t know. I like the way her eyes grow distant and shining when she talks about the past, like she can see it all playing out before her. I love hearing these stories. They were all previously closed off to me, blocked by the impenetrable barrier of closed books that my immaterial fingers cannot open, pages I cannot turn. “Tell me.”

“The Sumerians had this story. It’s one of the earliest descriptions of the underworld - from 2700 BC, I think. This goddess, Inanna - she goes to the Great Below to face off with her twin sister, Ereshkigal. She has to pass through seven gates to descend, but with each gate, she loses more of her life, her fertility, her clothes, her jewels. By the time she reaches her sister, she’s a naked corpse, trapped in the underworld. She can only return to the real world if she can find a substitute soul to take her place.”

I listen closely, watching her.

“Did she find a soul?” I ask.

“Inanna eventually discovers that her lover never mourned her,” Kasey says, staring up at the sky. “She banishes him to the underworld to take her place. I always thought that shit was pretty fucking dope. Loved that.”

“That does sound very…” I try out the word, which I’ve spoken before, but never in this way. “Dope.”

“The story has echoes in cultures all over the world,” she continues. “Orpheus and Eurydice. Hades and Persephone. The gates themselves, too. Think Dante’s Inferno, or the nine hells of the Aztecs. I mean, everywhere in the world, we have stories and ideas about what it means to die and go onto the next life. Too many stories and too much information to boil down into one easy answer. But the one thing everybody agrees is that death is essentially the separation of the soul from the body. And for some reason, some way, our souls are still here. Just us. Together. So… I think that pretty much automatically makes us friends, right?”

I hold my breath. I can’t find any words, but she wouldn’t hear them anyway.

“Maybe together, we can figure out what we are, and why Ketterbridge decided to keep us,” she says.

I never thought of it that way. I always thought of myself as trapped, punished, imprisoned in Ketterbridge. The way Kasey puts it - Ketterbridge decided to keep us - that makes it sound different. That makes it sound like we’re precious things that the world simply didn’t want to give up.

“Yes.” I reach for her hands, realize what will happen if I touch them, and stop. “Yes.”

“Okay,” she says. “Here’s what I think. It’s possible that I’m standing here talking to no one, but it doesn’t super matter, because no one’s going to know. And if you’ve been here in Ketterbridge, for two hundred years, incorporeal… you probably haven’t gotten to talk to anyone for a good long time. So. I’m here, and you can talk to me. I’m going to listen, even if I can’t really hear you. When Jamie and Aiden and I get you out of this - stasis, I guess - you can retell me everything. We can call it a practice round. Maybe somewhere along the line, we’ll figure out a way for you to communicate with me. Maybe you can help us find you.”

I wish, more than anything, that I could tell her what this all means to me.

“You’re going to sit here and listen to me talk? Even though you can’t hear me?”

“Let’s try it,” she suggests. “Tell me something about you. Anything. Do you remember how you died?”

“I do.” I still can’t wrap my head around this, someone asking me questions and then waiting for my answer. “My death is one of the few things I remember with any great clarity. Possibly because I still don’t quite understand it. I do know that I made several bad choices, one after another. My father, he always told me to keep things above board, but I rarely took his advice. He was a man of prejudices, strong convictions. Anyone who disagreed with him he considered ignorant to the point of deplorability. But he was right in this. The one time I did something I knew I wouldn’t be proud of, and what happened? I died. I’m not even sure if he ever heard of my death, or of what happened to me, but he would have called it proof of his wisdom. That much is certain.”

“That’s crazy,” Kasey says. I stop, blinking.

“Wh- did you hear me?”

“I’m just going to say stuff like that every now and then,” she explains. “Let’s make it feel real, right? This way you’ll remember how to talk to other human beings, when you can again.”

My heart is pushing against my ribs in every direction.

“If this is working,” she murmurs, “Can you - make the warmth, again? So I know?”

It will put an end to this evening’s meeting, but if I don’t do it, she may think her wonderful, perfect idea is a dud. I can’t have that. I close my fingers around hers. Her warmth seeps into me, and I start to direct it back. I see the realization spread over her face, the understanding. She tosses her head back and laughs. It’s the last thing I see before my vision starts going dark around the edges. Her excitement is the only thing in the world that could match mine.

"Fuck yeah!" she whoops, and I smile, even as I fall back into nothingness.