“When Kasey died, that wasn’t exactly the end of things. God, I don’t even know where to start.”

It’s clear by the surprise on Aiden’s face that he didn’t think this would be about Kasey. He leans against the workbench, his easy smile dropping away. My stomach lurches unpleasantly. This isn’t going to be an easy conversation, no way around that, but it has to happen.

“We haven’t really talked about it much,” Aiden says, watching me closely. “What happened to Kasey.”

“No, and there’s a good reason for that.” I wish desperately that this was the kind of talk we could have via text. I can hardly look at him right now.

“Go on, Jamie.” Kasey comes to stand at my side. Everything is easier with her closeby, and she knows that. “Just say it.”

I stare at her for a moment, then look back to Aiden. Going by the way his eyebrows are drawn up and his lips turned down, he’s starting to get concerned. He’s probably going to think I’m having a breakdown or something if I don’t start talking soon. Kasey is right, as usual. Best to be direct.

“Aiden, Kasey is still here. In Ketterbridge.”

“Right...” Now he looks confused. “She’s… in Memory Gardens. Did you want to visit her grave or something? I’ll come with you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. When she died... oh, god.” I take a deep breath. “Please don’t be mad. Kasey is a ghost and she’s been here in Ketterbridge ever since she died and I’m the only one who can see or hear her but she is corporeal, like she looks like herself and she’s wearing what she wore when she died, um. She’s kind of been chilling in my apartment until we can figure things out. This is her first time to the Ghost Office! She's right here. And she wants me to tell you that she still remembers the red platform shoes with the peep toe that you ruined at our tenth grade Valentine’s Day dance, and she says that you owe her $194.02 for them. Adjusted for inflation.” I stop and catch my breath. “So, yeah. That’s all I wanted to say.”

For a handful of long, tense seconds, Aiden is completely frozen. When he unthaws, a small parade of expressions marches across his face, far too quickly for me to read. He turns away, one hand to his mouth.

“Aiden?” Oh, no. My heart plummets. “Look, I know I shouldn’t have kept this from you, but it took me a while to convince Kasey to trust you with it. Then she came with us the day that we looked for the cemetery, and saw that you’re cool now, and we’ve had some discussions about it... Oh - that reminds me. Kasey thinks she can actually feel warmth from William. At the line on Benton Street.”

Aiden whips around, his mouth slightly open, and runs a disbelieving hand through his hair.

“No, but-” His lips move soundlessly, searching for words that won’t come. “Kasey, she - I didn’t - there was no way-” He seems dazed, unreachable.

I step a little closer to him, my heart tying itself into anxious knots.

“I’m so sorry. I wanted to say something sooner, but I didn’t feel like it was mine to share.”

“He looks like he’s gonna pass out,” Kasey observes.

“Not helping!” I snap at her, and Aiden follows my line of sight, staring at the spot where she stands, invisible to him. “Aiden, are you - are you okay?”

“I…” He seems like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands; they reach up towards his face, then drop to his sides, then run through his hair again. “I want to think this is a joke, but I don’t think it’s something you would joke about, so it can’t be that.”

“I’m being completely serious right now. I promise.”

Aiden’s mouth opens and closes several times before he lands on something to say.

“Jamie, I need you to tell me everything one more time. A lot slower, please. Breathing between words.”

I do. I explain everything about Kasey’s afterlife, from start to finish. She stands right next to me the whole time, correcting what I say here and there. Aiden listens closely, his face growing paler and paler. When I get to the end, he slumps backward against the workbenches and runs a trembling hand over his mouth.

“Are you okay?” I’ve asked him that like, twenty times today alone, but I can’t help myself. I’m a little taken aback by his response. I knew he would be shocked, I thought he might be angry or upset with me, but this is different. He looks shaken to his very core. “Let’s go outside, okay? Get some air.”

Kasey joins us as I steer Aiden through the open door of the Ghost Office. There’s a last bit of brightness lingering in the sky over the river, a breeze rippling the calm water. We're having one of those late summer days where the very air feels green. It’s beautiful out, and some much-needed tranquility, but Aiden may as well be on a different planet. He’s completely silent, obviously lost in thought, some battle happening behind his eyes. I get the sense that he’s incubating something to say.

“You know.” I nudge his ribs with my elbow, trying to lighten the mood. “I thought I reacted badly when you told me that you could do magic and you were hunting for a ghost.” My half-assed attempt at a smile dies when he turns to look at me. “Oh, my god. I’m so fucking sorry, Aiden, I promise I won’t keep things from you again.”

“No, Jamie.” He takes an unsteady breath. “I’m not mad at you. I…” He shakes his head like he can’t believe any of this. “I have to tell you something, and you won't like it.”

“What-?”

“It’s me.”

I glance at Kasey, who shrugs, her confusion a mirror to my own.

“You? What do you mean?”

“I think-” He stops, swallows, and starts again. “I think that I did this.”

~~~~

“What the hell does he mean by that?” Kasey looks at me, like I should have any fucking idea.

“What are you talking about?” I take his arm, pull him so that he’s forced to look at me. “Aiden?”

“Okay.” He puts his fingertips to the bridge of his nose. “Now it’s my turn to do a lot of explaining. Is Kasey still here?”

“She’s right next to you.”

Aiden jumps and looks to his right, accidentally stepping directly through Kasey, who was on his left.

“Okay. Shit. Gotta get used to that. You both need to hear this, though, so.” Aiden takes a deep breath. “You know how I told you, Jamie, that range isn’t an issue for me when it comes to listening for energy?”

“Yeah?”

“Okay, I… I was in Berlin when Kasey had her car accident. I had already been planning to come back to Ketterbridge, but I wanted to finish the program I was doing for my drinking. I was doing well by that point, hadn’t touched a drop in a while. I was even taking classes online to get the certificate that I needed to apply for the archivist job. But I wanted to feel sure that I was stable before I came back. I kept having this mental image of coming back to Ketterbridge and relapsing and-” He hesitates, cuts off.

This is more information than I’ve ever been willingly handed about Aiden’s time away from Ketterbridge. I have no clue what it has to do with Kasey, but I’m listening with rapt attention, and so is she. Aiden keeps stopping and starting again, but I know to be patient.

“I thought I had more time,” he says softly.

I remember abruptly what Aiden said, when he first came back. Now there’s someone who I’ll never get the chance to make things up to. What happened made me realize that I don’t have all the time I thought.

“I never thought for a second,” he continues, a pained expression on his face, “That Kasey… I mean, she was young and healthy, and she wasn’t self-destructive like Ralph, or reckless or - I just had no idea it was coming. It happened while I was asleep. I woke up and it was like - like I was in the accident, myself. It felt like someone woke me up by cracking a windshield on my head.” He closes his eyes, like he can still feel it. “I’ve heard deaths before, obviously. Natural ones are much calmer, like a note dropping out of a song at the right time. Ones that could have been prevented… they’re much worse. This was the first one I’d experienced sober in a really long time. It was… it…” He bites his lip.

My head is spinning, but all I can do is wait. Cutting him off now would be a huge mistake, even though I already have five thousand questions.

“Do you remember how I told you that your energy has always been easier for me to pick out?” Aiden asks, and I nod mutely. “I could hear something coming for you, not something physical, not something that would actually put you in danger, but... I put two and two together and I realized right away that whatever happened, happened to someone important to you. Someone whose note has been right next to yours for years and years. I…” He stops, closes his eyes like he can’t look at me. “I did something by accident. I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that I had panicked and released a lot of magic, but I had no clue what I did. I called my aunt and warned her, but she said that Kasey had died and nothing else had changed. So I thought - I mean, I hoped - that maybe I hadn’t actually done anything. I got on a flight the next day. I was obviously way too late for Kasey, but I realized I had to come back before someone else died because I wasn’t here.”

His voice scrapes on the last word. My heart twists painfully.

“Aiden…” I want to reach for his hand. He shakes his head and forges on.

“I must have done this. I made Kasey into a ghost.”

Kasey lets out a soft breath.

“Holy shit,” she whispers.

“Are you sure?” I don't know what else to say.

“There’s no one else in Ketterbridge who could capture and preserve a soul. It was an accident, I didn’t mean to.” Aiden winces. “I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t know what I’d done, and I didn’t want to talk to you about Kasey in general because I… I thought maybe you wouldn’t be able to forgive me.”

“But - forgive you for what?”

He stares at me like it’s obvious.

“For what? For not being here. If I had still been in Ketterbridge, maybe I could have stopped Kasey from dying. Instead I was busy running, and it was useless, it was all so fucking useless, I-”

“Aiden!” I cave and grab his hands. His blue gaze is turning lighter, not in the way of magic, but how they do when he cries. He doesn’t look like he’s going to, but I can parse the slight hitch in his breath, the way he keeps swallowing over and over again.

“She would still be here,” he says, unable to look at me. “If I hadn’t been-”

“Aiden, she is still here.” I squeeze his fingers, wishing I could kiss that expression right off of his face. “She is still here, because of you.”

“But-” His eyebrows draw together in confusion. “Wait, you’re not mad?”

“No. No.” I drop his hands and take him by the elbows. “You couldn’t do anything from where you were. You were trying to get better. You’ve already saved two people’s lives since you got back. Do you think that’s nothing? Shit, dude, it’s because of you that I still have Kasey, even if she’s - different. You were trying to look out for me, even though we were thousands of miles apart and we hadn’t seen each other in eight years and we weren’t even friends yet. How could I be mad at you?” I peer up into his face, and he finally meets my eyes. “Everything is better because you’re here,” I tell him. I hope he understands how serious I am.

His blue eyes are unreadable. He opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, but instead he grabs me and pulls me into a fierce, bone-crushing hug. I raise my arms to hug him back, but he immediately lets me go and steps away. Swipes a hand over his eyes.

"Jamie, I-" He begins hoarsely, and stops. He glances in Kasey's general direction and clears his throat. “What about you, Kasey? Do you even want this? I can try to find a way to release you, if you don't."

I turn to Kasey, who is silent and ashen, clearly still trying to process everything.

“You don’t want him to release you, right?” I can hear the fear in my voice, and I know it isn’t fair for me to put it this way, that it’s totally valid if she wants to go, but-

“No, of course not,” she says sternly, snapping out of her daze. Warm relief instantly floods through me. “Why should you guys get a full lifespan and not me? Tell him to ask me again when I’m ninety.”

“She says to ask her that when she’s ninety.”

Aiden smooths the back of his hand over his eyes again.

“So she doesn’t hate it?”

“No, but she’s annoyed that she can’t feel anything. She really wants us to get William corporeal, and also I’m pretty sure she wasn’t joking about you paying her back for the shoes.”

“Pay her back!” Aiden lets out a choking laugh. “Just how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“She told me to tell you that since she is dead and can’t accept cash, you’re going to have to donate it to a charity of her choice.”

“That sounds about right.” Aiden shakes his head. “Where is she?”

I use my hands to outline Kasey where she stands, and Aiden faces the approximate spot.

“Kasey. I’m really so fucking sorry. I know I should have been here.”

“And?” she says. I repeat the question to Aiden, who sighs.

“And I’m sorry I ruined your shoes in tenth grade. I will pay back your $200 as soon as I can. I work for the government, so it should only take about… six weeks for me to earn that much.”

Kasey rolls her eyes.

“Tell Aiden that-”

“Okay, you know what?” I hold up my hands between the two of them. “This isn’t gonna work. We have got to get the glasses functioning, because me being the go-between is a recipe for disaster.”

“Agreed,” they say, at the same time. “But!” Kasey continues. “Tell him the one other thing.”

“Oh, right.” I face Aiden again. “Kasey says to say that she’s the manager now.”

“The manager?” His eyebrows shoot up.

“Of the Ghost Office. Hang on, I wrote down what she said.” I pull my phone out of my pocket and open the note. “Here we go. Jamie and Aiden: I am officially taking over management of the Ghost Office. A short list of reasons why: firstly, I have a PhD and I am vastly overqualified. Secondly, because you monkeys clearly can’t handle everything by yourselves, as evidenced by the fact that the Ghost Office is half-destroyed and you guys nearly lost the pocket watch. I will not let you two cost me my potential cute lumberjack boyfriend with your ridiculous tomfoolery.”

“Tomfoolery!” sputters Aiden.

“Believe me, I was just as offended as you,” I tell him. “Anyways, it goes on. Let’s see... It’s inappropriate to set up an institution for the study of ghosts with no ghosts actually involved. Additionally, there should clearly be someone with in-depth historical knowledge on the team when the ghost being sought after is from the early 1800s. I say again that I am not applying for this job, but rather just taking it. Just you guys try to get rid of me. Neither of you can touch me and only one of you can see me. I will haunt the shit out of anyone who tries to - you know what? This is four pages long. I’ll text the rest to you later.”

“Four pages, Jesus Christ!”

“The point is.” I gesture to Kasey, who smiles widely. “Say hello to the newest member of our team.”