I give Kasey’s hand the quickest little touch, and she sits bolt upright in the street, her raven hair swinging around her ears.

“Will? Was that you? Wait - don’t answer that. I know it was you. Don’t waste any heat, okay?”

I drop to sit before her, smiling already. “Hello. Have you been waiting long? I’m sorry, I just got back from - wherever I was.”

“I’m glad you’re here, I’ve been dying to talk to you. Ever since Aiden told me...”

She’s been dying to talk to me. I beam at her, having completely missed the rest of what she said. But a strange look crosses her face - not an altogether happy look - and I hesitate.

“Kasey? Did something happen while I was-?”

“Aiden explained what it’s really doing to you, when you give me heat. I’m burning up all of your energy, and you need that energy. It’s what holds you together, allows you to be coherent.”

Is that what’s happening? I suppose it makes sense, now that I think about it. I can’t fathom how the team figured that one out, but it sounds like they’ve made some strides while I was lost.

“So, here’s my thought,” Kasey continues, and I listen with rapt attention. “I don’t want to make you keep doing this if it’s painful, or scary, or whatever. It feels unfair to keep asking you for that, when I have no idea what it feels like. So - before we go any further - are you comfortable, using this yes and no system? Because if not, this will be the last question I ever ask you this way. No hard feelings. One touch for yes. Two for no. You can think about it for a minute, if you want. I’ll wait.”

I stare at her, a cocktail of conflicting emotions stirring in me. On the one hand, I feel baffled; on the other, I want to laugh, and - I’m also strangely touched. It feels sweet - beyond sweet - to know that she’s worried about me, but… does Kasey really not know that I would do it one thousand times over, if she asked me to? Granted, it’s not my favorite feeling in the world. There’s always the fear that I may not come back.

Such a thing would have appealed to me, before she came along. A second death - not even death, simply release. Deliverance from this lonely, pointless existence. But now… after two hundred years of waiting to be seen, to miss my chance, let it slip right out of my fingers, and silently fade away? What a sad, quiet end to my time in this place. Unseen, unheard, and then gone - and none of it for anything.

I know now that I do not want that. But I will risk it. I will risk it over and over again, if it means a chance to be seen by her.

Am I okay with dissolving into nothing every time this beautiful, unpredictable, brilliant woman asks me to?

I tap her hand one time. Yes.

Kasey exhales a long, slow breath. “I hope that means it doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t hurt, it’s only a little frightening,” I tell her. “Nothing hurts. I wish I could hurt.”

“Okay, now that we’ve got that out of the way, don’t answer any more questions, Will. Please. I want to ask you stuff, but let’s wait for a bit. I still want to spend time with you, I’m not going to use up all of your energy in the first five minutes of having you back.”

This statement alone makes me want to grab her and give her every screed of warmth that I have, but I refrain. I want time with her, too.

“Okay.”

“So, you know what we’re doing tomorrow?”

“Tell me.”

“We’re going on another search mission for that old cemetery, the one that has your grave. We’re actually going hiking and then camping. Which I know doesn’t sound that wild, but like, if you knew Jamie as well as I do, you’d realize that this is staggering. Jamie hates camping, and he’s never even been. Right before our eighth-grade camping trip, he broke his toe, and he couldn’t come. You know what he said? I’m relieved, actually. This is better.”

Kasey laughs, tipping her head back, and I grin at her. I’ve only known Jamie for a short while, but I can almost hear it in his voice.

“That sounds like him.”

“Like seriously, he was stoked to break his toe. Preferred it, over the alternative. I mean - he didn’t do it on purpose, but you get the idea.”

“I do, very much so.”

“Anyways, we’re striking out into the woods again, but with a broader search radius this time. Aiden is gonna wear the glasses and look for spectral traces, and I’m supposed to just see if I feel anything. I don’t exactly know what that means. Can I feel your grave? I can’t feel mine unless someone near it calls for me.”

“Perhaps? No one has ever used my grave to call for me.”

“I wish we could just ask you where it is.”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help. I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Back in my living days, the nature surrounding Ketterbridge was vast and overflowing. A man could stroll down the riverbank and return with an armful of peltries; felling timber was cutting light into a forest so thick that it was almost dark beneath the boughs.

It’s thinned out since then. I have stood and watched as men in roaring machines shaved tremendous patches into the green blanket of the mountains, leaving only splinters in their wake. Not anymore, not since the land was marked as ‘protected’ - but it was a long time before the law caught up, and according to Kasey, it still barely has.

Could I go back, I probably would have chosen a different line of work. I suppose that’s of no matter now. I mean only to say that it was the old forest which reclaimed the cemetery, and that forest was powerful and consumptive, untrammeled by human intervention. I doubt that the cemetery will be easy to find, especially given that I can’t find it myself.

“I hope you can find it,” I tell Kasey. “I would hate to make Jamie go camping for no reason.”

“We thought that we needed to use the map to find your grave, then use your grave to summon you,” she explains. “Now we think we had it backwards. We’ve got to get something from your grave to make the map work, and then use the map to summon you. I don’t know how it’s supposed to work, but Aiden doesn’t, either, so. I guess we’re all learning together. We really should write this all down somewhere, in case another ghost needs finding in the future. That’s one thing that really annoys me about this form of existence. I can’t fucking write anything down.”

“I know how you feel.”

“I was doing old homework, trying to kickstart my brain, and it just made me want to write stuff down. There was a question about these ancient artifacts unearthed at Tillya Tepe. Fascinating archaeological finds, god, they make me want to write a good analysis." She pauses, and I can tell by her eyes that she has a story to tell me. "Those objects came really close to being taken by the Taliban, at one point.”

“Oh, that's-"

“There was this whole covert operation to prevent the objects from being taken and destroyed. The staff at the National Museum of Afghanistan - fucking heroes, I swear - they secretly moved twenty-thousand artifacts into a sealed vault, off-site. Twenty-thousand, Will.”

“Goodness.”

“The Taliban showed up and tried to get into the vault. A banker there stopped them by deliberately breaking the key into the vault door. Not a historian or archaeologist or curator. A banker. A man named Ameruddin Askarzai. I Googled him once, and almost nothing turned up, just a few articles here and there. It always struck me... Like, it was this incredible act of bravery, and he saved twenty-thousand priceless pieces of history. Barely anyone knows his name, but... his impact, it’ll live on for who knows how long?” Kasey falls silent for a moment, deflating. “I wish I’d lived long enough to make some kind of bigger impact like that.”

The interested smile I always feel myself wearing when she talks about history instantly slips from my face.

“But you have made an impact! You’ve changed everything for me, I know that’s not the same, but you-”

She can’t hear me. Damnation. Damn this, damn the fact that I can’t tell her what kind of impact she’s really had. Kasey wants to change or save history? Well, I am a piece of history, and she’s saved me from lifetimes of - just - damn it all to hell, she told me not to use up my heat, but-

I feather my fingers as lightly as I can across hers, and her dark eyes widen.

“Will! I didn’t ask a question, don’t-” Kasey stops, blinking. “Are you - trying to make me feel better? Wait, don’t answer that! God, I’ve been thinking so hard about my questions, and here I am making you waste all your heat before we even get to them!”

Despite her protestations, she's back to smiling. It lights up her whole face.

“Doesn’t feel like a waste to me.”

“Okay, let me think.” Kasey nibbles her lip, eyes narrowing. “That’s been three touches now, so you - you’re probably starting to come undone, aren’t you?”

Indeed, I can feel the threads that hold me together starting to loosen, fray, pull apart.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m gonna ask my questions now, okay? I don’t want to keep you half here, that sounds uncomfortable. And also I can’t stay late tonight, because apparently we have to get up ass-early in the morning.”

“Ask me anything you like.”

“So, again, one touch for yes, two for no.”

“Got it.”

“The incident report we found on your death has some false information, and some that we think is true. I want to know which is which, so - were you dead before you ended up in the river, or did you really drown? Hang on, that’s not a yes or no… Let me try again. Did you drown, Will?”

Like so many others on the beat crew, but not for the same reasons. I still remember the pitch-black water closing over my head, the last desperate reach for the surface, the taste of blood in my mouth. The deep inhale that my lungs finally took without my permission, breathing in water instead of air. Choking on the involuntary reflex that was trying to save me. I wish I could say I was brave, but in truth I was shivering uncontrollably, blinded by panic, terrified right up until the end.

I’d hauled men out of the water before, ataxic and vomiting, dangerously hypothermic, scared half to death. You’re alright, lad, just breathe - someone get him a blanket!

Yet I had never imagined what it would feel like.

No one pulled me out until I was floating facedown on the surface, but I bear no grudge against the beat crew boys. I know they would have tried, if they had been there. It would have made no difference. No one could have saved me, and they probably would have gotten hurt for their trouble.

It was no commonplace drowning, but - a drowning it was, nonetheless.

One tap. Yes. I feel more of myself falling away, seams tearing. Kasey winces.

“Oh, no. Drowning isn’t a nice way to die. I’m so sorry.”

Though I’m starting to crumble apart in earnest, this still twists something inside of me. Someone is sorry about what happened to me, the fate I met.

“Okay, next question, if you have it in you.”

“One more, I think.”

“Did you die trying to help someone else?”

I tap her hands three times before I fall apart completely. A simple yes or no doesn’t quite fit here.

I wasn’t trying to help someone. I was only trying to do the right thing.