Could I linger longer with someone else’s eyes on me, I would never depart Kasey Lavoe’s side. Never.

But my newfound form is still fragile in my grasp. To push it too hard is to lose it. When Kasey fell into my arms at Aiden’s, after we all watched the movie together, my heart ran faster than the wildest river I have ever worked.

Her deep black eyes reflect everything back so brilliantly, every light, every color. They glitter like a night sky filled with bright constellations, especially when they meet mine. I am disarmed completely, I fall to pieces, and the only option is retreat.

But the moment I get my breath back, my heart under control - I want to return to her. Need to return to her.

So I find myself back on Benton the very next night, hoping that Kasey will feel the same kind of need, and return to me.

She is already waiting when I arrive. The echo of my once-living heart thrums in my ears at the sight of her.

“Miss Lavoe,” I say. “Kasey.”

She is too far away to hear me, but she must sense that I'm nearby. Her gaze drops from the stars overhead, directly onto me. She may have pulled every star down from the sky and dropped them into my hands, the way light and spark and fire flares within me.

To be looked at by anyone is overwhelming, but to be looked at by Kasey is a lightning strike.

A smile spreads across her face, and she bounds to her feet. I think she’s about to run to me - she makes a quick movement forward - but then she stops, reconsidering, and stands still.

“Hey, cute thing,” she calls, slinging her dark hair out of her face. “You okay to come over here? You basically snuggled me during the movie last night, so I have a feeling you can manage it.”

I have not stopped thinking about Kasey curled up in my arms on Aiden’s couch, not for one second. Nor have I forgotten how it felt to have her crash into my arms, afterwards. Just as she did at the Ghost Office, on the day of my summoning. She could not simply step into my embrace, calm and composed. Both times, it’s been a forceful impact, a wild leap.

I cannot imagine it any other way, not from Kasey. The thought makes me smile. Gives me courage.

I take a step forward, then let myself disappear. I reappear only a foot or so before her, and she blinks in surprise. Without a word, I reach across the distance, take her hand, lift it to my mouth. Bend slightly, to brush a kiss onto her knuckles.

To feel the warmth and press of Kasey’s fingers again is enough to throw me to the ground, but I manage to straighten up, look into her eyes for a brief moment.

“Oh my god,” she laughs, a rosy blush in her cheeks.

She slips her hand from my grasp and surprises me by closing her fingers around my suspenders. She gives them a sharp tug, pulling me across what little space remained between us.

She bites down on her lip, gazing up at me. “Hey, you."

“Good evening,” I stammer, breathless to be so close to her.

“You miss me already, Danny Phantom?” she asks, in a playful voice.

“Who?”

“Yeah, that’s fair,” Kasey giggles. “There’s no reason you would get that one. Let’s just say he’s the only other ghost I’ve had a crush on, besides you.”

I have the sense that she is teasing me. She must be, for there are no other ghosts.

“Where resides this fellow?” I ask, frowning deeply. “I’d like a word with him.”

Kasey laughs again. She still has hold of my suspenders, and she uses them to pull herself up onto her toes.

I freeze as she brushes the tip of her nose against mine.

“Don’t worry,” she murmurs, very softly. “I know which ghost I prefer. You don’t have any competition, beat crew boy.”

I am overcome by the feeling of her breath against my lips, to the point that I scarcely hear her words. To understand what she said takes me longer than I’d care to admit. When I do, my heart stumbles.

I swallow hard, closing my eyes. The feeling of Kasey is a vivid experience all by itself. Combined with the sight of her - too much for my heart.

Kasey lets go of my suspenders and draws back.

The boundaries of how much I can bear at once are ever in motion - sometimes retreating, sometimes reclaiming lost ground. Somehow, Kasey seems to intuit when she's brushing up against them. She’s a wild thing, happy to shatter what she doesn’t see fit to stand. But with this, she is delicate, careful, attentive.

An involuntary movement. As Kasey falls back, I follow after, so that when she lands on her feet, my nose is still pressed against hers.

I forget my situation. I forget how long I’ve been alone. That I left my body behind centuries ago. That this is both so old and so new to me. That I barely know how to absorb all the sensations that come with it. All I can do is chase the intoxicating feeling that just overtook me.

Kasey's lips so close to mine, her face turned up to me, her warmth. That's all I can think of.

I sense that Kasey is overwhelmed, too. I’m not the only one who’s gone without feeling for too long. She’s so still, her eyes closed, her breath slightly heightened. I realize that I am holding her by her waist, though I have no recollection of putting my hands there.

I speak my mind without stopping to think.

“Sometimes I can't grasp that you truly see me, Kasey. I think you must be looking right through me, at another. Seeing another, speaking to another. But it’s impossible for me to feel that way when we’re like this.”

Kasey smiles. Opens her eyes, pulls back just enough to look into mine.

“I’m talking to you,” she says. “William Joseph Clarke, of Missouri. Life dates 1797 to 1822. Beat crew man, hell-bent on destroying his family’s good name. Sassy. Loser at ghost tag.”

I laugh, curling further towards Kasey, and now our foreheads come together, too.

We stand like that for some time, both of us adjusting. Now that I’m aware of my hands on her, I am hit with waves of sensation. There’s soft fabric, the warmth of her body beneath it. I imagine I can feel her racing heartbeat through my fingers, but it could be my own.

In fact, my heart is leaping wildly, all over the place. First in my ears, then hammering in my chest at a rate and force that could break ribs. Now it’s in my hands, which are still on Kasey, and some warmth is spilling out from my chest into every part of me, but particularly into my cheeks - am I breathing? I don’t technically need to, and I’m suddenly not sure how long I’ve gone without it.

Kasey places her palms on my chest, moving achingly slow. She leaves them there for a moment. Then she lifts one hand, and very lightly drags a fingertip along the collar line of my shirt. Just above the fabric, so that her fingertip touches my skin. I close my eyes, feel her travel down the curve, feel her linger in the gap left by the one undone button.

When I was incorporeal, all I wanted was to be seen and heard. This is so far beyond what I ever dared to hope for. I’m not even sure what this is, this feeling taking over my whole body right now, stealing my breath.

Kasey releases me and steps away. I blink in surprise. Did I do something wrong? I shouldn't have taken her by the waist, shouldn't have come so close - I must apologize, but my mind is so thoroughly blank, pure sensation and no words -

“I’m sorry.” Kasey shakes her hands out, then fans her face. “If we stayed like that any longer, I was gonna kiss you. Like, for sure. There’s only so much a girl can take.”

There’s only so much that I can take, too. I don’t know what I would have done if she had kissed me.

She is studying me, allowing her eyes to travel more slowly over my features than they have before. I hold my breath. Hold onto my form, as well as I can while I’m so flustered.

“Are you Nordic, Will? That feels like a valid guess. Did your parents travel here, or...? Sorry, the historian in me wants to know.”

It takes me a second to grasp the meaning of her words. I am still soaring miles above my own head.

“I - don’t remember,” I admit. “Most of my family history, I don’t…”

I fade off, embarrassed. Kasey’s eyes soften.

“It’s fine. There’s something way more important I wanted to ask you, anyways. I’m going on a mission for the Ghost Office, and it’s going to take me some time. I don't know how long, exactly. I set a date to check in with Jamie and Aiden, just in case. It could be days, though. Maybe longer.”

My heart drops, and it seems that all of Kasey's warmth has fled me. Days without her, already? Longer than that, even?

“So I wanted to see if you’d come with me,” she continues. “It’s something only dead members of the team can do, and I could use your help. But if it sounds like too much for you-”

“No, I’ll come!” I interrupt, quite unintentionally.

Kasey stops, blinking up at me. “I didn't say what we’re doing, yet.”

I work up the courage to tuck a strand of raven hair behind her ear. “As long as I’m with you, that is of little importance.”

Kasey's lips turn up in a warm smile. She offers me her hand, and I take it.

Benton Street vanishes. When I open my eyes, we are someplace else entirely.

To our left, the ocean. Sand dunes to our right, peppered with tufts of frozen beach grass. The moon is huge and full, pouring light onto the water’s glassy surface. The rushing of the waves fills my ears.

Kasey pulls on my hand. “Come on. We’ve got some walking to do.”

I'm still adjusting to contact of any kind, but walking with Kasey’s fingers laced through mine feels surprisingly… natural. Right.

I imagine that the sand must be cold. The entire beach must be freezing. The wind is white-capping the waves, tearing through the trees beyond the dunes, making the branches bend and the dry leaves dance. An occasional snowflake escapes from the sky, floats through or past us.

But I am incapable of feeling any of the world’s coldness. I experience only the warmth of the beautiful ghost by my side.

We walk along the beach, leaving no prints in the sand.

Kasey steals a glance at me.

“So - like I said, we’re on a mission. You haven’t left Ketterbridge since your death, Will, I know that. But I assume that you’ve tried?”

“Many times, yes.” I search for one of my more intact memories. “I put in a particular effort to escape in the 1840s. I heard of two sisters in New York who could commune with spirits. They asked questions, and ghosts answered with tapping sounds. I thought that they might help me. But I could not go, no matter how hard I tried.”

Kasey’s eyes narrow thoughtfully. “You mean the Fox sisters?”

I startle, twisting to look at Kasey.

“The Fox sisters, yes! Did they make their mark on history, then?”

“Yeah, they did. Sorry to tell you this, Will, but the Fox sisters couldn’t have helped you, even if you'd been able to leave Ketterbridge. They faked that whole thing. They made the tapping sounds by cracking the joints in their toes. One of the sisters admitted it, forty years later.”

“What? Really?”

“Mhm. Hey, though, if you ask me, those sisters were still pretty cool. They basically kicked off the entire Spiritualist movement in the States. After their story went public, tons of people started trying to communicate with ghosts. There were millions of Spiritualists, just by the end of the 1850s.”

“Millions,” I repeat, dazed.

“Yep. And the Spiritualist movement had a huge influence on the women’s suffrage movement, too. It was thought that women were more naturally suited to be mediums. That brought plenty of women a form of empowerment they’d never had access to before, as religious leaders. A chance to practice speaking with authority, to big groups of people.” Kasey breaks into a grin. “All because of the Fox sisters. All because of a twelve-year-old girl, and her fifteen-year-old sister.”

I have been listening closely, a slow smile rising on my face.

Kasey used to tell me about history because I could not respond, but we wanted to spend time together. A story fitted our communication needs well. Some part of me had feared that now, when we could actually speak, she might not do this anymore.

It appears that I was wrong. For that, I’m glad.

“Please never stop telling me such things,” I murmur.

Kasey smiles brightly. The moonlight streams through her, expanding her natural glow, catching in her eyes.

Again, I forget to breathe.

We walk in silence for a stretch. Listening to the crashing of the waves, the wind in the trees.

“The mission?” I finally manage.

“Oh, right.” Kasey shakes her head, lifts her eyes from our intertwined hands. “The next Ghost Office mission is for us to find a way to leave Ketterbridge. That's why I asked if you've tried. We need a power source that we can take with us. We’re powered by something here, in Ketterbridge, and we can’t go beyond its reach. Aiden made me, which means-”

“Aiden made you?” This information is staggering. All this time, I had no idea what force of the universe transformed me. “Kasey, we’re - made by people?”

“We…" She falls into a brief silence. "There’s a lot I need to fill you in on. I think it’s best if we do that gradually. But yes, Aiden made me into a ghost.”

“Then…” I come to an abrupt halt, my head spinning. “Who made me?”

Kasey stops, too. Again, she hesitates.

“Did you die alone, Will? Or was someone with you?”

A painful memory flashes through my mind.

Ariana reaching for me. The terror in her voice, in her sapphire eyes. Not sapphire, though, not that night. Some trick of the moonlight made them burn with white-blue fire.

“Ariana was there.” The old, deep ache stirs in me. I close my eyes, but I'm certain that my hurt shows on my face. “I don’t know how or why, but she was. She tried to save me, she - came so close.”

Kasey’s fingertips skate gently along my jaw, gliding over the small scar there. Her touch grounds me, brings me back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly, when I open my eyes. “I’m sure that’s rough to think about.”

“It does not explain who made me,” I point out, and Kasey nibbles her lip.

“I think we should save that for another time. Let’s - let’s stay on mission, okay?”

She sets off again, her bright red pants billowing around her legs. I fall into step at her side.

She drops my hand and winds her arm around my lower back, instead. This leaves me nowhere to put my arm but around her shoulders, so I do, and find myself rewarded with a lingering smile.

“What is the nature of our mission?” I ask.

“We know that we can't go a certain distance from our power source,” Kasey explains. “But we don’t know if that distance is a consistent radius outwards from the source, or what. We need to walk along the edge, go in every direction, see how far we can get. Figure out where the boundaries lie. That sound okay?”

"Yes." I squeeze Kasey's fingers. "I hope this will be the first of many journeys I get to take with you, Miss Lavoe."

Kasey slows to a stop, releasing me. I turn to look at her.

She takes hold of my forearm with both hands, uses it to leverage herself up, and plants a kiss on my cheek.

Then she smiles at me, and starts walking.

I follow after her, thinking that I can't truly be upset with whoever made me into a ghost.

After all, they gave me this.