“You honestly won’t tell me, Jamie?”

I make an apologetic face at Kasey, then shake my head no. “I’m sorry, I can’t.”

“How come?” She springs lightly down from the workbench, crosses the Ghost Office to where I’m kneeling on the floor with the container of salt. “Was it a sex thing?”

“No,” I answer firmly, then pause, reconsidering. “Well. It definitely was after we got back home.”

Kasey giggles, then groans loudly, drops to sprawl out on the floor near where I’m working. “Seriously, you went back years in time by accident, and saw Aiden in the past, and I don’t get to hear one fucking thing about it?”

I stop what I’m doing, biting my lip. Remembering the horrified, humiliated expression on Aiden's face when he realized what part of his life I went to in the past. And he doesn’t even know what state he was in when I found him there. He only knows that he was twenty-four.

That was enough to put that expression in his eyes.

He and I still haven’t had a longer conversation about what happened with the conduits just yet, so I'm not sure how he's feeling about it now. And he never asked me to keep what I saw to myself.

But he doesn't always have to ask. I know my Companion Plant.

“It’s - not mine to share, Kase-face.” I say it softly and seriously, hoping she can hear how much I mean it. “Not mine to talk about. Not even to you.”

Kasey narrows her dark eyes at me thoughtfully. She slowly holds up her hands, like she’s letting it go. I cast her a grateful smile, then sit back on my ankles and dust my fingers off.

“You really think this could be a thing?” I nod down at the thick line of salt I made on the Ghost Office floor. “A lot of the conventional wisdom about ghosts doesn’t seem to apply to you and Will.”

“That’s why we’ve got to test things out.” Kasey pulls herself up to sit on her knees. "While we have a controlled environment to do it."

She’s torn her long scarlet pants into high-waisted shorts today, and wrapped the spare fabric from them into a bandana, knotted at her temple. She’s only buttoned her shirt halfway down, then tied up the rest into a little knot, making it into a crop top.

I watch her as she peers suspiciously down at the salt, my heart full of affection. “You look cute today.”

Kasey flashes a warm smile at me. “Maybe ‘cause I’m in such a good mood.”

“You’re in a good mood a lot, lately. And you've been spending a lot of alone time with Will at the Haunted House.” I fix Kasey with a devious grin, then give her words back to her. “Is it a sex thing?”

“No,” she giggles, then stops. “Well. It definitely is, sometimes. Can we focus on the salt, please?”

“Oh, I see, so it’s all about the salt now, is it? A few seconds ago it was all about what I saw when I went back in time.”

“Alright, you know what, Jamie? I know what you used the conduit for. You went back in time to that hotel where you guys did the heist with Calla and Ralph, where you kissed all of the security guards on the cheek. Went back to finish what you started with the security team, right? That’s why you don’t want to tell me about it.”

“Oh, my god, Kase-face,” I groan-laugh, setting the salt aside. “You’re right. I’m so busted. I went back to that hotel, got back all of those condoms that fell out of the pocket of Carter’s jacket, took ‘em right out of the fountain, then just went around finding every single security guard, and-”

“I hope this story isn’t true,” comes a deep voice from behind me.

Kasey giggles as I whip around to find Aiden standing in the Ghost Office doorway, his dark eyebrows arched all the way up. Will is behind him with the knuckle of his index finger pressed over his own mouth, clearly biting back a laugh.

“Oh!” A burning blush rises in my cheeks as Aiden’s blue gaze falls on my face. “Um - hey, babe!”

“Yeah, hey.”

“So, we were just talking about - salt, and I was - how much of that did you-?”

Aiden huffs out a laugh, sliding his backpack down from his shoulder. “You hearing this shit, Will?”

“I know it not to be true,” Will snickers, leaning his broad shoulders back against the Ghost Office wall. “Jamie would never return to the place of the much-loathed cubes.”

“God, those cubes,” I grumble, as Aiden huffs out another laugh. “Also, super cool of you, Will. You could’ve just said I know Jamie wouldn’t go off looking to get dirty with like five security guards.”

Will looks at me very seriously. “I shan't say what I cannot say with complete certainty, Jamie.”

“What-?” I burst into startled laughter, then try to glare at Aiden and Kasey when they do, too. “Alright, you know what? If this salt thing works, I’m salting our whole house, and everything around it. No more ghosts for us.”

“Okay, Roman general Scipio Aemilianus. Is your house in Carthage, by any chance?”

“Kase-face, whatever that burn was, it was way too much of a history deep-cut to be effective. Went right over my head.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Should’ve known a joke about a legend from the Third Punic War would be too specific. Anyways, you’re too much of a garden-boy for your salt threat to be effective. What’ll happen to your plants if you salt the ground, hmm?”

“Where’s that website where we were reading about salt and ghosts?” I slip my phone from my pocket and open up my latest tabs. “It said something about how salt could be loaded into a shotgun. Maybe let’s go with that, instead.”

“Salt bullets!” Will stares at me, his green eyes wide. “Why would anyone use such a thing?”

“To - keep ghosts away, I guess?”

“Bit aggressive, ain’t it?” Will grumbles, affronted. “We’re just here to have a good time, to borrow the words of my love.”

Kasey gives him an approving grin. “That’s fucking right, babe!”

“I don’t think this is gonna do anything.” Aiden runs his skeptical blue eyes over the salt line, a strand of chestnut softness escaping from his snapback. “Information from random ghost hunting websites is - questionable.”

“Yeah, true. But it’s an old idea, and lots of the ghost hunting blogs talk about it.” I look down at the website on my phone. “Salt can be used to dispel or repel spirits. It can also be used as a condiment.”

“I love how the condiment thing is so secondary,” Kasey snickers. “Totally an afterthought.”

She and Will come over to take a closer look at the salt line. Aiden comes over, too, and I sit on my ankles again. I tip my head back, lean it against the front of his thighs. Feel the warmth of him through his jeans.

“Hi,” I say more quietly, smiling up at him.

“Hi,” he rumbles, smiling down at me.

“Did you mean what you said earlier about picking me up a pastry from Mugshot on your way home from City Hall?”

“Did you mean what you said earlier about going back to the hotel to hook up with all the security guards?”

“No! No.”

Aiden bends to place a toasty-warm pastry bag in my hands. “Then yes, here's your pastry.”

“Oh, my god. Should I be taking all of this as a compliment? Love that you all seem to think I have the power to seduce five security guards.”

Aiden ruffles my hair affectionately, twines a strand of it between his fingertips.

“Give it up, Keane. You already lost your shot at a perfect score. Kendrick wouldn’t be interested, not after he had to drag your dumb ass out of the lobby fountain. Or - maybe he would be. I’m not sure. Can’t say.”

“I think we can say,” I groan, wincing with my entire face. “After that! He had to chase me around the fountain pool more than once, get sprayed in the face by the jets, tackle me to the ground and dunk both of us, then drag me out. And I was running around like a fool the whole time, with condoms flying out of my pockets.”

“Yeah, but… I dunno.” Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders. “I’d - still be interested, if I was Kendrick. If I’m being honest. You’re cute, is the thing.”

I let out a startled, sputtering laugh, then blush deeply, start to drop my head. Aiden reaches down around my face and catches me by my chin. He makes me turn my face up to him, then bends down to brush a soft, warm kiss onto my mouth.

I drop my gaze to the warm pastry bag in my hands after he lets me go, trying to calm my wild heartbeat.

“Careful, my love,” Will says hastily, his leaf-green eyes filling up with alarm as Kasey takes a step closer to the salt line. “We don’t know what might happen.”

“It’s okay, I’ve got this.” Kasey glances at me, then does a double-take. “Jamie, are you really eating during an experiment? What sort of science teacher are you?”

“A really fucking good one,” Aiden answers firmly, lifting me up and setting me on my feet. “Just one with an Achilles' heel for sugar.”

I wish I didn’t have a giant bite of the pastry in my mouth so I could argue with this, but Will folds his burly arms around Kasey’s waist before I can say anything.

“Kasey,” he says anxiously, drawing her back from the salt line. “Let me.”

Kasey blinks at him over her shoulder, caught by surprise. “No, I - I don’t want you-”

She breaks off as Will stares at her with begging eyes.

Kasey hesitates, then lets out a soft, affectionate laugh and stands back. But her face grows very serious very quickly as Will approaches the salt line. She twists a nervous fingertip around a strand of her hair, her eyes fixed intently on him.

“It’s - probably not real, right?” she says abruptly, turning to me and Aiden. “That thing about what salt does to ghosts?”

Ice-blue fire lights up and begins to glow in Aiden’s eyes. “I’m ready with backup power for him, if anything happens.”

“But nothing’s gonna happen,” Kasey insists, alarm rising in her voice. “Nothing’s gonna happen to him, right?”

Will’s heavy, scuffed work boots come right up to the edge of the salt line, then stop.

“Did the salt stop you, or did you stop?” Aiden asks uncertainly.

“I stopped.” Will’s jaw is tensing up, his pale green eyes focused on the salt. “Did you say this might - dispel ghosts, Jamie?”

“It’s - like - occult lore, man, but I’m sure that nothing’s really-”

“I should do it,” Kasey blurts out suddenly, darting forward. "Let me-"

She gasps sharply, freezing to the spot as Will immediately steps across the salt line.

We all stare at him in startled, unbreathing silence, but - there he is. Perfectly fine, across the boundary.

Kasey breathes out a huge, heavy exhale that droops her shoulders.

“Shit, oh my god - Will!” she sputters, her eyes very wide, her fingers pressed over her mouth. “Why did you do that?”

“So you wouldn’t,” he says, looking hugely relieved. “It seems that it makes no matter, however.”

Kasey looks ready to start yelling at him, but she drops her eyes to the salt line, absorbing the new information.

She hesitates, then rushes across it to join Will on the other side. She stops beside him, intact, still glowing.

“Okay.” She lets out another huge breath, weaving her fingers through Will’s. “Okay. Good.”

“Looks like salt will have to stick to its secondary use as a condiment,” I tell her.

Kasey doesn't seem to hear me. She runs a trembling hand over her face, then spins around and buries her face into Will’s chest.

“God! I haven’t had to worry about you like that since you became corporeal, that was - don’t do shit like that, you big dumb lumberjack!”

Will startles a little, then breaks into a slow, warm, surprised smile. He folds his arms around Kasey, pushes his nose into her hair.

“Done in the name of preventing you from doing exactly the same for me,” he says gently, his soft lilt heavier in this quiet voice he’s using. “We could equally scold each other.”

Kasey opens her mouth to argue with him, then closes it. She shakes her head, squeezes him tightly.

“Think just - just the one experiment might be enough for tonight.” Kasey draws back, but doesn’t let Will go. “Although - do me a favor and throw some of that at us, Jamie?”

I hesitate anxiously, then drop down and get a little handful of salt before I can think too hard about it. I flick it at Will and Kasey, flinching nervously - but it falls right through both of them, harmless.

Everyone present lets out a soft, relieved breath.

“Alright,” Kasey says quietly. “Alright.”

It takes a moment for the ghosts to let each other go. When they do, Kasey takes a deep breath, then heads outside. Will casts a lingering glance at her, begins to follow, then changes course, heads over to talk to Aiden.

I follow Kasey outside. I find her silently looking out at the moon, which hangs heavy and full over the river, reflecting on its rippling surface. The white light falls through it a little, in the clear waters of the shallows.

It falls a little bit through Kasey, too.

“Why’d you want to do that experiment?” I ask, leaning my shoulder against the aged wood of the Ghost Office. “It doesn’t have to do with the case.”

“No.” Kasey folds her arms over her chest, her short hair hiding her expression. “That - was just for me.”

She lets her eyes drop from the moon to me, sees me waiting for an explanation.

“I just…” She shrugs her shoulders slowly. “When Will and I go out there in the world, I need to know if there’s anything we do need to be careful of. As ghosts. Because Will, what he means to me… I’m not losing him because some would-be ghost hunter throws a handful of salt our way. Or whatever. I don’t care, I’m - I’m not losing him.”

I bite back a smile, turning the ring slowly around my finger.

“Don’t worry,” I tell Kasey, after a moment. “I know you won’t let anyone dispel your man. And now we know that he'd dispel himself for you in a heartbeat.”

She lets out a soft, wondering laugh. “What a thing to have to worry about.”

“Definitely, um - ghost specific. Although Ralph is clearly concerned that Calla might melt into the shadows and disappear on him.”

Kasey glances at me again. “Will she?”

“Oh, no. She likes Ralph too much to do that. I can tell.” I hesitate, rubbing my elbow awkwardly. “Kasey… I know you’re probably - not happy that Aiden and I have seen Calla, and we haven’t - like-”

“No.” Kasey turns to face me, shaking her head earnestly. “No, not at all. Pressuring Calla to give us information about Rouge, or the case… first of all, it’s not gonna work.”

“I was gonna say!” I blurt out, immensely relieved.

“And second of all, you’re friends with Ralph.”

I stop, blinking at Kasey, caught by surprise. “Well - yeah.”

“It sounds like Ralph and Calla have a good thing going.” Kasey tosses her dark hair out of her eyes, looking back out at the river again. “If his friends start driving her away with questions about her family’s past… I just wouldn’t want us to mess anything up between the two of them.”

“Yeah, exactly!” I let out a huge breath, staring gratefully at Kasey, weak with relief to know we’re on the same page about this. “Oh, okay, good. Thank you. I really would hate to fuck this up for Ralph. Or for Calla. They’re good for each other. Ralph is so different, now, and Calla is, too.”

“Well, it changes things,” Kasey says quietly. “You know. Finding someone you - someone who really… someone who can help you with stuff that - you didn’t even know you - just…”

Kasey slowly trails off, fades into silence. She gives me a little shrug, then a small, swift smile.

Then she heads back inside, making a beeline right for Will.