“Whatever.” Ari shouldered his guitar and gestured for Wyn to help. “Food. Let’s go.”

“All right. I know a place.”

Wyn led him off the street, down a set of concrete stairs into a basement establishment so bright that Ari reeled back when he opened the door. The place was painted in warm white and cool blues, with frosted mirrors hung in configurations that distributed the scant light from the windows that ran along the ceiling. It as crowded.

"Order at the counter and I'll claim us a table," Wyn said, slipping off to a corner. 

A man with Brillo pad forearms took Ari's order for two chais and two cucumber salads, which Ari chose exclusively because he'd seen Wyn drink chai and the salads were sitting in the same refrigerated case as the yogurt parfaits and pastry slices, ready to grab and escape with. 

Also, because Wyn looked like someone who liked salad.

At the booth Wyn had reserved for them, Wyn had already toted the amp and Ari's case over without having been asked. He was sitting primly on one side of the booth and thumbing through one of the neater binders from his messenger bag. He cast a dubious glance at the mason jar of salad Ari brought for him.

"You ordered for me?" It felt like a challenge. 

"Yeah."

"Thank you." Wyn uncapped the jar and started in on the marinated insides. He disappeared about a third of it in short order. "So, you remember Caleb brought me some paperwork yesterday."

"Did you get a copy for me, too?" Ari asked, spearing several chunks of cucumber and cheese in one strike. He filled his mouth to cool his head.

"You seem so resigned. But yes."

"Is it the same thing we did yesterday?"

"It could be."

The light pressed in on them.

"You're cool talking about that stuff here?"

Wyn slid the folder across to him with a shrug. "I don't think anyone here would object to us discussing my reality TV gig. This city's full of performers."

The letterhead on the papers identified the show and the associated team as the Spirit Sweepers. The terms outlined were opaque to Ari. The closest he'd ever come to signing a contract was filling out student loan paperwork.

"Is there wi-fi in here?" Ari asked. He swung his head around in search of a sign with the password. The requisite faux chalkboard informed him it was 'th3grapevine.' He punched it into his phone and started looking for clips.

There were lots.

"What are you doing?" Wyn asked. He leaned over the table to scrutinize Ari's screen.

Ari was already loading up a clip titled 'Spirit Sweepers at the blue lady's house.' 

It was filmed in that green-washed night vision style that reminded Ari of The Matrix. It reduced Wyn's eyes to perfect glowing spots, because of course Wyn was the focus. An invisible second party was filming him lurching through waist-high grass.

Breath hissed through Wyn's teeth and he stopped just shy of snatching the phone. "Turn the sound off if you're going to watch that."

There wasn't much sound to begin with. Not much more than the crackle of grass and wind. "It's not like there's closed captions."

"You don't need them!"

"God, fine." Ari complied. He wouldn’t listen, but he had to watch.

The party holding the camera started to lag behind. 

Fog wafted across the camera's lens, and even more formed a cumulus around Wyn's head. He and the camera carrier were both still, their bodies licked at by the waving grasses, for a long moment. Then Wyn stiffened like a prey animal, moved his lips to form a few short words, and crumpled down into the grass. 

The camera juddered. When it approached Wyn, it came at a halting pace until Wyn came into view. He was on his side, tucked in a tight ball with his hands bunching in his shirt like he was trying to claw something out of his stomach. The camera and some other equipment crashed to the ground, and through the flickering screen created by the grass Ari could make out Wyn's face contorted in a terrible way, and some unidentified man kneeling to try and help or soothe him.

He turned his phone facedown on the table and sunk into his chair. Wyn wasn't looking at him and, he suspected, hadn't been for a while. Wyn’s jaw was tight and his gaze was fixed on a window, on the sunlight.

"What did I just watch?" Ari asked once he felt brave enough.

"An echo, or something like it," Wyn said with a false lightness. "Spirits don't just speak, they can impress themselves upon you to make themselves understood. That woman, her neighbor emptied both barrels of a shotgun into her stomach. She died of blood loss within sight of her home."

"Why?"

"Drunk, angry. He was in some kind of dispute with her husband. There are court documents. They don't interest me."

"Is this job like that?"

"According to Caleb, no. But he’s clueless. Caleb's just a trust fund baby with an obsession. The guy with the camera is just some kid Caleb keeps around because he can work cameras and manage the website."

"What kind of job is it, then? According to Caleb."

"An old woman died at home and the family trying to move the property are experiencing snags in that process on account of activity. Nothing extreme, but Caleb prefers to involve me if he has any reason to believe the activity is real."

"And you want me around so that doesn't happen." Ari nodded to his phone.

"It feels terrible to die."

"I bet." Ari chewed at the interior of his lip, searching for words. "When are you leaving? If I say yes."

"Tomorrow morning. Caleb's given me some extra time to return this because I changed partners so suddenly."

Tomorrow. Less than twelve hours. The fresh memory of Wyn's twisted face his brain's imaginative power to supply an approximation of the sounds he might make living someone's awful final moments blunted Ari’s aggravation.

"I'll say I've got a gig tomorrow night," Ari said, half to himself. It wouldn't be a lie, and the hostel's regularly shuffled management were never so well organized that they'd be certain they hadn't forgotten a time off request.

Another thought, unbidden and unvoiced, occurred to him.

He could quit. He could just walk out. He had money for an apartment and then some. He could- No, he wouldn't crash with Blake. That was a bridge too far.

"What's with the look?" Wyn asked.

Ari snapped back to himself. "Oh. I'm just excited."

Wyn's head tilted. "Well, that makes one of us."