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Apparently, this was acceptable, because Nate went back to work.

For a while, the medium painted silently, looking at Leo every so often. It still made Leo want to squirm, but he was trying to be a good model. After all, if this painting turned out well… Somebody might recognize him. And then he’d know who he had been.

“Okay,” Nate said. “Now please meet my gaze.”

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“You’re looking at my ear.” Nate set the brush down. It seemed there was something to say, though he didn’t quite know how. “I think I know what this is about. You remember the question you asked me in the kitchen when I was finding the right color for your eyes?”

Leo remembered the question.

He had asked it in a weak moment, and he didn’t like being reminded of it.

Even if the question had never really left his mind after he’d given voice to it.

“I’ve been thinking about it.” Nate wiped his hands on the rag. He didn’t pick the brush back up. “I don’t have an answer. I want to say that first. I don’t know why you’re still here. But, you were wrong too.”

“About what?”

“That nothing happens to you anymore.” Nate started counting with his fingers as he went on. “Since I got here, you got stuck in a child’s toy. Then a fox stole you and carried you across a field. And you had dinner with my family. Now you’re back to haunting. Last night a few thousand strangers watched you push that door, and one of them even figured out someone must have been there.”

Leo didn’t know how to respond to that barrage of truths.

He couldn’t argue with any of it. Except…

“Those things have happened since you got here.”

“Yes.”

“What happens when you go away again?”

Nate didn’t answer right away.

He looked down at the rag in his hands, folded it once, and set it on the sawhorse next to the palette. “I’m not leaving here before the job’s done.”

“The renovation.”

“The job.”

Leo understood what Nate meant when he said it like that. Leo was the job.

“You’re going to ‘restore’ me,” Leo said. “Then exorcise me.”

“Yes.”

“So when you say you won’t leave before the job’s done, you mean you won’t leave until I do.”

Nate didn’t argue.

“Am I supposed to find that comforting?” Leo demanded.

“I can’t tell you how to feel, and I won’t try. I also won’t lie to you. I promised that, didn’t I? I consider it part of my job to help you move on.”

“Because you told your mother that you would?”

“Because…” Nate paused. “It’s the right thing to do. When I go, I won’t leave you here by yourself.”

Then take me with you. Leo almost said the words out loud. He didn’t, because he knew his wish was impossible. And also because he didn’t know if Nate would even want to take him if it were possible.