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Startled, Nate looked out the window.

There was a car in the drive. A gray sedan, dusty from the road, parked behind his truck. He hadn’t heard it come up the gravel.

“Are you expecting someone?” Leo asked.

“No.”

Nate crossed the foyer with his head pounding in time with his steps.

Who could it be?

Someone who’d seen his content online? One of the old men at the diner had mentioned people driving out here.

Yet, somehow Nate thought the sedan looked familiar.

He glanced back at Leo. “Don’t do anything weird.”

Leo, naturally, took offense to those words. “I never do anything weird!”

Nate gave him a look, and then he opened the door.

Waiting there for him was his cousin, Caleb. Richard’s son. He stood with his hands in his coat pockets, looking up at the porch ceiling before he noticed the door had been opened.

“Hey, Nate.”

“Caleb.”

Nate didn’t move from the doorway. His cousin looked the way he always looked; tall, rumpled, tired around the eyes. There was a faint smell of smoke about him. Snuffed candles. Work, in other words.

He was always working these days.

So why was he here?

“Did something happen?” Nate asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t randomly take days off to visit family out of the blue.”

Caleb smiled a little. Then the smile stopped. His nose had caught something. “You smell like the tea.”

He didn’t phrase it like a question. The smell was unmistakable to any medium in their community. Bitter and green, in the sweat, in the breath, even a day or two after use. There was no point denying it and Nate didn’t try.

“Yes.”

Caleb looked at him for a moment longer. “Must have been some dose.”

“I don’t know. I didn’t measure it.”

“You didn’t?” Caleb’s eyes widened.

“Don’t read anything into it. It was one time. The situation required it.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, and Nate could tell he wanted to ask ‘what situation’, but he didn’t. Not yet, anyway.

Beside Nate, Leo pressed closer.

Caleb’s gaze shifted. Found the space at Nate’s shoulder and settled there, not quite focused. Caleb felt ghosts more than he saw them.