Page 92

Leo drifted into the sitting room. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Nate claimed.

Leo eyed him oddly. “You know,” he said after a moment, “you should fix the shutters, now that you bought the hardware.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right.”

A pause. Leo was still studying him, then he asked. “Where did you learn to do that, anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re from a family of mediums. How did you end up doing… this?” Leo gestured broadly around them. “I don’t suppose you took up house flipping just for the opportunity to exorcise ghosts like me.”

“No,” Nate admitted.

Leo waited.

He’d gotten good at that lately. Standing in the silence until Nate filled it.

It was Nate’s own technique, and being on the receiving end of it was deeply annoying.

But it gave him an idea.

“Tell you what,” Nate said. “Let’s trade.”

Leo’s eyes narrowed. “Trade what?”

“I’ll tell you how I ended up doing this instead of the family business.” Nate opened a website on his laptop. “And in exchange, you look at a list with me.”

“What list?”

“Alder Hollow has a cemetery. The county keeps a burial index online. There’s a list of people who died here between 1970 and 1980.”

Leo went still.

“One of the names might shake something loose for you,” Nate suggested.

“It won’t.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I do know that,” Leo argued. “You’re trading your story for nothing.”

“Not a high price for you to pay then.”

Leo looked at the laptop. He very obviously wanted Nate’s story while not wanting the list. The question was which weighed more.

“You go first,” Leo said.

“I’ll tell you half the story first. The rest after the list.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“I’ve met you.”

Leo made an offended sound. But he crossed the room and sat down across from Nate. In a chair, as if he needed one. “Fine,” he said. “But that first half of your story had better be good.”

“That would depend on your standards.” Nate leaned back in his chair. “It’s not a dramatic story.”