“I think she might be … a vampire?” Niko raises an eyebrow, and she buries her face in her arms again. “I told you it was insane!”

“It’s not insane!” he says, a laugh in his voice, but not a mean one. It never is with Niko. “Once you’re tapped into the other side, it’s really easy to start seeing stuff beyond this one. Like, when I was eight I spent the summer with my cousins in Bayamón, and they totally had me convinced their neighbor’s dog was a werewolf. But, as far as I know, werewolves aren’t real, and neither are vampires.”

August picks her head up. “Right. Of course. I’m an idiot.”

“Well,” Niko says. “She’s not a vampire. But she might be dead.”

August freezes. “What do you mean?”

“It sounds like she might be an apparition,” he explains. “A particularly … strong one. She might not even know she’s—”

“A ghost?” August offers helplessly. Niko pulls a sympathetic grimace. “Oh my God, so she’s dead? And she doesn’t know she’s dead? I can’t even ask her on a date; how am I supposed to tell her she’s dead?”

“Okay, hold on. You can’t just tell somebody they’re dead. We have to make sure she’s dead first.”

“Right. Okay. How do we do that?” She’s got her phone out, already googling how to tell if someone is a ghost. Apparently, there’s a Groupon for this. “Wait. Holy shit. She is always wearing the exact same thing.”

“You only just noticed she has one outfit?”

“I don’t know! It’s ripped jeans and a leather jacket! Every lesbian I’ve ever met has that outfit!”

“Huh. Good point,” Niko says thoughtfully. “Have you ever touched her?”

“Um. Yes?”

“And how did it feel? Cold?”

“No, the opposite. Like … really warm. Sometimes staticky. Like a shock.”

“Hmm. Interesting. Are you the only one who can see her?”

“No, she talks to people on the train all the time.”

“Okay, have you ever seen her touch anything or anyone?”

“Yeah, she has this, like, backpack full of stuff, and she’s given me things from it, gum, a scarf. One time she put a Band-Aid on this kid who skinned his knee on the stairs.”

He rests his chin on his hand. “Cute. Maybe a poltergeist. A cute poltergeist. Can I meet her?”

August snaps her eyes up from her phone. “What?”

“Well, if I met her, I could get a better sense of what exactly she is, if she’s on this side or not, or somewhere in between. It’d only take a few questions. Maybe some light physical contact.”

She tries to picture it, Niko in all his Niko-ness, putting his hand on Jane’s shoulder: Hello, how are you, I think you may be an unmoored spirit trapped in some kind of MTA purgatory.

“You said you didn’t want to freak her out.”

“I never said that. I said you shouldn’t tell somebody they’re dead unless you’re sure they’re dead. Very bad energy.”

“What would you even ask her?”

“I don’t know. It would depend on how things feel. Sounds like a fun experiment.”

August grinds her teeth. “Isn’t there something else we could do first? Like—can I pour a ring of salt around her or splash her with holy water or something? But like, in a subtle way?”

“You and I come at subtlety from very different directions,” Niko observes. “But we could do a séance.”

August can practically hear her mother scoffing into her Lean Cuisine from the next time zone.

“A … séance?”

“Yeah,” he says casually. “To talk to her. If she’s a ghost, she should be able to visit, and boom, we’d know.”

“And if nothing happens, we can rule out ghost?”

“Yep.”

And so, August Landry, world’s leading skeptic, opens her mouth and says, “Okay, let’s do a séance.”

“Love it,” Niko says. He’s produced a toothpick from his pocket and starts chewing on it as he wipes down the bar. “Yeah, we’ll need numbers, so we should ask Myla and Wes. We can do it at the shop after close. I don’t like where the moon is right now, though, so let’s do it night after tomorrow. Do you have anything that belongs to her?”

“I, um,” August says, “I do, actually. She gave me her scarf.”

“That’ll do.”

She leans down to take a sip of her drink and promptly chokes on it.

“Good lord, that is disgusting. You’re terrible at this.”

Niko laughs. “Myla tried to tell you.”

 

* * *

 

“So,” Wes says. He’s watching August douse her fries in Cholula with an extremely New England expression on his face. “You’ve gathered us here today to tell us you’re boned up for a ghost.”

“Jesus, can you keep your voice down?” August hisses, eyeing Winfield as he passes their table. She should have known better than to slide into the booth with this information after her shift and think this particular group of delinquents would be discreet. “I work here.”

“Wait, so—” Myla cuts in. “She really used to work here? When it first opened? And now she’s on the subway looking exactly the same?”

“Yes.”

She leans back in the booth, eyes alight. “I can’t believe you’ve been in New York for, like, a month and already found the coolest person in the entire city. Back to the Future ass.”

“We’re more at the intersection of Ghost and Quantum Leap,” August points out. “But that’s not the point.”

“The point is,” Niko says, “we’re doing a séance to get a feel for the situation. And considering this whole thing is low-key a psychic’s wet dream, we’d love if you would help.”

And so, on Sunday night, the four of them are huddled together on Church Street, trying to look small and inconspicuous outside the locked door of Miss Ivy’s.

“Do you want me to pick it?” August asks, glancing nervously down the street.

“What? Pick the lock?” Wes says. “What kind of feral child are you? Are you Jessica Jones?”

“We’re not breaking and entering,” Niko says. “I have a key. Somewhere.”

August turns to sniff in Myla’s direction. “You smell like a McRib.”

“What?”

“You know, like, smoky.”

Myla jabs an elbow into Wes’s ribs. “Someone forgot their lunch in the toaster oven today and I had to put out a kitchen fire,” she says. “We’re, like, one fire away from losing our security deposit.”

“We lost our security deposit when you took it upon yourself to rewire the entire apartment,” Wes replies.

Niko chuckles under his breath. He’s fingering through a ring of keys in the dim glow of the streetlights. August wonders what all the keys are for—knowing Niko, he’s probably talked his way into having a key to half the plant supply stores and dive bars in Brooklyn.