“Tell me what it’s like.” Chester gave up the head-butting routine and curled up in my lap for a snooze. I watched Nick with interest, awaiting his answer.

“Tell you what what’s like?”

“Don’t be obtuse. If you can read my thoughts, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Dead City. Toes-up-ville. What’s it like?”

Nick looked away, looked back. “I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m stuck in the train depot, remember?”

“Right,” I said. “So tell me about the depot.”

A slow smile settled on his lips. “You don’t want me to leave.”

“You’re company. I’d settle for just about any warm body at the moment—not that you really qualify.”

“That hurts.”

“Good.”

Nick’s smile faded. “I’m sorry, Mojo. About the times you waited up for me, and the times you cried. If I could do it over again—”

“Get out of my head,” I interrupted, shoving the ragtag, disintegrating-marriage memories back into the appropriate mental closet. “I want to know about the train station. And how you happened to hook up with Chester.”

“It’s just—a train station. Like something you might see in one of those black-and-white movies from the forties. All kinds of people, milling around, confused. Others standing in line for tickets.”

“It sounds lonely,” I said, and then regretted it. “Isn’t there some kind of intake system? Maybe an orientation session? ‘Dead 101,’ or something like that?”

“No angels,” Nick said, with somber amusement. “No harps. Definitely no ‘Dead 101.’ It took a while to figure it out, actually—that I’d croaked, I mean.”

“I thought you said you saw your corpse at the morgue, then attended your own funeral. I don’t want to be crass or anything, but either of those things could be called a clue.”

Another grin, this one rueful. “At the time, I thought I was dreaming. People who die suddenly, or violently, usually react that way.”

I felt a stab of something. Maybe it was sympathy. “And if I forgive you, you can get on one of the trains and go—where? Real estate heaven? Are they replacing the streets of gold with asphalt these days, and slapping up little stucco houses that all look alike?”

“You could be nicer to me, you know,” Nick said. “After all, I am dead.”

I sat up straight. Chester gave me a look of reproach for almost dumping him to the floor. “Wait a second—”

“No,” Nick told me quietly. “I haven’t seen your parents.”

“Can you ask around a little?”

He shook his head. “It’s not as if there’s an information booth,” he said.

“You’re not a lot of help, Nick.”

“And you’re deliberately being a bitch.”

I smiled. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” Nick said graciously. “I forgive you.”

“Gee, thanks.”