Claire lunged to her feet, startled and afraid for the look of sheer agony on his face. The movement caught his attention, and he jerked his head toward her, blue eyes wide.

“No,” he moaned, and pitched forward to his hands and knees, gasping. “Don’t.”

She ignored that and jumped down the stairs to run to his side, but once she was there she didn’t know what to do, didn’t have any idea how to help him. Michael was breathing in deep, aching gasps, in terrible pain.

She put her hand on his back, felt his fever-hot skin burning through the thin cloth, and heard him make a sound like nothing she’d ever heard in her life.

Like someone dying, she thought in panic, and opened her mouth to scream for Shane, Eve, anybody.

Her hand suddenly went right through him. The scream, for whatever reason, locked tight in her throat as Michael—transparent Michael—looked up at her with despair and desperation in his eyes.

“Oh, God, don’t tell them.” His voice came from a long, long way off, a whisper that faded on the shafts of morning sun.

And so did he.

Claire, mouth still open, utterly unable to speak, waved her hand slowly through the thin air where Michael Glass had been standing. Slowly, then faster. The air felt cold around her, like she was standing in a blast from an air conditioner, and the chill slowly faded.

Like Michael.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and clapped both hands over her mouth.

And muffled the scream that she had to let out or explode.

She might have blacked out a little, because next thing she knew, she was sitting on the couch, next to Michael’s guitar case, and she felt kind of funny. Bad funny, as if her brain had turned liquid and sloshed around in her head.

Weirdly calm, though. She reached over and touched the leather cover of his guitar case. It felt real. When she flipped up the latches and pulled her shaking fingers across the strings, they made a wistful sort of whisper.

He’s a ghost. Michael’s a ghost.

He wasn’t a ghost. How could he be a ghost, if he sat here—right here!—at the table and ate dinner? Tacos! What kind of ghost ate tacos? What kind of…?

Her hand went right through him. Right through him.

But he was real. She’d touched him. She’d—

Her hand went right through him.

“Don’t panic,” she said numbly, out loud. “Just…don’t panic. There’s some explanation….” Yeah, right. She’d stumble over to Professor Wu’s physics class and ask. She could just imagine how that would go over. They’d toss a net over her and pump her full of Prozac or whatever.

He’d said, Oh, God, don’t tell them. Tell who? Tell…? Was he gone? Was he dead?