It probably wasn’t very tactful of me – but then, nobody’s ever accused me of tact – but I went ahead and just asked him as we were climbing the long gravel driveway to the house, ‘Hey. How’d you die, anyway?’

Jesse didn’t say anything right away. I’d probably offended him. Ghosts don’t really like talking about how they died, I’ve noticed. Sometimes they can’t even remember. Car-crash victims usually haven’t the slightest clue what happened to them. That’s why I always see them wandering around looking for the other people who were in the car with them. I have to go up and explain to them what happened, and then try to figure out where the people are who they’re looking for. This is a major pain, too, let me tell you. I have to go all the way to the precinct that took the accident report and pretend I’m doing a school report or whatever and record the names of the victims, then follow up on what happened to them.

I tell you, sometimes I feel like my work never ends.

Anyway, Jesse was quiet for a while, and I figured he wasn’t going to tell me. He was looking straight ahead, up at the house – the house where he’d died, the house he was destined to haunt until . . . well, until he resolved whatever it was that was holding him to this world.

The moon was still out, pretty high in the sky now, and I could see Jesse’s face almost as if it were day. He didn’t look a whole lot different from usual. His mouth, which was on the thin-but-wide side, was kind of frowning, which, as near as I could tell, was what it usually did. And underneath those glossy black eyebrows, his thickly-lashed eyes revealed about as much as a mirror – that is, I could probably have seen my reflection in them, but I could read nothing about what he might be thinking.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘You know what? Never mind. If you don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to—’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

‘I was just kinda curious, that’s all,’ I said. ‘But if it’s too personal . . .’

‘It isn’t too personal.’ We had reached the house by then. He wheeled the bike to where it was supposed to go, and leaned it up against the carport wall. He was deep in the shadows when he said, ‘You know this house wasn’t always a family home.’

I went, ‘Oh, really?’ Like this was the first I’d heard of it.

‘Yes. It was once a hotel. Well, more like a boarding house, really, than a hotel.’

I asked, brightly, ‘And you were staying here as a guest?’

‘Yes.’ He came out from the shade of the carport, but he wasn’t looking at me when he spoke next. He was squinting out towards the sea.

‘And . . .’ I tried to prompt him. ‘Something happened while you were staying here?’