Ayanna waited to feel different. She had felt the burn of his hands through the back of her coat and on her right hand and wrist. The urge to tell herself it was anxiety or panic was there, but she knew it wasn’t true. In some ways, it was what she had longed for, some magic way that wasn’t pills and talking and processing to return herself back to who she’d been before. Felix had texted back: We want to think that haunting is about the living, but all the explanations are with the dead who owe us nothing.

“Which way is my hotel?” Matthias asked.

“You’re staying downtown?”

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Ayanna didn’t care that she was being rude. It was Jane: Are you OK? Heard you got pancaked by a bike.

“Your hotel is north,” Ayanna said. She shook her head. Apparently, nothing interesting in this city could happen without someone texting Jane about it.

They walked in the same direction a little more. Matthias’s entire affect seemed different. He was giddy: his walk almost a dance, and a grin that Ayanna would describe as unhinged because it did not waver.

“Have you ever saved a life?” Matthias asked. “It’s the most exhilarating feeling in the world. I feel so alive. I live in miracles. I was born of them. I give them. Praise him!”

Ayanna knew it would be better if she walked straight to the bar that never carded her and bought a shot. But there was a question boiling in her with each step she took away from the coffee shop. I used to be someone who wasn’t afraid of saying what was on her mind, Ayanna thought. It was another thing she mourned. When death steals someone precious, it’s hard not to miss all the other, smaller things it stuffed into its pockets alongside the beloved.

“Can I ask you one more question?” Ayanna asked. Her voice was high and shaky. She realized she had no idea where her feet were taking her.

“Sure,” Matthias said. He seemed completely transformed to her out in the yellow fall light. His face and eyes bright with ecstasy, the wind blowing his longish hair, and a dimple had appeared in his cheek.

“Do you ever see the dead?”

“No,” Matthias said, “that’s impossible. The dead are dead.”

“Then what about your mom?”

“My mother drowned. God brought her back. My dad had to do a pilgrimage of true faith.” She could hear how he was parroting someone else. “And God rewarded him.”

“But do you really believe this?”