“Astral projection,” Rastin replied when Wes had asked what he had meant by “remote.”

“Huh,” Patrick said. “So that’s really a thing.”

“A thing that allows me to enter his Moldavia,” Rastin said. “As he is the only one who possesses the ability to open doors between the two sides.”

From there, Rastin went on to tell us about his long-standing agreement with Erik that he would leave him be so long as Erik kept people out of the house. Rastin had also described his habit of dropping in on Erik intermittently to be sure he was holding up his end of the bargain.

“Normally during my past check-ins with Erik,” he said, “I’ve found him in some unreasonable state. If we conversed, it was never for long. Always, I would leave before I could be trapped again.”

“Trapped?” asked Charlotte.

“The documentary,” Rastin replied, his eyes going far off. “I trust you’ve all seen it.”

“Oh yeah,” Patrick said, stuffing another candy bar into his mouth. “Ar yu ckhidding?”

“We replay the moth-barfing part every time,” Wes added. “Your tonsils are huge, by the way.”

When I asked what really happened during that episode, Rastin told us how, after mistaking Erik for a malevolent entity—a mistake I couldn’t blame him for since I’d been guilty of making the same one—he’d immediately tried to exorcise him. An action that had resulted in disaster, as evidenced by the documentary.

“I didn’t know what I was dealing with,” said Rastin.

“You mean you didn’t know he was actually human,” guessed Charlotte as she shot me a pointed look that I ignored, in spite of deserving it.

“Exactly,” said Rastin.

And, according to Rastin, it was Erik’s humanness that changed the whole game.

“Erik believes it is the curse that binds him to this world,” said Rastin. “But, over time, I have become increasingly convinced it is his shattered state.”

In the past, Erik had apparently used various objects as stand-in hearts since, for a time, the substitutes focused his soul, allowing him to play music. But the hearts never lasted. Eventually, they gave out, resulting in chaos for Erik.

“Wait, though,” said Charlotte. “The fake hearts restore his spirit? Before, you said you thought Erik’s soul was stuck here because of its splintered state. So that’s the answer right there. That’s what needs to happen.”

It was then that Rastin revealed how Charlotte had guessed his plans exactly, and that he’d proposed this very solution to Erik multiple times, offering to perform the ritual again except, this time, with his soul focused.

Erik had always refused. At least until Rastin’s last remote visit, the very drop-in that had been prompted by my email.

“Not only did he agree,” Rastin said, “but it was his idea.”

I didn’t like this detail. Because it meshed with what Stephanie had told me about the masked Erik she had encountered on the “other side” of her house that night after the dance. And because I didn’t like that it proved she’d been right about Erik wanting to protect her—that he truly did care about Stephanie. Not when hating him outright gave me strength. And a target.