“What’s up with the earbuds?” he asked as we walked down the crowded sidewalk toward Fourteenth Street. Well, I walked. He glided a few inches above the stained sidewalk. “Are you going to ignore me and listen to music? I hope not, because I’m chatty. Annoyingly so.”

I kept my gaze focused on making sure I didn’t knock into anyone. Talking also kept me from freaking out over the possibility that I was going to get super lost. “Listening to music would be kind of rude.”

“Yes, it would.”

“The earbuds make it seem like I’m talking on the phone.” I lifted the string, wiggling the mouthpiece. “I can talk to you without people thinking I’m talking to myself.”

“Oh. Damn. That’s clever.” He kept pace beside me. “You must have a lot of experience with this sort of thing.”

“Some.” A sticky breeze whipped down the sidewalk, tossing my hair across my face and bringing with it the heavy scent of exhaust.

“Like what kind of experience?”

I glanced in his direction, hearing the genuine interest in his tone. Words bubbled up to the tip of my tongue, but this guy—this poor dead guy—didn’t know me. Probably had no idea that he’d roamed into the apartment of a Warden. So, how could I explain what it had been like when I’d done things like this before?

“I have a question for you,” I said instead.

“I’ll have an answer.”

I shoved the hair out of my face. “You...passed on, didn’t you? Saw the light and went through it?”

That question earned me some weird looks from people passing by, but oh well.

“That’s right! You said that before and I wanted to ask, but I faded. How can you tell?” he asked. “That I saw the light and went to it?”

“There’s a difference between ghosts and spirits,” I explained, keeping my voice low. “Ghosts are stuck. They don’t know they’re dead, or they refuse to accept it, and they usually look like they did when they died. You don’t look or act like that, plus you have a...glow about you. A heavenly light, I guess.”

“I do?” He glanced down at his arm. “I can’t see it.”

“You do.” I thought about how Sam had looked different at first. “When spirits have passed on and they come back to check on their loved ones or do whatever spirits do with their time, they look normal except for the glow. They might look younger than they were when they died, or the age when they died. But when I first saw you, you looked like...like you had no features.”

“Maybe I showed up looking different because...when I died, I didn’t cross over immediately. I couldn’t.”

We came to an intersection packed with people waiting to cross. “Straight or turn?”