“Straight. It’s just another two blocks.”

I nodded and started chewing on my thumb again. “Why couldn’t you cross over immediately? You didn’t want to, or...”

Sam stayed quiet as we crossed the street. I looked down but couldn’t see the curb through the legs of people. I figured I had—

The toes on my right foot slammed into the curb, sending sharp pain shooting across my foot. I tripped, catching myself. “Crap.”

“You okay?” someone who wasn’t Sam asked.

“Yep.” I looked to my right and saw an older man in a suit talking to me.

“You should pay attention to where you’re going and not who you’re talking to on the phone,” he advised and then walked on, shaking his head.

“Thanks, douche-canoe, for the unsolicited advice!” Sam shouted to no avail. “Maybe I should go push him into that hot dog vendor.”

“Can you do that?”

“Sadly no.” He sighed forlornly. “I haven’t figured out how to become a poltergeist and move stuff.”

Not many spirits or ghosts could interact with their surroundings, but I kept that to myself as I breathed through the obnoxiously horrid pain of a stubbed toe. “I think I just killed my foot.”

Sam drifted closer to me, trying to avoid going through an older lady in a trench coat. “You know why stubbed toes are so painful? It’s because they have a whole bundle of nerve endings that provide sensory feedback to your central nervous system. So, when you stub your toe, that pain gets sent to the brain quicker. Plus, there’s little tissue there to cushion the blow.”

“I cannot believe you know that.”

“Like I said, I know a lot of stuff. Not sure how useful that is now,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Being dead and all.”

“I have a piece of random knowledge for you.”

“Hit me up.”

A grin tugged at my lips. “I don’t think poltergeists are actually ghosts or spirits. There’s some evidence pointing to poltergeist activity being a buildup of energy from a live person.”

“Really?”

I nodded. “They’re manipulating things around them without knowing. It’s usually someone going through something pretty intense.”

“Wow. I didn’t know that.” Sam was quiet for a moment. “I actually did go to the light first, but I got...trapped and went someplace else.”

“Someplace else?”

Sam didn’t answer.

I looked at him and unease blossomed. “Hold on a second.”

He frowned. “What?”

I stopped alongside a pub, keeping my back close to the brick wall.

Sam stopped, too, his expression marked with confusion. “What are you doing?”

“Look, I want to make sure that whatever message you want to give this girl isn’t something mean or creepy. If you want to mess with her, I’m not doing this.”