They order their food and Shelly’s mom leans back in her chair. Her eyes are tired, but she smiles at Shelly anyway. “One day we’re going to have a nicer car. Then we won’t have to troll the thrift store for new tapes on the weekends. We’ll listen to whatever we want.”

Shelly sees her opening and pulls Joseph’s tape out of her pocket. “Can we listen to this?” she asks, holding it out to her mother. “It’s new.”

Her mother takes the tape and turns it over in her hands. “Where did you get it?” she asks. “Why this tape?”

Shelly hesitates, but even if her mother doesn’t approve of ghosts, there are only so many places Shelly could have gotten a tape. Sometimes it’s easier to tell the truth. “One of Grandma’s friends gave it to me.”

Mom looks up, eyebrows raised. “A dead friend?”

Joseph is dead, and technically a dead friend is an accurate description, but it seems rude somehow to focus on the fact that he’s no longer alive. “His name is Joseph.”

Shelly’s mom laughs and tucks the tape into her purse. “Joseph has a strong commitment to theme,” she says. “We can listen. I used to like The Cure.”

Their milkshakes and food arrive, and Shelly picks up her chopsticks as her mother serves them both from the larger plate. Shelly’s never heard of The Cure before, but Joseph wears all black and sits in a graveyard—something even ghosts don’t normally do. “You like The Cure?”

“I used to,” her mom says, picking up a fry. “When I was the age I’m guessing Joseph is—a teenager?” She waits for Shelly to nod then grins. “I thought so. I was like him, I bet. I had a lot of feelings. I listened to a lot of music.” She pauses. “I talked to a lot of ghosts.”

Shelly doesn’t get to hear her mother talk about ghosts in a way that isn’t disapproving very often. “When?” she asks. “You never work with Grandma.”

“There’s more to life than ghosts, Shelly,” she says. “They seem interesting, but most of them are broken reflections of who they were when they were alive. Most of them just need a chance to fade on their own. Besides, somebody needs a steady income in this family. There’s no telling what kind of magic people will want to see in a month—or a year. Banishing ghosts could go out of fashion.”

“People are always going to die,” Shelly says, frowning. “There’ll never be a shortage of ghosts.”

“True,” says her mom. “But that doesn’t mean we have to be the ones who deal with it. Some people deserve to be haunted—even if it’s by the cat of their house’s last owner. Sometimes the cat was there first.”