“I don’t think you’re weak,” Sam said. “I have two very good reasons you shouldn’t help me. First, it’s a very delicate piece of equipment and I’d feel more confident handling it myself. Second, you’re wearing an extremely fetching dress this morning, and if it were damaged in some way, it could impact my enjoyment of it.”

“Your enjoyment!”

“So you see, it’s a purely selfish request, not one based in antiquated and easily disprovable notions about female strength.”

“Because you want to continue looking at my undamaged dress.”

“It’s a very appealing shade of red. You wear a lot of red. I like it.”

Alva opened her mouth to respond, looked at him, and shut it. “I don’t know whether you’re incredibly complicated or exactly as simple as you seem to be,” she murmured, but she handed him the device.

“Simple,” he said, turning towards the house. She fell into step beside him. “Practically simpleminded, or so Henry tells me.”

“I wonder.” She stopped a few feet short of the front door, staring at it. “I assume the mythical ghost has yet to appear.”

Her tone was deliberately light, but Sam thought he heard an undercurrent of tension. “It’s been perfectly quiet,” he said. “Although I did startle a spider earlier.”

She nodded, a little stiffly, and started walking again. She didn’t pause as she opened the door, like she was daring herself to enter.

Inside, she blinked in the darkness and looked around, seeming to relax as she took in the dust and the newly taken-down board. The lunch pail was still sitting where an unnamed worker had left it, and Alva glared at it severely, as though it could convey her displeasure back to its owner.

“What does all this stuff do?” she asked, poking at the box he’d brought in earlier.

“A lot of it measures energy in different ways,” he said. “I’m not sure what the best way to measure an apparition’s appearance is yet, so I’m erring on the side of too much data rather than too little.”

“Why are you so certain they exist? I thought you were mad at first. I still do, actually, but not in the completely off your head sense.”

He leaned against a wall, watching her. “I believe in things I can measure. I also believe that what most people take for granted as reality is simply the top layer of a much more interesting truth. It’s like looking at a lake and thinking it’s only a flat blue surface because you can’t see into the water. You can think it all you want, but fish are swimming under there all the same.”

“And you think ghosts are the fish.”

“I think they’re a fish, or that they might be. It’s worth checking to see if they are or aren’t.”