changed. He popped in for Sunday dinner, then Monday and Tuesday, and all week long. After his tragic death, we were glad to see him . . . at first. But he’s, um, not a very good dinner companion.”
“Drank too much,” Brad said. “He always was a little hazy and wobbly.”
Jackie seemed embarrassed. “The coroner said his blood alcohol level was a little high when he slipped and hit his head.”
“Very high,” Brad corrected. “Uncle Stan could get insufferable when he was drunk. Then he died drunk—and now he’s a rambunctious and obnoxious drunk ghost.”
“I’ve tried to communicate,” said the medium. “I summoned his spirit. I spoke with him the last time he appeared uninvited for dinner.”
“I made lasagna,” Jackie said, “an old family recipe, one of Uncle Stan’s favorites.”
“We told him to go away,” Brad said. “But he wouldn’t listen. He insisted that we were his family and that he was going to be with us always.”
The two kids looked up from their video games and groaned. Madison was especially loud. “He’s a creepy old man. I don’t want him popping in and out of our house at night.”
“I can see how that would be very alarming,” Robin assured her. “We’ve found that in family disputes, the best way to solve things is through frank and open discussion. I’ve seen many cases of ghosts who hang on to their old lives and refuse to move on. Sometimes the families can get along well enough, but other times it’s just tragic for all concerned. The adjustment can be pretty painful.”
I remembered that Sheyenne had had a terrible first few days after she returned as a ghost. She tried valiantly to adjust, pretended to go on as if nothing had changed, but the loss never stopped tugging at her.
One day, not long before my own murder, Sheyenne had floated up to me with a troubled expression on her face. “Would you come with me back to my apartment? Just to have another look around, in case we find any clues?”
“I packed everything up and put it in storage,” I said. “Your landlord’s probably cleaned the place by now.”
“I know . . . but it’s something I’d like to do.” Her sad expression pulled at my heartstrings. “Would you go with me? Please?”
“For you, I’d go anywhere,” I said, and it was probably true.
We returned to the apartment building where she had lived while going to med school and working at Basilisk to pay the bills. She drifted beside me up the steps to the entrance.
I had an odd déjà vu of the night we’d strolled here after our date, the two of us in light conversation, occasionally and then more frequently bumping against each other as we walked along, finally holding hands. Every unnatural in town had probably smelled the pheromones we exuded....
“I don’t know if I can convince your landlord to let us in,” I said. I had not made a good impression in my previous encounters with him.
“I had a spare key,” Sheyenne said. “You can use that.”
“What if he’s changed the lock by now?”
“He’s too cheap. Besides, the former tenant is dead—why would he bother?”
We went up the stairs to the second floor. The third step creaked, and I remembered it from before. We had laughed at it then. Odd how little details like that stick in your memory.
Her door was 2B (“Or not 2B?” I remembered my Hamlet joke from that night). The hall floor was covered with weathered peel-and-press carpet squares. Sheyenne bent down and lifted the corner of one with a ghostly hand to reveal her spare key. “I knew it’d still be here.” She handed me the key, and I inserted it into the lock. Sheyenne, being a ghost, simply melted through the door, eager to see what she could find.
As I turned the knob, I heard startled yelps from inside. I pushed the door open, afraid Sheyenne was in trouble—and saw a terrified Korean family seated around a table playing dominoes. Parents, three kids, and an old grandfather.
“What are you doing here?” Sheyenne demanded.
Upon entering the apartment, I experienced a flood of memories, and not the good ones . . . not memories of how Sheyenne and I had started kissing as soon as we passed through the door, not the memory of her low-lit bedroom down the hall. No, what I remembered was when the landlord and I had found her sprawled and dying on the living room floor, already jaundiced and