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FUCK, I HATE this part.

Deep breath. Okay.

I slept with you again. Every chance I got.

I visited the Afterlife.

I kept tabs on the Food Tour.

There were more spirits gathering. So many. The crowd restless, eager to begin. Sooner or later, I figured, Ev would show up there. Be on that tour when it left. Which seemed like a better way to find her than aimlessly searching the Afterlife.

But there were delays. Frankie kept stalling. He gave tours of your early aftertastes; he explained how you brought those spirits back. But no one new went through. Not yet.

He was waiting on you, he told us. On your restaurant for ghosts.

It didn’t take me long to figure he meant DUH.

So I encouraged you. Pushed you toward Viktor even though he was a sleaze. Pushed you toward the Dead despite the risks. Pushed you into the kitchen because that was where I needed you. But it didn’t work fast enough.

My Hunger took a turn.

When I wasn’t around you, the cravings got worse. They were eating me alive, reaching for Death, demanding it. I was scared to be alone, to go to sleep. The day I showed up with those pastries, I’d woken screaming, the Hunger pangs so sharp and strong I had to fight to wake at all. I was scared that, one day soon, I’d close my eyes and never open them again. That the Hunger would take me while I dreamed.

I couldn’t wait for the tour, or for your restaurant.

I had to do something. To make it stop.

So I begged you to bring Everleigh back.

I should have told you then. All the things Ev said when she returned.

How her Hunger had been my fault. How my Hunger had been hers. How when we don’t let go, it starves the ones we love. How the Hunger pulls us toward each other because it craves a last goodbye. How that’s what all your ghosts want, too.

She said that what we had to do to feed it was to let each other go.

So we did.

But once Ev disappeared, I still didn’t feel full. Only empty. Only Hungry.

I wish I’d put it together then. I wish I’d guessed. That there was something off with what you were doing. But I just thought the flaw was me—all the times I’d died; all my bad decisions. I’d messed up everything else, so why not this?

I told myself I’d find some other way to feed it. That it could still be okay. That Everleigh was safe now. That most of all, I still had you.

And then, a few weeks later, I started slipping through the veil.

It happened without warning. Without my meaning to. In the middle of a card reading. Halfway through a video game. That night at the opera.

It was like the Hunger finished what it started in my sleep. Like it had found a way to drag me, briefly, through the veil.

And what I saw? Things were messed up in the Afterlife.

Food was burning in the Hall. Stalls were closed, or cooking things no one would eat. The souls on Frankie’s tour were crazed, like any minute they might bolt.

There were signs on our side, too. Like a fungus, spreading from the Dead.

Cold spots in your apartment. Lights that glitched. The thermostat. Food rotting for no reason. Your fridge—it isn’t broken, Stan; it’s haunted.

In the hospital, when you said you tasted Everleigh? I started thinking that your closure wasn’t really closure. That maybe you were tasting her again because she hadn’t actually moved On. Only, if that was true, then where the hell was she? Back in the Afterlife? Somewhere else? Somewhere worse? Where, for that matter, were all the ghosts that you brought back?

This morning, I found out.

Here , Stan. They’re still here.

They never left.