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“Let’s get some light in here. Your hologram or whatever you’re using to bend the light is damn good.”

John turned to William, who gave a tiny shrug. Apparently, he hadn’t mentioned to Hannah the truth. John, only slightly annoyed,

stood and stepped into the sunlight. For a moment, it felt as if he could hear both William’s and Hannah’s hearts beating.

She came from around her desk. Her grey, knee-length skirt was fitted and her heels were impossibly high and she watched him

with catlike stillness. Her stony self-assuredness cracked a hair; it wasn’t, interestingly, fear, but what John perceived

to be an uncharacteristic waver. Yet even now that was already being replaced by something... harder. “Damn good...”

“So you aren’t a street magician illusionist,” Hannah said a few minutes later. “Huh. I was thinking you were something along the lines

of a Black Criss Angel.”

William cocked his head and John almost laughed because yes, he remembered what it felt like, this particular kind of diminishing.

Understanding John would require first filtering him through a standard (read: white) counterpart. His and William’s gazes

met knowingly.

“William?”

William straightened. “It’s what I meant in the texts... that he, you know, was something different.”

“Different can be good. Different can be bad.”

“John is some kind of... spirit. Spirit?” William looked to John for confirmation. “Or do you prefer ghost ?”

John considered this. “Spirit, ghost, phantom—all OK. Chain-rattler, dead guy—not OK. Spook...”

“A definite no,” quipped William.

Hannah leaned against her desk, crossed her arms. There was something feral in her nature, something fundamentally aggressive.

“So this is the batshittiest conversation I’ve had so far this morning.”

“Only this morning.”

“Why didn’t you cross over? Do you know why you’re here?”

“I’m still trying to figure out—”

“Last name?”

“I can’t remember—”

“How long have you been here?”

“I’m not sure—”

“Were you lingering at some old haunt? House? Workplace? A person?”

“I—”

“A wife, maybe? Kids? You look young. How did you die?”

“I’m really not prepared for—”

“An interrogation?” Hannah slid expertly onto her desk and crossed her shapely legs, one savage heel pointed in John’s direction.

“Listen, I’m not going to pretend this isn’t, you know, a shock. But I’ve seen a lot in my day.”

She didn’t look shocked so much as she looked a bit manic. John glanced at the tall cardboard cup sitting on her desk.

Coffee. It looked so familiar now; he couldn’t believe it hadn’t registered completely when he’d walked into the room. The

ubiquitous brand was so synonymous with the coffee it was interchangeable with the drink itself. He couldn’t remember the

names of the drinks he’d order, but he recalled the velvety smoothness of the cardboard against his palm, the brown sleeve

rubbing against the thin skin between his thumb and index finger, the comforting ritual of it, perhaps more important to beginning

his day than even the caffeine. He tried to expand the pinhole of remembered sensation into a real memory, but the black space

collapsed and there was nothing else.

He glanced at another cardboard cup resting behind Hannah on a mirrored console. He looked at the mirrored wastebasket beneath

her desk and wondered just how many discarded cups of coffee lay there.

“I’m just saying,” she said. “You’re not the first ghost I’ve seen. When I was fourteen I saw a lady looking straight off

the set of Gone with the Wind rise through the kitchen linoleum and float out the back wall. I saw her twice after that, but my mom brought someone in,

they left out a bowl of milk and a salted knife blade for a week, and that was that. Anyway, enough about me. This is about

Y-O-U. Branding, the big picture, the long-term plan.”

So this was what lay behind her indecipherable expression: calculation.

John didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but he appreciated someone who didn’t waste time. “I’ve come back, yes. But I’m

ready to leave, as soon as possible.”

“Oh. And where are you trying to get to?”

“My House.”

“Is it a haunting kind of thing?”

“It’s a home kind of thing.”

Hannah looked to William and back to John again. “So why did you want to meet with me?”

“I’ve been given the impression,” said John, “that you’re accustomed to being tasked with the impossible. The seemingly impossible

task here would be locating my House.”

“Sounds like a job for the CIA or FBI. Men in Black.”

“Or a woman with more influential connections than the president.”

“Or at least the governor. You are extremely to the point, John.”

“I assume most people in your line of work appreciate that.”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“But you’ll take me on.”

“Will I?”

“You didn’t get your company into this beautiful corner office by missing opportunities.”

Hannah laughed. “All right, John. All right.” She pursed her lips. “I don’t know what you’ve been through or why you’re here,

but out there”—she stabbed a tan, manicured finger toward the windows—“you’ve arrived. At least, once I get done with you.”

15

“Find your people, find your house?” Hannah said a while later. “It’s a good idea, sure. But there’s plenty of time for that.

And a word to the wise? People smell an opportunity and they’ll all want their slice, like it’s a goddamned buffet line.”

“I consider myself warned.”

“There are a few tactics to take. The easiest is that we present you to the world as a new illusionist, one with skills Blaine

and Angel would give their left nuts for. The thing is, sometimes pretending to be something extraordinary can take you a

lot further than actually being extraordinary. You’ll do some stuff people have seen before, but then we’ll get them with

things no one else on this planet can accomplish—you are the only one, right?”

“The only dead man walking? I’ll ask around.”

Hannah smiled. “We don’t want to set you up as the best illusionist ever for some other dead guy to run with the whole idea.

It really only works if you’re the only one. Anyway, you’ll pull out all the stops—walking through walls, through tanks of

water, through goddamned people. They’ll eat it up. And you’ll be exactly who you are. In plain sight!” Hannah looked quite pleased with herself.

John didn’t want to mention the queasiness that overtook him when he ran through doors and walls, but perhaps she saw it on

his face. Perhaps, in her fierce nature, she still smelled blood in the air and didn’t want to loosen her teeth, because she

added: “Or.” She spread her arms wide. “We keep it real. We introduce you to the entire world as you are.”

“I thought you said that about the first magician idea. Plain sight.”

“I mean you could be you . Period.” Her eyes brightened and she lifted her palms to face outward. Her gaze unfocused and she saw something he couldn’t.

“John.”

John glanced at William, who nodded as if he were completely following this.

“No family name. Just John,” she said quietly. “A single name for a single soul. A single soul who represents each and every

one of us.” Her eyes refocused and once again she turned her keen gaze to him. “You represent me . You represent William . You rep the security downstairs. You are us. And you’re a bold embodiment at that.”

“It sounds like a lot to take on.”

“Your skin—dark as night. That’s powerful.”

John quirked a brow.

“Or if you were albino white, that’d make a statement, too.

Diversity is big. And Black everything is hot right now.

On top of that, you’ve got that British-y but still unplaceable accent going, which rounds you out.

Little bit of this, little bit of that—lots of facets.

Not even post-racial because that’s bullshit, right?

More like post-human. Spiritual shit. Transcendent.

” She slapped her palms against her desk.

“Damn, I’m good! I wonder what you did, your profession?

Like I said, you’re a young one. Those your typical day clothes?

Classic. Good quality. You kind of look like a young Wall Street, dark-skinned Michael B. Jordan. On a weekend.”

William cocked his head to the side.

“What?” Hannah said. “I didn’t say he’s Jordan’s twin. I do know that all Black people don’t look alike.”

“I don’t think he could even pass for Jordan’s half cousin. More like... Chiwetel Ejiofor.”

John shook his head. “I don’t—”

“You don’t know, don’t remember, right, right.” Hannah leaned back onto her desk. “I assume you don’t have a place to stay.”

“I’m between places at the moment.”

“At the very least, stay at my place. We’ll figure out some particulars—ID, banking...”

As she went on, John felt his resistance grow, for these sounded like fetters, things that would bind him here, as if he belonged

in this world and not in his House.

“...anything you might need,” she continued. “Or not.”

From his periphery, he saw William’s head swivel between John and the woman who might one day eat them both for dinner.

“You can’t just hang out on the streets. And before you thank me, it isn’t a favor.” She grinned. “I’ll figure out a way for

you to repay me.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t confuse it as such. But no, thank you.”

Hannah appeared confused, but her eyes shined and she smiled in that flinty way of hers.

“I have,” John said, “a better idea.”

ripples

it was a horrendously bloody time.

There weren’t so many people on the planet then, but somehow many of them felt they needed to kill each other for resources,

or land, or wealth, or because someone believed the wrong thing or maybe were born just a little different from the people

around them. It didn’t take much to end up on the wrong side of a spear or stake or hole in the ground, let me just say that.

And don’t think I didn’t try reasoning with them, and by them I mean many different peoples from many different lands. I had the ability to know every language I came in contact with;

I understood and communicated without effort, as if intention alone were all I needed and words would sort themselves out.

This made me feel as if no one was beyond reach, but in the end I began to feel that they all were. War, then a lull, then

war again. It was like that Whac-A-Mole game, which wouldn’t exist for thousands of years but the sentiment was the same.

(Let it be noted that I think that game is crude and I didn’t like it when I first saw it. Took me way back to the old-old

days, but maybe I’m a fuddy-duddy.)

I had to stop stepping in because if I kept on, I’d end up hating the entire human race, which wasn’t ideal considering it

looked as if I might be stuck with it.

And yet, there were moments of optimism. I’ve met some bright spirits. Met some faded ones, too, and some others that are

like black holes—liable to suck up the energy of anyone who comes near. There’s often one or two souls, every couple of hundred

years or so, who really make an impression on both the world and on me:

Leonardo da Vinci

Brilliant man. Immensely ahead of his time. He showed me so many of his ideas, and more than a few times I asked, Leonardo, what are you going to do with all of these? And he’d just shrug and never answer. I told him maybe he ought to put all these sketches away, keep them private. Burn them,

even. I didn’t tell him how I had thousands of years’ experience in knowing what humans did to other humans who either dreamed

too much or were a little too ahead, time-wise, of everyone else.

He’d been commissioned to paint a woman’s portrait by her husband, and he thought she was charming because she was from the

countryside, from an old aristocratic family with no money, and she liked to tell off-color jokes. I thought she was nice

enough, but also like the type to replace your sugar with salt. He said, She’s mischievous, but I’m going to turn her into a mystery. I didn’t think he could pull it off, and also I thought it funny that he didn’t know the biggest mystery was standing right

in front of him.

Eventually I left Florence for Spain, and we never regained contact. But over four hundred years later, I went to a museum

and there she was; he’d finished painting her. Lisa wore a mysterious smile and nicer clothes than she had in actuality, but

he captured the impish glint in her eyes perfectly. And later, when a book with all his notebooks was published, I was happy

he didn’t listen to me about burning his ideas.

See? You can live for thousands upon thousands of years and still get it wrong.

Harriet Tubman

I avoided the United States for a short while; it was just too difficult to move around, with or without fake papers, and honestly, the audacity of having to have papers in the first place was beyond offensive.

I wanted to knock whoever demanded them of me upside the head because no matter how old they were, they were just children to me.

But I did travel through both the Union and the Confederacy a couple of times, spent a frightening few weeks with Miss Harriet, who I always called Miss Harriet because even though she was like a child to me, too, there was also something about her that felt about as old as I was.

She carried a lot of pain in those eyes, but even more stubbornness.

When I left the continent, I knew I’d be back when things changed, as they always do.

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that change—for better or for worse—is a constant.

Moses is the only person who has ever known the truth about me, and as far as I know, she took my secret to her grave.

Sonam

You will never have heard of her. Sonam lived a very quiet life on a Tibetan mountainside. She never married and had two brothers

who lived with their families nearby.

One day, I was absentmindedly drumming my fingers against the table (by then a three-thousand-year-old rhythm I’d picked up

at a celebration in Kush), and she broke into a grin and clapped right along with me. It was an interesting intersection,

as if two disparate timelines had converged, and it was one of the more memorable times I haven’t felt alone.

Sonam never killed even a bug if she could help it, and would take time to heal a bird’s wing just as soon as she’d fix a

valuable goat’s leg. She didn’t speak much, but when she did, was skilled at wielding a good quip.

I stayed with Sonam for nearly a year, and she taught me a lot about acceptance and not doing .

To not do is a lot harder than you might think, but she did it well, wove not doing into her daily life, and was one of the most serene people I’ve ever known.

I didn’t realize how noisy I was inside until

she gifted me with silence.

Quiet lives leave ripples in their wake, too, and are just as important as the ones that leave big splashes.