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Nate scrolled.

The list held names, dates, and plot numbers. Farmers, shopkeepers, a pastor. Here and there a child. Leo read every line.

“Next.”

Nate scrolled.

“These people had terrible names,” Leo said somewhere in the third column. “Herbert Cudlow. Who does that to a baby?”

“Someone in Alder Hollow, apparently.”

“I bet it was his name that killed him. Next.”

Nate scrolled, and he watched Leo’s face.

Leo’s arms uncrossed at some point, and he leaned in toward the screen, as if getting closer might give more meaning to the names. As if he wanted to find something.

But he didn’t. Nate could tell. There was no flicker of recognition, not a pause. Not one name that took longer than any other.

“Next.”

Scroll.

“Next.”

Scroll.

The last column was short. Leo read it very slowly.

Then he sat back.

“Well. That’s everyone who died in your useless town. All of them strangers. It’s an entire cemetery of strangers.” It sounded like he was trying to keep his tone light. He failed. “You traded your story for nothing. I warned you.”

Nate reached over to close the laptop, then stopped, because Leo was still looking at the screen.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Leo said. “That’s what I kept thinking the whole time. My name could have been on that list. My real name. And I would have said next.” He shook his head. “I could look straight at it and feel nothing. That’s what I am now.”

Nate didn’t know what to say in response to that. Probably there wasn’t a good response. So he went with his instinct. “I don’t think that’s true,” he said. “I think I would have seen it in your face if your name had been on that list. But there was nothing. Maybe you weren’t buried at the local cemetery.”

Leo took that in. “Why would I not have been buried here?” he asked then. “Where else would I be buried?”

“Well, we’ve established that your corpse was not walled up in the cellar.”

Leo blinked at him.

“That’s true,” he said. “I would know.”

“So you’re somewhere. Just not on this list.”

Leo looked at the laptop, at the last short column of strangers.

“Somewhere,” he repeated, testing. “Fine. I’m a mystery. I’ve always suspected I was fascinating.” He drifted back to his chair and pointed at Nate. “The list is complete. The answer is no. And you owe me half a story. Pay up.”

Nate got up and refilled his coffee first.

He was going to need it for this.

“To understand what happened,” he said, sitting back down, “you have to understand what I was saying to them. In my family, the gift is a duty. The dead need help moving on, the living need protecting, and if you can do it, you owe it. I don’t want to call it a cult, but it’s like a religion. And I was trying to leave the church.”