The ghost cackles and flies away.

Haruto looks amusedly exasperated.

"That was rude," is what Peter comes up with as he tries to regain any shreds of dignity and composure.

"They do that sometimes," says the teenager who was inside the tarot tent, seeming to have meandered over closer to where Peter and Haruto are having their conversation.

"'They'?"

"Ghosts."

"I would have thought that ghosts ought to be as likely to do that kind of thing as the people they were in life!"

Shrug.

"To answer your questions," Haruto continues, as if that was a totally normal thing to have happened, "there is nothing that can destroy a ghost, except perhaps the Grim himself, though I have not known him to have ever done so. But a ghost may choose to go to the Netherworld rather than stay in the mortal world, or move on to the great beyond."

"The... great beyond."

"It is not for mortals to know what lies beyond."

"Why would anyone do that, does being a ghost really really suck in some way such that they'd rather vanish into who knows where than stick around doing stuff?"

"People have their own reasons to make the choices that they make, and we mustn't judge them."

If Peter weren't already primed to see everyone as saying extremely shallow contentless shit this would just have sounded like sanctimonious condescension. Instead it sounds like it's probably some kind of canned response.

"Being a ghost isn't so bad," opines the tarot reader.

"How would you know?" he asks, sounding perhaps a bit more snappish than he intended.

"Tried it out for a while."

"wha"

"You know, the bog? Over there? The baleful bog? You can swim in it and become a ghost for a bit, just to see what it's like."

"And then you... unghost... later?"

"Yeah."

...okay, he's a little bit tempted.

"Um, you mentioned a Netherworld?"

"Yes. That is the dimension where ghosts live, if they don't live in the mortal world. It is also where the Grim lives and where our headquarters are located."

"Is it... a nice place?"

He shrugs. "It's alright."