"How old are you?"

"—me? Eighteen, why?"

Jeremy grimaces.  "Small talk."

...Jake cracks up.

"What? What? What'd he say?"

"He was just trying to make small talk," he says between giggles.

Why is this so funny? Jake has no idea. But it's so funny.

"Oh." Yeah, why is it so funny? Although watching someone else laugh does make it feel funny. Mirror neurons, yo.

"Does he want to ask any of his 'so many' questions about magic?"

"Do you want to," giggle, "ask your so many questions about magic?"

"Oh! Yeah! Okay so my main questions are how and why and since when and huh."

Jeremy looks like something about this makes him ache.

"Uh, how is mostly 'with spells', and there are some innate abilities or ones people can gain, why I don't know,  the book I got was published in the seventies but my parents have met other ghosts they thought were probably ancient."

He repeats that, then asks, "Innate abilities?"

"Just the things that ghosts can do because they're ghosts, I mean."

Jake relays that.

"Okay, spells, cool, I'll get to that in a sec, what exactly is up with ghosts? Like, does everyone leave a ghost or is it just people with unfinished business or violent deaths or what? —wait, what about your parents? Wait, is that insensitive? Wait, does that mean that—sorry. Um."

Oliver is kind of cute.

Jake's just not feeling it.

"Everyone leaves a ghost. I think Jeremy said something about how ghosts stop existing for stretches of time or something but I didn't ask about that and I don't understand it but he says that's why his parents aren't around, because they're in stretches of not existing. Uhh... right, I think Jeremy mentioned that, like, God doesn't exist or anything, no, like, religions."

"Yeah, uh—is this guy religious at all—"

"Are you religious?"

"Uhhhh..."

"We're both atheists."

"Oh! Then no."

"...Mmhm.  Uh, ghosts are moored in time and tethered in space, but most of them less than either of those than me.  I'm just completely stuck here.  But almost all other ghosts spend less and less time existing, the longer it's been since they died, and also sometimes they're in like, other worlds.  Not on Earth, and sometimes there are other ghosts there.  No living people, though."

"Other worlds?" he asks as soon as Jake's relayed this. "Like, dimensions or something or like Mars?"

"It's really unclear but maybe more like Mars."

"Why is it unclear? ...I guess maybe you can't really see the Earth from Mars without a telescope so you can't confirm really... Do ghosts have clothes? Or are you like naked? —you don't have to answer that."