"Oh, no, they'd have to pay me," Ford responded immediately, though with a wave of his hand that indicated he didn't think this a significant hurdle (it was easy to be dismissive of obstacles when the scenario was purely hypothetical). If he was only lingering behind as a spirit to help his brother get out of debts, though, they had better be paying him. Or he'd have to go peddle his ghostly services, such that they were, elsewhere &mdash, which would create a headache for his former colleagues in the spirit division. Maybe the threat alone — that he had all the right inside knowledge to make their jobs difficult — would have been enough to blackmail them into keeping him on the payroll. "Maybe I could even negotiate a raise," he joked. "Due to my increase in subject matter expertise."

He winced at her mention of broken ankles. As he inventoried his past experiences for anything relevant to say he briefly considered how he'd sprained his ankle coming off the dance floor last summer, but discarded it as a potential anecdote. Macnair had helped heal it; the memory was too fraught to be conversation fodder. So he skipped trying to relate and opted for sympathy instead: "I'm sorry to hear that. Did you at least break it doing anything interesting?"

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