I burst through the door of the Magician’s pub, holding a lit candle. The audience inside turns their heads from the stage, but the Magician doesn’t stop playing his mandolin, fingers flying over the strings.

“I need to talk to you,” I shout. The Magician sighs, purrs an excuse into the mic before stepping off stage.

“I’ve tried all your remedies, including dripping this hot wax on my stomach, and all I’ve got are a bunch of burn scars. My husband’s soul still hasn’t crossed, and if it doesn’t by the next new moon, he’ll be cursed in the middle land forever,” I say as the bar’s patrons weep with joy, elated, I assume, in response to the magic of the mandolin.

But over the Magician’s shoulder, I see the bartender grinding a stock of Popalin — known for the euphoria it causes before an intense crash. He shakes a sprinkle of powder into the glasses ready to be served on his tray.

“You have no real magic at all!” I shriek, pointing at the bartender.

“Magic is knowing the tools available to you. People believe what they need to. You’re welcome to stay for the party, but I have other souls to heal.”

“Oh yeah, like this shit healed my husband’s soul?” I say as I pour the hot wax that has pooled in the candle’s holder, but the Magician jumps out of the way in time for only a drop of it to land on his shoe.

“These are Italian leather,” he says with horror, but I am already turning toward the door, chucking the candle in the trash on the way out.

I stare at the ceiling for hours in bed that night, as has become my ritual since my husband passed. When I fall asleep, he is there again, pleading to crawl into bed beside me and stay. I’d asked him to forget me, move on to the afterlife. But after all the things I’ve tried, I reach for the only tool I have left — surrender. I let him wrap his ghostly limbs around me, and it’s like magic to feel him again.