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were . . .”
    “Hit by a train?” Jack offered.
    “Good choice,” said Euri with a snort. “Try not to look anyone in the eye for too long. There’s something creepy about your eyes. They look alive.”
    “How do I find out if my mom’s still here?” Jack asked.
    “Well, we can start by just looking around,” Euri said. Shoving furiously, she pushed her way out of the end of the tunnel. Jack couldn’t tell what she was pushing against until she pulled him after her, and he found himself in a crowd of shadowy beings jammed into a wide, stone passageway. The ghostly procession slowly shuffled forward, carrying him and Euri along with it. Like Euri, the dead appeared no different from the living, except for their pale faces and their eyes, which were dull and translucent regardless of color. A few murmured to each other, but most were quiet and shared the anxious, preoccupied look of the living commuters eight stories above.
    Jack panned their faces, hoping to recognize his mom. There were a number of old people, many of them in nightgowns, but also many younger people in a wide range of dress—knickers and flouncy shirts, police uniforms, Native American headdresses, elegant lace-trimmed gowns, turbans, jeans, tattered coats, saris, mink stoles, heavy black suits and hats, tweed caps, dirty smocks, silk Chinese suits, tuxedoes. There were children too—a few in sailor outfits or dresses, many more in rags.
    “Even if she is down here, how am I going to find my mom?” he whispered to Euri. “It’s packed!”
    “Well, I thought maybe you’d just luck out,” she whispered back. “But you’re right. It’s not so easy to find someone down here.”
    Jack frowned and went back to studying the crowd. The array of faces—every age, race, and ethnicity— stretched in every direction. “How do all these people fit down here?” Jack asked.
    “They’re spirits. They don’t really take up any room at all.”
    Jack noted that Euri didn’t include herself in the description, though she too was a ghost. “Euri?”
    “Yes?”
    “How’d you die?”
    “‘I died for beauty but was scarce/Adjusted in the tomb,’” said a man’s voice in a Scottish brogue behind them.
    Jack instantly recognized the lines of the poem and turned around. “‘When one who died for truth was lain/In an adjoining room,’” he continued.
    “Emily Dickinson,” said the ghost, who had a white beard and a pipe hanging out of his mouth. “Fine stuff, though I prefer Blake myself.”
    The ghost continued to stare at Jack until his pipe sagged to the point of dropping out of his mouth.
    “He’s new,” Euri said. “Just died this morning.”
    “Hit by a train,” Jack added eagerly.
    The man grunted. “Didn’t mean to stare, lad. Thought there was something live about you. Welcome. Todd’s the name, Ruthven—rhymes with livin’ but spelled R-U-TH-V-E-N, mind you, confusing for Americans, I know. I was an author, poet, and editor myself. You may have read my series of children’s books— Space Cat , Space Cat and the Kittens ?”
    Jack shook his head. “Sorry.”
    “Oh, well,” said Todd, trying to hide his disappointment.
    “Not everyone is E. B. White. Anyway, lad, what’s your name?”
    “I’m . . .” Jack wondered whether to say his real name. “Jack?”
    “Well then, Jack, it’s nice that the young ghosts know some poetry today. We have a club of poets and the like that meets every night at the White Horse Tavern. You should drop by sometime. You might know a few. Two a.m.”
    Jack tried not to look confused. The endless expanse of stone passageways seemed unlikely to end in a bar. Two in the morning also seemed on the late side for a meeting.
    “We’ll see you later,” Euri said, shoving through the crowd and steering Jack along with her. “Some of the dead can be very chatty,” she remarked when they had left Todd.
    “What was he talking about?’ Jack asked as they pushed their way into a new group