Ooooh! You know what was incredibly awesome for me in the reading of this (other than the fact that it was just an awesome story by YOU)? I was gone for a week to visit family, so I came home to catch up on LJ. I opened a tab with your story, went away because I had something to do, came back, oh -- two DAYS later because it's been a busy weekend. So all that long-winded prologue to say, I completely forgot all about the header and author notes in it. So I read the story having no idea that it was a "Conversations with Dead People" story! I was reading along, thinking, hey, this is sort of a cool idea Xander/Tara-ish story but she's a ghost so it's kind of poignant, hey but it's getting kind of creepy, what's going on here... and then WHAM! Raised the hairs on my neck along with Xander's. You did a fantastic job of inching the creep-meter up gradually. I loved the introduction of Jesse at the end, then finishing up with Angelus, who guaranteed Xander's silence. Brilliant.