“Funeral directors sometimes do that to make bodies easier to dress. Doesn’t usually matter—most corpses don’t get up and walk around half-exposed after the funeral.”
Funeral. Corpses. Undertaker.
What obviously amused the reaper left me horrified and hollow. “If I unbutton my shirt, am I going to find a roadmap of Frankenstein stitches?” I demanded, my voice trembling in spite of my best effort to remain calm.
This is real. I’m dead.
I sank to my knees in the middle of the parking lot, hunched over with my head in my shaking hands. I’d been on an autopsy table, and in a coffin, and in a hearse. My steps made no sound and my body cast no shadow.
I had died, and the world kept spinning, without even a wobble in its rotation to mark the occasion. I’d known life would go on without me, but seeing that was different than knowing it, and feeling it was worst of all.
If I turned down the job and died for good, no one would know I’d been granted one more day, and the chance to make something of my afterlife. No one would know, and no one would care. I could throw back my head right then and scream until my lungs burst from the pressure, and no one would hear me. Hell, I might not even have lungs to burst. There’s no telling what they took out of me during the autopsy….
Levi’s red brows arched as he stared down at me. “What, no quips about dissection or formaldehyde?”
I scrubbed my hands over my face and stood, glad that I could at least feel the texture of my own skin, even if I couldn’t interact with the rest of the world. “Sorry, but the whole walking corpse epiphany kind of threw me off my game.” Still, I had to know… “So, would you say I’m closer to a zombie or a vampire? I gotta know—are my parts going to rot and fall off, or am I forever frozen in youthful perfection?”
Levi gave me that satisfied look again, like refusing to be broken by the psychological shock of my own death was some kind of nifty dog trick I’d mastered. “Relax. You weren’t autopsied. The cause of death was obvious, thanks to my quick thinking, and the coroner was one of our reanimators. Instead of cutting you open, he prepared you to return, completely intact and functioning. If you take the job, you’ll look just like this forever.” Levi waved one hand at my body, then shook his head and stared up at the sky. “You know, we never had to plant employees before the advent of chemical preservation. It was a much simpler time…”
“Were the recruits simpler then too?” I asked, when he finally glanced away from the stars. “'Cause I still don’t understand how I earned this whole ‘get out of death free’ card. You know, the lack of wings and all…”
“We don’t want angels.” Levi walked across the lot without looking back, leaving me no choice but to follow. “Or saints, or do-gooders. A saint would spare everyone scheduled to die, and that would lead to a drastic imbalance between life and death. We need someone who will do the right thing, even when that means ending a life. Which it usually does, for us.”
So… I’d been recruited because I wasn’t a humanitarian? I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “Why didn’t Nash qualify?”
“Because he didn’t have a chance to be tested.”
“Neither did I.”
Levi settled onto the bumper of the last car in the lot. “You’ve already been tested, and you passed.”
“Because I picked Nash up instead of leaving him to die of alcohol poisoning? That doesn’t make me worthy. It barely makes me human.”
Levi shook his head. “You passed because you saved his life at the expense of your own.”
“That was survivor’s guilt! I couldn’t face my mother every day, knowing I got Nash killed.” And I sure as hell couldn’t face myself.
“You claimed no credit for what you did, and you died without knowing that wouldn’t be the end for you. That’s the test.” He shrugged and leaned forward, like we were getting to his favorite part. “To weed out the power-seekers and those who just want to prolong their own lives, we can’t take anyone who actually volunteers for the position. The theory is that only those who don’t want power are truly qualified to wield it. So a recruit has to willingly give up his or her life for someone else, with no expectation of reward.”
For a moment, I could only stare at him. I was being granted an afterlife—naturally, it came with strings—because I’d volunteered to die? “Is that irony intentional, or just coincidence?”
Levi laughed. “I’m going to let you answer that for yourself, after you’ve been reaping for a few years.”
“How did you know I’d do it?” My mind was spinning with the sudden realization. “You must have known. Why else would you have been watching me for so long?”
“I didn’t know. I took a chance on you, and I’m really hoping it pays off. We had a position to fill, so I started weeding through the possibilities. None of those actually scheduled to die qualify, of course, but anyone willing to die for one of them might. Usually that’s the parent of a small child, but there weren’t any of those on the lists I had access to, so I moved on to siblings. Nash was one of three scheduled to die in my district, and he was the only one with a same-gender sibling close in age. Theoretically, the two of you were likely to share a closer bond than any of the others I looked at. And the fact that you’re a bean sidhe meant that you knew an exchange was possible. Which, though unusual in a recruit, worked in my favor.”
“But that’s all just theory,” I insisted. “In reality, one sibling could be such a heartless bastard that he’d make out with his girlfriend instead of looking out for his pain-in-the-ass little brother, thus dooming the poor kid to death by head-on collision.”
Levi frowned. “You need to remember that Nash would have died anyway. Keeping him home wouldn’t have stopped that. And since you took his place, I think your survivor’s guilt can reasonably be put to rest now.”
“You must have been dead a long time, if you think that’s even possible.”
Levi gave me a creepy half smile, but made no comment on his age.
“What about the other guy? The one who hit us?” I asked. “He survived, right? Couldn’t you have traded his life for Nash’s, and left both of us alive?”
The reaper’s smile faded into an even creepier puzzled expression. “Yes. I could have. But he didn’t volunteer. And if I’d taken the drunk driver instead of you, I’d still be looking for a new recruit, now wouldn’t I?”
I could only stare at him, stunned in spite of my knowledge that for the reaper, filling his vacancy was the bottom line. “You let a drunk driver live and killed me instead, just to get yourself out of the nursing home?”
Levi shrugged. “The driver was of no use to me. You are.”
“Where are we?” I pulled my hand from Levi’s even as the world solidified around me, and I was glad to be rid of the feel of dead flesh. Not that his hand felt different than any other hand, but knowing it was attached to a dead kid kind of creeped me out.
As did the sudden realization that my hand was now also attached to a dead kid.
“This is where they live now,” he said stepping off the sidewalk and onto the grass, lit only by a streetlight on the corner.
I didn’t recognize the house. I only knew the town because we’d lived there as kids, before my dad died. But this time, my mom had settled into the older section of a large development. She’d found a corner lot, but the house was too small to have three bedrooms.
There was no room for me.
And though I knew I wouldn’t be moving back in, even if I took the job, that fact still stung much more than I’d expected. Mom and Nash were trying to move on from my death, and my presence would only disrupt their adjustment. The last thing I wanted was to make it harder for them.
So why had Levi brought me?
“What is this, a bribe? I thought potential reapers were supposed to be above bribes.”
He shrugged. “If you’re going to take the job, there’s something you need to understand first.”
“Som
ething beyond the fact that I’m dead and invisible, and I was evidently dressed by Edward Scissorhands?”
Levi ignored my sarcasm. “Yes. Officially, I’m supposed to explain to you that no matter how alive you might look, and feel, and even function, you’re not alive. Not like your friends and family are. You died, and your soul was removed from your body, and even though you’ve been reanimated, you don’t truly belong here. And you never will. I’m supposed to tell you that the sooner you come to terms with that fact, the sooner you can start to accept your new state of being and your job. And the sooner your family and friends can start to accept your death.”
I frowned, arms crossed over my chest. “That sounds like advice from the Grim Reaper website.”
“The recruiting handbook, actually, but you obviously get the idea.”
“Yeah. So if I’m supposed to be letting everyone move on, why did you bring me here?”
“Because I think that steering you away from your family is just going to make you more determined to see them. You need to understand that stepping back into their lives would only be making things worse. They’ll think they have you back, but when you start becoming more reaper, and less son and brother, they’ll just have to let you go all over again. A clean break is easiest for all involved.”
Maybe. But anyone who’s ever broken a bone knows that even a clean break hurts like hell.
“Are you going in?” he asked at last, squinting up at me in the light from the street lamp.
“You can walk through doors and climb through windows, but walls and floors will be barriers. And, of course, no one can see or hear you.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
Levi shrugged. “Even visitors bow to physics, in one form or another.”
Is that what I am? A visitor in my own family’s home? I couldn’t take my eyes off the house, a physical reminder that I didn’t belong here. Not in their home, and not in their lives—which was just what he wanted me to see.
“When you’re a reaper, there will be fewer physical rules to follow. But that’s a perk of the job. No benefits until you sign on the dotted line.”
“In blood?” I asked, only half kidding.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Levi said, and a chill raced the length of my spine. “Meet me at the hospital when you’re done.” Then he disappeared before I could ask him how I was supposed to get there, or why he’d be at the hospital.
As I walked toward the front porch, that feeling of displacement swelled within me. My shoes made no impression on the grass. I couldn’t feel the breeze rustling tree leaves over my head. I was caught somewhere between dead and living, and even my mother had moved on without me.
As evidenced by the house I’d never seen.
I reached for the doorknob, and my hand went right through it. I should have seen that coming. Yet each new demonstration of my physical absence was more unsettling than the last.
I closed my eyes and stepped through the door, and when I looked again, I found myself in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by familiar furniture. And stacks of boxes. The worn couch against one wall still sported the stain where I’d spilled a can of Big Red on the center cushion. The end table was still cracked from where I’d fallen on it, goofing around with Nash.
The sound of running water drew my focus to a swinging door on the right hand wall. The kitchen. I crossed the room and stepped through the door, which refused to even swing in acknowledgement of my passing.
My mother stood at the sink, drying her hands on a faded dish towel over and over, staring out the window at an unlit backyard I’d never played in. Then she dropped the towel on the counter and leaned forward, gripping the edges of the sink, staring down at the drain. Her knuckles were white with tension, her back curved, half-hidden by a mass of long blond curls.
“Mom?”
But she couldn’t hear me, and that reminder made my throat tight. Her shoulders shook, and suddenly she grabbed a glass from the counter, a quarter inch of milk still standing in the bottom. She hurled the glass at a fridge I’d never seen, spraying shards and white droplets all over the kitchen.
“Mom?” Nash called from somewhere else in the house, and my breath caught in my throat. Levi was right; he was okay. Or, at the very least, he was home. In this new house, which couldn’t possibly feel like home yet.
“I’m fine!” my mother lied, sliding down the cabinet to sit on the floor, just outside the shrapnel zone. Her face was pale and streaked with silent tears, and I hated knowing I was the cause.
I sank to my knees in front of her, inches away, but worlds apart. I watched her private pain, aching to heal the wound I’d caused, but there was nothing I could do. I’d never felt so worthless in my life.
Finally, she dried her face on the dish towel, then started picking up the glass. When the kitchen was clean again, familiar dishes stacked in unfamiliar cabinets, she pulled a paper plate from the stack on the table and piled it with cookies from a platter near the stove. Chocolate chip with walnuts—her go-to comfort food.
I followed her out of the kitchen and watched when she paused outside the closed door at the end of the hall. Nash’s room was silent—no music and no video game carnage. Mom took a deep breath, then knocked on the door. When he didn’t answer, she pushed the door open anyway and stepped inside.
My brother sat by the window in his desk chair, staring outside. He didn’t even look up when she came in.
“I brought you some cookies,” my mom said, and I almost laughed out loud—not that they’d have heard me. Cookies were her solution to everything. Baking them distracted her, and serving them fulfilled her. But sugar never solved anything in the end. “And there’s the cake, of course.”
Cake? A housewarming cake? Or to welcome him home from the hospital—to celebrate the life he hadn’t lost.
“I’m not hungry.” Nash crossed his arms over his bruised, bare chest, even thinner than I remembered. He’d lost weight in the hospital. But not as much as he’d have lost in a coffin.
“The doctor said you need to eat,” Mom insisted.
“She also said to give me some space.”
Mom frowned and set the cookies on his desk. “Doctors make mistakes sometimes.”
Nash huffed, still staring out the window. “Then why’d you open this little heart-to-heart with a quote from one?”
I wanted to smack him. If my hand wouldn’t have gone right through his head, maybe I would have. But Mom took it in stride. She sank onto the edge of his desk and pushed hair back from her face. “Nash, you can’t sit in your room forever.”
He shrugged. “Worked for Howard Hughes.”
“That comparison doesn’t really work for me.”
“I’ll try harder next time.” Nash sighed. “I don’t really want to talk right now, Mom.”
She crossed her own arms over her chest, mirroring his stubborn posture. “Well, I want to talk.”
Finally Nash turned to look at her, wincing with one hand over his ribs. “About what? Cookies? I don’t want any. The move? I don’t want to be here. Tod? I don’t want him dead. But since this isn’t the Republic of Nash, that doesn’t seem to matter.”
My mom sighed and picked up a cookie she probably wouldn’t eat. “Nash, Tod’s time was up, and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it. You have to stop blaming yourself.”
The irony stung like fire in my chest, and I stumbled back a step.
Nash’s expression went hard, but I could see the pain beneath. “Why, Mom? You blame me.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off. “You don’t blame me for his death—we both know how that works—but you blame me for how he died. If I hadn’t gone out, that damn drunk would never have hit us. Tod might have died peacefully at home, instead of on the side of the road, crushed by his own steering wheel.”
I blinked, stunned. I’d made sure Nash would never know what happened, but instead of absolving him of guilt, I’d saddled
him with it. Nash thought it was his fault. And one glance at my mother told me he was right—she did too.
But she didn’t know the truth. He obviously hadn’t told her that I’d had Genna over instead of watching him—which had set the whole thing in motion. And neither of them knew about the rest of it.
Nash stared at our mother, silently begging her to argue. To insist that she didn’t blame him. But we could both see the truth, even if the colors in her eyes held steady.
“No.” I said it out loud, glancing back and forth between them, but no one heard me. “This isn’t what I wanted.” But my brother stared right past me.
Mom answered, finally, too late to be believable. “It’s not your fault,” she said, staring at the hands clasped in her lap.
Nash actually rolled his eyes. “I went to the party. I got drunk. I made him come get me. It’s my fault we were on the road. If I’d done any of that differently, he wouldn’t have gone out like that.”
I couldn’t take anymore. “It was my choice!” I stood, but they still couldn’t see me, and they damn well couldn’t hear me.
My mother shook her head slowly, wordlessly denying his guilt, even as her eyes argued to the contrary.
“I wish you’d just say it!” Nash shouted, and I stood in front of him, trying to interrupt, trying to keep him from saying whatever would come next, because there’d be no taking it back. But he looked right through me. “I wish you’d just yell at me and get it over with. I know I screwed up. I know I can never fix it, and I wish you’d just say it, so we can…so we can at least start to move on. Because he’s not coming back, Mom. I’m the only one left.”
“Nash, no,” I said, but my words—like my presence—were worthless.
Mom sniffled. “Nash, I’m not going to…”
“Just say it!” he shouted, standing, and I tried to shove him back into his chair, but my hands went right through his chest.
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