He sounded genuinely interested.
Hill grimaced a smile and wondered if he had somehow stumbled into a job interview against his will. It had happened before. That was how he’d gotten his job at CIRATTA, ambushed in the break room when all he’d been there for was to drop off some paperwork before Fraser left on a business trip.
His stomach felt the same, and he was drawing blanks on what he was pretty sure should be easy questions to answer.
Why did he prefer being alive?
Was “people do” a good enough answer?
Hill awkwardly took a bite of his cookie to buy himself a second. It looked like a double-stuffed Oreo, but as the cream and biscuit coated his tongue it tasted like…
With Janet? Out of everyone she’d picked fucking Janet?
The memory rolled over his tastebuds and down his throat before he could choke on it. Frustration, jealousy, and bitten-back tears for the filling. Hill coughed and set the rest of the treat back down.
“The food’s better,” he said.
Seb laughed. There was a crack in one of the dog’s teeth, a line of rot that threaded brown and deep up toward the gumline. Hillwatched it with uneasy fascination as the man shook his head and wagged a dirty-nailed finger.
It looked like blood rimed under his thumb.
Years of lessons in being normal told him that it wasn’t; of course, it wasn’t. Why would a man have blood under his nails in a nice office like this? He was just oversensitive.
The part of Hill that was always sharp and intolerable about things, made of sandpaper and unapologetic about it, grimaced at him inside his head.
Why would he have a dog face? The rules clearly don’t apply.
“The spirit of a biscuit,” Seb said and nodded to the plate on the table. “Sometimes you get a bad one. Try again.”
Hill licked the taste of someone else’s heartbreak off his lips and was queasy about how much he was tempted. He’d always been told to think about how the other person would feel, and he had always assumed that was literal. An internal IFTTT process. That had been raw, immediate as his own pain or anger. He could still taste the hot salt of her—he felt sure it had been a woman, although he could not say why—anger in the back of his throat.
“No.” His voice was dry and scratchy. He leaned forward and gingerly slid the plate onto the edge of the desk. The untouched coffee sloshed over the side of the cup and stung his fingers. It hurt, but…it didn’t spill over and spread. It stung his knuckles, and it was done. Hill would have been amazed if not for…well, everything else. “I’m good.”
Seb shrugged. “Your loss,” he said as he picked up an Oreo. He tossed it in the air and snapped at it like a…well, a dog. Sharp white teeth caught it in midair and sheared it in half, a swipe of that long, wet tongue getting both into his mouth. “But there’s more to death than food.”
The image of Davy’s ass, tight and firm and still glistening from Hill’s shower gel between the veil of lax, squirmingtentacles, strolled through Hill’s mind. It felt like he blushed. He didn’t know if it was possible to do that without a heart or blood supply.
Of course, other things depended on blood flow too, and as Hill shifted awkwardly in the chair, it didn’t seem to be having any trouble. Hill crossed his legs and folded his hands over his lap as he tried to focus on Seb.
It shouldn’t have been this difficult; the man had adog face. But Davy had long, lean thighs with a scar carved into one like punctuation, and he walked with a cocky strut that shouldn’t even have been possible in Hill’s body. It was hard to keep that imagery caged up in the “Unachievable crushes”—for so many reasons—area of his brain.
On the other side of the desk Seb gave Hill a wet, wide smile. “You’ve seen some of what we have to offer,” he said. Hill wondered with quick, cringy embarrassment if the other man somehow knew what he was thinking. Could spirits do that? If they could, and Seb was aware of Hill’s mortification, he ignored it as he went on. “And there is the question of inevitability.”
“Everyone dies,” Hill admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’ll have unfinished business. I could go to heaven.”
Seb chuckled. That was…unnerving, but he pressed on before Hill could ask what was so funny.
“Or…hell,” Seb pointed out, still somehow smirking with his dog lips. “But if you don’t, and you end up in the Beyond, the Company is a good friend to have. I’m sure that your new…associate…has had some stories to tell about us, but—”
“No,” Hill said.
Seb blinked. For the first time he looked genuinely off-balance. “No?”
Hill shook his head. “He’s not mentioned you.”
“Huh,” Seb said. He scratched along his jowls as he absorbed that, and brindle hair stuck to the white cuff of his sleeve. “Isuppose he’s been dead longer than most who get Invoked, but… nothing? Not even about the men with snares and knives at the end of the tunnel?”
“Wait. Thewhat?”
