“I don’t—” he started to demur, with Davy’s tossed-off directive not to touch the food at the forefront of his brain. Except he’d already broken that, hadn’t he? So… “A Latte, please?”
“Iced?” Hen asked as she pulled a thin metal card out of her wallet. The logo on it was of a pair of scales and a feather.
“OK,” Hill said.
He thought better of it immediately, or at least doubted himself, but it was too late to change his mind as Hen stepped up to the counter. As she put the order in and scanned her card, he just hovered awkwardly next to her and looked around.
Everyone in the shop was masked. Some of them didn’t have the grafted muzzle like Hen and Seb. They just had static masks in wood or cloth. One man had a skeletal hand tattooed over his mouth.
“So, how have you been?” Hen asked. She pointed at a donut through the glass screen and nodded approvingly when the barista picked it up with a pair of tongs. “What are you up to these days?”
It was strange to interact with someone you’d last seen dying in a hospital bed. She’d called him a slur then, in the sameupbeat tone, and his mom had dragged him out. She’d covered his ears, although it had been far too late, and told him Hen hadn’t meant it.
She’d been sick.
Hill wondered what that meant for her spirit. Davy was who he’d been when he died. Hill felt the same. Was Hen still the person the cancer had turned her into, or had death undone the tumor’s work?
“Being dead is taking up a lot of my time,” Hill said. “How did you find me?”
“I was looking for you,” Hen said. She tucked the card back in her wallet and shooed him toward a table by the window. “You’re a person of interest for the people I work for.”
“The Company.”
She clucked her tongue. Hill stared at her over a napkin dispenser and tried to work out if that was meant to mean something or was just a noise she made.
“They’re the only game in town worth playing,” she said. “I know it sounds pretentious, but it could be worse. Back in Europe, so I hear, they still have Courts. Well, not over here. We’re dead, but we’re still American.”
She chuckled, wattles wobbling with amusement. Hill really wanted to ask whether her lifelong nickname had influenced her choice of animal, or did she get a vote. He wasn’t sure if it would be rude or not. The decision tree he usually ran through to work that out didn’t have the options he needed for his current situation.
Hen was done with the joke, anyhow. She wiped the corners of her beak with her thumb and forefinger. Hill was surprised at how familiar the gesture was, the memory of a dozen lunches he’d sat through with his mom. Although before, the gesture had always been accompanied by a crustless sandwich and a smudge of her signature red lipstick left on her fingertips.
“But yes,” she acknowledged. “I work for the Company, and while you’re still weighing up their offer, they want me to help show you some of the advantages. A familiar face, and all.”
She caught the edge of an order being called and turned to look. When the man with the skeleton hand shushing him picked it up instead, she heaved an annoyed sigh.
“How did they know you knew me?” Hill asked.
Hen shrugged. “They’re the Company,” she said, as if that was answer enough.
“Have you seen my dad?” Hill asked.
The ache in his voice made his chest hurt and flicked the living world briefly back into hi-res around them. Instead of a coffee shop, they were perched on the windowsill of a daycare. One of the kids playing on the ground nearby shivered abruptly despite his “Santa’s Favorite Helper” sweater and started to cry.
Hen looked alarmed as she pressed both hands flat on the faded-out sketch of the Beyond’s table.
“Who?” she said.
“My dad?” Hill said. “Albie. Albert Rosen. Your best friend’s husband?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Hen said. She looked around, the jerky movements of her head starkly birdlike. “What is this? Who are they?”
An elf on the shelf fell off its perch and bounced off the ground. Its plastic face grinned maliciously at the ceiling as the rest of the toddlers joined in with the first one. As the daycare providers ran over to calm them down, the living world faded back to sketch lines and background noise as Hill stared at Hen.
“You remember me?”
“Of course,” Hen said. She smoothed her hair fretfully with one hand, preening it tidy with her nails. “You’re my godchild.”
“You remember my mom?”
