Hill wiped his mouth. “I didn’t know that was—”
“Well, it is,” Hen said. She took a drink of her coffee and swallowed whatever rage was brewed into Mad at You Mocha. “And the odds of anyone who hated Fraser dying, reaching the Beyond,andescaping the gauntlet—”
“You mean the men with snares?” Hill asked.
Hen clicked her beak shut and went a funny color. Even her wattles blanched, the red lobes fading to a dull burgundy.
“We don’t talk about them,” she said sharply. “What if they hear you? And to the living it might seem Fraser had a lot of enemies, but among the dead it’s a drop in the bucket. A drop in the bucket with no map. Whereas I have all the resources of the Company, and a remit to show you just how invaluable that is.”
Hill twiddled with the straw in his cup. The ice cubes clattered against each other.
“Was he afraid of anyone?”
“His brother,” Hen said immediately. “They were both dangerous men, but Davy could charm… Fraser could never understand that, and it bothered him.”
Hill felt the hollow lack-of-heat flush through him as he thought of the way Davy’s eyes crinkled when he was pleased with himself and the blunt nudge of a tentacle against the seam of his mouth. He reached for his coffee and took a sip.
The sharp tang of meanness cut through the honey-sweetness of the smooth roasted beans. Hill licked the mockery off his lips. He’d always assumed that sort of crowing meanness was performative, to make the victim feel bad. Whoever’s coffee this had been was…genuinely having a good time.
“Is there anyone else? Anyone that worried him or put him on edge?” he asked. Hen wrinkled her brow as she thought about it, obviously stumped. Hill stirred his drink and thought about the real delight brewed into it. What would Fraser’s coffee order be like? He tried again. “Anyone he gloated about getting one over on?”
That struck a chord with Hen. She started to smile before she answered him.
“I don’t know, this is maybe stupid,” she said. “But there was this deli—umm—Delilicious? The everything bagels were to die for. I went there all the time, but Fraser wouldn’t even drop me off outside to pick up an order. I remember when the place got closed down by the health department, he was so smug about it. He took me to eat at one of their competitors the night they were closing down. Spent a fortune. It wasn’t—”
Someone hit the door into the shop hard, nearly tripped over their own feet as they fell over the threshold, and shoved the door shut behind them. Hen put her coffee down and stood up. She came around the table to peer out into the street. When Hill twisted around to see what she was looking at, he was surprisedto see the pavements were nearly empty. The few people left on the street looked nervous and on edge. A black Buick drove down the road, stopped, and a lean man in gray got out. He had a muzzle, but it wasn’t living. It was a carved bone dog skull, yellowed and scored with cracks repaired with a dull, grayish solder.
“What did you do?” Hen asked.
“Me?” Hill said. It wasn’t a protest; he was genuinely confused. “I don’t…I didn’t do anything. I don’t know HOW to do anything.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard, her nails digging down into the muscle.
“You did,” she insisted. “I felt it. When we saw the living and they…did they see us?”
“I didn’t think they…”
She shook him. “Did they see us?”
He focused on the flash he’d seen, red-faced toddlers on a snowflake mat, and the elf as it bounced off the floor. The one toddler’s shocked face before it screwed up into a howl.
“I guess the baby might have?” he said. “Maybe? I don’t…”
Hen dragged him to his feet. “Idiot,” she hissed. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”
She dragged him behind her as she headed toward the back of the store. A sort of uneasy muttering built up around them.
“Where are they going?”
“Haunting…”
“He said something about ghosts…”
“He’s wet. The kid’s still wet. He’s not been stripped.”
What started as private murmurs began to pick up volume as chairs were pushed back and people stood up.
“What’s going on?” Hill asked.
