Out in the hall, the kid was caught mid-pace as he waited for him. He turned to glare at Davy as he stepped out onto the cheap lino.
“What took you so long?”
“You know, youcouldhave just walked through the fucking door?” Davy asked as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
The kid stopped, mouth open, as he looked at the door, then back at Davy.
“I can?” he asked.
Davy snorted. “I fucking wish,” he said. “Nothing’s that easy in this life. Or the next.”
The kid looked pissed off. He started to say something, stopped himself, and took a deep breath. It wasn’t really necessary in his current situation, but Davy understood the impulse. The kid narrowed his eyes. The pretty green had faded to almost silver, pale and striking against dark lashes and sallow skin.
“Am I dead?” he asked.
Davy held his arms out. The span felt slightly off, and he spared a breath to be mildly annoyed to realize the kid was taller than him.
“Do youlookdead?” he asked.
The kid looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers to watch the tendons move under thin, desaturated skin.
“Kind of,” he said quietly.
Fair enough, Davy supposed. He patted himself down briskly. Hoodie first, then his jeans, and then the back pockets. He found the wallet in the back left, a well-worn flap of leather roughly stitched in one corner where it had started to come apart. It was full of cash, but no cards or ID.
At least the kid made an effort.
“Think of it as more of a…Face/Offsituation,” he said absently as he pulled the cash out to count it.
“A what?”
Davy glanced up and took in the look of utter confusion on the kid’s face. OK, so that wasn’t the easy cultural touchstone he’d expected. He weighed up the advantages of trying to prompt the way to mutual understanding, and then decided to just change tack.
“OK, like a house swap,” he said. “I get to be alive, you get to be dead. We have fun, we both learn important lessons, and then we probably go back to the status quo.”
That got him a frown and the dubious repetition of, “Probably?”
Davy shrugged. “Things happen,” he said vaguely.
What things, he couldn’t say. There was no handbook for the dead, just the slow drip of information from the dry dead down to the wet dead. The threat of “things” had definitely been muttered about.
Davy tossed the wallet and folded the cash over to tuck it back into his jeans. He turned and headed toward the front door.
“H-hey, wait,” the kid stammered out. “What are you… Where are yougoing!?”
Davy paused on the threshold of the house and looked back over his shoulder.
“It’s been thirty years since I had something to eat,” Davy said. “I’m going to get a burger.”
“I’m a vegan,” the kid protested weakly.
“Going to suck to be you when you get this back,” Davy said. He waved his hand in a sweeping “after you” gesture at the door. “You coming or what?”
It took a moment, but the kid shook off his bafflement and broke into a graceless, ungainly lope to catch up with Davy. He squeezed through the propped-open door and stumbled down the step onto the path, looking around like he’d never seen the street before.
Davy stared after him and then looked down at his body, all long arms and lanky legs. Shit. If he needed to run, he better not look like that. He stepped down onto the path and let the door slam behind him.
As his foot hit the cracked pavers, he felt a brief jolt of disorientation as his brain tried to stitch his last real flesh memory and this one together.
