I tried the bell again. Blue skies. Nothing but.
Footsteps, heavy enough to hear through the solid wood door came near and the curtained windows went yellow. A light over the door clicked on, punching a cone of light into the darkness.
The handle turned—no lock—and the door swung inward.
“Reed Daughter.”
Than looked terrible. Well, he looked like he always did—pale skin, dark hair, and eyes that carried the cold light of a thousand dying stars.
But those end-of-the-universe eyes were bloodshot, his chapped nose looked painful, and his hair stuck up at weird angles.
So this is what Death warmed over actually looked like.
His over-stretched pink T-shirt had a picture on it of two beach balls which fell over the bra zone. The words: Big Girls Love Big Balls were written across the bottom of the shirt.
But it was the fuzzy pajama bottoms with little yellow ears of corn on them, and the…
“Holy crap. Tell me those are fake.”
He slowly peered groundward and shifted his foot. The slippers he was wearing—because gods help me, they’d better just be slippers—were huge furry spiders. Eight bent legs, a row of googly eyes.
He shook his foot again. The eyes swirled.
“They are not fake. They are house slippers.”
“The spiders are…never mind. Let’s try again. Hey, Than.” I lifted the bag. “I brought you some stuff. Nice slippers.”
The sallow light from the room behind him and the yellow light from the porch did his complexion no favors. He narrowed his eyes, probably trying to suss out if I were lying, then he shrugged. “They are warm.”
I worked to keep my gaze on him and not peek behind him into the house. I was here because he was sick. Because he needed food. Not because I finally had a chance to case the joint.
I motioned to the bag. “Chicken soup, soft tissues, medicine if you have what I think you have.”
“I see.” Still the pause, the hesitation as he decided if his privacy was worth a can of soup. “Won’t you come in?”
Shivers plucked my spine and the hair on the back of my neck stuck up. When Death invites you in—even Death who looked like he’d been run over by a truck—you felt it in your bones.
“Thank you. Shoes or no shoes?” I stepped into the foyer.
“Remove them.”
I toed them off and nudged them against the wall. “This is for you.” I held the bag up again.
He took a big step backward—spider eyes a-googling, spider legs a-jiggling—and pointed down the hallway. Then he lifted his other elbow and sneezed into it. Hard. Twice. Even the spiders trembled.
“How long have you been feeling like this?” I asked.
“I am sure I don’t know what you mean.” He sniffed into his elbow.
“You’re sick.”
“I am not—” He broke off into a coughing fit, his elbow still over his mouth.
The coughs kept coming so I set the bag down on the little statue of an armadillo holding a silver tray near the door, and took Than’s free elbow.
“Couch or bed?” I powered us forward.
He sneezed and waved generally leftward. We went down the hall and through a wide archway into the living room.
