He looked nervous.
Not his usual kind of nervous, either. Dustin had seen him flustered, panicked, embarrassed, overwhelmed, and once, memorably, so overstimulated by a kiss that he’d forgotten how to be solid.
This was worse.
“What did you find?” Dustin asked.
“I found many things.” Greg’s knuckles were white around his clipboard. “The filing system was a disaster. There’s a reaper named Norbert who has a lot to answer for.”
“I don’t care about the filing system.”
“It seems like nobody does,” Greg said, sounding genuinely wounded.
“Greg.”
His gaze flicked toward the kitchen. Cathy was stillawake. Cooking, from the smell of it, because that was what she did when the world stopped making sense.
“Not here,” Greg said.
Dustin’s stomach dropped.
Whatever Greg had found, he wasn’t going to say it in front of Cathy.
“Let’s go for a drive,” Dustin said.
Greg blinked. “Now?”
“Now.”
“It’s very late.”
“I know what time it is.” Dustin grabbed his keys. “Come on.”
Greg followed him outside, because of course he did. He’d protest and stammer and list seventeen reasons why something was inadvisable, and then he’d follow anyway.
Dustin pulled out of the driveway. The neighborhood was dark and quiet, porch lights glowing against the night. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked.
For a while, he drove without thinking. Down Maple, left on Third, past the town’s only grocery store. Roads he’d driven hundreds of times with the windows down and the music too loud, back before everything.
Greg sat stiffly in the passenger seat, the clipboard in his lap.
“So,” Dustin said. “The filing system was a disaster.”
“It was genuinely awful.” Greg sounded relieved to have something safe to say. “There’s a reaper in Spectral Disputes who’s been borrowing filing cabinets from the records department, and now nothing is where it should be. I wish I’d had time to reorganize.”
“I’m glad you came back instead.”
Greg went quiet again.
They passed the high school. The chain-link fence around the track field was the same one Dustin had climbed a hundred times as a kid. Beyond it, in the dark, was the hill where he and Tyler had once made all their grand plans.
He didn’t look at it.
“Greg,” Dustin said. “Tell me.”
Greg’s jaw tightened.
Dustin pulled the truck over.
