He couldn’t forget the moment the lines had snapped, the way the ground kept rushing up. He couldn’t forget waking up without a scratch.
He couldn’t explain it to himself either. He'd checked his gear three times since getting back. There was nothing wrong with it, except for the lines that had snapped clean through, which shouldn't have happened, whichcouldn'thave happened, which?—
There was a knock at his door.
Dustin frowned. Who was knocking on his door? Nobody knew he was here except?—
He opened the door.
Clipboard guy.
Withhis clipboard.
Of course.
“Hi,” Greg said. He was wearing the same button-down and tie as always. The clipboard was tucked under his arm, and his free hand was doing an awkward half-wave that he aborted midway through. “You said something about dinner.”
“I said lose the clipboard.”
“I can't. It's company issue.” Greg shifted his weight. “Section 4, Subsection 7 of the field manual states that all field reapers must maintain possession of their assigned documentation device while operating in mortal-adjacent spaces. It's not optional.”
Dustin raised an eyebrow at him. “There’s amanualfor that?”
“Everything has a manual. Death is very organized. It has to be. Do you know how many people die every day?”
“I try notto think about it.”
“About 150,000. Give or take. That's a lot of paperwork.”
Dustin only looked at the man with the clipboard. “I’m sorry my mortality causes you so much paperwork.”
“It’s nothing you have to worry about. The point is, I can't leave the clipboard behind. It's how I receive messages from headquarters. It's like a phone, except…”
“For death?”
“I was going to say 'interdimensional communication,' but yes. Essentially.”
Dustin leaned against the doorframe. This was insane. Absolutely insane. A stranger had tracked him to his motel room. A stranger who claimed to be a supernatural entity. A stranger who had shown up at his jump site and the club he went to after and now his door, always watching, alwaysthere.
This was how people ended up as the subject of true crime podcasts.
But Greg looked so painfully earnest standing there, clearly bracing for rejection. And Dustin had been lying on that bed for far too long with nothing but the cracks in the ceiling and the echo of his own fall for company.
“There's a diner down the street,” he heard himself say. “You’re buying.”
The diner was called Lucky's, which felt ironic given recent events.
Dustin slid into a booth by the window. The floor was slightly sticky, which he tried to ignore. This was his second time coming here.
It was different now that he had a self-proclaimed reaper sitting across from him.
Greg had set the clipboard flat on the table beside him and he was studying the menu as if it were another manual he needed to memorize.
“The burgers are good,” Dustin offered.
“What do they taste like?”
Dustin blinked. “You're kidding.”
