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“So it wasn’t just the éclairs, was it? That night, back at Fort You Again when we stuffed our faces with so many baked goods Eli got the shakes and thought he could see the end of the universe, and we all laughed so much Greer peed herself, it wasn’t just the éclairs. We were all together. We did the thing. We won. That’s what made everything taste so good. That’s why you were already asking me what we were on to next while we still had cakes and shit left to eat. You can’t just forget what that feels like, man. I know it’s still in you somewhere, the taste of it. The taste for it. Under the knitwear and the sellout graphic designer bullshit, it’s still there. We can have it again, one last time.”

This was it. Jack was back. He hadn’t given such a rousing speech since the great convenience store supply truck robbery of ’17, which landed him with enough cases of energy drinks to keep him comfortably jittery until just a few months before his death.

A third pause on the line. Carter was thinking. Good. That meant Jack had him. It was just a matter of time before he…

Hung up the phone.

Carter had hung up the phone. Shit. Had Jack really lost his touch, just like that? Would this afterlife really be worth living if it meant he had to forfeit all the things he used to be?

Jack turned slack-jawed to Dale, who hovered at his shoulder.

“No Carter?” Dale asked.

“No Carter.”

“Jeez, Jackie,” said Dale. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

Jack swallowed down a lump of something thick and bitter he vaguely recognized as defeat before turning back to his phone. Greer needed to know. Jack had let her down. Everything she was counting on him for, everything he’d promised her, today and always, he couldn’t deliver. The lump returned, harder to swallow than the last. Maybe she just…wouldn’t notice? It probably wouldn’t be quite that easy. Greer noticed things. Most things, even. She’d notice that she wasn’t any richer. She’d notice that Jack wasn’t who she needed him to be anymore. He tapped her number.

Twenty minutes later, Greer was on the white leather couch, staring up at him expectantly. He should probably say something. It was what she seemed to be waiting for. It was what he’d planned to do. But nothing came. Where would he start? Every thought in his head was wrong. This wasn’t like him. Was this Margaret creeping in? He couldn’t imagine her ever having a moment of uncertainty in her eight decades of life. It seemed to be a new experience for both of them.

“So I went back to the archives this morning,” Jack began.

Greer readjusted her hands on her lap. Her hazel gaze weighed heavily on him.

“Slight problem,” Jack continued. “The guy who got me into the section with all the secret shit last time is dead now.”

“Dead?” Greer repeated, her voice up an octave in alarm. Then a strange look settled over her. “What kind of dead?”

Jack creased his already creased brow.

“Like, you’re a kind of dead, right?” said Greer. “And so is Dale.”

Dale gave a little wave from where he sat on the ottoman.

“Oh, no,” said Jack. “He’s the usual kind.” The souls of S.C.Y.T.H.E. employees were always collected and moved along quickly. It was a perk, or perhaps a drawback, of the job, depending on who you asked.

“So what does that mean for us?”

Us. Jack tried not to dwell on that last word, even as it echoed in his ears. The time had come. Rip the bandage off. Peel the scab. Get an infection and deal with the pus. There was nothing else he could do.

Except there was a knock at the door. He could answer the door. A couple of Mormons would be a nice change of pace about now.

“Just a sec,” he said to Greer, smothering his tone and facial expression in apology. Jack hustled to the door, mentally thanking whoever stood on the other side. A moment later he was face-to-face, or, more accurately, nose-to-chest, with Carter.

“I’m here to help Greer,” he said before Jack had time to even think of what to say.

“Good,” was what he landed on. “That’s good. Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” said Carter. “I told you, I’m not here for you, or me, or fucking éclairs. I’m here for Greer.”

“Noted,” said Jack.

There was a time when Jack could square up to Carter, eye to eye, with only half an inch of height between them. Now that Carter towered over Jack, the dynamic felt weird. Jack no longer had the upper hand, or even an equal one. Instead, he was half-certain Carter was about to pick him up and toss him through the window like an especially unpleasant and disappointingly sober game of cornhole.

“Carter?”

Jack turned around to find Greer padding toward them over the marble foyer floors in her rubber-ducky socks.