Page 27

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The trouble with the living was they always doubted death. They knew it would come for them, sure, but until it did, they usually struggled to conceive of encountering it. Only goths and your weird aunt believed in ghosts; only the chronically religious and your weird aunt believed in an afterlife; only priests believed in possession, because that one was too weird even for your weird aunt. And yet life, for all its complexities and unknowns, had nothing on the utter strangeness of death, and no one seemed open to hearing as much until it came for them. Jack figured this out after the sixth person in a row hung up on him that evening. Apparently, no one wanted to hear that their loved one was going to die that month and that they could find out who, where, and how, for a perfectly reasonable fee. Jack hadn’t expected this process to be quite so difficult, but then, he’d been having an afterlife crisis for long enough now that the idea of predeath foresight seemed like a given to him.

Greer was having no better luck, and between the two of them, she seemed more affected by the lack of success. It had been three hours and her face was already drawn, the puffiness under her eyes thicker, her frown lines deeper. She looked exhausted, defeated. It hurt Jack more than any angry phone call recipient could.

“This isn’t going to work,” she said at last, the sky behind her darkening in tandem with her mood. “How the hell are we supposed to convince strangers that anything we’re saying is true? We sound insane. Fuck. I don’t know how I let you convince me this was a good idea.”

Jack looked across the couch to Dale, who didn’t seem quite so quick to take credit for the plan this time. Greer was right. They wouldn’t be able to sell the Master List to just anyone. Their story sounded too far-fetched, which was something Jack would have realized if he were still alive and playing by those rules. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t sell it at all. There had to be someone out there—someone as full of schemes and mischief as Jack was—who’d take a chance on the list.

“I may have some old contacts who would be interested,” Jack said, mentally running through the names of all his former connections as he did so.

“No one’s going to believe this,” said Greer. “Not even the lunatics you used to know.”

“Unless you know someone who specializes in death stuff,” Dale offered.

“Nah,” said Jack. “Most of my guys were into your basics: money, drugs, lifted merch. Kind of boring, in hindsight. But…” Something niggled at him deep in the back of his mind, something from years ago. A nineteen-year-old Eli knocking on the door of Jack’s apartment, face drained of color, eyes wide and rimmed with dark circles, hand cut like it had been used for a blood sacrifice in a horror movie. He never came to Jack unless something was very, very bad. This had been. “Greer, does Eli still know that guy with the Cruella De Vil hair and all the chains?”

“I have no idea,” said Greer. Jack thought he saw a small shudder run through her. “Why?”

“Just remembering something Eli said a million years ago. Apparently he won’t talk to me, but he listens to you. Could you talk to him? See if they’re still in touch?”

Greer readjusted her position on the couch. “You really think nothing’s changed since we were kids, huh?”

“What does that mean?”

“Eli isn’t the same little boy who looks up to his big sister, Jack. And I’m not the same girl who goes along with dumb ideas out of boredom anymore. He and I barely talk these days, and when we do, it inevitably turns into yelling.”

Jack took a moment to digest this, and even then, he wasn’t sure his stomach acid was sufficient to break down the information he’d just received. Eli had always been sullen and a bit of a prick, but no matter how much he thought he hid it, he worshipped at the altar of Greer with just as much vigor as Jack, albeit in a very different way. Eli and Greer had always been close in a way that was uniquely them, a way that was filled with annoyance and angst and glares and love. At times Jack had even envied it and imagined what it would be like to have a sibling: a built-in teammate to take on the world with for the rest of his life. But something had changed between Eli and Greer, and somehow that built-in teammate thing no longer applied to them, and Jack couldn’t quite wrap his head around this new world where the boy who looked at his sister as the only cool authority figure in his life was gone.

“Ah,” he said at last.

“Yeah,” said Greer.

Jack could feel himself drained of ideas. It felt like running at full speed toward a brick wall. He was about to be pancaked against it like a Looney Tunes character, and there were no thoughts in his head with enough substance to slow him down. He knew this feeling. It had been rare in life, but he’d felt it before, and each time, it had taken days, sometimes longer, to scrape himself off that wall and figure out a way around it. Now the rules were different. Now the friends he’d leaned on were mostly scattered to the wind. Now the stakes were a child’s life, not just the thrill of the game. Now Jack wasn’t fully convinced he still had what it took to make it around the wall at all. It seemed to loom higher, sturdier than before. This wasn’t like him. Jack McCoy didn’t do walls.

“Would you try?”

Greer looked at him. “Jack.”

“Greer. Would you try?”

“You think that chain guy can help us?”

Jack couldn’t be sure. He was basing all this off a sun-bleached memory. He was running straight into a brick wall and Greer’s hazel eyes could almost certainly see it. “I do.”

Greer took a sharp inhale. “Then I’ll try.”

16

Eli paced circles on the thread-worn carpet like a tiger in a cage. He ran a hand through unruly curls, flashing looks at Greer and Jack from the corner of his eye. Finally he stopped his circles and planted his feet in front of his unwelcome guests, who sat stiffly on the corduroy couch of apartment 3A.

“This is fucked,” he said. Then he homed in on Greer. “For you of all people to fall for this bullshit. It’s fucked.”

“It’s not bullshit,” said Jack. “I have the list.”

“That’s not what I mean. Christ, Greer, I really thought you were above this shit now. You have a family.”

“My family is why I’m doing this,” Greer snapped. “And that’s some very high and mighty talk from the guy who’s fresh out of prison. Again.”