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“Jack.” His name came from behind gritted teeth. It didn’t want to be there, and the mouth that uttered it didn’t want the residue on its tongue.

Jack turned from the doorway to face Eli. “Yeah?”

Eli gave his head a shake. A deep exhale. Jack recognized the pattern but tried not to get his hopes too high.

“Why this job?” said Eli.

Jack stared blankly back.

“You come back from the dead as an old lady to do one last job,” said Eli. “Why this one?”

Jack fought to keep from sliding any meaningful looks in Greer’s direction. It was an art he hadn’t had much reason to practice in recent years, but one he’d been forced to hone back in their youth. Eli had known him for too long and knew him too well not to pick up on these things otherwise. Instead Jack kept his eyes steadily locked on Eli’s own.

“Because Greer asked me to,” he said matter-of-factly. “And I don’t let my friends jump in the pool alone.”

Another head shake. Jack tried to keep his expression as bland as the undecorated white walls of apartment 3A. He was dealing with a caged tiger, after all. The last thing he needed to do was give him a reason to pounce.

“I’ll make a call,” he said, then he turned to his sister, who stood half in the hall. “I’ll make the call.”

Greer bowed her head in thanks and followed Eli’s outstretched arm back inside, where she and Jack returned to their previous perch on the couch. Eli slid his phone from his jeans pocket and disappeared into his bedroom, leaving a heavy silence in his wake. Jack looked around the barren room, the very same room where he’d had his little afterlife intervention only a few short days ago. His friends had tried to get him to move on then, or at least to leave them alone. Now they were almost as good as back to the You Again gang. It was funny the difference a few days could make. Funny, but not surprising. Jack was a man who was used to doors opening for him, even the ones that had initially been slammed in his face. When he put his mind to something, it was all only a matter of time and strategy before he had it in his grasp, and the one thing he’d always put his mind to above all else was the people in apartment 3A with him right now. And Dale. And Carter.

And Jules. But some doors were beyond even Jack.

Apartment 3A was one more formerly slammed door that had opened for him.

Three down, one to go.

17

When Jack was alive, he knew everything there was to know about life, because as far as he was concerned, life only existed within eight city blocks. He knew the rules of those blocks, who lived where, what that world would look like at any given time of day. Then he died, and suddenly life was a lot more confusing than he’d realized when he was living it.

Eli hadn’t said much after he got off the phone the night before. He’d just handed Jack a piece of paper with an address scribbled on it, his cheeks nearly as ashen as they’d been the night he turned up on Jack’s doorstep after first seeing the man with the chains. Turns out, death wasn’t only a thing you did when life ended, and neither was encountering a bureaucratic industry made up of suits and copy machines and reports. To those who knew how, death was also a resource worth exploiting. And apparently the people who operated the Bleak Market knew how.

Jack wasn’t as surprised by this as he might have been in life. Working for S.C.Y.T.H.E. meant his surprise bar had been raised fairly substantially and now required something in the realm of extraterrestrials or perhaps a very well-trained cat to truly get his eyes widening. Once he’d gained a better handle on the mechanisms of death, it made sense to him that people wired the way he was would find a way to monetize it via less than legal means. Still, while Jack wasn’t surprised to learn that an underground trade in afterlife paraphernalia existed, he couldn’t help but feel as though the world he thought he knew had never really existed at all.

“You good?” said the man over whose body Jack stood contemplating his grasp on reality.

“Oh, yeah, sorry,” Jack said, returning his attention to the backyard where he’d been sent to collect the soul of one Chris Crisp, a man of roughly Jack’s age who was both sprawled on the grass with a gunshot wound to the head and hovering just to Jack’s right. “It’s just…you ever feel like there’s more going on in this life than you’ll ever know?”

Chris Crisp gave a shrug. “I dunno, man. I just got a bullet in my head, you know? I’m kind of still stuck on that.”

“Yeah, no, right,” said Jack. “I get that.”

He took the long way back to the office after dropping Chris at processing, windows down, sunroof open. The world, it turned out, was a very strange yet predictably cash-driven place, and Jack couldn’t help but feel glad to have stuck around long enough to find that out, even if he had to do so in someone else’s body. Even if it meant that on the next full moon—a detail he found at least a little cliché—he would be venturing into an underground market of death. Even if it killed him a second time.

According to Eli, the monthly Bleak Market operated out of a condemned old factory downtown. Access required a password, speakeasy-style, that only Eli was allowed to learn, which meant he would be along for the ride whether he wanted to be or not. It all seemed best-case scenario to Jack, who always enjoyed a classic touch to a criminal enterprise, and who couldn’t help but feel a little triumphant at having dragged Eli back into the fold. The job itself would be straightforward enough: as the morning neared and deals were sealed, an auction of only the highest-ticket items would take place at the market. Jack knew a list of the soon-to-die would fit that bill, so all he and the You Agains had to do was find a buyer with deep pockets. As far as he was concerned, this would be a cakewalk.

He returned to his desk feeling more alive than he had since he was in his own body. Margaret’s essence had graciously receded, and Jack was fully back in the driver’s seat. His fingers flew across the keyboard as he typed up Chris Crisp’s report, humming quietly to himself. The Eagle, Jack’s cubicle neighbor, popped a sharp nose over the divide between their desks, but Jack decided not to notice. He wouldn’t need to be Margaret forever. Maybe after the Master List sold, he could retire from S.C.Y.T.H.E. and live out the rest of his time in this body in the South of France, the way he’d first imagined. Maybe Greer would join him. Sure, she had a husband, but who had she come to when she needed help? Nothing in life lasted forever, not even life itself. Marriage was no exception. Granted, his current aesthetic might not be to her romantic taste, but they say love is blind, and at least he didn’t have acne scars anymore. But he was getting ahead of himself. One thing at a time. First he had to sell the list, and the full moon was still two days away, which meant he should probably press pause on his plans for a European elopement.

The rest of the day passed in the sort of haze that settles over a brain when its focus is weeks and miles away. By the time Jack caught up to himself, he was back at home watching reality TV with Dale. Just above him, the Master List waited patiently on his bedside table. He’d read it over twice on the day he’d brought it home, holding the paper in delicate fingertips, just in case he recognized any names. He couldn’t decide whether that would be a bad thing; after all, he was already dead and it had been mostly fine so far. But something about the thought of seeing a loved one’s name made him uneasy, and he couldn’t help feeling for whoever encountered that scenario once the list was sold. Not everyone got the chance to stick around the way he had. In fact, as far as he knew, he was the only one. For everyone else—and even for Dale once this job was done—death was a pretty permanent deal. All the more reason people would shell out for the list, Jack figured. Having the chance to disrupt death would be worth a pretty penny, there was no question about that. The only question that remained was whether this was what an underground buyer would actually use the list for. Back when he first became Margaret and was in the throes of researching S.C.Y.T.H.E., Jack came across an internal memo about an agent who’d uncovered a secret ring of soul snatchers within the company ranks. They’d been stealing and selling essences to some mad scientist or other. Details were sparse, but the thought of a soul being experimented on made Jack shudder in his borrowed shell. Thankfully it was a thought he didn’t hold on to for too long, first because he’d been too busy learning how to be a senior citizen grim reaper, and now because the impending job took up too much space in his mind for much else.

Life faded into a dull sort of background noise over those forty-eight hours leading up to the Bleak Market. Jack accomplished his newfound weekend routine of water aerobics and a trip to the nail salon through little more than muscle memory, his mind too busy with the persistent hum of anticipation to focus on much else. His nights, meanwhile, were spent around Margaret’s marble kitchen island with Dale, Eli, and Greer, working through the logistics of their upcoming Bleak Market trip: Would anyone be able to see Dale if he came? Who should they talk to? Who should they avoid? Most of their conversations were built on a foundation of pure speculation. Eli hadn’t been given much to go on, and the market didn’t exactly have a presence online.

Then, on the evening before the full moon, something unexpected happened. A knock on Margaret’s door. Jack opened it to find Carter there, hands in his jeans pockets, head hung.

“Hey,” said Jack, allowing a small note of surprise into his voice. This was bordering on well-trained cat levels of unexpected. Carter was not a man to change his mind.