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Cyrus said nothing to that. Instead he turned his hand over and examined the scar on his palm, and even from where Jack stood, he could see the hairs lift on Cyrus’s pale forearms.

“Jack,” Carter called. “Eli’s bleeding out. We’ve got to go.”

Jack nodded to Carter, who wrapped an arm around Eli’s back, helping him up to his feet. Greer rushed over to help as Cyrus slunk from the chamber, leaving Jack face-to-face with Gerard. He looked into the old man’s face, ready for hate and anger to consume him, but something unexpected emerged in their place: pity. When Jack had been faced with his own death, he’d stolen someone else’s life without a second thought. In a way, Gerard’s willingness to kill for the sake of his soul meant he had been prepared to do the same. They were two sides to the same desperate coin.

“I’ll return the list,” Jack said.

“You expect me to trust you?” Gerard hissed through his teeth.

“Not really,” said Jack. “I catfished you with someone else’s body, so trust might be a bit too much to ask here. But S.C.Y.T.H.E. thinks you’re dead, so it’s not like you can return it yourself. Plus, I get it. Death can change you. I don’t like who it’s made me. I mean, Margaret seems fun, but the rest of it? The desperation? It’s not who I want to be. We’re both on a clock here, and I don’t want mine to run out like this. Do you?”

Gerard held Jack’s gaze for a long moment. “All I want,” he said, “is to rest in peace and to know that everyone else dying with me will get to do the same.”

With tentative hands, he pried the scroll from his breast pocket, studying it with a labored breath. “Is she still in there?”

“Margaret? Yeah. Big-time. Getting louder by the minute, actually.”

Gerard nodded and surrendered the list to Jack’s careful fingers. “Then this is for her. I want her to be the one to return it.”

There was a warmth to the paper that such an object shouldn’t have, as though it were a living thing. Jack could almost feel a pulse. Somewhere inside him, he could feel Margaret smile.

“She will,” Jack promised. He turned to hurry after his friends, but Gerard grabbed his arm.

“There’s more,” he said, voice strained.

“More what?”

“I can’t rest until I know someone is doing something about the glitch.”

“The…?”

“Death is changing,” Gerard said, that wild urgency back in his eyes. “Something is wrong with it; a glitch, they’re calling it. An imbalance between the natural order of life and death, allowing for things that shouldn’t be possible: uncooperative essences, souls becoming ghosts before the end of their forty-five-day grace period”—he gave Jack a hard look—“possession. Of course, I really shouldn’t know this, but as archivist I see all the paperwork related to the company, and there’s been quite a lot about this glitch these past few months, though some literature dates back years. It seems to be getting worse at an accelerated rate. It’s only a matter of time now before that glitch not only takes down the company, but the very balance of life and death, and no one is doing enough to stop it. I’ve spent months buried in research, combing through the depths of Section 301 D, to no avail. After I’m gone, there’ll be no one left to fix it except the morons running the place, and most of them have never picked up a book in their lives.”

“Jack!” Greer’s voice barreled down the corridor beyond the chamber. Eli was still bleeding. The You Agains needed him.

“I have to go,” he said.

Not yet.

Margaret held him there, rooted to the cement as Gerard’s gaze continued its plea. “I promise I’ll look into it,” Jack said. And with that, his borrowed body returned to him, allowing a stumble out into the cavernous corridor as he raced after his friends.

43

It wasn’t the first time Jack had to wash Eli’s blood off his hands, but with any luck, it would be the last. The drive to the hospital was nearly silent aside from Eli’s heavy breathing. As they crowded the waiting room, the events of the night bubbled in everyone’s throats, and soon uneasy conversation settled over the stark, sterile space. Not long before dawn rolled around, Eli was finally deemed fully stable despite the concussion and blood loss, and as soon as the You Agains were given the go-ahead, they gathered around his bed.

Eli would have a new scar to show for it all, but he would heal. Maybe they all would.

For his part, Jack’s grip on his borrowed body had weakened, its rightful owner making herself known in moments that kept catching him off guard. Just now Margaret heaved her wrist into view, displaying the time on the delicate gold watch wrapped around it, and Jack knew what he needed to do.

• • •

The doors to the bank had opened moments before his arrival, and aside from the employees, he was the first through them that morning. A teller ushered him over to her desk and Jack told her he wanted to transfer some funds. Margaret had been generous enough to offer up the information he needed to access her accounts, and that meant he could remove just enough money for Greer’s husband to receive the treatment he needed and not a penny more, which Margaret’s newfound presence was keen to make sure of.

Jack was back at the hospital half an hour later with a tray of coffees and a box of assorted doughnuts. Eli was still pale from the whole ordeal, but the darkness that always seemed to haunt him had lifted somehow. He was propped upright on the bed, laughing at something someone had said before Jack entered the room. Jack put the doughnuts on the bedside table and pulled Greer into the hall.

“It’s done,” he said.

“What’s done?”