***
Her friends were waiting for her, sitting atop the fountain at the center of town. They were hard to miss; Ferbus’s orange hair stood out like a traffic cone, and Elysia’s blond ponytail caught the sun as she climbed up onto the fountain’s ledge to get a better look at the car—though she was so short, it didn’t make much of a difference. Ferbus stood too, rolling up the newspaper he’d been reading. And Driggs—
Driggs was lying on the ledge, staring at the sky. At the sound of the engine, his head flopped to the side and followed the car as it made its way down Dead End. He barely moved.
Lex rolled up her window with shaking hands. By the time the car came to a stop in front of the fountain, her body felt as if it was about to snap apart at the seams.
Uncle Mort glanced at the welcoming committee, then back at Lex. “You ready for this, kiddo?”
“Do I have a choice?”
He gave her a sympathetic smile as she clambered out of the car. “That’s the spirit.”
“Lex!” Elysia squealed, jumping to embrace her in an epic bear hug. “Oh my God, we missed you so much! Ow!” Ferbus had pinched her. “What?”
“Let her breathe,” he said as Elysia detached herself. “Hi, Lex.”
Lex couldn’t even muster a response. Elysia’s contagious zeal usually had a way of making terrible things seem not so terrible after all, but it wasn’t working this time. Lex wrung her clammy hands, her anxiety heightened by this deluge of undeserved love. Didn’t they know what she’d done? Didn’t they realize how much danger they were in by even being in the same zip code as her? She didn’t even want to look at Driggs . . .
Of course, she had to. There he was, just as she had left him, her imperfectly adorable partner with that messy coffee-colored hair, those mismatched eyes—one brown, one blue. Her brain spun into overdrive. Did he even care that she was back? He was looking at her with an unreadable expression. Was it a sneer? Was he mad?
Her face was doing that weird twitching thing again, so she looked away. The last thing she wanted was for Driggs to realize that he was now in a relationship with a spastic robot. He inched to her side, wordlessly hooked his pinkie finger through hers, and gave it a squeeze.
But he didn’t say anything.
Uncle Mort exited the car, frowning. “Ferb, Lys, what are you doing here?”
Elysia threw a nervous glance at the library. “We didn’t really have a choice.”
“But you know the drill—you’re not supposed to meet your new partners until training.”
A muffled burst of sound came from within the library. Someone peeked out from behind the blinds, then disappeared as soon as the Juniors looked over.
“What are they like?” Elysia said. She squinted at the two-door, where the rookies were trying desperately to free themselves from the back seat.
“Dumb, right?” said Ferbus. “Scared? Liable to get us in even more trouble than we’re already in?” He shot a bitter glance at the library.
“Go easy on them, okay?” Uncle Mort said, following Ferbus’s gaze with a hint of suspicion. Ferbus and Elysia had spent the past year guarding the Afterlife, but now that rookies were arriving, it was their job to train them as Killers and Cullers—much to Elysia’s delight and Ferbus’s dismay.
“I’ll try,” said Ferbus. “But I anticipate suckitude.”
“Um, hello?” A trapped voice came from the car.
Uncle Mort sighed. “Fine. Introductions today means more time for training tomorrow. Give me a minute to pry them out of there.” He walked back to the car and started to wrestle down the tricky front seats. He’d confided in Lex that some of the townspeople thought he was nuts for bringing new kids into a such an unstable and dangerous environment, but firm believer in the Junior Grim program that he was, he had summed up his reply with one rude flip of a finger.
Elysia leaned in to Lex. “I still can’t believe he let you go with him.”
Ferbus let out a snort. “What’s so hard to believe? The man would let her blow up the moon if she wanted to. And she probably does.”
Lex narrowed her eyes, but was still too rattled to think of a good comeback. And Driggs didn’t even jump to her defense. Odd.
It didn’t matter, as Elysia could always be counted on to fill a silence. “But Mort’s never taken anyone with him on his annual trip to fetch the rookies. No Juniors, no Seniors, not even anyone who’s retired. Was it cool, Lex?”
“Of course it was cool,” Ferbus said. “I remember when he got me—just picked me up, like I had called for a taxi.” He glared at Elysia. “Imagine my disappointment when we fetched you next.”
“Shut up, Ferb.”
Uncle Mort let out a triumphant yell as he finally collapsed the front seat. The Juniors’ eyes flew to the car.
First to bound out of it was a boy with dirty-blond hair and a seemingly unlimited cache of pent-up energy. His gaze darted about maniacally, not settling on anything for more than a second or two. Though he stood not much taller than Elysia, a set of sturdy muscles sliding beneath his skin suggested a hidden, tenacious strength. And a flicker of jumpiness seemed to compel his every motion, as if he might run off to scamper up the nearest tree at any given moment. Indeed, everything about him—the quick movements, his nimble hands, the way he even seemed to be sniffing the air—led to the overall impression of a peppy little squirrel.
His counterpart, on the other hand, resembled less a rodent than a large, flightless bird. A lanky girl of Indian descent, she slipped out of the car in total silence and hardly moved, the very portrait of someone who had recently been blindsided by a particularly cruel blitz of puberty. The kid was all angles; she didn’t seem to know how to stand or what to do with her limbs or how best to hide her knobby knees. Poker-straight black hair hung down to her waist, and a curtain of thick bangs nearly covered her eyes, though not completely. Massive, round, and wavering somewhere between blue and green, they popped so radiantly against the darkness of her skin that her stare seemed electrified.
Eventually she settled into a dejected stance, hugging a book to her chest and rocking nervously from side to side. “I got a two-for-one deal,” Uncle Mort told the Juniors. “Foster kids from the same family. Can you believe it?”
“Where are we?” the boy said. “Is this the town? Who are they?” He began to hop from foot to foot. “What are we doing here? Aren’t you going to tell us? Didn’t he say he was going to tell us?” he asked the girl, who didn’t move.
“Good Lord, kid,” Uncle Mort said over his questions. “No more sodas for you.”
“I only had three!”
“Like they made a difference,” Uncle Mort told the Juniors under his breath. “Intrinsically buoyant, that one.”
Ferbus stared in wonder. “He’s like a bag of microwave popcorn.”
Driggs finally spoke, his voice equally amazed. “But popcorn tends to stop popping after a couple minutes. He’s . . . still going.”
“Are we in the Adirondacks? Where are we staying? Do we need money? How—”
“Zip it, jumping bean.” Uncle Mort took the boy by the shoulders to still him. “All will be explained shortly. For now, meet Ferbus, Elysia, and Driggs.”
The boy nodded at each of them. “Hi. Hi. Hi.”
“Kids, meet the new rookies.” He prodded the boy. “Go ahead, introduce yourselves.”
“I’m Pip,” he said with a little wave. “And this is Bang. Because she’s originally from Bangalore, India. And—”
“No need to say where you’re from,” said Uncle Mort. “You’re earthlings, that’s all that matters.”
Ferbus studied the odd pair. “You sure about that?”
The girl unfolded her arms, tossed her book to the ground, and directed a flurry of frantic hand gestures at Pip, who followed them with an intense stare. When she finished, she dropped her hands to her sides and looked at Uncle Mort.
He stared back, uncomprehending. “What did she say?” he asked Pip.
>
Pip had stopped bouncing around. He looked hurt. “She said that you promised they would be nice to us.”
“What’s wrong with her?” Ferbus said. “She deaf?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her!” Pip said. “She can hear perfectly fine. She just doesn’t talk.”
“But that’s not—” Elysia looked confused. “I learned some sign language when I was a kid, and whatever all that was—that’s not sign language.”
Pip looked at her blankly. “It’s our sign language.”
Bang inched closer to him. He grabbed her hand and backed up a little. “You’re not going to be mean about this, are you?” he asked. “Because high school back home was hard enough for us, and if you’re going to be the same as those jerks—”
“No, of course we’re not!” Elysia cried. “I’m so sorry. We’re all sorry.” She elbowed Ferbus in the ribs.
“Right.” Fergus coughed. “Sorry.”
“Different is good here,” said Driggs. “We’ve all got weird things. The weirder, the better.”
Pip’s face slowly softened back into a grin. Almost imperceptibly, Bang’s did too.
“You guys ready for a walk?” Uncle Mort asked them.
“A walk where?” asked Pip. “Why are we here? Where is everyone? What—”
“Silence.” Uncle Mort clamped a hand over Pip’s mouth. “Actually, that’s not a bad question,” he said to the Juniors. “Where is everyone?”
They exchanged anxious glances.
Driggs cleared his throat. “You’re not going to like this.”
3
“Change of plans.”
His anger barely contained, Uncle Mort removed his hand from Pip’s mouth and almost flung him to the ground. “Take your new partners to the Crypt and get them settled in their rooms,” he said, popping the trunk and handing the rookies’ backpacks to Ferbus and Elysia. “I’ll be back to talk to them a little later. Got it?”
“Okay,” Elysia said, sensing the danger in disobeying. She threw a last wave at Lex, then put her arms around the rookies’ shoulders and began walking them toward their dorm.
Uncle Mort waited until they were out of earshot before turning back to Driggs. “What do you mean, a secret meeting?”
“Norwood and Heloise pulled all off-duty Seniors—and even a bunch that were on duty—into the library and locked the doors.” He unhooked his hand from Lex’s and removed a small video camera from his pocket. “I ran home and grabbed this, then we snuck in for the first few minutes. I shot what I could before they kicked us out.”
Uncle Mort pressed play. The picture was shaky and the sound muffled, as if the camera had been stuffed underneath Driggs’s shirt. It finally focused on Norwood, the director of Ether Traffic Control. He stood at a podium in the same authoritative stance he took in the hub at the Bank, where he and the other Etceteras controlled the scything activities of all the Grims out in the Field. His wife and codirector, Heloise, posed behind him, as severe and batlike as always, a smug look plastered across her face.
“I’ll make this brief,” Norwood said in his typical gruff voice, his sharp yellow eyes scanning the crowd. “We want to leave enough time to take care of those two.” He pointed at the closed door of the supply closet.
The spidery proprietress of Ashes, Croak’s fanciest restaurant, raised a finger. “Does Morrrrrt know you’re dooooing thisssss?”
“Of course he does,” Norwood said, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. “Now, as you’ve no doubt read in the paper, Zara has gotten her hands on another scythe, which means that she can once again Crash—that is, scythe at will to a location of her own choosing without it being programmed by the Etceteras. She’s been hopping all over the country, ten victims so far.”
“So she could Crash here and Damn us too!” someone else jumped in. “With one little swipe of a scythe!”
“Exactly.” Norwood swept a hand through his curly brown-with-gray-streaks hair. “Now, I’ll admit it looks bad. But if there’s anything positive to be gained from this situation, it’s the confirmation that Juniors are not to be trusted.” He pounded his fist on the podium. “They’re combative, impulsive, and above all, insubordinate. Who knows what sort of conspiratorial junk Mort has been filling their heads with? Especially that niece of his.”
This ignited the crowd. One young woman stood up and put her hands on her hips, looking as if she’d just walked off the set of a movie about bitchy sorority girls. “I heard she gave Zara her power!”
“Me too!” another voice shouted. It belonged to Trumbull, the town butcher and Zara’s former boss. His lack of supervision had given Zara the free time and seclusion to carry out her attacks, embarrassing him thoroughly in the process. No doubt he was seeking to repair the damage done to his already seedy reputation. “I heard Lex is even worse than Zara!”
“Well, it’s no wonder!” yelled another. “Don’t you know who she is?”
“Mort never should have brought her here!”
“Do you think she’s the Last?”
“She very well could be.” Norwood spoke at a normal volume, but the people quieted down to listen to him. “You’re right, she’s just as bad as Zara. And she shouldn’t be here. None of them should. But Mort insists they stay, so for the time being, we’re stuck with them.”
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t be stuck with Mort anymore,” Trumbull said.
A hint of a smile rippled beneath Norwood’s lips. “Maybe not.”
As the crowd talked among themselves, Heloise gave her husband’s hand a squeeze. She briefly scanned the room, her expression smug until she spotted the camera. “What are you—”
The video froze. “That’s when they kicked us out,” Driggs said.
Lex’s hands had grown clammy. “Everyone hates me,” she said. “I knew they would.”
Driggs swallowed, but still wouldn’t look at her.
“He pointed at the supply closet at the beginning, said he was going to ‘take care’ of something,” said Uncle Mort. “What was he talking about?”
As an answer to that very question, Norwood burst out of the library and walked briskly toward the fountain, his bony white hands clamped on the shoulders of Kloo and Ayjay.
Lex had wondered why the two oldest Juniors hadn’t come out to greet her along with the others, but the possibility that they might be locked in a supply closet hadn’t really crossed her mind. A visibly troubled Kloo played with one of her many braids, her chocolate brown skin glistening in the heat, while Ayjay nervously adjusted the eye patch that hid the injury he’d sustained in Zara’s attack over the summer.
“Hello, Mort,” Norwood said with a disappointed sneer as the townspeople crowded out behind him. They swarmed toward the fountain, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and Lex, staring at her as if she were a many-legged, poisonous bug.
“Norwood,” Uncle Mort answered, a calculating smile on his face. “What’s shakin’?”
“I thought I’d get a jump on the initiation vote while you were off on your little vacation,” Norwood replied. “Why wait?”
Uncle Mort kept the smile on his face, but when he spoke, his voice was tight. “You know that’s my responsibility.”
“Oh, you’ve got too much on your plate as it is. Think of this as a favor. No need to thank me.”
“No,” Uncle Mort said, holding his gaze. “No need at all.”
He started to say something else, but Norwood had already climbed onto the fountain ledge, yanking Ayjay and Kloo up with him.
“What’s going on?” Driggs asked Uncle Mort.
“Standard induction into the Senior population. After the vote, they’ll put their hands on the obelisk and get sworn in. You guys should leave, Juniors aren’t supposed to see this,” Uncle Mort said without conviction, clearly too distracted to care.
“Induction involves a vote?” Driggs asked. “I thought Juniors were automatically promoted to Seniors once they put in their
five years and turn twenty-one.”
“They are. Asking for the Seniors’ approval is just a formality. You know, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
“People of Croak!” Norwood shouted with a trace of annoyance. “Kloo and Ayjay stand before us as candidates for the Senior Grim population. Should they pass the town vote, they must solemnly swear to uphold all rights, responsibilities, and duties entrusted to them as Senior Grims, to Kill and Cull souls to the best of their ability and with the utmost objectivity, and to at all times adhere to the Grimsphere Terms of Execution and all that is implied therein.”
His eyes narrowed. “Furthermore, they will become privy to all affairs of the Senior Grim population. Their words and deeds will be a reflection on all of us, the citizenry of Croak. They’ll have the same rights as we do whether they’re qualified or not, regardless of any past transgressions or personal associations with Juniors of the more treasonous persuasion,” he finished, throwing a sour glance at Ayjay’s eye patch.
Uncle Mort’s hands had tightened into fists. “He’s going off script.”
Norwood turned to the crowd. “And so I turn to you, Seniors of Croak, with one simple question: Is there anyone present who objects to this?”
A short, meaty arm shot up at once. Trumbull wanted to make damn sure everyone saw him.
Soon another hand was raised. And another. One by one they popped up—some hesitant, some firm—until roughly three-quarters of the town had their hands in the air, waving their disapproval at the shocked, hurt pair of Kloo and Ayjay.
Norwood looked at his wife, who, as a final touch, raised her own hand with a flourish. “That’s a majority,” he said with a false tone of regret. “Sorry, kids. Maybe next year.”
Incensed, Uncle Mort pushed through the crowd and climbed atop the fountain, facing the people. “What are you doing? You know these two are good kids!”
“We don’t know that,” said the sorority girl toward the front. “We thought Zara was a good kid too, and look what happened with her. And with your niece!”
“Well, the niece was bad from the start,” Trumbull grumbled, shooting Lex a harsh look.