Scorch

  “The entire encounter lasted less than five seconds, Hel. I doubt that even with your admirable ability to sprint in heels, you would have been able to get there in time.”

  “Surveillance cameras!” a furious Norwood roared.

  “Are already in place. In fact, your Etceteras are supposed to be monitoring them. How’s that going, by the way?”

  Norwood sputtered, but said nothing.

  Uncle Mort turned to the confused crowd. “Folks, a threat of this nature hasn’t terrorized the Grimsphere in centuries. That doesn’t mean we can’t protect ourselves, but we need to do it a little more creatively. We’re not dealing with a cracked-out lunatic here—Zara is smart, focused, and willing to improvise and experiment with whatever will work to her advantage. This makes her unpredictable and extremely dangerous.”

  “That should be the Junior motto,” Norwood snarled. “Because now this one can Crash, and yet you’re still keeping her around. She can Damn too, can’t she? That’s great, Mort. A ticking time bomb right here in our own town, free to do whatever the hell she pleases despite the fact that this—all of this—was her fault to begin with!”

  He turned to the crowd. “Isn’t that nice, folks? He just let her right back in without even a slap on the wrist. She’s probably even working with Zara. Hell, they probably all are! Doesn’t seem fair, does it? Doesn’t seem fair to the honest, hard-working citizens of this town to let these out-of-control brats play cowboys and Indians with our lives!”

  Uncle Mort did not respond to this, but instead smiled calmly at the crowd. “We’re doing everything we can to keep you safe. Trust me.”

  Norwood, now red, straightened his jacket and put his face close to Uncle Mort’s. “You’re a shitty mayor, Mort. And you’re an even shittier liar.” He grabbed Heloise’s hand and started to walk away, turning back only to shout once more to the townspeople before disappearing into the night.

  “He’s going to get us all killed!”

  ***

  The trio returned home exhausted. “That went well, huh?” Uncle Mort said. He held up an imaginary Yorick as he headed to the basement. “To the end of my reign.”

  “What?” Lex cried. “Come on, Uncle Mort, the people love you. They’d never—”

  The door slammed.

  Lex sat down on the couch, where Driggs had pulled up his shirt and was peeking under the bandage. “Oh, God,” she whispered, getting a good look at his stitches for the first time. A lump tugged at her throat. “Does it hurt?”

  “Not as much as the knowledge that you’ll never let me forget you saved my life. I might rather be dead.”

  Lex tried to laugh, but it just came out as a weird gurgle.

  Driggs replaced the bandage and gave her a crooked grin. “Seriously, though, thanks for doing what you did. Even if it was a little unorthodox.”

  Lex lightly ran her hand across the bandage, then across the scars that had been there for years. Driggs hadn’t exactly grown up in the most loving home.

  “And listen,” he said, his face reddening. “I’m sorry about earlier, what I said about your sister. It was douchey.”

  “Yeah, but you weren’t wrong. Things are getting dangerous. Clearly.”

  “Good thing chicks dig scars, right?”

  “Oh yeah. The deader, the better.”

  “Necrophiliac.”

  She flipped him off. He grinned and ripped the bandage off his chest in retaliation.

  “Ewww!” she shrieked, laughing as he put the bloody stitches closer to her face. “What is wrong with you?”

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you want to see me naked?”

  “No, I—well, yes.” She smiled and put her hand on his chest. “Yes, I do.”

  She was just about to prove this to him when Uncle Mort pounded on the ceiling of the basement.

  “I sense affection!” he yelled. “Knock it off, you two!”

  Scowling at the camera, Lex retreated to the other end of the couch while Driggs pulled his shirt back down and gave her a disappointed look.

  “Next time Crash us to a hotel room, okay?” he grumbled.

  For the second time in the past twelve hours, Lex was awakened by uncomfortable furniture. She and Driggs had zonked out on opposite ends of the lumpy couch, and not all sorts of unclothed and on top of each other, as she would have preferred.

  She rubbed her eyes. They’d fallen asleep with the lights on, but the sky was still dark. Her watch informed her it was 3:36—plenty of time to get more sleep, but her brain wasn’t really allowing that to happen. Besides, she was freezing.

  She glanced at Driggs. His hoodie was practically a torn-up rag at this point, the ripped shards hanging loosely against his chest. He stirred in his sleep—maybe he was cold too. Lex grabbed the only nearby blanket and draped it over him, mentally writing an acceptance speech for her Girlfriend of the Year award.

  Until the blanket caught on a scrap of paper sticking out of his jeans pocket. Frowning, Lex pulled it out and skimmed it—

  “Driggs, wake up.” She shook him. “Driggs!”

  “Whaaat?” he groaned, squinting. “Why again? With the shaking?”

  She held up the scrap. “I just found this in your pants.”

  Driggs raised an eyebrow. “What were you doing in my pants?”

  She smacked him. “Focus! Read what it says.”

  “‘If redemption is that which you prize—’” He bolted upright. “Another copy of Bone’s note? Same handwriting, too?”

  “Zara must have put it in your pocket!”

  Driggs frowned. “She did put one hand around my waist. She could have easily snuck it in there. I was a bit preoccupied with, you know, not dying.”

  Lex grinned. “Which means Zara is after the key to the dead, the Wrong Book, the whole shebang. I was right!”

  “Is that what she meant by ‘pass it on’?” He examined the note more closely. “She wants us to find it and give it to her? Do we look like we run an ancient-book delivery service?”

  “She must know we’re looking for the same thing. She has to. Otherwise why insist that it’s hers, when—”

  She stopped. Driggs was looking at the back of the note. His face had gone pale.

  “What?”

  Wordlessly, he turned it around so she could see what had been written, in a hand different from Bone’s. Zara’s.

  ONE PER DAY UNTIL IT’S MINE, LEX.

  She looked at him, her blood ice. “One per day? One what per day?”

  The next morning, Necropolis’s newest rookie was found Damned in his bed, his body still smoldering.

  7

  The following week was excruciating.

  True to her word, Zara kept on Damning—one per day, same as she had for the past few weeks.

  Except her victims were no longer criminals.

  “I feel vomity,” Lex said one morning at the breakfast table, limply tossing aside The Obituary. A black-and-white photo of a smiling couple stared back at her, their honeymoon cut short after Zara had Damned the bride in her sleep. Lex counted on her fingers. “The nun in South Carolina. The Culler in Necropolis. That little boy—”

  “Still can’t believe that one,” said Driggs. “Damning a kindergartner? She’s sick.”

  “She’s desperate,” said Uncle Mort, prodding one of the surveillance gadgets he’d been tinkering with ever since the incident.

  “But why? What’s in the Wrong Book that she so badly needs?”

  Uncle Mort looked up from his work to think. “Well, right now, Zara is small potatoes—going after criminals individually, one by one. Or she was, before she started killing innocents. My guess is that the Wrong Book contains some sort of method for extinguishing large numbers of people, say, an entire prisonful.” He shrugged. “Either that or she’s seeking a formula for immortality. Which would be, in a word, craptastic.”

  “Aren’t both of those scenarios equally craptastic?” Lex said. “Even if we did manage to get the Wrong Book
, we could never afford to hand it over to her.”

  “Obviously. But it’ll open up room for negotiations.”

  “Is there at least something in there we can use?”

  “Lex. Seriously?” Uncle Mort said, looking about ready to disown her. “The Wrong Book’s contents are poisonous, meant to destroy the world piece by piece until there’s nothing left. It’s been locked up and protected for centuries for that very reason. So I’m going to go with no.”

  “What makes her think we have it, anyway?” said Driggs. “Why does she think we’re holding out on her?”

  “She doesn’t know whether we have it or not,” said Uncle Mort. “But she also doesn’t have the freedom to search Croak for it herself. It’s a lot easier just to make you guys get it.”

  “Easier?” Lex said, rubbing her stomach. It had been a mess for days. “Damning innocents is the easy way?”

  “It’s working,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

  It was. Ever since Lex saw Zara’s scribbled words on that note, she had thought of little else other than finding the key. Every day that went by without progress, she felt the weight of another singed body on her conscience.

  Driggs wanted to help in the search, but Uncle Mort had put him on strict bed rest and forbidden Lex to stay home with him all day. “No need to play nurse,” he’d said. “We all know how that randy little scenario plays out.” So the new plan was for Driggs to read over the books Lex grabbed for him from the library, while she would sniff out any clues she might find around town.

  This plan, Lex quickly found out, sucked. The added pressure seemed to make things worse. She looked up every time she entered a building, but she saw no keys to anything, metaphorical or otherwise. Most days she just ended up at the Morgue around lunchtime, grumpy and defeated.

  “What are you so pissed about?” Ferbus asked her. “You didn’t get sliced and diced.”

  Lex’s nostrils flared, but she held her tongue. She’d always found Ferbus’s fierce loyalty to Driggs to be admirable, but after what happened, the rift that existed between her and Ferbus had widened considerably. Lex had a feeling she’d never hear the end of this.

  Bang’s nose was in a book, as usual, and Pip was reading The Obituary. He pointed at Zara’s picture and the instructions underneath that explicitly stated she was not to be harmed when captured. “Why do they want to take her alive?”

  Elysia put on a pained face. “Well, punishment in the Grimsphere is a little different than it is in the outside world. We Grims know that death means the Afterlife, and that’s not so bad, is it? So in the eyes of the Grimsphere government, the best punishment is to keep criminals out of the Afterlife and alive for as long as possible, but under really terrible conditions.”

  Lex had never heard about this. “What, like torture?”

  Elysia nodded. “The Hole,” she said in a quiet voice. “Supposedly it’s a deep, dark pit in Necropolis where you live out the rest of your natural life all alone, cold, and in the dark. If you stop eating, they force-feed you. If you try to commit suicide, they revive you. Most people lose their minds.”

  Ferbus let out a snort. “Sounds almost as much fun as watching your best friend bleed to death.”

  Lex shot him a smile so forced it hurt her cheeks. “Why don’t you go hang out with him for the afternoon? I’ll sub in for your shift.”

  Ferbus studied her, then nodded. “Okay. Maybe I can pick up some tips on how to stay alive in your presence, or . . .”

  He trailed off. Three Seniors were looming over their booth.

  “Hey, Damners,” said Snodgrass with a menacing grin. “Doom anyone’s soul to eternal torment today?”

  “Like they’re smart enough to plan anything without instructions from Zara,” said Riley, still wearing those obnoxious sunglasses. She giggled and squeezed Lazlo, the punkish blond guy who guarded the Afterlife, whose arm was woven through hers.

  Ferbus seemed to be fighting himself over whether to insult her or keep staring at her voluminous rack. “What do you want?”

  “Just checking up on you guys,” said Riley. “Make sure you’re not plotting a terrorist attack or anything.”

  “In case your Neanderthal brain has already forgotten, Zara stabbed Driggs,” Lex said, a flare of anger burning through her hands. “You think she’d do that if we were on her side?”

  “Maybe, to throw off suspicion,” said Riley. “Who knows why you kids do any of the crap you do?”

  “And who knows why you guys are such assholes?” Lex countered, taking a sip of her soda. “Life is just full of little mysteries, isn’t it?”

  Snodgrass suddenly slapped the soda out of her hand, all joking gone from his face.

  “Listen, you little shits,” he snarled. “We don’t appreciate our town being held hostage. It’s not fair to the people who have been here for years, Grims who have to live in fear because some punk-ass degenerates decided they wanted to try their hands at playing God.” He leaned in. “So why don’t you just get the hell out of Croak and go back to the miserable slums you crawled out of.”

  Ferbus and Lex simultaneously lunged at him. Ferbus seized his wrist and started to twist it, but Lex—

  Lex’s arm was being restrained with a firm, unyielding grip. She looked down into the jewel-like eyes of Bang, who shook her head and pulled Lex back into the seat. She didn’t speak, obviously, but her message was clear: Don’t give them any more ammo.

  But the damage was done. Snodgrass wriggled out of Ferbus’s grip and backed away from the table, drawing his scythe. The other two did the same. “Don’t you ever touch me again,” he growled, his eyes fiery with anger . . . and a hint of fear.

  “What in the name of chicken fried steak is going on here?” a shrill voice rang out. Pandora hurried in from the kitchen, her face livid.

  “Relax, Dora,” Lazlo said, holding up a hand. “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “Yeah,” said Snodgrass. “Don’t get your granny panties in a twist.”

  Dora’s eyes widened as she spotted their scythes. “How dare you bully these kids around, especially in my establishment?” she hollered. “Last I checked, you were all adults. You better act like it or I’ll throw you out, every last one of you!”

  “But Dora, they attacked us,” said Riley. “They’re out of control! Everyone around here seems to realize that but you and your husband. And that idiot mayor of ours.”

  “Can it, tart,” Dora snarled. “These kids have just as much of a right to be here as the rest of you. They work just as hard, they’re just as committed, and I’ll not have any of you disparaging them just because some puffed-up blowhard tells you to!”

  “You’re lucky you’re senile, old bag,” said Snodgrass. “Or you’d be a little more careful with what you say.”

  “I’ll say whatever I damn well please,” she countered. “You don’t like it, find somewhere else to get lunch. There’s the woods outside or the Dumpster out back, but I promise neither will have the triple-patty burgers you so love to stuff into that twit face of yours, Snoddy.”

  Snodgrass opened his mouth to say something more, then closed it. Without another word he led the others out the door.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Dora said. “Pay them no mind, kids. This sure as hell won’t be the last time you eat here at the Morgue.”

  But it was.

  ***

  “What’s happening to my hands?” Pip said.

  “Hasn’t Ferbus explained this to you already?”

  “Ferbus stopped answering my questions days ago.”

  Lex sighed as she extended her finger toward a car crash victim. As if the scene at the Morgue hadn’t rattled her enough, Pip was getting on her last nerve. No wonder Ferbus was in such a foul mood these days. She liked Pip, but his incessant questioning already had her wishing she could trade places with the targets.

  “They get paler and thinner,” she explained as she touched the target, careful not to let the shock shu
ddering through her body manifest itself in any obvious ways.

  “Is that why Bang’s hair is getting poofier too?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why?”

  “Exposure to the ether.”

  “But—”

  “Let’s have some quiet time for a while, shall we?”

  Pip shut his mouth for all of two seconds as he positioned his hands around the Gamma, then opened it back up again. “What happens if I don’t Cull the soul?”

  Lex took a deep breath and tried not to picture herself stapling his lips together. “If a Culler allows a soul to escape before it is properly stored in a Vessel, the soul becomes a ghost.”

  “A ghost?” he said, his eyes wide as he Culled. “Like Casper?”

  “Not remotely like Casper.”

  Once Pip finished placing the soul in the Vessel, he held up his scythe, a polished white marble with metallic flecks. Lex did the same with hers, and they swept them through the air simultaneously, then jumped through the rift. With barely a break of ether in between, the atmosphere switched to blazingly hot within mere seconds. Tall flames licked the walls, surrounding them both in a frozen, hellish trap.

  “Then what?” he persisted. “Come on, tell me!”

  Lex sighed as she reached down to the fireman’s neck, gracing it ever so slightly. Of course Ferbus had weaseled out of explaining the creepy stuff. “A ghost isn’t permitted entrance to the Afterlife,” she told Pip as he Culled the soul, his eyes glued to hers. “So it just becomes a soul without a body, a consciousness that’s trapped here on earth.”

  “What, like a floating mind?” said Pip. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “It does when you think about the fact that a ghost will be there to watch each and every one of its loved ones die, all the while knowing full well that it will never see any of them again—because they will move on to the Afterlife, where it can never follow. And once everyone it ever knew is dead and gone, the ghost is doomed to wander the earth for all eternity, unable to feel anything other than pain, anguish, and unfathomable sorrow.”