Croak

  “Oh, shut up,” said Elysia. She took Lex’s arm, her warm hazel eyes aglow in the brightness. “I’m so glad you’re here. These guys can be such idiots sometimes.”

  A loud rapping clamored from behind the vault door. “I heard that!” Ferbus’s muffled voice rang out.

  “Well, it’s true!” She gestured at the door. “He’s the grumpiest of all. The only thing that cheers that kid up is some quality alone time with his precious Nintendo.”

  “Xbox!”

  “Whatever!”

  “Listen, shorty,” said Driggs, “we gotta run. I want to show her the Lair before lunch.”

  “Ew.” A look of disgust spread across Elysia’s face. “Well, have fun with that.” She opened up the vault for them. “I get off for my break in a few minutes, we can go to lunch together! I can show you the Morgue, it’s really—”

  “Yeah, we’ll be there, okay, bye,” said Driggs, shutting the door.

  Lex frowned at him.

  “What?” he said innocently. “Hey, I love the girl to death, but if you don’t actively stop her, she’ll talk herself right into a case of laryngitis.”

  “Which makes her talk even more,” said Ferbus in a tone suggesting that he knew this all too well.

  “I like her,” Lex was surprised to hear herself say. Driggs and Ferbus stared in disbelief.

  As everyone knows, the only population more catty than a pack of actual cats is a clique of teenage girls. Back home, it sometimes seemed to Lex as though her violent beatings couldn’t cause nearly as much pain as the popular crowd’s sharp-tongued wickedness. Eventually it got so bad that she had come to forever swear off the possibility of friendship with another girl, aside from Cordy. But Elysia’s congeniality was infectious. It had been so long since Lex was on the receiving end of such well-intentioned exuberance from a female that it was impossible not to get excited about it.

  “Anyway,” said Driggs, eyeing her strangely, “the Lair’s over here.” He walked across the room to the shiny black door, turned the handle, and stopped. He looked at Lex.

  “If I’ve been reading you correctly—and I like to think that I have—I’m gonna guess that you’re not the type of person who will scream when we enter this room. But just in case I’m wrong—don’t scream. It disturbs them.”

  “Them? More jellyfish?”

  “Elysia screamed,” Ferbus said from his desk. “Even though you told her not to. Remember?”

  “Hey!” Elysia’s muted voice came through the wall.

  “In fact, if I recall correctly,” continued Ferbus, “I think she almost cried.”

  “So?” the voice shot back. “Most sane people would! Seriously, you should put a warning sign on that room or something. One of these days it’s going to give some poor rookie a heart attack, because I know mine almost friggin’ exploded—”

  Ferbus had begun slamming his head down on the desk. “Just go,” he said between pounds. “It could be a while.”

  Driggs pushed the handle forward to reveal a dimly lit room. Draped in what looked like a terrific amount of velvet, the walls almost seemed be pulsating, though Lex couldn’t quite tell why—until Driggs snapped on the lights.

  Covering the room from floor to ceiling were thousands of black widow spiders.

  10

  Lex wasn’t scared. She wasn’t even grossed out. She was transfixed, hypnotized by the rhythmic writhing of the massive colony, its shape heaving more like one gigantic organism than heaps of minuscule entities. Their shiny black bodies glimmered menacingly in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

  “You okay?” asked Driggs, closing the door behind them.

  “Yeah,” she whispered.

  “You mind if I turn down the lights now that you’ve gotten a good look?” he said, returning to the dimmer. “They don’t like it so bright.”

  “Sure, whatever,” Lex said, barely hearing him. The buzzing bulbs above them softened to a dull glow, and indeed, the spiders seemed to relax. Test tubes full of a pale liquid lined the wall next to the door, and a pile of Vessels sat in the corner. In the new lighting, the silken webs surrounding the hordes gave the room an ethereal, dreamlike quality.

  “So these are my lovely ladies,” Driggs said, affectionately gazing around the room. “What do you think?”

  “I think you must be a very lonely boy.”

  He reached out his finger, allowing a large spider to crawl onto it. “You sure you want to mock the guy in charge of the venomous spider room?”

  “Who in their right mind would put you in charge of anything?”

  “Mort did, as soon as he started noticing I was hanging out with them all the time. Love at first sight, I guess.”

  Lex snorted. “What are they for?”

  “Here,” he said, casting a white blur into the air. “The fruits of their wee labors.”

  Lex caught it and gave him an incredulous look. “Vessels are made from spider silk?”

  “One of the strongest materials in the world.”

  “Cool.” She picked at the soft fibers of the ball. “Is that it?”

  “Is that it? A roomful of spiders toiling twenty-four hours a day to make thousands of Vessels per week, and you’re asking if that’s it?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grinned. “Actually, no, it’s not. We also extract their venom.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can isolate and make airborne the chemicals in it that induce memory loss. That’s how we confuse any outsiders who wander into town. We show them a good time, take advantage of their travel budgets, and send them on their way with only a marginal recollection of their visit and an eerie feeling that they should never return.” He pointed at the test tubes. “Kilda’s our main line of defense—she douses herself in Amnesia every day. One whiff of her brooch and tourists forget their own phone numbers.”

  “But why doesn’t it affect us?”

  “We build up immunity. You’ve been breathing it in small amounts ever since you got here.” He leaned into a web and let a spider crawl onto his nose.

  She winced. “Don’t you ever get bitten?”

  “Nah, they love me,” he said with a certain warmth that even Lex found endearing. “I wouldn’t touch them if I were you, though. They can sense ineptitude.”

  Lex ignored this. She carefully blew another strand of silk aside and examined the crawling walls, noticing that among the thousands of black, lustrous eyes, the colony was also speckled with a bunch of tiny red spots. She inspected a spider within a nearby cluster. Sure enough, centered directly on the underside of its bulbous abdomen was a large crimson marking in the unmistakable shape of an hourglass. “How frighteningly appropriate.”

  Driggs nodded. “Nature is not without a dark sense of humor.” He gently picked the spider out of his hair, placed it on the wall, and opened the door. “And that’s the whole Bank,” he said as they exited into the office.

  Elysia was sitting on Ferbus’s desk, waiting for them. “Gross, huh? You guys ready for lunch? My replacement just headed in, but we’re still waiting for Ferbus’s. Oh, and he still needs to slay this dragon or whatever.” She looked at the screen. “Left! Down! Stab!”

  “Shut up, woman!”

  They didn’t have to wait for long. After a few more minutes of frenzied keyboard pounding, a man entered the room and walked over to the desk. “Great, he’s here,” Elysia said, snapping off the computer screen. “Let’s go!”

  Ferbus’s howls echoed for miles.

  ***

  Elysia apologized all the way to the diner. “I’m sorry! How was I supposed to know it was a really important dragon?”

  “Silence,” said Ferbus, his face still white. “You’re dead to me.”

  They arrived at a beaten screen door, which Driggs held open for the group as they walked in. Ferbus made a beeline for the jukebox and started playing “Everybody Hurts,” while Elysia berated him for being so melodramatic.

  Driggs steered Lex toward the counte
r. “Welcome to the Morgue,” he said.

  She took a moment to assess the eatery, which, as decreed by the American Diner, Soda Fountain, and Greasy Spoon Preservation Act, had stubbornly clung to the décor of the 1950s in every conceivable manner. A long, stainless steel counter with blue cylindrical stools spanned the far wall, while scores of hooded Senior Grims conversed with one another in shiny red leather booths, strains of “tumor the size of a barn!” and “crushed by a refrigerator!” wafting through the delicious, burger-scented air.

  “Dora!” Driggs yelled across the sunny restaurant. An old woman—in fact, the same witchy-looking lady Uncle Mort had pointed out to Lex when she first arrived in Croak—beamed at them from behind the counter.

  “My goodness,” she cackled as they approached. “Driggsy finally managed to secure a broad. How much is he paying you, dear?”

  “Calm down, Dora,” Driggs said, poking at a nearby plate of chocolate chip cookies. “Or you’ll jog that smallpox right out of remission.”

  “Zing!” yelled Ferbus from across the room.

  “Get your grimy paws out of there!” She slapped Driggs’s fingers away with a pale, liver-spotted hand. “Last thing you need is another acne breakout.” Lex stifled a giggle. Driggs’s ears reddened. “His face used to look like the Pacific Ring of Fire,” Dora told Lex, her wrinkly features glowing with glee.

  “Lex, this is Pandora,” Driggs speedily interjected in a not-so-subtle effort to change the subject. “Uglier than a troll and older than dirt. Any questions about the Mesozoic era may be directed straight to her.”

  “Pleasure, Lex,” Dora said, giving her a squeeze on the shoulder. “I hope this one hasn’t been giving you too much troub—Oh, for Pete’s sake, Driggs.” She spit on her hand and smushed it into his face. “It’s like you were raised by badgers.” She wiped a smudge off his cheek, then, nimbly avoiding his futile swipes of defense, tackled the far trickier challenge of his ruffled hair. “What do you wash this stuff with, boy? Maple syrup?”

  Driggs struggled in vain, yelling, “Burn the witch!” and, “Unhand me, you hag!” until finally she released his scalp, pinched his cheek, and pulled it close to her gnarled nose. “What a mug,” she said. “Even with a shiner. Just look at those eyes!”

  Driggs wrenched his face away, then relaxed and lovingly patted her on the elbow. “Thanks, Dora.”

  “We like to josh,” she said to Lex. “But don’t listen to an old poop like me. He’s quite the catch.”

  Lex’s smile instantly turned to a grimace, while Driggs’s face flushed a spectacular purple.

  “Ah.” Pandora clucked. “I see. Well. What can I get you?”

  “A pile of burgers,” Driggs said, running a hand through his now hopelessly chaotic hair. “And—”

  “—Oreos. And for you, sweetheart?”

  “Um . . .” Lex cringed as she pondered the menu board, which featured items such as Mad CowBurger, E. Coli Cola, and the gag-inducing Salmo-Nilla Ice Cream.

  “Don’t let the name fool you,” Pandora said. “It’s actually frozen yogurt.”

  Twenty-four hours ago Lex would have sold her soul for a cup of Coffin Coffee, but compared with the rush of the ether and the jolts of the shocks, caffeine now just seemed so . . . weak. So she ordered some Pox Chicken and a large glass of something called HomiCider. After Dora plated their meals, Lex grabbed her tray and followed Driggs to the largest booth in the restaurant. A red, horseshoe-shaped monstrosity, it seemed dingier and more well worn than the other tables, and JOONYE GIMS was written in what appeared to be ketchup on a wooden plaque hanging from the ceiling—though the label hardly seemed necessary, as the table was clearly populated only by Grims of the teenage persuasion.

  Ferbus, now somewhat recovered, grabbed a burger from Driggs’s tray and sat down at the table. Elysia joined him, followed by Driggs, then Lex, who could feel the eyes of the other kids boring through her. One was a muscular Asian boy whose black hair faded to a peroxide blond in the center to form a skunklike fauxhawk. Next to him sat a tall chocolate-skinned girl with hair woven into a dizzying maze of braids.

  “Guys, this is her!” said Elysia. “This is Lex!”

  The boy nodded and downed half of his burger in one bite. The girl snapped her head around to face Lex, whacking the boy in the face with her braids. “Hi! I’m Kloo,” she said warmly. “And this is Ayjay.”

  “What happened to your eye?” he garbled, his mouth full. Kloo elbowed him. “I mean, hi.”

  “So,” Elysia said, “Kloo is the one you want to go to if you cut yourself on your scythe or if you get another black eye or you fall down a flight of stairs because you tripped on an untied shoelace.” A quick, disapproving glance at Ferbus suggested that this might be a frequent occurrence. “She’s practically a doctor, she can fix you up in no time and even throw in a week’s worth of subsequent care and worry. She’s like our mom.”

  Kloo nodded at Lex in an indescribably maternal way, somehow cramming a lifetime of compassion, support, and tenderness all into one slight bounce of the head. “It’s true,” she said. “Anything you need, hon.”

  “And Ayjay is—um—”

  “I eat. I sleep. I Cull. I lift.” Ayjay smiled and gestured at the gym across the street called Dead Weight, showing off a well-sculpted bicep. He took another bite. “That’s about it.”

  Elysia nodded. “Ayjay’s a man of few words.”

  Ayjay turned to Kloo. “You gonna drink that?” he asked, pointing at her glass.

  “No. I’m gonna pour it down your pants.”

  “Sexy.”

  “Yeah? You think?”

  They then proceeded to make out.

  “Great, they’re at it again,” said Ferbus loudly, as if this were not obvious to everyone in the restaurant. “You’d think it would get old, but apparently it does not.”

  “And this is Zara, who you trained with yesterday, right?” said Elysia, determined to continue with her introductions. “How did she do, Zara?”

  Zara shifted in her seat. “Fine,” she said with a small scowl.

  Elysia exchanged an exasperated glance with Driggs. “But not as good as you, Zara. Right, we know. Oh, and this is Sofi. She’s an Etcetera.”

  A mocha-skinned girl approached the table, her hair slick and brown with badly bleached highlights. “Holy bananas!” she squeaked when she saw Driggs. “What happened to your face?”

  “Bar fight.”

  “Oh, you,” she said, squeezing into the empty seat next to him. She turned to face Lex and winced at her matching bruise. “Wow, chica, you too? You guys, like, fall off the roof?”

  “Something like that,” Driggs said.

  Sofi giggled and flicked at her dangly earrings. Lex imagined that this was the sort of girl who kept a notebook full of signatures combining her first name with cute boys’ last names.

  “This is Lex,” Elysia said to her.

  “Wait, don’t tell me.” Sofi looked Lex up and down. “Toootally a Killer. Like, a hundred zillion percent.”

  “How do you do that?” Driggs asked.

  “Born talent.” She batted her eyes and took a sip of his soda. Lex internally retched.

  “Hey, guys,” Driggs said to the table. “Have you seen anything strange out in your shifts lately? We got this really weird guy today—I don’t know what happened to him. I couldn’t figure out the cause of death.”

  “You couldn’t?” Ferbus said in amazement. “What’s that make your record now, one out of a million?”

  “What did he look like?” Kloo asked. “Where was he?”

  “Baseball game,” Driggs said. “No injuries, no disease, no substance abuse, no signs of a struggle. He looked normal, except for—well, his eyes were completely white.”

  A general murmur of confusion swept through the table. “What do you mean?” said Elysia.

  Lex saw her opportunity to contribute to the discussion instead of continuing to sit there like a lump. “Solid white,” she said.
“They looked like hailstones.”

  Driggs nodded. “Which means that it can’t be poison, either, because there’s nothing I know of that can blind and kill a person that fast without the victim even flinching. Unless—” He let out a weird gasping noise, choking on his own epiphany. “Guys, what if a Grim did it? Maybe it’s a Crasher!”

  His suggestion was met by fits of laughter. “Or a leprechaun! Or a mermaid!” said Ferbus, flicking a fry at him.

  “What’s a Crasher?” Lex asked.

  “Nothing,” said Ferbus. “Driggs is out of his tree, that’s all.”

  “So I’ve gathered.”

  “See, D-bag? Even the rookie knows better.”

  Lex nibbled at her chicken fingers, shocked at how she seemed to have been accepted into the group so swiftly and completely, without so much as a derisive whisper. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had sat at a lunch table with people her own age. Back at school, she had been forced to spend much of the last two years sitting with the teachers, who didn’t trust her not to douse the cheerleading squad with ketchup again.

  “Well, I don’t know,” said Driggs with a shrug, slightly deflated by Ferbus’s ridicule. “Keep a lookout on your shifts, I guess.”

  “Wish I could,” said Ferbus. “Almost makes me want to jump back into the Field, just to watch you lose your mind.”

  “Why do you two work in the Afterlife?” Lex asked Ferbus and Elysia. “Why aren’t you out in the Field?”

  “I was a Culler last year,” Elysia said. “And Ferbus was a Killer. We were partners.” They exchanged disgusted glances. “But once you finish your first year, you can decide what area you want to try within the Grimming community. Sort of like a college major.”

  “Like me,” said Sofi. “I was a Killer for like only a few months before I started begging to work with the Smacks.”

  “Kloo and Ayjay are full-time Field Grims,” Elysia went on. “They’re the oldest Juniors, almost graduated. And Zara’s on hiatus from Field work—except when we need a sub—because she’s doing her swiping internship at the butcher shop this summer.”