Rogue

  But he just turned around and went back into the house.

  “What . . . just happened?” Driggs asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Lex said. “I think we just got consent to do—” She waved her hands. “You know. Stuff.”

  “Then stuff,” he said, taking her back into his arms, “is what we shall do.”

  So they did stuff. All night long. Awkward, sweaty, inexperienced, painful, wonderful, gearshift-poking, windshield-wiper-waving stuff.

  And it couldn’t have been more cracktastic.

  18

  “Rise and shine, Croakers!” Uncle Mort’s Cuff shouted early the next morning. “G’day? Anyone there?”

  The Juniors jolted up from the makeshift beds they’d fashioned for themselves around the living room—except for Driggs, who’d gone back to Croak to check on Lex’s parents, and Ferbus, who was still sleeping, snoring, and drooling.

  They huddled together around Uncle Mort. “Broomie?” he rasped into his Cuff, still half asleep.

  “Yeah, I’ve got some bloody good news. It worked.”

  That woke him up. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, sealing the portal—it worked!” she exclaimed. Lex could just imagine her with a giant Yorick in hand, sloshing it around. “It just occurred to me that you had no way of knowing that, so I thought I’d check in. The plan is officially working. The Afterlife hasn’t lightened up any yet, but hey, we’ll take what we can get, eh?”

  “How do you know that for sure?” Lex asked.

  “Lest you forget, we had a portal ourselves up until a few hours ago. The souls inside were kind enough to fill us in, Pip among them.”

  Bang tensed up and grabbed Elysia’s arm.

  “Pip’s okay?” Elysia asked.

  “Oh, more than okay. He’s with Riqo, and they’re as happy as pigs in slop.”

  A tiny smile formed on Bang’s face.

  “Some girl named Sofi, too. She said to tell Elysia thanks, whatever that means.”

  “How’s everything else going in DeMyse?” Uncle Mort asked.

  They heard a slosh of liquid and a gulp. “Swimmingly!” she said, mouth half full. “Only one problem: that dillhole Norwood is still Crashing around like a drunken elephant—”

  “Actually,” Uncle Mort said with a bit of guilt, “that was us.”

  “Oh. Well, knock it off. Violations can still cause damage—and the portal destruction itself is far from a delicate procedure. The blast zones around them are hit pretty hard.”

  “And—your portal?”

  “Yep. LeRoy took care of it. Blew the hub clean up, but we’re all right.”

  Uncle Mort looked visibly relieved. “Good. Now we can start spreading the word—”

  “Start? What do you think I’ve been doing all night long?”

  Puzzled, Uncle Mort reached into his bag and pulled out a rolled-up sheet of paper. Lex recognized it as the world map he’d taken from his basement. But what she hadn’t noticed then were the little dots spattered around in nearly every country.

  “Grim towns!” Elysia said.

  There they were, all over the world. Some, like Croak, were green, while Necropolis and DeMyse and many others were red. In fact, some of them were switching colors before their eyes.

  “Whoa,” Lex said, pointing at one that had just turned red, right in the middle of Australia. “What happened?”

  “The mayor of Perish just destroyed its portal,” Uncle Mort explained.

  Just like the keypad doors in Necropolis, Lex thought, but the other way around. Green to red, doors to the Afterlife locking them out forever.

  She surveyed the map. There weren’t many green ones left. “You were right,” she said to Uncle Mort. “The mayors really are sealing the portals.”

  “Yeah,” he said, lightly running his fingers over the dots, his eyes filling with something that Lex assumed was gratitude. “They are.”

  “At this rate,” Broomie said, “they should all be closed up within a few hours. Once they are, Mort, you take care of the last one, and bam—damage stopped. Then Lex does her thing, zaps that Grotton dickwad to kingdom come—and double bam, damage reversed!”

  Lex felt like retching at the prospect, but she said nothing. “One small snag, though,” Broomie said. “You’ll have to get past Norwood. Sounds like he and all the other gun-toting blokes in Croak are gearing up for a showdown.”

  Lex swallowed. “One that will probably involve my parents.”

  “Most likely,” Broomie said. “Pandora issued a national statement requiring all Grims to do as you ask, give you anything you need, and get the hell out of your way. She said compliance is mandatory, but Norwood doesn’t give a bugger what she says. So be prepared for a bit of a tussle.”

  Uncle Mort nodded. “This is more than I could have hoped for. Thank you, Broomie.”

  “No worries, mate. Good luck.” She clicked off.

  Uncle Mort sat quietly for a moment, looking at the map, then stood up. “Okay, you heard the woman,” he said flatly. “We leave for Croak in a few hours.” He tossed the map to Elysia. “Lys, you’re on map duty. Let me know when all the cities have changed to red.”

  “You got it!” she said, eagerly rolling it out in front of her.

  “Until then, I’m going to take a walk,” he said, getting up. “Won’t be gone long.”

  Lex watched him go. He drifted out the door, his eyes vacant. Was he just tired, or was he acting weird?

  Lex rubbed her eyes again, then glanced at Elysia, who was definitely acting weird. The girl was grinning from ear to ear, staring at that map.

  “Lys, what’s going on with you?” Lex asked. “You seem . . .”

  She couldn’t put her finger on it. Elysia was just as scared and miserable as the rest of them, Lex knew, especially after everything that had happened in Necropolis. Still, she was unmistakably bubblier than usual.

  “Different, right?” Elysia put her elbow on the table and propped her chin up with her hand. “I feel different. I don’t know—lighter, somehow. Like, you know how back when you were in school, you’d be so worried about the end of the year, with all the tests and finals and stuff, and then when they were all over and it was summer vacation, you just felt like this big weight had been lifted off of you and all you had to worry about was what time the pool opened so you could go swimming all day?”

  “Uh—sure.”

  “That’s what it feels like!” Her eyes were sparkling. Sparkling. “I know it doesn’t make any sense with everything that’s happened, especially since we’re all about to die in this carnagepalooza, but it’s the truth. I feel—I feel—”

  “Perky.”

  “So perky!” Elysia shook her head. “I’m really, really sorry, Lex. It’s awful, isn’t it? I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s not like I’m happy that any of this has happened.”

  “Of course not,” said Lex. “Still—when did you start feeling this way?”

  Elysia frowned. “I think it was after I got caught by the guards. Maybe I was relieved, you know? I mean, our main goal in Necropolis was to not get caught, so once I got caught, it was like, well, there’s nothing else I can do, right? Pressure’s off. Plus, Boulder was really nice to me, made me feel comfortable and not completely scared out of my gourd—”

  “You said you felt weird.”

  “Huh?” Elysia asked, thrown.

  “Driggs grabbed you and tried to pull you up into the air duct, but then he disappeared and you fell down to the floor,” Lex said, slowly recalling the series of events, “and you said you felt weird.”

  Elysia scrunched up her nose. “Did I? That whole thing was a blur. I barely remember it.”

  Lex thought for a moment, then dug around in her bag and pulled out her Lifeglass. She hated looking at the thing—it stored way more bad memories than good ones—but its replay function had saved their asses once. Maybe it could again.

  She put it on the table and peered into the upper b
ulb. Images from the past few hours started to flash through the glass, but in reverse, like a DVD skipping back through its chapters: the call from Broomie, Lex and Driggs undressing in the car . . .

  Lex reddened. “You probably weren’t supposed to see that.”

  “Come on, Lex,” said Elysia. “We heard the whole thing.”

  Lex reddened some more.

  The images kept coming. The arrival at Ayjay’s house, the explosion at Necropolis, the president’s office, the training modules. Then there it was: the Junior dorm.

  Lex shook the Lifeglass, trying to make it play forward. She’d never quite learned how to work it. “There,” she said, pointing at the air duct. “Driggs grabbed you, you fell back down to the floor, and—there’s that strange look on your face. What were you thinking at that moment?”

  Elysia’s eyes widened. “Something happened when Driggs touched me,” she said, and Lex remembered it too. That weird shock wave that had emanated out of him. “It was like he’d punched me, but with—I don’t know. Air? A magnetic force field or something?” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But I meant it, I did feel weird. And ever since, I’ve had all these nutty happy feelings.”

  Lex puffed some air out of her mouth. “Strange.” She picked up the Lifeglass and gave it another shake, hoping to turn it off, but it started rewinding again. “No, stop,” she scolded it. “Don’t—”

  “Wait!” Elysia grabbed the Lifeglass out of her hands and paused it. “It’s Zara!”

  It was Zara. And she looked just as surprised as they did.

  “How?” Lex said, utterly confused. “The only time I saw Zara was in the president’s office, and this isn’t . . .”

  It was then that she spotted the tiles. Dark green, with little crossed scythes in the middle of them.

  “Holy shit,” she said, goose bumps firing up and down her arms. “The bathroom in the Juniors’ dorm. I was staring out the window. I saw a flash of silver right before I zonked out—it was right after they Amnesia’d me!”

  “So you wouldn’t have remembered this!” Elysia added.

  “Shh!” Lex hissed, even though the Lifeglass didn’t have sound.

  Zara, despite her many flaws, had one major thing going for her: intelligence. Even at that moment, freshly strangled and probably hating Lex more than she ever had, she had the presence of mind to remember that as well: the Lifeglass had no sound. So she thought for a moment, ducked away from the window, then came back with a piece of paper—or whatever the equivalent was inside the Afterlife. It said:

  I HATE YOU, LEX.

  Lex felt a stab of guilt. Zara let the piece of paper fall, but there was another behind it. And another.

  BUT I LOVE IT HERE. THE AFTERLIFE IS BETTER THAN ADVERTISED. I DON’T WANT IT TO DISAPPEAR.

  SO I LOOKED FOR HELP. AND WHAT I FOUND WAS CORPP.

  Lex and Elysia both gasped. After Lex had accidentally Damned Corpp, he’d gone deep into the Void for good, not wanting to see the living anymore. It was just his way of dealing with death; he wanted to paint and explore the Afterlife, not get caught up in the past.

  HE WASN’T HAPPY TO SEE ME, OBVIOUSLY. BUT HE TOLD ME SOMETHING THAT I THINK CAN HELP.

  WHEN YOU DAMNED CORPP, DRIGGS UNDAMNED HIM—OR SO WE ALL THOUGHT. BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT DRIGGS DID.

  Lex didn’t dare breathe. Neither did Elysia; they both watched, not blinking, not wanting to miss what came next.

  Not that they could have. Zara held that last paper up longer than any of the others, emphatically pointing and even mouthing the words.

  DRIGGS UNGRIMMED HIM.

  A choked noise sounded behind her. Lex whipped around to find Driggs standing there, looking at the words in the Lifeglass with just as much confusion and shock as the girls were feeling.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his voice shaky.

  It took Lex a second or two to find her voice. “It’s Zara,” she told him. Bang and Ferbus were listening too now. “She left me a message that I hadn’t remembered, because the Juniors Amnesia’d us. She said . . .”

  She didn’t need to tell him what Zara said. By the look on his face, he’d seen everything.

  Driggs shook his head. “That can’t be true.”

  “Except—” Elysia’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, that’s it! Why I felt so weird after you touched me, why I haven’t felt like myself ever since, why I couldn’t scythe! You—I—” She grabbed the edges of the coffee table. “I’m not a Grim anymore!”

  Driggs’s eyes were darting around the floor. “But how could—I didn’t mean to—”

  “But you did,” Grotton’s voice growled.

  The Juniors screamed. Grotton floated through the doorway, leering at them.

  “What are you doing here?” Lex said.

  “Oh, I came for the decadent atmosphere,” he said, sniffing his nose at the dusty lights. “But I stay for the adolescent screeching.”

  Lex wanted to grab him around the throat. “How are you here? I thought you were shackled to the Wrong—oh,” she said, remembering. “You can project yourself.”

  “Precisely.” He glanced at Zara, frozen in the Lifeglass. “So you’ve figured it out, then?”

  “Figured what out?” Lex asked. “If anything, we’re more confused than we were before!”

  “Why?” he replied. “The answer’s right there in front of you.”

  “But what does Driggs have to do with anything?” she shot back. “You said it yourself—I’m the Last!”

  His smile grew and grew, Cheshire cat–like.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, love.”

  All eyes in the room flew to Driggs.

  “Okay,” Driggs said, holding his hands out in front of him. “Let’s all just hold the goddamned phone here. I can’t be the Last.” He pointed at Lex. “You’re the only second-generation Grim in existence! You’re the one Damning and ghosting and obliterating the Afterlife! No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  “I just—how could it be me?”

  “Good question,” said Grotton, floating to Driggs’s side and whispering in his ear. “It’s a pity Mort’s stepped out. He’s the one who brought you to the Grimsphere in the first place, isn’t he? And at such an early age, too. Strange of him to make an exception like that, hmm?”

  Something cracked in Driggs’s face. “He knew?”

  When no one offered an answer to that, Driggs sat down on the floor, too shaken to remain standing. “This still makes no sense,” he told the carpet. “I’m not a second-generation anything. I’m nothing like you two,” he said, gesturing at Lex and Grotton. “I’m not exceptional in any way at all. So why me?”

  “Because you’re not exceptional!” Lex blurted. She gave him a sympathetic look. “I mean, you are to me. But—what did Uncle Mort say back in his basement when we were looking at that rookie radar machine—”

  “What, that I was a really rotten Grim when I first came to Croak?” Driggs said. “Way to kick me when I’m down, Lex.”

  “But that’s my point. Maybe you weren’t supposed to ever become a Grim at all!”

  He frowned, but didn’t say anything.

  She joined him on the floor and tried to catch his gaze. “Think about it, Driggs. Did you turn delinquent just before you became a Grim, like the rest of us?”

  “Of course I did, you know that! Shoplifted, got into fights—”

  “But did you do all that stuff because you couldn’t help it, because you were strangely compelled to do so? Or were you acting out because of your parents?”

  “I . . .” He looked even more confused. “I don’t know. I was so young.”

  “Exactly.” She looked up at the other Juniors. “The rest of us didn’t go bad until a couple years before coming here—when we were around fourteen. Which means that when you came to Croak, you couldn’t possibly have turned yet. Uncle Mort must have picked you—”

  “Before I even showed any signs of being a Grim,” Driggs fin
ished.

  “So what does that mean?” Ferbus piped up, trying desperately to keep up with this conversation. “You were never supposed to be a Grim at all?”

  “Maybe not.” Heads swiveled to the front door, where Uncle Mort had silently appeared. “Or maybe so,” he added. “Never did figure that part out.”

  He walked in, looking very tired as Driggs stared at him. “I was the one sent to Kill your parents,” he confessed. “I still did shifts back then, before my mayoral duties became too time-consuming. I saw you there, standing over them, and I—” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw something in you. You hadn’t shown up on my radar, and you hadn’t gone delinquent, but I just had a feeling that you belonged with us.”

  “Hey!” Elysia said. “Maybe that’s why you can unGrim, Driggs! Because you’re the only Grim who’s secretly good, unlike the rest of us evil death folk.”

  “But I can’t unGrim,” Driggs said, throwing Uncle Mort a desperate look. “Can I?”

  Uncle Mort sat down on the couch next to Ferbus. “I don’t know,” he said, scratching his scar. “The mounting evidence is hard to ignore.”

  “So if Driggs can unGrim,” Lex slowly started, “then he can do what he did not only to Elysia and Corpp, but to the entire Grimsphere population. Remove all traces of our powers from the world. If he gets his body back, he can essentially . . . destroy the Grimsphere.”

  It seemed that all the air rushed out of everyone’s lungs at the same time. “Wow,” said Elysia. “That’s a pretty big deal.”

  “No. It’s batshit crazy,” Ferbus said, looking at Uncle Mort. “Right? Tell them that’s batshit.”

  But Uncle Mort was thinking. “It could work. If what Bang read from the Wrong Book pages is true, if the world is capable of going back to the way it was before Grotton came along”— a sharp growl from Grotton confirmed this theory—“then erasing all Grim powers would certainly ensure that no one could commit any violations ever again.”