“If you’re going to be my assistant,” I told her. “You’ll have to get used to seeing me covered in blood.” I was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t see her face to know if she got it. She certainly didn’t laugh.
A few more painful wipes and I could open my eyes again, but the whole side of my head was throbbing. “Fuck, does anyone have some Motrin or something? I feel like my head has been cleaved open with a battle ax.”
“We should probably wait until the paramedics see you, what if there’s an interaction?” Ally’s voice was shaky at the edges. Her blond hair had fallen forward and her brown eyes were wide with concern. There were even little tears in the corners.
Geezus, I thought. Either I really looked like death, or this poor girl wouldn’t last a week. Wait until she saw me actually die! And it would be a shame to lose her. I was paying out of pocket for this probationary week, $750 cash upfront, in hopes that she could help me with the horrible office stuff and orchestrating all the details of my hectic life. After that, the plan was to convince Brinkley, my FBRD handler, to write it off. I was already preparing my speech as to how she was indispensable, assuming she would still be around after seeing the worst. It seemed like she was definitely going to see the worst. After all, this was only day 2.
“I’ll be OK,” I told her, though I had no idea why I was trying to comfort her. I mean, I’m the one who had my face bashed in with a chunk of flying concrete.
“You’ve lost a lot of blood,” the male voice said. I turned toward him. Oh man. It was the landlord, the guy I rented my office from. Of course, the word landlord wasn’t accurate at all. It conjured the image of a chubby, older dude, with maybe a bald spot on top of his head. Maybe even fat, in cheap suits.
But this guy—I struggled for just a moment to remember his name…Hand… Handel, that’s right. Lane Handel…he didn’t look like a landlord at all. He was in his late twenties maybe, with thick dark hair. His blue eyes were soft and sympathetic. He was cute as hell, and I was suddenly super embarrassed to be bleeding all over his furniture.
“I’m sorry I’m getting blood everywhere.”
“It’s OK,” he said. “It’ll wipe right off.”
I thought I managed a smile, but the side of my head had gone sort of numb, so it was probably lopsided at best.
“I’ve heard you guys can take a lot of damage,” he said, placing a pillow behind my back. “But that doesn’t mean some asshole has the right to hurt you.”
I laid back into the pillow and couch, looking around. Then I realized where we were, his comic book shop. They’d placed me on a black leather couch. The it’ll wipe right off comment made more sense now. And it gave me the idea to just wear leather all the time. Too bad the Catwoman look wasn’t really my style.
“My coffee,” I murmured.
“I’ll get you another,” Ally said. “How do you feel?”
I wanted to tell her to forget about the coffee. That wasn’t what I meant. I was trying to say I felt bad that I’d made her go across town so early in the morning to get me a coffee, only to water the sidewalk with it.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to complete my thought about the coffee.
“I think she has a concussion,” Lane concluded. “Is that bad, for someone like her?”
Someone like me. A death replacement agent with the ability to die and wake up again, assuming my brain isn’t damaged of course. Had my brain been damaged by a flying brick? Maybe.
I felt—off. The world tilted again and I was spinning, digging my fingers into the leather arm beside me, desperate for something to hang on to.
“I think I’m just going to close my eyes,” I told them. “Or maybe vomit.”
“No, no!” I heard them say and felt rough hands shaking me. It didn’t matter.
The darkness reached up and swallowed me whole.
“Ow,” I whined for the second time that day. I’d woken up to a nurse poking me in the arm and failing to get my vein. “Geezus, are you new or something? Haven’t you worked with dehydrated people before?”
With a final angry thrust, her needle found my vein. I watched the blood ooze into the tiny glass tube and thought about whopping her upside her head for being mean to me. I’d already gotten into trouble for verbally assaulting the nurses this week. I was pretty sure physical violence was even more frowned upon.
“We are just taking some blood. We need to make sure everything is OK,” Dr. York said. He pulled a butterscotch candy from his lab coat and handed it to me. With his wispy white hair and crinkly blue eyes, he put off a very grandfatherly vibe. He was my favorite work person so far since moving here from St. Louis.
“Did the jerk bash my brains in?” I asked him. Then a realization hit me. “Shit, did I die?”
“No,” Dr. York reassured me. “You just blacked out from blood loss. We’ve filled you up and you’re recouping fine. We ran you through the MRI to be sure, but it’s all OK up there.” He tapped the side of his head.
“Whew,” I exhaled. “Can I have another candy?”
He pressed a butterscotch into my hand with a smile, and I pocketed it for later. “You might experience vertigo for a few days. Take it easy.”
“I have a replacement on Friday,” I told him, making it perfectly clear that I could rest, but not forever. I had work to do.
“You should feel better by then,” he said. “But maybe not 100%. Just be careful.”
“I die for a living,” I said. Like Rachel, and see what it got her.
I reached up and touched the puffy white bandage on the side of my head. I bet my face looked like shit. “How careful can I be?”
Ally eased me into the front seat of her car, then climbed in herself. Before starting the car, she handed me another iced latte and a brown bag reeking of something sugary. The bag was still warm.
“I got you a new coffee,” she said, turning on the car and blasting the AC. “Though it’s almost five in the evening.”
“I love evening lattes,” I told her and accepted the cup. I didn’t want to be ungrateful.
I found a muffin inside, one of those fat hunks of cake with the crumbly top. I loved those muffins. Whenever I saw one, whether it was in a gas station or bakery, I had to buy it. It was a compulsion really. I couldn’t not eat a beautiful muffin.
I shoved a chunk of sugary muffin top into my mouth and moaned. “Bless you. You’re amazing.”
Her shoulders rolled back and her face softened. Then she finally started her car and pulled away from the hospital. Was she really that worried about pleasing me? I hadn’t been too demanding, had I? Granted, it had been a rough second day on the job.
“I spoke to your handler about security measures,” Ally said.
I harrumphed at the mention of Brinkley. The callous old cop had been grumpier than usual, but I figured he was sad for the same reasons I was sad: we’d left St. Louis and Rachel behind.
“I suggested that we find you a house,” she went on. “We can choose something slightly out of town with less traffic. Its location will be safer. We can get you a security system and maybe a big dog.”
“A dog!” I exclaimed with a mouth full of muffin. “You want me to try to keep something alive?”
She grinned. “You’re great at keeping things alive.”
“Har-har,” I said, getting her joke. “But I mean like care for it. I can show up and die, but like feed it? That’s just crazy.”
“I’ll help,” she said and gave a tentative smile. “That’s what you hired me for, right?”
I shrugged and a shadow passed over her eyes.
“I think it’s a great idea,” I said, trying to recover something I’d lost. “So what, we start shopping for houses and dogs?”
“Yes,” she said and parked on the street outside my apartment. “I’ve reviewed your accounts and estimated your budget and have already chosen several that I think you might like.”
“How do you know what I like?” I asked. “You just met me!”
&
nbsp; She pressed her lips together and looked out over the steering wheel. “They’re just lovely houses. I think anyone would like them.”
She was being weird. Then again, I remember when I met Rachel and we’d first started working together. She was supposed to be my mentor, having already worked as a death replacement agent for seven years by the time Brinkley had recruited me.
We hated each other at first. Everything about her seemed overbearing. Her bright clothes and sassy bob. Her dark, assessing eyes. Her sarcasm. The way she acted like she knew everything about everything.
By the end of the month, she was calling me Jessup and I would’ve done anything for her.
Maybe it would be like that with Ally. She was competent and smart. She could do this job if she wanted to. And having her around comforted me. We would just have to get used to each other, right?
I realized she was speaking again.
“I thought since we have the next two days off, we could go look at houses and dogs. You have a consultation Thursday afternoon and the replacement the day after, but otherwise, you’re free,” she said.
She helped me from the car and into the apartment building. I let her fuss over me, secretly liking the attention. It was something Rachel would do, when the mood suited her. Ally used my key to get into the apartment on the second floor.
We navigated around the packed boxes stacked high on top of one another. All my rooms were full of brown boxes and furniture that came with the apartment. The furniture was old lady stuff with horrendous floral prints. I blamed Brinkley for picking out the apartment, but I had to admit it was in a great location—only one block from my office. Well, it was a great location until, you know, I got hit in the face with a brick.
“Getting a house and dog won’t change the fact that I work on Broadway,” I said, picking up the conversation where we’d left it. “Do you think it was the giant Jesse Sullivan Death Replacement Services sign that did it? Or maybe they saw my dog tags?” I touched the two tags around my neck that I wore at all times. They identified me as a death replacement agent and kept me out of the morgue or from being buried alive—should anyone find my corpse anywhere.
“Mr. Handel suspects it was your T-shirt,” she said and eased me into the bed.
“Oh, maybe,” I said, remembering what I’d been wearing: dark jeans, mismatched sneakers and a black T-shirt with a giant FBRD printed on the back in bright white letters. What a mistake that turned out to be. “They would’ve seen it as they drove up behind me.”
“I’ve been thinking about the office too,” she said. “Mr. Handel agreed to restore the back entrance to the building. It was sealed, but apparently, it can be reopened, and then we can move the sign back there. There’s already a parking lot for you to use. That way, you will only receive traffic from the people specifically looking for your services.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Tell him to get on that.”
“He’s already doing it,” she said. “In fact, he insisted.”
We woke up early the next day and started our house hunt. How Ally lined up six house showings in day was a mystery to me. Apparently there were four more lined up for the next morning, before my consultation, should I not like any of these.
The first house was too small, smaller than my apartment and pretty close to the city center, so after a polite thank you, we moved on.
The second and third houses had tiny yards, which Ally said was bad if I planned on getting a big dog. We want somewhere it can run around, and I agreed, because the idea that I was going to walk the beast was out of the question. He—or she—would definitely need a big yard to run around in.
The fourth house was large, but needed a lot of work—like a new HVAC system and plumbing—which moved the house out of my price range. I was sure I could get Brinkley to write it off or something, but I liked paying for my own stuff. I got a housing allowance each month as part of my contract, being a government minion and all, but Ally insisted we could do better, and I believed her.
The fifth house, a cape cod, had a serious black mold infestation in the basement. Not to mention a super creepy attic that I was pretty sure had been used in every horror movie ever. I just knew I was going to die if I lived in that house. Maybe I’d be ghost-murdered two or three times. No thank you.
So when Ally said but you’re allergic to mold, I jumped all over that excuse. No need for her to know what a chicken shit I was. One of the few good things about my job was that people assumed I was a total badass, and nothing scared me. After all, I couldn’t die all the time and endure the physical pain if I was wimpy, right? It wasn’t true of course. All kinds of things scared the hell out of me: large bugs in my ears, physical deformities, the idea that one day I was going to go batshit crazy like Rachel—but no one needed to know I had those chinks in my armor.
Just after 3:00 P.M. we reached the last house of the day. It was a little farther away from the city center. The houses in the subdivision were unique, yet they resembled each other, like a matching set. Despite my usual nonconformist stance in life, I kind of liked the similarities. It was like camouflage, you know, like if someone snuck into this suburb looking to brutally murder me, they might get confused. They might break into the wrong house and my life would be inadvertently saved. Not that I wanted someone else to be murdered on my behalf, of course.
The houses of Greenbrook were mostly two stories high with an attached garage. The exterior of the houses were either brick or stone. The garage doors were white and windowless.
This house in particular was all white-gray brick with black shutters. The front walkway was lined with decorative rocks and a landscaped flower bed full of daffodils and shrubs. The grass was thick and pretty. If I moved in, I would kill it by the end of next summer.
“And here is the last one of the day,” the realtor said and gestured toward the house. While I was trying to figure out if the squirrel chattering in the bush was a threat, Ally nodded and smiled on my behalf.
The realtor was a very polished lady, with a styled fluff of brunette hair and bright red nails. Her vest was a deep black and matched her A-line skirt. I had no idea how she managed to walk around in those black pumps—or why a woman would even want to. I also noticed that she had a tendency to touch each of her wrists, one sporting a gold watch, the other several gold bangles, as if to see if they were still there.
“How much is this one?” I asked, and the realtor’s cheeks twitched as if I had asked to see her panties.
Ally smiled. “They are asking an even 300K.”
I get paid $10,000 per replacement, and I had almost forty replacements under my belt. Because so many of my expenses were covered by my contract, I’d managed to pocket much of the $370,000 I’d made in the last five years, minus taxes. In theory, if I kept up this pace, I’d pay off this house in another five years. To be 27 with a paid off house sounded great.
“How many houses are in this neighborhood?” Ally asked, trying to turn the conversation away from money.
“48 presently,” the realtor said and touched the bottom of her bob. “But we have four more in development on the far west side.” The realtor pointed in a direction that I guessed was west. “And there is room for an additional twelve. The maximum capacity is 64. But your section is complete, so this is the full size of the lot.”
She gestured to each side of the house and waited for me to appreciate its roominess.
I caught on and nodded perhaps too enthusiastically. “Oooo, yes. Very nice.” I heard Ally swallow a laugh beside me.
The realtor looked disappointed. After relaxing the wrinkles on her nose, she tugged at the bottom of her vest and went on. “There is a two-mile nature loop surrounding the subdivision. You’ll have direct access through your backyard. As you can see, many trees were planted along the border of this lot to provide a natural fence. Alice tells me you’re getting a dog?”
I perked up when I realized she’d turned from the door and addressed me di
rectly.
“I got hit in the face with a brick,” I said. “Ally thinks I should up my security measures.”
The realtor’s face blanched. I could tell she was trying to decide if she wanted to know about the brick or not. I guessed not.
“Dogs are lovely companions,” she said.
“Do you have one?” I asked as she pushed open the front door.
Her lips pursed. “No. I have two cats.”
I crossed the bare foyer into the large living room with its large windows lining the wall. Out the window, I could see an abundance of trees, just as the realtor said. I felt the sun on my face through the glass and closed my eyes for just a moment to enjoy it. Then I turned away to inspect the rest. To the right of the living room was a large archway leading to the kitchen. To the left waited some stairs.
“This is the one,” I murmured and Ally came to stand beside me and placed her arm against mine on the window sill.
“Are you sure? We should see the rest of it first, don’t you think?” she asked. She kept her voice low. “There could be a creepy attic.”
I gave her a look, accusing her of knowing the real reason I rejected the last house. She only smiled.
“The three bedrooms are upstairs,” the realtor said, as if trying to break up our whispering. “And here is the home office.”
The realtor pointed to the door that I walked right past when first entering.
“The kitchen is through here,” she said. When she made it clear she expected us to follow her, we did.
“All the Viking appliances will stay,” she went on. “Including the Kenmore washer and dryer in the basement.” The kitchen was pretty, with lots of light coming through the sliding glass doors. The realtor gave us just a moment to enjoy it before going to the doors. She opened them, ushering us through. On the back deck, she took a deep breath, probably for dramatic effect.
“Plenty of room for your dog,” the realtor said, gesturing out at the large backyard. She crept down the steps and started across the grass on tiptoe, so her heels wouldn’t sink into the ground. We followed her.
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