Croak (13 page)

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 counter. “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.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Zara shuddered. “It’s disgusting.”

“Swiping internship?” Lex said.

“The owners of all the shops and restaurants in town—mostly retired Grims and Etceteras—are called swipers,” Elysia said, all too happy to have more stuff to explain. “It’s their job to take things from the outside world for our own purposes, like food, clothes, medicine, toiletries—”

“Veal, tongue, gizzards,” Zara said with a look of revulsion.

“Swipers use their scythes a little differently,” Elysia continued. “They open up small windows into the ether—just large enough for them to reach through—and take supplies that generally go unnoticed from places like large warehouses, back rooms of grocery stores, Laundromats—”

“Laundromats?”

“You should see our sock inventory,” Driggs said. “Massive.”

Elysia nodded. “We’re pretty isolated out here, so it’s a really efficient system.”

Lex was dumbfounded. “I had no idea petty theft was such a noble endeavor.”

“Well,” said Zara, “when you think about the gracious services we provide to the citizens of this world, it’s only fair. People should be thankful we don’t charge more.”

“But don’t you ever get caught?”

“Nope,” she said, combing through her staticky silver hair with the long, bony fingers that everyone in Croak seemed to possess. “We only take enough to sustain our small population. People out there never notice their things are missing, and if they do, they blame themselves anyway.”

Lex longingly thought of her mother, and of all the clothes she had complained about losing over the years. Now, definitive proof that the washing machine wasn’t a “ravenous, blouse-eating monster,” as she put it.

“As for me, I’m currently trying out Afterlife Liaisons,” Elysia said. “And Ferbus, well . . .”

“Ferbus wanted to hone his defensive skills,” said Ferbus. “So Ferbus took up the Vault Post.”

“Right, defensive skills,” Lex said. “Bet those come in real handy on dragon raids.”

Ferbus narrowed his eyes. “My job may seem pointless,” he said testily, “but if any unauthorized individuals come upstairs, it’s my job to make sure they don’t get into the Lair or Afterlife.”

“And how do you do that?”

“I can’t tell you. Suffice it to say that Mort trained me, and in the time it’d take for any intruder to say ‘Who’s that handsome devil?’ I’d have already broken their neck in three places.”

“But he still can’t tie his shoes,” said Driggs.

Everyone laughed. Elysia laughed the hardest.

“I guess you have to learn how to entertain yourselves around here, without TVs or anything,” said Lex.

“Oh, we have a TV,” Elysia said.

Lex grabbed her arm. “Say that again?”

She laughed. “At the Crypt. That’s our dorm. And what’s ours is yours, come over whenever you want. We all live there, except for you and Driggs.”

Driggs nodded. “Best not to mingle with the dirty peons.”

“It’s only because Uncle Mort is my uncle,” Lex said, rolling her eyes. “My parents would shit a brick if I had to live on my own.”

Had this exchange taken place in a cheesy comedy movie, a record needle scratch would have sounded at this moment to denote the stunned silence that Lex’s statement had produced, followed by an uncomfortable cough or two. But in a noisy diner, the sudden hush of a small group of people went largely unnoticed, and Lex became aware that she had said something wrong only when she realized that all of the Juniors were staring at her, their mouths agape. Driggs swore under his breath.

“What?” Lex asked, perplexed. “What’s wrong?”

“You—you have parents?” choked Elysia.

“Um, yeah.”

“Two of ’em?” Ferbus asked.

“How many should I have?”

Ferbus eyed Lex with a furious glower. Elysia bit her nail and looked like she was about to cry. Everyone else stared at the table.