Page 32 of Deader than Dead

As the shed door was pulled open, I leaned forward slightly to see inside, Gold Tooth’s fingers tightening around my biceps as if he thought I might have some secret plan to make a break for it. I wished. No torturer. No thumb screws. Not unless someone had hidden them beneath the bags of soil stacked along one wall of the shed. There were a few terracotta plant pots, some intact, and some broken. Seed packets. A trowel. In short, exactly what you’d expect to find inside a shed.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” O’Reilly said in that pleasant melodic voice of hers. “We’re going to give you a chance to talk. Alone. Where no one will disturb you.” She turned her attention to me. “I would suggest you convince Mr. Farrell to do the right thing. Perhaps drum in the futility of him thinking he can hang onto his secrets.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I would suggest you try, Mr. Averill. It’s very much in your best interests that we reach an agreement. I want that mask tonight. I’ve waited long enough for it.”

Bellamy rolled his eyes. “You can—“

He was already being shoved in the shed, though, Crocodile not bothering to be gentle. Once he was inside, I was shoved after him, Bellamy catching me as I stumbled. Before I could fully regain my balance, someone slammed the door closed, leaving us with nothing to do but listen as they attached a padlock and clicked it shut.

Chapter Seventeen

Bellamy

It hadn’t taken John and me long to carry out a thorough search of the shed and discover nothing of use in it. Not unless we were going to attack them with a small trowel or a piece of jagged plant pot, and I suspected, what with the guns they carried, that they’d squash that rebellion within minutes. Who was I kidding? It would take seconds, not minutes. And they would most likely laugh a lot.

One other thing had quickly become apparent as we’d searched every nook and cranny. The shed had no windows. In fact, no source of ventilation whatsoever. Which, with the clock approaching midday and it being a warm, sunny day, meant the atmosphere was growing increasingly stifling, and was only likely to get hotter. This was obviously their version of leaving us to sweat. Literally.

I gave up looking for anything of use before John did, fashioning myself a semi- comfortable seat out of bags of soil and easing myself onto it. I rested my head back against the wall and closed my eyes for a minute, fatigue getting the better of me. How long had I slept last night? In John’s bed, only a few hours. And before that? Before that I’d been dead. I let out a virtually silent laugh, the noise not enough to deter John from his search, as I cracked one eye open to check.

Dead. A few hours might have passed since John had broken the news, but there’d been a lot going on since then. Too much for me to have time to consider the ramifications.

“I remember nothing,” I said. “About being dead, I mean.” The silence that followed my statement had me opening my eyes again. John had stopped sorting through the seed packets—god only knew what he thought he might find in there—and was staring at me, his expression one of careful neutrality. “Does that mean that when people die, there’s nothing after that?”

John winced as he moved some of the soil bags to make a matching seat to mine opposite. “People always think I have all the answers.”

“Don’t you?”

His smile was wry as he lowered himself onto the bags and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I’m sure you’ll be as disappointed as everyone else who’s ever asked that question when I say far from it.”

I considered his words, weighing them carefully. “But you must have spoken to so many people who’ve been there, and who you’ve brought back.”

“Hundreds,” John confirmed.

“And?” I felt guilty for pushing him, but who knew if I’d get another chance to ask given the machinations going on outside this shed, and O’Reilly’s presumed malicious intent despite her placid exterior.

John let out a breathy sigh. When he spoke, he spoke slowly, as if pondering his words. “You said yourself that you don’t remember dying?” He waited for my nod. “It’s very rare that anyone does. And it’s not something I bring up, because…”

“Panic,” I said when he seemed to struggle with the right words.

He nodded. “You have to understand that my job is to bring them back, but it’s not for me. It’s for whichever relative or loved one has paid through the nose for the pleasure.” His mouth twisted in a way that said he recognized the slight mercenary edge in his words. “Christ! Now I sound like Griffin.”

I frowned. “Who?”

“One of the other necromancers. He’s older than I am. More jaded. I get the impression that if it didn’t pay well, you wouldn’t see him for dust.”

“You dislike him?”

John thought about it. “I’d normally say yes to that question.” He flicked a glance toward the shed door, the one we both knew was padlocked shut and could only be opened with O’Reilly’s say-so. “But today doesn’t feel like a day for flippancy. It feels like a day for the truth.”

“The sword of Damocles is definitely hanging over our heads,” I agreed. “So… what would the answer be today? What is the truth?”

“I don’t know him. He doesn’t let people know him. He keeps himself to himself, avoids the office unless he’s under pain of death to be there. I think there’s some stuff in his past, something that’s made him the way he is.” When I arched an eyebrow, John elaborated. “He drinks. At work, I mean. I don’t know about at home. We don’t exactly socialize.”

“He’s an alcoholic?”

John shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m a necromancer, not a doctor.”

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