Page 1 of Definitely Dead

Chapter one

Black.Everythingwasblack—thesky, the water, the sand.

His soul.

While not usually so morose, after more than a millennium in the Underworld, Tyr Bergstrom figured he’d earned the right to be a little bitter. Or maybe not, considering he’d done this to himself.

He wasn’t dead, even if it felt like it most days. No, he had, with full understanding of his actions, chosen this existence. As such, he could leave anytime he wanted and return to the land of the living. To a world where the sun shined, and time made fucking sense.

But he stayed.

Out of duty? Loyalty? Pride?

He didn’t know anymore.

But guiding souls through the afterlife like an operator at a carnival ride damn sure wasn’t it.

“Listen up!” he called, raising his voice to be heard over the din of conversation. “You’re dead. Yeah, it sucks. No, you can’t go back. No, there wasn’t a mistake. No, I don’t know your loved ones or where they are in the Underworld.”

Where the banks met the glassy waters of the River Acheron, a rickety pier extended past the shoreline, its weathered boards warped and faded. The thing whined from the pressure of merely existing, and it always looked one wrong step away from disintegrating completely.

Tyr ushered the group toward it.

“Wait here for the ferryman. Don’t touch the water.”

“What happens after we cross?” The female’s hair fell around her pale, withered face in tangled wisps, and she pointed toward the river with a finger crooked from age and disease.

“You’ll be judged.” He shrugged. One day, he would be too.

“And then?” A young male tilted his head, his upper lip curved in a smirk.

Pretty cocky for a dead bastard.

“Guess that’s up to you.” And not his problem.

“What happens if we touch the water?” someone at the back asked.

He stared down at the shifting onyx sands beneath his boots and sighed. Always the same uninspired questions. Topside, he had protected royalty and safeguarded kingdoms. Here, he had been reduced to little more than a glorified tour guide.

The least the tourists could do in return wastryto be interesting.

“Want to find out?” As he suspected, no one took him up on the offer. “Good. Now, line up.”

“What’s that place?” The teenager jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Can we stay there?”

“Do what you want, kid.” With a quiet growl, he turned and started back up the hill toward the village made of cobblestone streets and thatched huts. “I just work here.”

Because time moved differently between the mortal realm and the Underworld, they didn’t typically receive newcomers in batches like this. One hundred fresh souls—give or take—arrived on the banks of the river every day in a steady trickle spaced over hours.

Many of them, he never even saw before they crossed.

A cluster of ten or more new souls arriving together almost always meant war, natural disasters, or some other type of mass-casualty event. Moreover, they always had something in common, something that would suggest they had died at the same time, in the same place.

Nothing about the current group gave him that indication.

Still, the anomaly didn’t concern him. It didn’t even pique his curiosity. He simply filed the information away to report on later. While he didn’t care what had brought them there, his boss certainly would.

“Hey, mind if I join you?” Without waiting for an answer, the young male from the group fell into step beside him, his hands shoved into the pockets of his ripped jeans. “I didn’t expect it to be so cold here.”

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