“You told me your name,” she said from beside me, her voice slipping into my thoughts and wrapping around my mind.
I’m not quite sure what possessed me to tell her the one thing I guarded so close. I had many names over the years, more than I could count, more than I cared to remember. But only one had meant anything. The one I was born with. The one that my mother gave me, the one that someone truly wanted me to have. My name was the only connection I had left of my past, of my life. It was the only part of me that I thought I had left.
I turned my head, looking over at her once more. She was watching me tentatively, almost warily… like she wasn’t sure what to expect. She probably wondered if I’d even told her the truth and now that we’d slept together, if I was going to morph back into the man I’d always been with her.
I walked my fingers between the space between us, and her laugh was throaty as my fingers neared hers. Instead of linking them together, I wrapped my hand around her wrist and tugged, pulling her closer.
She came willingly, fitting herself against my side and resting her cheek on my shoulder. The toes on her right foot found their way between my calves and I smiled up at the ceiling.
“You’re the first person I’ve ever told my real name since I’ve been dead.”
“How did you die?” she asked quietly.
This was something I’d never told anyone either.
“I was a boxer. I died in a dirty fight.”
“Did it hurt?” she asked, sorrow lacing her voice.
“I don’t really remember,” I lied, but I was tired of lying so I told her the truth. “Yeah, for a moment, but it didn’t hurt very long.”
“And then what happened?Hecame for you?”
Hebeing the Grim Reaper.
I nodded. The movement of my head caused a couple strands of her blond hair to stick in my stubble and tickle my chin. I reached up to untangle the silky strands and smooth my palm over them. “Next thing I knew I was in his office. Nothing but a cloud of red—basically just a soul—and he was offering me a job as an Escort.”
“Did you know what an Escort was when you took the job?”
I knew eventually she would ask me this. It was a natural question—did you know you were going to be a killer? Did you actually choose it?
“Yes,” I answered. “He told me what I would be doing.”
We both lay there for long moments, quiet. I wasn’t sure what she was thinking, if the realization—the knowledge that I actually chose this life—would be something she could ever accept.
And if she didn’t?my brain asked me.
But I think the real question wasWhat if she did?
Because if she didn’t, I would understand. I could go on exactly as I had been before. Okay, not exactly as before because this had changed me—shehad changed me. But I would go on, and I would continue to do exactly what I’d been doing for over ninety years.
But if she did… if she somehow found a way to accept me, I knew things—life—as it was now would have to change. Irrevocably and forever.
She lifted her head off my shoulder and propped her arm and chin on top my chest. Her blue eyes studied me and her wild hair was tangled around her chin. “So how come you agreed? Why do any of you agree?”
“I can’t say for sure about the others, but I do know that when you’ve just suffered some kind of violent or sudden death, you’re in shock. You find yourself basically a cloud of color standing in a room with a man and his closets full of bodies.” At this she lifted both her eyebrows and stared at me in disbelief, but she said nothing else as I continued.
“It isn’t really much of a choice. You can stay dead and be tossed into some kind of void that is a fate worse than hell for all of eternity, or you can take his offer, get a new body, a new life, and a shit-ton of money. Considering most people are still shocked that they’re actually dead, choosing to live isn’t that hard.”
“But it’s not living,” she said softly.
“No. It’s not.” I took a minute to brush some of the wayward hair out her face. “But usually by the time you realize that, it’s much too late. Once you make the deal, once you take on the title of Death Escort, there is no getting out.”
“Like Dex,” she whispered.
“Yeah, like Dex. You do the job or get Recalled, sent off to a place worse than hell.”
“When did you realize you weren’t really living?”
