Vinny shrugs. “They did when I was alive.”
“Yeah, well. They also said ‘YOLO,’ and look how that turned out.”
He cuts me a sideways glance. “You’re in a good mood for someone who just lost their payout.”
“Did I?”
Vinny points in the direction of the subway platform. “Yeah, you fumbled the switch and dropped the bone. I couldn’t grab it, by the way. Someone had already nabbed it.”
I cluck my tongue, shoving my hands into my jacket pockets. “Oh, Vinny, my sweet, dumb Jacob Marley. How little you’ve learned.”
Raising one hand, I flick my wrist, and the fake star obol appears between my fingers. It’s a little shaky, because, again, small hands. Another flick of the wrist and the star is replaced with the bull. And then, because I’m not skilled enough to palm a third item, I raise Pete’s watch with my other hand.
“The job went off exactly as planned,” I say.
“Minus the almost getting reaped,” Vinny points out.
I hum noncommittally. “Even that ended up in my favor. Now Pete won’t be missing his watch.”
“All that for a watch?”
I grin. “Poor Infamous Pete is infamous for his poor memory and computer skills. Rumor has it, he keeps his PINs scratched into the band of the watch.”
The botched coin switch was just a cover for me to get close enough to Pete. Light pressure on the wrist while his focus was on the bone in my other hand. A slip of the clasp with my thumb, a pinch of the band between middle and ring fingers, and the watch is now mine.
I flip it over and sure enough, several lines of letters and numbers are scratched clumsily into the leather.
“You can’t take the watch back with you,” Vinny points out. “You can only take back what you brought yourself, and that watch hitched a ride on the Dead guy.”
I shoot Vinny a flat look. “I’m going to memorize the numbers, Casper.”
“Oh.”
We reach a door at the end of the tunnel, and just like I’ve convinced myself, there’s a room beyond with a hive of Orpheus chambers built into the wall on the far side. They’re little more than bunks, like train sleeping compartments, with a tank above them and tubing leading to a mist mask. A light flashes on a monitor in one of the bunks.
I take my bag from Vinny and stuff my knit hat into it. “Well, gotta go.”
Vinny leans against the nearest chamber. “How long have you got?”
I flip over and shake my hair out, even though it doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’ll look how it looks when I get back to my body. “No idea.”
Alchemy and magical gadgets aren’t my forte, so the technical part of this con has been all guesswork. I’m betting I have only a few minutes left, so I’ll have to do my memorizing quick. I lie down in the lit chamber.
This is the second difference between me and my brother. He never would have done a job like this alone. It was one of his rules.
Rule #4: Never do anything without your crew.
Dante lived by that rule, until he didn’t, and that’s what got him killed.
I’m halfway through another recitation of the passwords when I catch a shift in the air. The scent of rotten meat and garlic that’s been following me begins to fade. The world around me starts to shimmer. This is it.
Clouds fill the space, starting as a translucent fog, then growing more real until I can feel the cold and damp cling to my skin. My vision fills with a bright light, and suddenly I’m zooming away from it. Faster and faster, the entire universe spinning around me.
And then I suck in a breath.
A real one.
With my real lungs in my real body.
