Page 2

He recognized the scar first: a raised crescent that traced a puffy cheekbone and curved just under the left eye. According to the scar’s owner, it was the result of a broken bottle wielded during a drunken brawl. According to fact, it involved a stoned Peter Pan rewatch and a mental lapse regarding the concept of gravity.

Dale Keegan was thirty-three, a year younger than Jack. Not an ideal age to die. Jack might have taken a moment to reflect on that, or maybe on the disconcerting connection to his recent past currently hovering in front of him, but he didn’t get the chance. Dale’s glance shot up from where it had been lingering on his own discarded body, his eyes landing on Margaret in her tasteful coat before widening.

“Jackie?”

Jack froze. To the outside world, he was a five-foot-nothing octogenarian with a four-step skin-care routine. Jack didn’t exist; couldn’t exist. It was what allowed him to continue existing at all.

Before he could say anything, Dale’s essence continued. “Holy shit, is that you? What the hell are you doing in there?”

“I—” For the afterlife of him, Jack couldn’t think of what words belonged on the end of that sentence. He was too busy trying to figure out how Dale could recognize him behind his geriatric disguise.

“Damn weird day, man. Got stabbed a few hours ago and now one of my best friends is an old lady. What’s up with that?”

Jack found himself looking over his shoulder, as if anyone else could hear Dale’s words. “Hey, I need you to keep it down, okay?”

This elicited a knowing grin from Dale.

“Nice to see you’re up to your old tricks,” said the spirit.

Though possession was definitely a new trick for Jack, he couldn’t argue his track record of often questionable life choices. They were the foundation of his whole relationship with Dale. They were work friends of a sort—work that would have ended in a decent jail stint if they ever got caught.

“You on the run, Jackie? Seems unnecessary if you’re already dead, but you always did manage to get yourself in over your head more than most.”

“Can you stop saying my name now?” said Jack. This neighborhood was always swarming with agents from his department, and the last thing he needed was a colleague overhearing this conversation. “What the hell happened to you, anyway?”

“One of the Winston brothers finally caught up with me.” Dale shrugged. “Can you believe it took the dumbasses this long?” He glanced back down at his body, head cocked in consideration. “Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. But what’s your deal now, Jackie? Hiding out in an old lady, what’s that all about?” Jack probably could have—should have—explained the whole situation. About the opportunity to stay alive, about Margaret, about S.C.Y.T.H.E., which, back in the day, would have led him to come up with some half-cocked scheme to use Margaret’s unassuming appearance for nefarious purposes. At which point Dale would have egged him on to do something profoundly stupid. And illegal. And fun. But now the only chance Jack had to avoid being a bodiless spirit like Dale was to fully embrace the role of Margaret, and that meant leaving all those habits behind.

“Let’s go for a drive,” Jack said instead. In his mind he was already halfway to dropping Dale off at the processing warehouse.

“Great idea, Jackie. To Billy’s?”

“No, not to Billy’s, dude. I have a job to do.”

Dale’s eyes lit up at that. “Can I get in on it?”

“Not that kind of job.”

“Then what— Oh.” Dale looked at his feet, the left of which a cockroach was currently scampering through. “You’re a working man now, Jackie, I get it. You died and the old ways died with you.”

“It’s not like that,” Jack said, too quickly. “I have to keep up appearances, that’s all.”

“Well, if that’s all,” Dale tried again, “then a quick stop at Billy’s won’t hurt, right? One last time? For a dead man?”

It was tempting. Jack couldn’t deny it. Billy’s All-Day Diner sat at the end of a lonely street, its sign holding up only moderately worse than its decrepit interior. It had failed so many health inspections that Billy had nearly been forced to close, each time prompting a standoff between the restaurant inspector and the neighborhood that ended with the inspector threatened, coerced, or—in one case involving incriminating feet pics—blackmailed out of town. They’d gone through roughly six inspectors by the time Jack graduated high school.

Jack had never left one of Billy’s booths without dragging his friends into some twisted scheme or other. It was a den of greasy eggs and sin, from which nothing good ever emerged. A place in which Margaret would never have been caught dead and, frankly, one Jack shouldn’t be either, even if it was one of the few tangible remnants of his old life; a life he craved more than Billy’s famous hash browns. He looked at his dead pal, and his heart, which was also Margaret’s heart, gave a reluctant pang.

“Billy’s,” he agreed, sealing his fate with a single word.

3

Nothing had changed since the last time Jack had sipped a black coffee in one of Billy’s peeling red diner booths over three months ago. The stains on the walls were the same, the burnt coffee in his cup was the same, even the cup itself was probably the same one he’d drunk from last time. The only difference was in the looks he received walking up to his usual booth wearing the costume of a wealthy eighty-something, and even those were short-lived, thanks to the strict mind-your-business ethos of the neighborhood. Jack had counted on that attitude to come in clutch for what was about to appear to onlookers to be a conversation between Margaret and herself.

Jack took another sip of his coffee, waiting for Dale to get on with whatever final words he had, but the man across the booth simply stared, occasionally shaking his head in what appeared to be wonder.

“What?” Jack finally asked.

“I just can’t believe it. You hacked death. I mean, if anyone was gonna, it would be Jack McCoy, but still.”