"Can't say as I have," I said. "If you recall, I'm not so good with the Español."
"Oh, I think the pictures would have been quite sufficient."
"What the hell are you talking about? Pictures of what?"
"The commuter train that derailed in Osaka, for one. Or the as yet unidentified plague that wiped an entire Bantu village off the map. And, of course, there was the explosion at the Vatican…"
"What's your point, Lily?"
"My
point
, Collector, is that ever since New York, the détente between heaven and hell has been crumbling around us. These petty skirmishes between the Fallen and their Chosen kin have only gotten worse of late, and both sides are itching for an excuse to escalate into all-out war. Even the mortal world can sense that something's wrong, though of course they've no idea what that something might be. So you see, now is not the time to stray from the straight and narrow – now's the time to keep your head down and do your job. Maybe in so doing, you'll spare the both of us a world of hurt."
"Keep my head down and do my job? That's pretty fucking rich, coming from you. You think I've forgotten that it was
your
private little war on God that got us into this mess in the first place? That it was
you
who orchestrated the damning of an innocent girl in an attempt to jump-start the End Days? Just because the bureaucrats on both sides are convinced the insurrection died with So'enel doesn't mean that
I've
forgotten. So why don't you save your good little soldier speech for someone who doesn't know it's full of shit."
Lilith's eyes gleamed with rage, and for a moment, I thought she was going to hit me, but instead she took a breath, and the anger drained from her face. "Even if what you say is true – and I'm not granting that it is – your actions in thwarting the MacNeil girl's erroneous collection attracted no small measure of attention. Attention toward you, and by extension toward
me
. It seems to me that, all thoughts of revenge aside, only a fool would try to fan the flames of war while under that kind of scrutiny. Tell me, Collector, do you think me a fool?"
"No," I admitted. "I don't think you're a fool."
"Nor I you," she replied. "Which means that for the moment, at least, our motives are aligned."
"I suppose it does."
"I am glad you see the logic in my position," she said. "But let me offer you a word of warning: should
I ever suspect that your motives and mine are no longer aligned, I assure you my response will be as swift as it is final."
"Of that, Lily, I have no doubt."
"Good. Now, let's get down to business, shall we?"
5.
"Hey."
The pale man's eyes fluttered for a moment, and then were still.
"Hey, buddy – wake up!"
His head lolled to one side, and his limbs twitched as if in a dream. A thin stream of drool extended from the corner of his mouth to the white tile floor below.
"I said
wake up
!"
"Hurm," he muttered, though his eyes remained closed. "Grah."
I looked down at my naked torso, at the stab wound an inch above my navel. Though I held my hands as tight to it as I could, blood seeped red-black between my fingers. The wound was muscle-deep, and burned hotter than the bile that still scratched at the back of my throat. The blood loss was making me woozy – if the pale man didn't wake up soon, it was going to be nap time for me as well, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to like how that scenario played out. And since talking to him wasn't doing the trick, it was time to move on to plan B.
I tossed the sheet off of my naked legs and swung my feet onto the floor. Pain radiated from my stomach in nauseating waves as I sat up, and my eyes clenched shut as I willed myself not to puke. I'd already thrown up once – the channel that traced the perimeter of the stainless steel table on which I sat ran thick with evidence of that fact. But then, that's what happens when you snag yourself a fresh meat-suit.
Twenty minutes ago and a continent away, Lily and I were having our little powwow in the park. Now I was bleeding out in the back room of a mortuary in Aurora, Illinois. Most folks would probably call that a pretty unlikely turn of events. I call it an average workday.
See, the assignment Lily gave me was for a job in Illinois. Some kind of bigwig at the local state house. So when she and I parted, I made my way through Bogotá's evening rush to an internet café so I could find myself a suitable vessel.
Now I'll grant you, the hop from Bogotá to Illinois
sounds
impressive, but when it comes to possession, distance ain't the issue. Once you leave a body, the physical realm sort of drops away, so it makes no difference whether you're traveling three feet or three thousand miles. No, the issue is having a destination to focus on, which in my case means tracking down a fresh corpse.
Which leads me to this guy. His name was Jonathan Gray. An insurance man, according to his obituary. He'd died of carbon monoxide poisoning the night before last, thanks to a family of chimney swifts who'd taken up residence in his flue. I wondered if his company'd ever handicapped the odds against that one. Anyways, he was perfect for my needs, on account of he was brand spanking dead, and his manner of death meant no obvious physical trauma. You get a body that's too beat up, or one that's been embalmed, and you may as well be trying to possess a bean-bag chair for all the good it'll do you. Of course, what I didn't count on was his mortician being a night owl.
With one blood-slick hand, I snatched at the spray nozzle that hung over my head. Sluggish as this meat-suit was, the hose was hard to get a hold of. Eventually, though, I grabbed it, and turned it on my sleeping friend. His whole body went rigid when the cold water hit, and his eyelids sprang open like a pair of roll-up shades. Then he spotted me, and took off in a crab-walk away from me across the floor. Or, at least, he tried, but his hands and feet found no traction on the wet tiles, so he just sort of collapsed into a thrashing mound of knees and elbows.
"Good, you're awake," I said, marveling at the effort it took to form the words. "Now would you mind maybe stitching me back up?"
"B-b-but – I mean, y-y-you… you're…"
"Dead?" I offered. His head bobbed up and down.
"Yeah, not so much. Now are you gonna be cool, or am I going to have to hit you with the hose again?"
"N-no!" he shouted, and then he gathered his wits about him and tried again. "That won't be necessary. Oh, God – your stomach!"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you. And what the hell are you doing here, anyway? It's a Sunday night, for Christ's sake!"
"I'm sorry, I – well, you see, I live around back, and sometimes, when I can't sleep, I… oh, what's it
matter
what I'm doing here – you're
dead
! Or, at least, you
were
, until you sat up while I was making my incision so I could begin the embalming process. I guess I must have fainted then, because the next thing I know, you're spraying water on me, and…" He trailed off, blinking hard a couple times as though convinced that with a little willpower, he could rid himself of this whole unpleasant situation. "This is all highly irregular," he added. I wished I could agree.
"Look, I–" I said, and then I paused, narrowing my eyes appraisingly at the man before me. He was growing paler by the moment, and he appeared a little green as well. I worried he was going to faint again. If that happened, this meat-suit was toast – and if this meat-suit expired, God only knew where I'd end up. Which meant I had to keep this guy calm enough for him to stay conscious – and to do that, I had to keep him talking. "Hey, you got a name?"
"Ethan," he said. He swallowed hard, took a few gulping breaths. "Ethan Strickland."
"Look, Ethan, I understand this is a bit of a shock for you, but I could really use a hand."
"Yes, of course!" he said, rallying a bit. "We've got to get you to a hospital!"
"Not an option," I replied.
"But you're hurt!"
"I'll live. As long as you stitch me up, at least."
He shook his head emphatically.
"What's the problem? You've got needles, right? You've got thread."
"I can't. I'm not a doctor – I'm a mortician!"
"I didn't ask to see your degree."
"But I don't have any anesthetic!"
"You got any whiskey?"
He looked down, said nothing.
"I'll take that as a yes. Get it, and get it quick."
The pale man clambered to his feet, and disappeared from the room. Said room seemed to swim a little bit, and I wondered if he'd be back before I passed out. Then I wondered if he'd be coming back at all, or if he was off calling for an ambulance. But come back he did, with a pair of reading glasses in one hand and a bottle of Michter's in the other.
"Hey," I said, "far be it from me to criticize, but if you need glasses, shouldn't you have been wearing them already?"
"Most of my, uh,
patients
, aren't in a position to complain," he said, handing me the whiskey. I took a long swig straight from the bottle, and then offered it to him.
"That's probably not the best idea."
"Yeah," I said, "but at this point, it probably ain't the worst."
He pursed his lips for a second as he considered what I said, and then he took a pull himself. "All right," he said, as much to himself as to me. "Let's get started. I'm going to need you to sit as still as you can. This is probably going to hurt."
That, it turns out, was an understatement.
I'm not saying it was the worst pain I've ever felt, but that's more a commentary on the sum total of my life experience than it is on the matter at hand. What I
can
say is that from the moment he disinfected the wound to the tug of the last stitch being pulled into place, sitting still was a task akin to resting your hand atop a hot burner and keeping it there. To his great credit, my mortician friend soldiered on until the wound was sealed. When he finished, I collapsed sweating and exhausted onto the stainless steel mortician's table, but I'll be damned if the world didn't seem a little more solid than it had before.
Then again, I guess I'll be damned either way.
"Are you all right?" he asked as I lay panting on the table.
"I will be," I said.
"Yes, I think you will. The bleeding's slowed considerably, and you've got a little more color to your face than you did when you… awoke."
"Yeah," I said, smiling. "You, too." I took another slug of whiskey and passed the bottle on to him. This time, he didn't protest.
"I'm guessing you'd like some clothes," he said.
Truth be told, I had forgotten I was naked, what with the more immediate concern of not dying and all. But the air in the mortuary was cold and damp, and the chill of death still lingered in my meat-suit's bones, so all the sudden, clothes sounded like a fabulous idea. "I wouldn't turn them down," I said.
He nodded toward a garment bag hanging from a hook on the wall beside us. I unzipped it and found a black pinstriped suit, a dress shirt, a buff and blue tie. At the bottom of the bag were a pair of boxers and some socks, as well as a set of loafers.
"This stuff gonna fit?"
"It should," he said, surprised, "it's yours."
I dressed in silence. The suit fit well. The tie I skipped.
"So," he said once I was dressed, "is there someone I should call? If not a doctor, then your wife perhaps?"
"What? No! I mean, I'd hate to bother her this late."
"I think she'd like to know as soon as possible, don't you? After all, your return is nothing short of miraculous. I swear, in all my years, I've never seen anything like it! I expect the medical journals will be chomping at the bit to write about you – and let's not forget the media! No doubt they'll be sure to
growf
!"
I'm guessing the media wouldn't be sure to
growf
– that's just the noise the guy made when I snatched the sheet off the mortician's table and wrapped it around his head. He struggled against me, but I held it fast, twisted tight over his mouth like a gag. Eventually, he caught on he wasn't getting anywhere with his thrashing about, and he dialed it down to the occasional token kick.
"Listen," I said, my lips scant inches from his ear, "I don't want to hurt you, but if you force me to, I will. See, I can't have anybody knowing I'm alive, which means you aren't calling
anyone
, you understand?" At that, his thrashing increased, and he shouted some muffled
mmm-mmm-mmmms
into the sheet around his mouth. I tightened my grip on the sheet and forced him to the floor. With the gag in his mouth, and my knee in the center of his back, the fight once more drained out of him.
"That's more like it," I said. "Now, you've been decent to me up until now, and I appreciate that. But I've got some business to attend to, and I'm pretty sure the second I walk out that door, you're going to be on the horn to the cops. Maybe they believe you that I up and walked out of here, and maybe they don't – but either way, this body'll be missing, and they're going to want to find it. Which means I'm going to have to tie you up."
More thrashing and muffled screams.
"Hey hey
hey
," I said, yanking back on the twisted sheet like a rider reining in a horse. "No need to get touchy, OK? It might not seem like it right now, but I'm doing you a
favor
here. One way or another,
I'm
walking out of here, and
you're
keeping quiet. My vote's for tying you up, but if you'd rather I left you laid out on a slab, it's your call. No? OK, then – put your hands behind your back, and keep still."
He did as I said. I left the sheet around his mouth, and wrapped each end a couple times around his wrists. Then I moved down to his feet. "Lift 'em up." He bent his knees so that the soles of his black loafers pointed skyward. "Attaboy," I said, wrapping his ankles as I'd wrapped his wrists, and then tying off the ends. The result was more or less your basic hog-tie, though I confess it probably wasn't as tight as it ought to've been. But like I said, the guy'd been decent to me, and besides, all I really needed was a few hours' head start.