Croak (20 page)

“LEXINGTON!”

Lex was so startled, she dropped what was left of her hot dog into the fountain. She turned around to meet the furious, reptilian face of Norwood. “Hiya, Woody,” she said, frowning as she batted at his tie. “This color doesn’t suit you.”

He snatched the tie out of her hand and tucked it into his shirt. “Why have you been stalling at your target sites?”

Lex hesitated. True, she and Driggs had been lingering a lot longer around the abnormal targets. And yes, there was that one time (or two, or maybe seventeen) that her hand had brushed up against her partner’s and they’d both been rendered hopelessly awkward and incompetent for a full minute or so before regaining their composure. But Norwood finding out about any of it—she hadn’t prepared for that. “Hey, we’re not breaking any rules,” she said, trying to sound unconcerned. “We scythe out eventually. What does it matter when it happens?”

He made a face. “It matters because when you little cretins get in trouble—
when,
not
if
—it’s going to be
me
who deals with it,
me
who has to send in reinforcements,
me
who bails out your sorry—”

“And
me
who has to suffer through all of your smelly tirades,” she said, waving her hand in front of his mouth. “Seriously, Woody, a Tic Tac now and then wouldn’t kill you.”

This did not sit well. Norwood looked about ready to hurl every last Junior right into the fountain. “I know you kids all think this is a joke, a lark, a goddamned summer camp for gene pool bottom dwellers like yourselves. But if you don’t quit screwing around out there, I’ve got one word for you: exile.” With that, he smoothed his tie, ran a hand through his lifeless hair, and stalked off. Heloise followed, giving them a vindictive nod as she left.

“And I’ve got two words for you,” Ayjay said quietly. “Anger management.”

“Wow, he
really
hates you Lex” Elysia said in awe. “More than Driggs, even! You see the distance on that spittle flying out of his mouth? Must have been about five feet.”

Lex watched him go. “What a crapbag. Out of his mind.”

“Well, not completely,” Driggs said.

Lex’s face was murderous.

“Sorry!” he said. “But he’s right, isn’t he?”

A glacial silence ensued.

“Um, we better get back to work,” said Kloo. A murmur of agreement swept through the group as they hurriedly gathered their things and made their escape.

Ayjay patted Driggs on the shoulder. “Good luck, man.”

Once they were alone, Lex grabbed Driggs by the ear and began yelling into it. “I am only helping you with your beloved investigations. You know full well that I’m the fastest Killer in this place and I could be in and out of the ether in less than a second. The only time I drag it out is whenever we get one of those white-eye deaths, so that I can look around and try to solve this little whodunit.”

Driggs wrestled his head away from her grip. “I just mean that you’ve stalled on other ones, too,” he said with a suspicious look. “What about—”

“Come on, Driggs. I’m just doing it to mess with Norwood.”

He scratched his arm. “Okay,” he said curtly, unconvinced. He began walking toward the Bank.

“Wait! You don’t believe me?”

“Lex, I just—”

She folded her arms and glared at him, which, if anything, only irritated him further.

He narrowed his eyes. “You think I don’t see what you’re doing? Sniffing around like a bloodhound every time we reach a target, looking for someone who deserves punishment?”

Lex gritted her teeth as she walked past him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” he said quietly, following her. “And I think
that
pisses you off more than anything.”

Lex, who didn’t have an answer to this because of its disturbing degree of accuracy, kept walking.

***

“Driggs!” Kilda shouted as Lex and Driggs returned from their shift that afternoon. She waved him over to the information desk. “Oh, Driggs!”

Driggs let out a low groan. “Hi, Kilda,” he said, attempting a polite smile. “What can I do for you?”

“I need more Amnesia! I’m almost out!”

“That’s impossible, Kilda,” he said in a patient tone. “I milked the spiders a month ago and took out enough to last through the end of the summer.”

“Well, I don’t know what to tell you! It’s practically gone!”

He gave her a sideways look. “Kilda, are you sure haven’t been dipping into a little bit of Amnesia yourself?”

“I take offense to that!”

“Okay, okay,” Driggs yelled over her protests. “I’ll get you some more.”

He and Lex walked into the hallway and up the stairs to deposit the Vessels. They chatted with Ferbus for a bit, but as soon as the conversation veered to the computer and his new goblin-resistant armor, Lex slipped into the Afterlife.

“Hi,” Elysia said, rubbing her eyes as Lex sat on her desk. “I’m so glad you’re here, I’m about ready to kill myself—oh, sorry, Emily.” She quickly apologized to a sobbing Emily Dickinson. “Why don’t you go play with Dr. Seuss for a while? He usually cheers you up.” Emily dabbed at her nose with a soiled handkerchief, then moped off. “She’s such a downer.”

Lex did not reply, as she had grown too distracted by the targets that were materializing in the atrium, including the white-eyed dentist she had Killed while he was performing a root canal. She shook her head, baffled. How the hell were these people dying?

“Hey,” she said to Elysia, an idea occurring to her. “Can I go talk to that guy? Ask him if he remembers what happened?”

Elysia winced and fiddled with her necklace. “We’re not really supposed to talk to the new arrivals. It sort of messes with their heads.”

“But what if he can tell us something important?”

Elysia shook her head. “He won’t remember. Targets usually have very little recollection of the circumstances surrounding their deaths. Especially these white-eye deaths—time is frozen, so they’ll never even know what hit them.”

Lex thought for a moment more. “I’m asking anyway,” she said, getting up.

“Lex—wait!”

“Hey!” Lex shouted at the hapless dentist. He turned to her, dazed. “Hi, I’d just like a brief moment of your time. Can you tell me how you died?”

The dentist staggered. “I’m dead?”

“Oh. You didn’t know that?”

He rubbed his head. “Last thing I remember, I was giving Mrs. Costello a root canal. Those gums of hers, my goodness, I’ve never seen such advanced periodontitis . . .”

Lex was shoved aside by an irritated Betsy Ross. “Scram, my dear.” She took the befuddled man by the arm. “Right this way, Dr. Nolan,” she said, escorting him toward the Void. “My, what a pretty white coat!”

“Let it go, Lex,” Elysia said as Lex returned to the desk. “Leave it to the authorities. You’re just a kid. Have fun. Go play in the fluff.”

“Not over here, though,” said a pale, miserable figure from behind a nearby pile. “I’ve constructed a Fortress of Solitude.”

Lex watched the dentist for a moment more, then gave up. “What’s wrong, Edgar?”

“Nothing.” He pouted. “Okay, everything.” He sighed dramatically as he approached, greasy black hair falling into his face. “I bit my tongue this morning, I dropped guacamole onto my favorite boots, Teddy Roosevelt made fun of my mustache, and—oh yeah—I’m dead.” He crossed his arms with a small huff.

“Hey, Quoth,” Lex said to the bird atop his shoulder, “go poop on Teddy Roosevelt.” The raven gave a slight nod as he launched into the air and flew over to the tangle of presidents, where he stopped, aimed carefully, and dropped a plump white bomb directly onto the face of America’s twenty-sixth.

Edgar stuck out his tongue. “Where’s your big stick now, Teddy Bear?”

“Dammit, Poe!” Teddy roared, shaking his fist. “I’ll get you for this!”

Edgar let out a screech not unlike that of a seven-year-old girl. He dove back into his fortress, sending clouds of the white fluff into the air. Lex watched them float around, her mind clicking onto something—

“Oh my God, that’s it!” She jumped up from the desk. “Elysia, I’ll catch you later. Edgar—you’re a
genius.
”

“I am aware of that,” a muffled voice replied.

“Where are we going?” Driggs asked as Lex dragged him down Dead End.

“Corpp’s.”

“The first step is admitting you have a problem, Lex.”

Lex gave him a light smack on the head. “Not for drinking.” She pulled him onto the sidewalk. “Whatever’s killing the targets is doing it instantaneously, right? What’s the one thing we know of that can do that—that Grims even
produce?
”

Driggs thought for a second, then smacked his own head. “Elixir.”

“Right. And who’s the only person in Croak with constant access to large quantities of it?”

Driggs looked at the tavern door. “You don’t think—”

“No, I don’t. But let’s see what he knows.”

Corpp’s had a different feel to it so early in the evening—empty, cooler, and far too quiet. Lex and Driggs sat down at the bar as the elderly owner emerged from the house he and his wife shared out back—the “shag shack,” as Pandora liked to put it, usually to a chorus of gagging.

“A bit early for you kids, don’t you think?” Corpp said, cleaning out a mug. “There are other ways to have fun besides drinking, you know.”

Driggs’s mouth dropped open. “Corpp, let’s not say things we can’t take back.”

“We’re not here to drink,” Lex said. “We just wanted to talk to you about something. Do you have a minute?”

He looked around the empty room. “Why yes, I believe I can squeeze you in,” he said with a chuckle, handing them a bowl of nuts.

“Great. So I was just wondering, where do you store your Elixir?”

Corpp frowned. “Why do you ask?”

Lex cringed and glanced up at the
THREE-DRINK MAXIMUM OR ELSE
sign. “Um, I’m doing a report on it.” Driggs coughed loudly. Lex kicked him in the shin.

“Juniors get homework nowadays?” Corpp asked, looking confused.

Lex thought quickly. If this lie was going to work, it had to be believable. “It’s a punishment for mouthing off to Norwood. He said I need to learn how to respect my elders, so he’s making me write a paper on the Croaker I admire most. And that . . . apparently . . . is you.” She smiled sweetly.

An appreciative grin spread across the old man’s face. “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.”

“I know, it’s quite an honor.” Lex grabbed a handful of peanuts. “So tell me—how do you make those Yoricks so scrumptious? It all starts with the Elixir, I bet.”

“Indeed it does,” Corpp said, his eyes sparkling. “And I must say, it’s better now than ever. See, back in my day, we had to import Elixir by the kegful and store it in the cellar. It never went bad, of course, but after a while it began to lose its zing. But about, oh, fifty years ago, me and some of the boys decided to run a pipe directly from the Afterlife right here to the bar.” He reached over to the tap and lovingly patted its head. “Now every drop is as clean as a whistle!”

“So let me get this straight,” Lex said. “There’s absolutely no way to access Elixir, in all of Croak, other than through this tap right here.”

“You got it. And me and the wifey are the only ones who know how to use it.” He indicated Pandora’s diner. “But what you really want to know about are the mixers! Well, I can’t divulge my secret recipes, but I will tell you the one ingredient I can’t live without is—”

“Thanks, Corpp!” Lex jumped off the barstool. “That was really interesting. Really. Thanks for your time. See you tonight, okay?”

“But—well, all right.” He smiled bemusedly. “Take some nuts!”

Driggs, who eagerly accepted a handful, could barely keep his snickers in as they left. “And the Oscar goes to . . .”

“Bite me. We found out what we needed to know, didn’t we? Elixir can’t be stolen from the bar, which means—”

“That it’s being taken from the Afterlife?” he said dubiously, chewing. “The place is on constant lockdown. There’s no way to smuggle Elixir out of there without half a dozen people noticing.”

“Then it’s coming from somewhere else.” She stopped walking. “Which means we need to ask more questions. And who knows more about Croak than anyone?”

Driggs looked reluctant. “Fine,” he said after a moment. “But only on one condition: let me do the talking.”

***

“Hi, Uncle Mort!” Lex blared as they walked into the kitchen.

“Unbelievable,” Driggs muttered.

Uncle Mort sat at the kitchen table, scouring a copy of
The Obituary
and picking his teeth with his scythe. “Hey, kids. How was work?”

“Well,” Driggs said, “it wasn’t—”

“How was
your
day, Uncle Mort?” Lex butted in as charmingly as possible, sliding into the seat next to him and fixing an earnest look on her face. Driggs took the seat across from her and mouthed, “Subtle.”

Unlike Corpp, however, Uncle Mort wasn’t falling for it. “What do you want?” he said, eyes still on the paper.

Lex pretended to be offended. “I don’t want anything!”

“If it’s money you’re after, I don’t have any. And I thought we discussed my policy on dinner.”

Lex took another breath, but this time Driggs was too quick for her. “Mort, there’s something we’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said.

Uncle Mort tossed the paper aside and began perusing a journal titled
Jellyfish Care and Maintenance: Getting the Most Out of Our Beloved Harbinger of Death.
“Yeah? What now?”

“We’ve been noticing something weird during our shifts,” Driggs continued. “Now, it could just be a coincidence, and we might be wrong, and we’re not even sure that it means anything at all, but—”

“Someone’s murdering people who aren’t supposed to die,” Lex burst in.

Driggs looked furious. “Lex!”

“Oh, grow a pair.” She clasped her hands together and leaned in. “Uncle Mort, we’ve been seeing these cases on almost a daily basis for about a month now—actually, we think it’s the same sort of thing that was in the paper this morning. These are targets who have no injuries or diseases, except their eyes are completely white. We think that a Grim is Crashing with direction and then murdering them, but so far we haven’t been able to figure out how they’re doing it. Or why. But something’s definitely up. And we figured that if anyone should know, or if anyone could explain, it would be you.”