Some Assembly Required (8 page)

Conflicted wasn’t the word Benji would have chosen, but he let it slide. Agnes obviously knew Patrick much better than he did.

Agnes tugged on their joined hands again, and Benji took the hint and sat up. He sighed when he realized he was back in his old clothes.

Agnes chuckled. “Occupational hazard,” she said, winking at him. She patted his hand, sandwiching his between both of hers. Her skin was translucent and wrinkled just like he’d expect for a woman her age, but it seemed to almost crackle with energy. Holding her hand wasn’t unlike getting a static shock on a dry winter day. Not enough to feel painful, but enough that the current was obvious.

She gave him a squeeze before letting go so he could make his way out of the ball pit. He felt much better than he had when he’d woken up. His head was clear, and his skin still felt like it was buzzing where it had come into contact with hers. He was usually muzzy for a bit after he woke, something that made facing a classroom full of five-year-olds excruciating for the first hour or so, but right now he felt like he’d been awake for hours downing Red Bull nonstop.

Agnes let out another low laugh when he looked from his hands to hers. “Patrick thinks it’s the ball pit that recharges auras, but I think you’ve already figured out he’s wrong, haven’t you?”

Benji flexed his hand, surprised to find it looked perfectly normal. “I didn’t feel like this before you touched me. I was tired and confused.” He looked over his shoulder at the ball bit. “So why do we end up there if it isn’t to recharge?”

Agnes’s eyes lit up, and for a moment there was a timeless quality to her appearance, a luminescence that was there and gone so fast Benji could have imagined it. He didn’t think he had, though. He was still learning the ropes, but Agnes was definitely more than she seemed. How could someone as smart at Patrick not have picked up on that? Especially if he’d been around as long as Agnes seemed to be hinting.

“Honestly? Because it’s a goddamn hassle for me, so it’s sure as hell going to be a hassle for
you
.” She snickered when he gaped at her. “Don’t look so shocked. I may spend most of my time knitting, but I’m not a delicate flower.”

He had a clear memory of her now that she’d done her mojo on him. She’d been knitting on a couch in one of the display houses, and Patrick had tricked him into touching her.

“But before, you didn’t recharge me. Everything went blank.”

She clucked her tongue. “That was Patrick’s fault. You can’t touch me.”

“But—”

Agnes cut him off with an unimpressed stare. “I said
you
can’t touch
me.
I can touch you. In fact, it’s necessary when your aura gets so depleted that you dematerialize. You were well on your way to that. Touching me just jump-started the process.”

Benji looked down at himself. He could feel the texture of his jeans against his thighs, including the uncomfortable stiffness of the stained fabric. He clenched his fist, focusing on the sharp bite of his fingernails into his palm. He felt solid. He felt
real
. But Agnes had said earlier they weren’t corporeal anymore. So what were they?

“You said Patrick haunts the café. So that’s what our lives are? We’re what, spirits? Ghosts?”

“You aren’t a ghost. I said ‘haunt’ because he won’t move on. Over the years I’ve wondered if he was called to be a permanent Guide, like Karin, but I think I just didn’t have all of the pieces. It makes more sense now.”

Benji was glad it made sense to her, because things were rapidly making
less
sense to him the more they spoke.

“Patrick’s problem has always been his inability to take anything on blind faith. You want to know what you are, son? You’re exactly what you were when you were human. Energy and matter and grace. Patrick talks about plasma states and harmonic frequencies and atom vibrations, but at the heart of it, that’s just denial.”

She pinned him with an intense stare that made Benji feel uncomfortably exposed and like she wasn’t seeing him, exactly. Or at least not just him. It wasn’t lost on him that she’d never once said “we” when answering his questions.
You aren’t a ghost. You’re made of energy.
Not we. Benji shivered under the force of her gaze. Maybe he didn’t want to know what Agnes was.

Her expression softened. “You’re whatever you want to be, Benjamin. You didn’t get the chance to figure that out when you were alive, and it’s a lesson you’re going to learn here before you can move on. But you won’t be here long. You aren’t a stranger to stepping out in faith.”

He had no idea what that meant. His mother was religious, but once he’d flown the nest he’d become a Christmas and Easter kind of guy, the kind of lapsed Catholic that made his mother suck her teeth in disapproval when they clumsily knelt on the risers, out of practice and bored during the interminable holiday masses.

Agnes smiled. “Faith is a broad term, son,” she said, and Benji wondered if she could read his mind. “Think of it as trust in the unknown. And Patrick? That’s too raw for him. At least, until now.”

Benji didn’t know how he factored into that, but the significant look she gave him left no question as to what had changed. The air between them felt charged, like Agnes was about to give him another energy whammy. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and Benji shivered. He wasn’t scared of Agnes, per se, but he felt the need to put some distance between them, however meager that was when they were both trapped inside the confines of CASA.

Agnes nodded even though he hadn’t said anything and started walking briskly toward the door. They were in Bambini Mondo, a place that had always appealed to his inner child but now seemed cloyingly bright and claustrophobic.

Karin was waiting for them at the elevators, a tense expression on her face. She’d traded her CASA uniform for a trim navy blue dress that looked like the ones his mother had worn back in the sixties when she’d been a stewardess. He blinked, wondering if Karin was just into retro clothes or if that was the outfit she’d died in. It was a damn sight better than stained jeans and a ratty T-shirt.

He turned to thank Agnes for her help, confusing though it had been, but she’d disappeared. He whirled around. Bambini Mondo was empty, and Agnes wasn’t walking up the stopped escalator, either. She was just gone.

Karin offered him a wry smile and then disappeared as well. He blinked hard, jumping when a second later she was standing in front of him again, this time in the familiar yellow polo shirt and jeans he’d seen her wearing before.

She leaned against the elevator doors, and Benji had to bite back a warning that it wasn’t a safe place. No one else was in the CASA, though he didn’t know if it was late at night or early in the morning. Or if the other ghosts—or whatever the hell they were—could operate the thing. But Karin didn’t look concerned that the doors might open and she’d plummet to her death—probably because she was already dead.

And wasn’t that a mindfuck.

“First thing to know: this isn’t a punishment. Yes, it’s purgatory. But you’re here to help other people, not because you’re atoning for anything.”

Benji gave her a dubious look. “I thought purgatory—”

She shook her head ruefully. “Catholic, am I right?”

He pursed his lips. “Lapsed.”

Karin laughed and clapped her hands together in delight. “So the fact that there’s a purgatory isn’t the hard sell for you, it’s the lack of atonement thing. Think of this as a clearinghouse to the other side. A pit stop where you have the chance to make a difference before moving on to wherever you are going next.”

“But where am I going next? Heaven?”

She shrugged. “Only you can decide that. I’ve seen atheists and agnostics move on. I’ve seen people who were Hindu, Jewish, Muslim—your beliefs don’t matter, as long as some part of you believes there’s something to move on
to
. Maybe it’s reincarnation. Maybe there is a heaven. Who knows? The point is that you accept whatever it is you’ll see when you walk through that door,” she said, nodding toward the main entrance. The one that had opened up to a terrifying void when he’d last seen them open.

She pushed off her spot against the elevator and started leading him through the store. “Okay, so that was number one. The second thing to keep in mind is that just as what comes after is up to you, so is what happens here.”

Benji bit back a snort at that. He’d had less than no control over anything since arriving at the CASA.

“No, it’s true. Some people are here only long enough to do what they need to accomplish so they can move on. The howler at the SPÖL, for example.”

“Howler?”

“Of course Patrick wouldn’t introduce himself or bother trying to explain anything,” she muttered. She was smiling again when she looked up, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “The howler was the gentleman you and Patrick helped move on yesterday.”

“I helped a… howler? Person?” Benji drew a blank.

Karin sighed and dipped her head. “Patrick likes to give things pet names, as I’m sure you’ve learned by now. A howler is a spirit that’s highly distraught. They cry and yell. And according to Patrick, keep him from his blessed beauty sleep.”

Patrick and Benji had talked to several people, but Benji definitely didn’t remember helping anyone move on. He wasn’t even sure what that meant. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Karin’s expression grew grimmer. “Maybe we should start with what you do know. Did Patrick tell you anything at all?”

Benji shrugged, feeling uncomfortably put on the spot. “He told me I was dead and this is purgatory, and that we can either move on to heaven or hell after we’re done here. That’s about it.”

Her smile was sharp and brittle, like it was costing her a lot of effort to keep on her face. “There’s a good deal more to it than that. Did you ask him any questions about your death?”

He nodded. At least, he’d tried to ask them. Patrick hadn’t been forthcoming with answers, which Benji was learning was par for the course. He divulged amazingly little for someone who rarely shut up.

“And he didn’t answer them, did he?” She groaned out loud when Benji shook his head. “It’s not unusual for you not to remember your death. That will come with time. And I don’t know the details,” she said, holding her hand up when he started to talk. “All I know is that a product from CASA was involved. That’s why you’re here. And as for how you move on, well, you save someone from the same fate.”

Benji puzzled that out as he followed her through the store. She walked fast, and he wondered if that was something she’d done before she’d died or a trait she’d developed after coming to CASA. It was a huge space, but why hurry? They had an eternity, didn’t they? What was the point of rushing anywhere?

They finally came to a stop in front of a familiar BRESIA stepladder. “For example, a new spirit entered our part of CASA a little after three in the afternoon. He was gone before I could fit him in for orientation, which I’d planned to do as soon as the store closed.”

She ran a hand up the smooth dark finish of the stepladder, and she lingered along one of the thin legs, gripping it in a manner that made Benji arch a brow.

He assumed from Karin’s demeanor she didn’t have any flirtatious proclivities toward him. He hadn’t known her long enough to make that judgment call. He swallowed. Patrick had left a hell of an impression on him.

“He was able to leave a little before six in the evening,” she said, and Benji was thankful for her to break the awkward silence. He nodded obediently, indicating he was listening. “Patrick helped him save a young man who would have been killed by this in three years. I imagine the spirit shared his fate. The only thing I know for sure is that this was involved,” she said, patting the top step of the ladder, “and that Patrick helped him by convincing the man to buy some floor grips that would prevent it from slipping out from under him.”

It looked so utterly nonthreatening. Benji couldn’t imagine it or anything else around them killing someone. What had the culprit been for him? He didn’t own the BRESIA, but 90 percent of his apartment was furnished from CASA. Or had been. It wasn’t his anymore. The dead couldn’t own things, could they?

He sat heavily on a stool in the sleekly modern kitchen unit. God, did anyone know he was dead yet? Who would find his body? The school, probably. The vice principal usually went out to check on staff who didn’t show up for work. The worst thing she’d ever found in Benji’s tenure was the PE teacher drunk as a skunk playing croquet in his front yard. He swallowed and looked down at his hands, flexing them. There were still a few stray specks of glitter under his nails. Stuck with him for eternity, probably, just like the god-awful clothes he was wearing.

Except that he
could
do something about. “How did you do it?” he asked suddenly, his head snapping up. Karin was still leaning against the BRESIA, looking at him with obvious concern.

“Do what?”

“Change,” he said, sweeping his hand in her direction. “Your clothes.”

Her lips dropped open in surprise. She’d probably expected him to have a thousand questions about purgatory and moving on. And before he died, Benji would have. He also would have inquired about the new spirit and made sure he’d actually moved on and wasn’t wandering around the store just as disoriented and bleary as he’d been when Benji had met him. But where had a lifetime of good deeds and compassion gotten him? He’d lived a half-life while he was alive, and now he seemed destined for a half death as well. It was bullshit. And he wasn’t going to just roll over and take it.

“Well, like I said, it’s your choice,” she said.

“And if I decided I didn’t want to be here?”

She inclined her head, her expression kind if a little stretched. “Patrick, Agnes, and I will help you figure out what you need to do to move on—”

“No. What if I decided
I didn’t want to be here
?” he repeated, slower this time. “You said I could do whatever I wanted. What if what I want isn’t to change my clothes, Karin? What if what I want is to leave?”

Her pasted-on smile faltered. “You can’t leave, Benji.”