Page 22 of How to Survive Your Own Death

Downside: terrifying.

Upside: Bazel said she needed skin-on-skin contact. This should do it.

CHAPTER 7

GERI

A simple touch did nothing.

The barista threw her head back and wailed. It was soul shattering.

Bazel said a touch. They were definitely touching. Geri couldn’t be not-touching if she wanted. Clearly the reaper lied.

“Why isn’t this working?” Fear snuck its way into her voice, which shouldn’t have surprised her because she was holding onto a wailing… something. She tried to shake off the barista but her grip was too tight.

“You must open the void,” Bazel replied from the other side of the counter.

Was he bored? He sounded bored.

“How the hell do I do that?” She shook off the barista.

“I use a scythe.”

Yup, bored.

Geri turned to give him a glare. “Do I look like a seventeenth century farmer to you?”

This job really was the worst: no training, just panic and screaming and a boss telling her to use the flibbertigibbet like she should have known that.

The barista grabbed her again, yanking her arm. Geri flinched, expecting a bite or searing pain. Instead, she found a frightened woman clinging to her, wordlessly asking for help.

Geri grabbed the cake server from on top of the pastry case. She slashed the air in the barista’s direction.

A long sigh escaped Carrie’s lips and the light left her eyes. She crumpled to the floor.

Geri dropped the cake server and it clattered to the floor.

“Lady, what did you do?” the guy with the mop asked—and not in a nice way.

“Nothing. She just fell.” Geri cradled her arm to her chest and rubbed where the barista had gripped her. The skin felt cold.

When the paramedics arrived, she used the confusion to slip away. Bazel and Bones followed, of course. She tried to ignore the way they simply melted through the crowds as she pushed her bike along the sidewalk.

She couldn’t see Bazel’s face but she just knew he was about to say something.

Holding up a finger to silence him, she said, “Not now. Just… just be quiet.”

She walked in silence, gathering her thoughts. It was a lot. The last week had been a lot.

The phone in the bike’s basket—which had not been there five minutes ago—vibrated with another message.

Geri reached over and tossed it to the ground.

“It will return,” Bazel said.

“No shit. I wish my latte would magic its way back to me. Fuck.” She clenched the handle bars, wishing she had a horn to honk or a steering wheel to pound. The bike had a little bell and that was not the same thing at all. “That was an eight-dollar latte.”

“It would be more affordable if⁠—”