Kelly Mendig - Three Days to Dead

“What’s changed?”

Everything. Me, him, the world. We weren’t the same people we’d been, even five minutes ago. As my memories returned, I would continue to evolve. Into someone who battled against foreign desire and fought for duty above self. One who would be dead again in fifty-something hours. One who would leave him again.

“Evy?”

He stood toe-to-toe, drilling me with his intense gaze. I looked down, unable to drum up any of my previous levity. All I felt was consuming sadness—heavy, palpable, and suffocating.

“We should go,” I said. “We’re running out of time.”

I opened the service door and fled into the bright third-floor corridor. Wyatt followed at a distance, and we did not speak again until we returned to his car.

“Chalice!”

The stranger’s voice bounced off the building behind me. I froze in place, fingers brushing the door handle. On the other side of the car, Wyatt tensed. We both turned in the direction of the library.

A boy in his late teens jogged down the sidewalk, his long brown hair flowing behind in tangled strands. He wore baggy jeans and moved with all of the grace of a newborn foal. He stumbled once, but kept going, intent on me.

“Hey, Chal,” he said, putting on the brakes. He almost overshot me.

“Hey,” I replied, not a clue who the kid was. Damn Chalice for having friends.

“What happened to you yesterday?” He had a high, nasally voice that, I imagined, became quite irritating after long-term exposure. “Dude, Baxter was furious when you didn’t show, and then he got all worried, ’cause you’re never late.” He eyed the bandage on my forearm. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I am now,” I said, holding up my arm. Lies tumbled out of my mouth. “Grease fire in my apartment. My, um, brother, Wyatt, over there was visiting, and he wanted to make stir-fry. He sloshed the oil and it got me, but then I had a bad reaction to painkillers at the hospital or I would have called. Tell … uh …” What name had he said? “Tell Baxter I’m sorry.”

The kid cocked his head to the left, analyzing one of those sentences. With my luck, Chalice was an only child and everyone knew it. He’d call me on it, and I’d have to fudge another lie.

“Tell Baxter yourself, Chal; he’ll be there when you go on-shift tonight,” he finally said.

I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle relieved laughter. Yeah, that was going to happen. “Right, sure. Look, I hate to be rude, but I really have to go.”

“Yeah, okay.” He shrugged one shoulder, seeming unbothered by my abrupt dismissal. He looked across the car and offered Wyatt a half-assed salute. “Dude, your sister’s awesome.” He turned and continued his wobble-legged journey down the street.

After he managed to put about twenty feet of distance between us, I turned and placed my palms flat against the top of the car. “That was somewhat surreal.”

“Brother?” Wyatt asked, still ghostly pale from his summoning exertion, but seeming less likely to be bowled over by a strong wind.

“It slipped out. At least I didn’t say that I missed my shift because I was dead and hadn’t made my four o’clock resurrection appointment yet.”

“His expression would have been priceless.”

“Why couldn’t I have woken up in the body of a homeless person that nobody knew? This has the potential to become very, very complicated.”

“I think we’ve passed that mile marker already. You said you met Chalice’s roommate. Now we know she has a job somewhere, so people are bound to recognize her.”

“Not to mention the suicide report that some city cop has probably filed away with Chalice’s photo in it.”

He blew air through his lips, eyebrows scrunching. “We need to make you disappear, Evy. Get Chalice Frost erased from the system.”

“You’re thinking of this now?”

“I’ve been a little distracted by other details, like tracking you down and tending to your self-healing wounds. If you’d come back where you were supposed to, it wouldn’t be an issue.”

I rolled my eyes.

He mimicked me, and then said, “We need to get this done so we can keep focusing on your memory.”

He was right. Hoping that Chalice Frost’s former life wouldn’t become a problem had been idiotic. We should have dealt with it right away. Time to correct a mistake. I just didn’t know what to do about Alex Forrester, but knocking him out cold and locking him in a closet for the next two days sounded promising.

I opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat. “So how do we do this?”

Wyatt turned the key and the car engine roared to life. “I need to stop by a bakery.”

I stared.

He winked. “Trust me.”

55:20

I balanced the bakery box in both hands, careful to not drop and ruin the expensive treat inside as I ascended the rickety metal staircase. Wyatt led the way up, taking the steps two at a time. The interior of the service stairwell smelled of forgetfulness and disuse.

We had returned to downtown. Wyatt had left me in the running car while he ran into a bakery and, moments later, returned with a white box. I hadn’t opened it, but a sticker on the side said “CSCK—Cherry Top.” Given the shape and weight of the box, I silently translated that into “Cheesecake—Cherry Topping.” I had kept my questions to myself, even when Wyatt drove us back toward Mercy’s Lot.

Halfway there, he had said, “You know, you’re showing amazing restraint.”

“With what? The cheesecake?”

A tiny smile. “No, with not asking me about the night you died. And who else was in the room.”

“You’ll tell me when I need to know something.”

“Fair enough.”

After reaching the outskirts of Mercy’s Lot, he had parked in front of an abandoned potato chip factory and said we needed to head to the top level.

Six flights up I smelled it. Faint at first, and then gradually stronger—the eye-watering stench of fermented sugar. I felt like I was walking into a distillery, and that clued me in as to who we were visiting.

Gremlins are the cockroaches of Dregs. They live short lives in the dark (eight days is the record), reproduce like bunnies, and are hard to kill. They are also hermaphroditic. On the fourth day of their lives they produce and fertilize litters of twelve, which are fully grown within twenty-four hours. Gremlins are as notorious for causing havoc with machinery as they are for having a sweet tooth. Existing almost entirely on a sugar-based diet, their waste created the alcoholic smell that permeated the upper floors of the factory.

I’m still waiting for some brave soul to start marketing Gremlin Piss Schnapps.

Flexible as putty and ugly as sin, the eighteen-inch-tall creatures didn’t fear the Triads. Instead of death and destruction, they specialized in causing trouble and occasional mayhem. We had no reason to hunt them. Their only natural enemies were gargoyles—as a crunchy snack or sport hunting, I didn’t know—and their own brief life spans.

On the seventh level, I began to hear the scuffling sounds of small feet racing back and forth. They knew we were there; it was only a matter of seconds before they sent an emissary. Gremlins did not speak to outsiders en masse. They rarely showed their full strength, and given the size of the factory (and the stink), there could easily be thousands of gremlins breeding in the shadows.

We reached the eighth floor. A reinforced fire door blocked the top of the stairwell. Wyatt banged his open palm against it.

“Ballengee be blessed,” he shouted. His voice bounced off the enclosed space, and I clutched the bakery box closer. More scuffling preceded a single set of footsteps.