So Victor was right. It had been a setup. Eli had staged a killing as a rescue. He had to admit, it was one way to get away with murder.
“I mean, I’m dead, right? This isn’t some shit prank?”
“You were dead,” said Victor. “Now, thanks to my friend, Sydney, you’re a bit less dead.”
Barry was spluttering curses and crackling like a sparkler. “What did you do?” He spat at Sydney. “You broke me.” Sydney frowned as he continued to short out, lighting up the grave in a strange, camera-flash kind of way. She had never resurrected an EO before. She wasn’t sure if all the pieces would—could—come back. “You broke my power, you little—”
“We have a job for you,” cut in Victor.
“Fuck off, does it look like I want a job? I want to get out of this fucking coffin.”
“I think you want to take this job.”
“Blow me. You’re Victor Vale, right? Ever told me about you when he was trying to recruit me.”
“It’s nice that he remembers,” said Victor, his patience wearing thin.
“Yeah, think you’re high and mighty, causing pain and shit? Well I’m not afraid of you.” He flickered in and out again. “Got that? Let me out and I’ll show you pain.”
Sydney watched Victor’s hand tighten into a fist, and felt the air hum around her, but Barry didn’t seem to feel anything. Something was wrong. She’d gone through the motions, given him a second chance, but he hadn’t come back the way the ordinary humans had, not all the way. The air stopped humming, and the man in the coffin cackled.
“Hah, see? Your little bitch messed up, didn’t she? I don’t feel a thing! You can’t hurt me!”
At that, Victor straightened.
“Oh, sure I can,” he said pleasantly. “I can shut the lid. Put the dirt back. Walk away. Hey,” he called up to Sydney, who was still swinging her legs over the side of the grave. “How long would it take for an undead to become dead again?”
Sydney wanted to explain to Victor that the people she resurrected weren’t undead, they were alive, and, as far as she could tell, they were perfectly mortal—well, aside from this little nerve issue—but she knew where he was going with this and what he wanted to hear, so she looked down at Barry Lynch, and shrugged dramatically. “I’ve never seen an undead go dead again on their own. So I’m guessing forever.”
“That’s a long time,” said Victor. Barry’s cursing and his taunts had died away. “Why don’t we let you think on it? Come back in a few days?” Sydney tossed Victor his shovel, and a spray of dirt tumbled down on the coffin lid like rain.
“Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait,” begged Barry, trying to claw his way out of the coffin and finding his feet trapped. Victor had nailed his pants to the wooden floorboards before they got started. It had been Sydney’s idea, actually, just to be safe. Now Barry panicked and flickered and began to whimper, and Victor rested the spade under the man’s chin and smiled.
“So you’ll take the job?”
XXXVI
LAST NIGHT
THE ESQUIRE HOTEL
“WHAT happened back there, Sydney?”
Victor was still knocking dirt off his boots as they climbed the stairs to the hotel room—he didn’t like elevators—with Sydney taking the steps two at a time beside him.
“Why didn’t Barry come back the way he should?”
Sydney chewed her lip. “I don’t know,” she said, winded from the climb. “I’ve been trying to figure it out. Maybe … maybe it’s because EOs have already had their second chance?”
“Did it feel different?” pressed Victor. “When you tried to resurrect him?”
She wrapped her arms around herself, and nodded. “It didn’t feel right. Normally, it’s like there’s this thread, something to grab onto, but with him, it was hard to reach, and it kept slipping. I didn’t get a good hold.”
Victor was quiet until they reached the seventh floor.