dad set his fork down and I caught a rare glimpse of the concern swirling in his eyes. “I’m worried about you, Kaylee.”
“Don’t be. Nothing’s changed.” But that wasn’t true, and even if it had been, it wouldn’t have set him at ease. My life wasn’t exactly normal before I died, and death had done nothing to improve that.
“You don’t eat. You hardly ever talk anymore, and I haven’t seen you watch TV or pick up a book in days. I walk into your room, and half the time you’re not there, even when you’re there.”
“I’m working on that,” I mumbled, swirling a bite of pancake in a puddle of syrup. “Corporeality is harder than it looks. It takes practice.” And concentration.
“Are you sure you’re ready for school? We could give it another week.” But he seemed to regret the words as soon as he’d said them. Another week off would mean another week of me sitting around the house doing nothing when I wasn’t training as an extractor, and that’s what was worrying him in the first place.
“I need to go. They all know today’s the day.”
“They” were my teachers, classmates, and the local television stations. I was big news—the girl who’d survived being stabbed by her own math teacher. My father had stopped answering the home phone, and we’d had to change my cell number when someone leaked it to the press. They all wanted to know what it was like to nearly die. To kill the man who’d tried to kill me. They wanted to know how I’d survived.
None of them could ever know the truth—that I hadn’t survived. That was part of the deal—allowing me to live my afterlife like my murder had never happened. Protecting my secret meant keeping up with schoolwork and work-work, in addition to my new duties extracting souls from those who shouldn’t have them.
“If anything goes wrong, I want you to call me,” my father said, and I nodded. I wasn’t going to tell him that if anything went wrong, I could blink out of school and into my own room before he could even get to his car in the parking lot at work. He knew that. He was just trying to help and to stay involved, and I loved him for it. For that, and for the pancakes, even if I had no real desire to eat them.
We both sipped our coffee, and I noticed that his appetite seemed to have disappeared, too. Then he set his mug down and picked up a strip of bacon. “You know, I’ve been thinking about this Friday …” He left the sentence hanging while he took a bite.
“What’s this Friday?” I asked, and my father frowned.
“Your birthday, Kaylee.”
For a moment, I could only blink at him, mentally denying the possibility, while I counted the days in my head. Time had lost all meaning over the past month. Tod said that was normal—something about absent circadian rhythms—but it didn’t seem possible that I could have forgotten my own birthday.
“I’m turning seventeen …” I whispered.
Except that I wasn’t. The anniversary of my birth would come and go, but I’d still be sixteen and eleven-twelfths. I’d be sixteen and eleven-twelfths forever—at least physically. I would always look too young to vote. Too young to drink. Too young to drive a rental car, should that urge ever strike. And none of those limitations had ever seemed more pointless. What did it matter?
What did any of it matter, anymore?
“So, who do you want to invite to the party?” My dad picked up his mug and sipped, waiting for my answer.
I frowned. “I don’t want a party.” Very few people knew I hadn’t really lived, and of those, Nash and Sabine—my ex and his ex—currently hated me for framing Nash for my murder. I’d had no choice, and I’d accepted the duties of my afterlife mostly to unframe Nash—if I wasn’t dead, he couldn’t have killed me. But I couldn’t blame him for hating me.
Still, even if Nash and Sabine both came, there wouldn’t be enough of my real friends to constitute a party, and I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone else.
“So, what do you usually do on your birthday?” He didn’t know the answer to his own question because he’d left me with my aunt and uncle—his brother—after my mother died. I’d only had him back for seven months.
He regretted leaving me—I knew that for a fact—and that regret was infinitely heavier for him, now that I was dead.
“Em and I usually rent movies and binge on junk food.” But that wouldn’t work this year. I’d never had a boyfriend on my birthday before, and I’d never had a father on my birthday before. And I’d certainly never been dead on my birthday before.
My dad looked so disappointed I wanted to hug him. So I did the next best thing. “Fine. A party. But a small one. Friends and family only.”
He gave me half a smile. “Decorations?”
“No. But you can get a cake. Chocolate, with cream cheese frosting. And I get a corner slice.” If my appetite ever came back, I planned to eat whatever the hell I wanted, for the rest of my afterlife. Calories mean nothing to the dead. “And I wouldn’t turn down a couple of presents.”
“Done.” He gave me a real smile that time, and I was relieved to see it. “I’m sorry I missed all the other birthdays, Kay.”
I shrugged. “You didn’t miss much.”
My dad opened his mouth to protest, but before he could speak, a tall woman in a brown suit skirt appeared in the kitchen in sensible low heels, her short brown hair perfectly arranged. “Jeez, Madeline.” My dad half choked, then gulped from his mug to clear his throat. “Ever hear of knocking?”
Madeline raised one perfectly arched brow at him. “Mr. Cavanaugh, I’m doing you a courtesy by letting you see and hear me at all. If that isn’t good enough for you, I can appear to Kaylee alone.”
Madeline was my boss in the reclamation department—she was the one who’d okayed the cover-up that hid my death and kept Nash from going down for my murder. She was also the only department member I’d met so far. My dad didn’t like her. She hadn’t bothered to form an opinion of him one way or another.
“It’s fine. Would you like some coffee?” He held up the untouched mug he’d fixed for me.
“This is not a social visit, Mr. Cavanaugh.” Madeline turned to me, arms crossed over her white blouse. “Kaylee, there’s some question about whether or not you’re ready to begin work on your own as an extractor. Four weeks is a rather short training period, we admit, but the soul thief you were restored to deal with has killed again, and we can’t let this continue if there’s any chance you’re ready to take him or her on now.”
A dull knot of fear blossomed deep in my stomach and I fed it with doubts about my own abilities because I knew I should be scared. I would be, if not for the pervasive numbness that settled deeper into me with each day of my afterlife.
“Wait a minute—who is this thief, and why does Kaylee have to be the one to stop him? No one ever bothered to explain that to me. After all, I’m just her father.”
Madeline focused her steely stare at him. “We don’t know who or what the thief is, Mr. Cavanaugh. That’s part of what we need Kaylee to find out. But we’ve already lost two agents chasing him, and
