“What could you do for him?”

“As a signing bonus, if you agree to work for us, the reclamation department will arrange for Mr. Hudson’s escape from police custody.”

“So he can be on the run for the rest of his life? No way.” I shook my head firmly, desperately hoping I wasn’t pushing my luck. Hoping they needed me as badly as it sounded like they needed me.

“How long since I died?” I asked. If Nash hadn’t been charged yet, it couldn’t have been that long.

“Only a couple of hours,” Madeline answered.

“But…” That didn’t make any sense. “It took you guys more than a week to bring Tod back as a reaper after he died.” He’d actually been buried and everything.

Madeline glanced at Levi with a small, arrogant smile, then met my gaze again. “Reapers are a dime a dozen, Kaylee. The reclamation department has considerably more resources and, in this case, much stronger motivation. We need your help with something very important, and we need it soon. So we expedited the process.”

I nodded slowly, still thinking. “You have to make it go away, or my answer’s no.”

“You want us to clear Nash’s name?”

“No, I want to clear his name.” I’d dragged him into this; I had to get him out of it. “I want you to make the crime disappear. No murder. I was attacked by my math teacher—to which I’m willing to testify—but I survived, and Nash had nothing to do with it.”

“Kaylee, we can’t reverse your death.”

“I know.” I sucked in a deep breath, relieved that my lungs seemed to work, even if my heart didn’t. “But you can cover it up. If I work for you, I get to keep my body, right? Like Tod did?”

“You can become corporeal at will, yes,” Madeline said slowly, obviously starting to follow my train of thought.

“Then who says I died? I haven’t been buried. I haven’t been autopsied…”

“Kaylee, you died in a public hospital,” Levi pointed out. “Your death has been documented. It was witnessed.”

I shrugged, still watching Madeline. “So make the paperwork go away. The news stories could just be false reports of my death. That’s happened before, right? And you can make the witnesses forget, can’t you? People see things. It’s inevitable. So someone must be cleaning up after them, right? You must have someone who can make them forget…”

Her frown deepened, but I could see the possibility in her eyes. “Kaylee, what you’re suggesting is quite complicated and would require considerable resources….”

“But you can do it, right?” I held my breath—or rather, I stopped breathing—waiting for her answer, hoping I was right.

Madeline glanced at Levi, and he shrugged. Then she turned to me again.“Yes. It’s possible. But only at great expense, and I’m not convinced your services are worth what you’re asking for.”

“Really?” I lifted my eyebrows, resisting the urge to cross my fingers. “So, you have other female bean sidhes? You already have someone who can call out to the soul you want reclaimed?”

I knew I’d won when her gaze narrowed and her jaw clenched.

“Fine. It’ll take a couple of hours to set up, but…you never died. You were transferred to a private hospital to recover, and you’ll be rejoining your classmates in a couple of weeks. After you’ve finished this first job for us.” I nodded, trying not to visibly gloat. “But Kaylee, that won’t last,” she warned. “You can finish school—you might even make it through college—but eventually people are going to notice that you don’t age. You’re going to have to disappear.”

“I know.” But that was no big deal—if I’d lived, I’d have looked thirty on my one hundredth birthday. I’d always expected to have to disappear eventually.

I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “There’s one more thing….”

Madeline blew on my signature to dry the ink, then handed me my copy of the contract. I’d read the whole thing, and even understood most of it. And thanks to Addison’s mistakes, I knew to demand my own copy.

“We’re so pleased to have you on board, Kaylee,” she said, folding her copy of my contract into thirds while I folded the hospital gown and laid it on the empty bed, glad to be wearing real clothes again, even if they’d been “borrowed” from some other patient. “We’ll be in touch very soon about your first assignment.”

I didn’t care that she was pleased. I didn’t give a damn about the assignment. I just wanted to go home.

“Are you ready?” Levi asked, watching me closely through his dead child eyes, and it occurred to me for the first time how much he and I had in common. I’d lived longer, but he’d been dead longer. And someday I might catch up to him.

“Yeah.” I accepted the hand he held out, then took one final glance around the empty hospital room we’d appropriated for my statement to the police. “Get me out of here.”

I closed my eyes and waited for the dizziness and disorientation that usually accompanied reaper-travel. But I felt nothing. The first indication I had that we’d left the hospital was the change in temperature. Then the whisper of hushed voices.

I opened my eyes, still holding Levi’s hand. We stood in Nash’s kitchen, alone, but I could hear movement and voices from the living room. And crying. Everyone was here, because my house was the scene of a double homicide, my mattress still soaked with two types of blood—one of them mine.