Chapter 17
Dell and Cole continued walking hand in hand down the long street. They weren’t alone. Other people came and went, all of
them looking just as alive as Dell felt.
“Where does this street lead?” she asked, squinting to see in the distance. There were no cross streets, and as far as she
could tell, the sidewalks and road disappeared up ahead.
“Nowhere,” Cole said. “Well, here, I guess. Over and over.”
“What does that mean?” she asked with an uneasy frown.
“It means if you keep walking that way”—he pointed in front of them—“or that way”—he pointed behind them—“you’ll end up right
here. It loops you back to the start.”
A tingle danced up Dell’s spine. They really were stuck. Even if her surroundings looked and smelled pleasing, the thought
there was no escape pinched her gut with worry.
“So, then, what is this place? Just one long street?” she asked as they passed shops selling bicycles, flowers, linens. A
small park with a fountain appeared across the street.
“More or less. It’s a holding zone for after you are transitioned and before you move on. You have to go through processing.” He pointed at a building up ahead. It was so tall, the top of it disappeared into the clouds. Dell could only imagine what was on all those floors.
“Processing?” she asked.
“It’s when your transition specialist confirms your case file is accurate and complete, and you are sent to the top floor
for moving on.”
Dell craned her neck again, trying to see the top of the skyscraper. “Does this building house the whole administration?”
“Yes.”
They were close enough now Dell could see Afterlife Administration in shiny gold letters above a set of revolving glass doors.
She was puzzling it all out in her mind, trying to understand how this place existed at all, and how it functioned. “So, assuming
someone was transitioned on purpose and not stuck on earth in a coma, they would just . . . wake up here?”
He shot her a guilty glance, knowing she was referring to her own situation, and nodded. “Yes. You come to on the thirteenth
floor, where I work: Transitions.”
“Lucky number thirteen. And then what happens?”
“Your specialist confirms your case is complete, and you are sent to the top floor.”
“So, if I’d died for real, I would have woken up in some corporate conference room?”
“It’s more of an office, but initially, yes. Just for the paperwork part. Then you are moved on.”
“Huh. I’ve heard death on earth is just paperwork. Good to know it extends to the afterlife too.”
They’d arrived at the revolving doors. Cole held out his arm to let Dell go in first.
“And all of these people—” Dell asked, gesturing at the busy doors and lobby they stepped into, “they all work here too?”
“I’d use the term people loosely, but yes, they work here in some capacity.”
Dell looked around in wonder. It could have been a corporate building in any big city. Skirts, suits, clacking high heels,
shiny dress shoes. Everyone looked like they had somewhere important to go and something important to do. She wondered where
they’d all come from, and what exactly Cole meant by loosely calling them people, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t know if
she asked.
They headed toward a bank of elevators as Dell thought of another question. “So, in your case, when your death is untimely
and accidental, you just . . . hang out here?”
“Correct. You arrive like everyone else, but you are sent to the DAD, and based on your wait time, you can opt to just wait
it out or take a job with the administration while they investigate your case.” He pointed across the lobby to a large screen
lit up with the words Now serving case number: 113,041,842,543,083,047.
Dell balked at the number. She didn’t even know what it was, a quadrillion something? “What’s your case number?” she asked
Cole.
“A lot higher than that one,” he said with a frown. He pressed the elevator call button, and Dell couldn’t help noticing the
tick in his jaw, the tapping of his foot. Clearly, he was uneasy about facing his supervisor.
“Hey, what’s the worst that could happen? We’re already dead,” she said with a little grin to soothe him.
“You forget that I am, and you are not. Not all the way, anyway. And to say I’m a little worried about all the rules we broke on earth would
be an understatement.”
Dell rolled her eyes. “You and your rules. We didn’t harm anyone. In fact, we exposed a crime. Your supervisor should thank us.”
The elevator dinged, and they stepped inside. The small box had a metallic scent Dell could almost taste.
“Beatrice is not one to say thank you,” Cole said, and pressed the button for the thirteenth floor. It lit up, and they lifted
off the ground.
The ride felt faster than it should for climbing thirteen floors, but Dell was pretty sure the top floor of the building reached
into the cosmos, so they weren’t exactly abiding by logical physics.
When they arrived, Cole led her into an open office space that looked like one she’d seen on TV. Having only ever worked in
kitchens, Dell only had TV as a reference for what an office looked like. The long, rectangular room held a grid of cubicles,
each with a desk, a computer, and someone sitting in a chair tapping away at a keyboard.
“Where’s yours?” she asked Cole, and nodded at the bullpen area.
“Over there. I’ll give you a tour if we have time after.” He pointed to their left and continued walking along the outer path
beside the cubes. Dell tried to imagine what his desk looked like. On earth, Dr. Cole Lewis’s desk had probably held an unorganized
array of books and notes, maybe student papers in need of grading. His favorite coffee mug, stained from overuse. Perhaps
a photo of Chaucer. Here in the afterlife, it probably looked like his apartment: neat, plain, dull.
“So, why is this place half awesome and half miserably bleak?” Dell asked, gesturing at the cubicles. “I mean, outside looks like a watercolor dreamscape, and inside looks like a comedic rendering of Corporate Hell.”
Cole’s mouth twitched with a tiny smile, and Dell wondered if he’d used the same description. “Because this is just a holding
zone. The architects didn’t put in the same effort as in the true afterlife. No one is supposed to be here that long, so it
didn’t need to be beautiful. But when the department started getting backed up, they put in a few amenities to ease the wait.”
“Hence the mishmash of pleasant sights and smells but absence of food and interior decorators. Got it,” Dell said.
“Exactly.” Cole turned them down a hall and approached a closed door. Outside it, he stopped and took a deep breath. He turned
to her with a pleading look. “Dell, I want you to know I’m sorry for dragging you into this whole mess, but the time I’ve
spent with you will have been worth whatever we’re about to face.”
In the back of her mind, Dell wondered just how frightened of Beatrice she should be. But in the front of her mind, she could
only think she agreed with Cole. The past day and a half had rerouted her life—and death—in ways she never could have imagined.
And being with him felt as right as the rising sun.
She rose up on her toes and kissed him. “For the record, I forgive you.”
“I’m not sure I deserve it, but I’ll take it,” he said. He took another breath and reached out to knock on Beatrice’s door.
“Enter,” a woman said from the other side.
Nerves crested in Dell’s chest when they stepped inside only to fall flat when she got a view of Beatrice.
Where she’d expected some vicious dragon lady, maybe even a literal demon, sat a petite woman in a loud pink cardigan and cat-eye glasses.
She could have been twenty or fifty; Dell could not guess her age. But she didn’t look scary at all.
“Ah, Mr. Lewis. Thank you for arriving promptly,” she said from behind her sturdy desk. Its thick wooden legs looked like
tree trunks rooted into the floor. The rest of the office looked well-worn with crowded bookshelves, draping plants, tall
file cabinets.
“Of course, ma’am,” Cole said as if it had been no bother to be zapped from earth to some inexplicable pocket of space and
time with no warning—naked, for that matter.
Dell smoothed her hands over her dress’s skirt, still recovering.
Beatrice turned her feline gaze on her. “Ms. Verdella Rodgers. The name that launched a thousand mistakes.”
Dell involuntarily quivered at the chill in her voice and suddenly understood why Cole was so on edge. “Hello,” she said despite
feeling like acknowledging the description was somehow admitting fault.
“On behalf of the administration, I do apologize for the mistake that led us here, at least initially,” Beatrice said demurely.
The apology settled over Dell with a different weight than the many times Cole had said it. Sure, they were responsible for
her untimely death, and if they were an earthbound organization, she’d have license to sue, but dying had ultimately saved
her life. In more ways than one.
“That’s okay,” Dell said. “I actually learned a lot of things I needed to know, with Cole’s help.” She looked up at him standing
beside her and took his hand.
He gave her a tiny, soft smile.
Beatrice interrupted the moment with a loud clearing of her throat. “Yes, you two seem to have really hit it off.”
Dell cringed inside, wondering just how much of what she and Cole had been up to Beatrice was privy to.
“About that, ma’am—” Cole started.
Beatrice held up her hand to cut him off. “Mr. Lewis, do you remember what I said to you before you left my office the last
time?”
Cole nervously swallowed. Dell felt his hand tighten around hers. “That I had three days on earth to help Ms. Rodgers correct
a wrong turn, and my mistake would be undone.”
Beatrice rose from her chair and headed for her bookshelf. She nodded. “Yes, I did say that.” She combed her hand with bright
pink nails over the leather spines lining a shelf. When she plucked out a familiar-looking book, Dell’s heart sank. The rule
book. Beatrice had her own copy, or maybe it was the copy Cole had had on earth and it somehow ended up back in Beatrice’s