I attempt to ignore him and continue my work.

“So, yeah, you never told me. How did you die?”

I hold up my hand to him, to say, “Stop.”

“Just making conversation,” he says from behind me. In Vicki’s vanity mirror, I can see him reaching out to touch a glass figurine near the frames.

I quickly straighten and grab his thick wrist before he can come in contact with it. “Don’t touch anything,” I demand.

“Whoa, sorry, man,” he says, putting his hands up in surrender. “I wasn’t going to move it.”

“Do you not remember the first rule I explained to you? You carry out your work, and then you leave. You do not touch anything.” I turn back to Vicki, who is now stirring again, thanks to Colburn’s disruption. “It won’t matter to Vicki if you speak, because she cannot hear you. But I can. And I do require silence for this part of the process.”

He claps his heels together quickly, like a soldier, and salutes. “Aye, aye, Captain!” he shouts firmly.

Fortunately, he watches carefully and silently as I carry out the rest of the seduction. When Vicki is snoring, I turn to him.

And cringe.

He’s holding Vicki’s smoldering cigarette in his hand.

“What did I tell you?” I hiss, snatching it from him and depositing it in the ashtray near her bed.

He holds out his hands. “It … was going to fall into her bed. She would have burned alive, man.”

I narrow my eyes. “So? Did I not just say that you do not touch anything? No exceptions.”

“But Chimere told me that we protect them—”

“We offer some protection, but within limits. You do not touch them. You do not handle human objects.” I see his puzzled expression and sigh. “For example, you may offer them advice in their dreams or comfort them while they sleep. As a human, do you not recall waking up from a good night’s sleep and having the answer to a seemingly impossible problem that had been plaguing you the day before? Or feeling energized and relaxed after a particularly stressful day? That was the work of your Sleepbringer, Chimere.

“In this situation,” I explain, “you could have warned Vicki in her dreams that danger was near, so that she would awaken and put out the cigarette herself. Do you understand?”

He doesn’t speak, just lets out a grand puff of air that blows the mop of hair out of his eyes.

“All right,” I say. “Julia’s next. But I often come back to Vicki’s home two or three times during the night, just to make sure she hasn’t walked off.”

He eyes the woman in disgust. “Wow. You should just let the old bag walk out into traffic.”

I glare at him, hoping he’s joking. He doesn’t flinch under the weight of my stare, so I say, “That is not funny. Only an Original, like Chimere, is allowed to seduce a human to her death. You are, in essence, to care for your charges as you care for yourself. Protect them. You must never even talk—”

“Jeez. I was kidding,” he groans. “You people need to lighten up.”

“If Chimere hears you talking like that, she’ll never let you assume this role.”

He snorts. “There’s a fate worse than death.”

“There’s worse. They can put you in the Last Place.”

He laughs. “Are you telling me they rank us? If I come in last place, do I still get some lovely parting gifts?”

“The Last Place,” I repeat. “It’s like purgatory for the most depraved Sleepbringers, the ones who fail miserably at their duties. A prison.”

He snorts. “I practically owned the detention room at school. I bet they already erected a memorial to me there.”

“It’s not something to laugh about. Every day there will seem like an eternity.”

He smiles slyly, as if to say, What would you know about it, old man? Hopeless. I don’t bother to continue my warning.

We step outside. “You’ll come to realize that you crave the seduction the way humans crave sleep. You won’t be able to avoid it.” In the moonlight, I study him. He does look rather haggard, his eyes sunken. “You’ll need to seduce soon.”

Somewhere in the garden, a cat meows. “I thought you said I had to wait. That I was too much of a newbie or something.”

“You are, but you’ll have no ability to concentrate on your studies unless your mind is sharp and clear. And for that, you’ll need to perform a seduction.”

His eyes brighten and he rocks back and forth on his branch. “Bam-chicka-bam-bam. Yeah, baby. Lead the way. You said Julia’s next?”

“No, I never said you’d be seducing Julia,” I say. At that moment, that cat appears, rounding the corner of Vicki’s house. It’s yellow and fat, and unlike a human, it can sense us. It purrs, warming to us immediately. Animals love us. I take it as serendipity that this feline is here at this exact time. “I said you’d have to perform a seduction, but you are too new to perform it on a human.”

He studies me, then the cat, and his jaw locks. “No friggin’ way.”

“We cannot continue if you don’t.” I stroke the cat’s soft fur. “And cats are easier. It’s a nice starting point.”

“I am not. Freaking. Getting with. A cat,” he says, curling his lips in disgust.

“As I said, you are thinking about it like a human. Remember, you are no longer human.”

He eyes the animal and frowns. I have to say, it’s quite satisfying.

CHAPTER 7

Julia

Griffin was the only customer I ever had who ordered item number 1.26 on Sweetie Pi’s menu. Number 1.26 is an egg cream, a drink made with chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer. It is gross. I’m just thinking about how my egg cream—making skills will seriously suffer without him when a gaggle of senior girls line up outside the stand, studying the menu. They’re all holding shopping bags from Forever 21 and Hollister and smacking their lips. Since I’ve worked at this stand in the food court since freshman year, pre-Griffin, I have a knack for predicting what certain customers will order. Judging by their waistlines, I can tell that these girls are fat-free vanilla yogurt in a kiddie-size cake cone all the way.

Well, actually, I can’t claim psychic powers; I’ve waited on these girls a zillion times. One, Kiki Nickelson, has been coming here just as long as, if not longer than, I’ve been working here. Considering how often I see her at the mall, her dad must be harboring some serious guilt issues over giving his daughter such a goofy name. He seems to have surrendered to her full control of the credit cards as a peace offering. She looks at me and says, “Oh, hey, Julia. What’s up?”

The good thing about being Front-Page Julia is that people who would otherwise call me “hey, you” do know my name. The bad thing is that that’s about all they care to know.

“Not much,” I say, still sporting my “can I help you?” smile.

Kiki’s face falls, and I can tell right away that she has made the connection between Griffin and me. Tears flood her eyes—real, honest-to-goodness tears. “Ohmigosh, I am so so so so so sorry about Griffin,” she says, smacking her heart with her manicured hand.

“Thanks,” I say. She and Griffin dated, many moons ago, until, as he put it, “I got so sick of her I had to Kiki her ass out the door.” He said she was about as high maintenance as the space shuttle.

The other girls offer their condolences and put in their orders. I was wrong; they all order fat-free vanilla in kiddie cups instead of cones. When I hand over the goods, Kiki is still giving me the sad puppy eyes. “You look like you’re holding up pretty well.”

I nod. The biggest problem with tragedies is that afterward, the world expects those affected by them to cease all functioning. I think everyone was expecting me to be lying here, a mangled heap of body parts, like a Picasso painting.

“If you need anything, just let us know, okay, Jules?” another girl says, dropping a five-dollar bill into the little tips canister at checkout, then patting the top of it as if she’s donating to the Dead Boyfriend Support League.