Croak by Gina Damico Page B

ship for the guilty party quickly arose, but Lex remembered what Zara had told her the day before, and she reluctantly held it in check. “Oh, really?” she said nonchalantly as they scythed into the stands of a jam-packed baseball stadium. “Then how did this guy die?”
    She pointed at the target, a man bent over his souvenir program. Lex looked around, dazed. There was just something eerie about the silent scene of thirty-eight thousand screaming fans fixed in mid-cheer, players hovering in petrified dives toward the bases, and stationary beer splashing its thick globules across the stands.
    “Experience,” Driggs said, frowning, “can also be a fickle mistress.” He peered at the field, then dropped to the ground.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Looking for a ball,” he said from underneath the seats. “Maybe he was hit by a line drive.”
    “Yeah, right. I loathe sports as much as the next marginally intelligent being, but even I know a ball could never reach all the way up here. And even if it could, it wouldn’t be fatal.”
    “True.” He straightened up to examine the man more closely. “No visible signs of injury, doesn’t look like he’s having any health problems. Go ahead, touch him.” Lex obliged, though something about this scene was starting to feel very off.
    Driggs’s concern grew as he Culled the Gamma. “It’s like he just . . . stopped living. Maybe—”
    He stopped abruptly, dropping to the floor once again. He peered up at the man’s face. “Look at this,” he said, his voice strange.
    Lex crouched down beside him. “Whoa.”
    The man’s eyes were completely white.
    Lex frowned. “What’s wrong with him?”
    “I don’t know.” Driggs nervously shoved the Vessel into his pocket as they scythed once more, this time automatically returning to the Ghost Gum.
    Lex looked in surprise at the sun, directly overhead. Their shift was over already? She’d never be able to get used to this time-warping business.
    Driggs, meanwhile, was pacing back and forth. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’ve been doing this for four years, and I’ve been able to find the cause of every single death.” He swallowed. “But that guy—I have no idea.”
    Lex thought. “Heart attack?”
    Driggs shook his head. “You can’t die from a heart attack that fast. There would have been at least some sign of distress.”
    “Poison? Drugs?”
    “No chemical works that instantly. You saw the guy—it looked like he was still reading his program.”
    “Then what, magical fairy dust? Vulcan death grip?”
    “Focus, Lex. Wake up that lonely brain cell.”
    “Well, what are you trying to say? He wasn’t supposed to be dead?”
    “That’s what it looked like, but—”
    “But how is that even possible?”
    “It’s not.”
    They were silent for a moment. Lex stuck her hands into her voluminous hoodie pocket, only to quickly yank them out again. She had forgotten about the heaps of Vessels Driggs had given her to store there.
    “Are we going to unload these things?” she asked, a trace of nervousness creeping into her voice. “They’re starting to gross me out.”
    “They’re just souls.”
    “But they’re warm. Like eggs. I feel like a spawning salmon.” Driggs laughed. This only made her voice get higher. “And they’re people’s souls, and they’re kinda important, so shouldn’t we maybe, I don’t know—dammit, what are we supposed to do with them?”
    “Hey.” Driggs put his hands on her shoulders and caught her manic gaze. “Relax, spaz. I’ll show you.”
    ***
    Over at the Bank, Kilda was terrorizing a pair of uneasy Frenchwomen seated on the lobby sofa. “Of course black sweatshirts are in style here, they’re the rage everywhere in America!” She leaned in ominously, her gigantic corsage almost touching their noses. “Now, let me give you some dining options for the next town over!”
    Driggs led Lex down the hallway and up the