Strange Country by Deborah Coates

but there’d obviously been something physical or there wouldn’t be Beth.
    “Why?” Hallie asked.
    “I want—” Beth stopped, thought for a moment. “I want to belong somewhere, for who I am to mean something.”
    “Beth—” Hallie stopped too, had to think about what she was going to say next. “You can make a home here if you want. In Taylor County, I mean. There’s Boyd. And I would help you. Or finish college and then decide. But you don’t want to be Death. You’d be alone forever.”
    “No, I wouldn’t. I’d make sure I wasn’t.”
    Less than five years separated Hallie and Beth, but it felt like a lifetime, like an abyss that couldn’t be crossed.
    “You think I don’t understand about death,” Beth said. “Not Death, my father, but dying. You think I have no idea.”
    “You don’t have any idea,” Hallie said.
    “I watched my mother die. And Odie. I lived through my sister dying when I was twelve. People die, I get that.”
    “You, personally, have never been in danger of dying.”
    “I’m not afraid of it.”
    “Then you’re an idiot,” Hallie said.
    Beth looked at her like she knew something Hallie didn’t know, which pissed Hallie off. “Look, I’m not helping you,” she said. “It’s stupid and dangerous.”
    “Fine, I’ll ask Boyd,” Beth said. She bent to retrieve her messenger bag. “I just thought maybe…”
    When she straightened, Hallie was standing between her and the door. “Don’t,” Hallie said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “Don’t ever do that. Play me against him. Ever. Besides, he wouldn’t do it.”
    Beth’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah.” She sounded tired. “I know. Or I would have asked him first. I figured you were more likely. Because it would help you out, you know? If I went instead. I thought it was worth a try.”
    Hallie leaned back against the door, resisting the urge just to throw Beth out and be done with it. “What makes you think either one of us could? Open a door to the under? What makes you think you can’t just walk right in on your own? You’re Death’s daughter. If they’re going to let anyone in, it’s going to be you. Have you tried?”
    Beth sank back down into the battered kitchen chair. “No,” she said. “Because…” Her voice dropped, and Hallie couldn’t hear the rest.
    “What?”
    “Because I don’t know exactly where it is!”
    Hallie heard the sound of a car coming up the driveway. Jesus. It was like she was Grand Central Station today. First, Laddie. Then, Beth. And now? Who knew.
    “Hold that thought,” she said to Beth, grabbed her coat, and went outside.
    She rounded the corner of the house in time to see a blue and tan long-bed pickup with rusted-out rear wheel wells pulling up behind Beth’s big old Buick.
    Who the hell was this?
    The temperature had dropped since she and Beth went into the house; the sky was still overcast, but it didn’t feel like snow—they’d had plenty of snow in January and February, and Hallie hoped they were done with it, but she was pretty sure they weren’t. Everything looked colder than it would have if there were snow on the ground—gray and hard and frozen.
    Brett Fowker got out of the truck.
    She was wearing her ever-present cowboy hat, though she’d exchanged the off-white felt one she wore for dress for a dark brown low-crowned model. Her hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and it swung slightly from side to side as she walked. She had on a flannel-lined denim jacket, leather gloves, and a red scarf. Hallie’d known Brett just about forever. “Just on my way back from the city,” she said by way of greeting.
    “Is this your truck?” Hallie asked. It was obvious it was, because who else would it belong to?
    “Daddy’s gone back down to Arizona for another few weeks,” Brett said, looking at the truck like she barely recognized it herself. “Until the weather really gets good, I guess. He took the little pickup to trailer a couple of