Industry night went swimmingly and, thanks to Jane and Lenny's blunder, Jane wasn't dropped off three blocks from her apartment. They entered the Verini Family Buick and, begrudgingly, Lenny told her sister, "Just... one stop."

"One stop?" Mimi teased, leaning over the center console. "Did I hear that right? Did I hear that you're getting lai—"

Lenny didn't have to look. She'd already been rearing to punch Mimi in the arm—only this time, she got Mimi square in the right pectoral.

Mimi collapsed back into her seat next to Jane, feigning injury.

"I'm just gonna get one thing straight," Lenny said.

"By that you mean gay," Val teased, and Mimi howled with laughter.

Lenny shook a finger at all of them, her eyes linger on Jane a little too long. "I don't want a fuss made about this, alright? And I hate talking about it. So just... pretend nothing is happening and I don't know Jane."

"Weird foreplay but okay," Mimi said.

Lenny twisted all the way around in her passenger seat to glare at Mimi. "I fucking mean it. Call me a prude, but I hate talking about that shit. Alright?"

"Alright, fine," Mimi said, raising her hands in surrender.

To Lenny, she saw this as a clear sign for psychoanalysis. As if writing smut as a virgin wasn't telling enough, there was clearly some sexual deviant activity going on in Lenny's psyche she'd rather be kept off the street.

Lenny flopped back around and settled in for the rest of their ridiculous ride across town. She felt like she was living in her parents' basement again while her parents tasked Val to be her DD for the evening. It was humiliating.

At their building, Lenny was the first out of the car and the first to the front door. Jane barely made it in time to catch the handle before it could shut.

"Hey, wait a minute," Jane said. "You should say goodbye to your sister."

"I'm not gonna fucking say goodbye to her. I'll probably be forced to see her Friday anyway," Lenny said, bitterly, and jammed her thumb repeatedly over the up button on the elevator. She massaged her brow, irritated, and wished she'd slowed down enough to have a smoke out on the stoop.

"I'm sorry about tonight," Jane said. "I didn't... I mean, I can tell you're super uncomfortable by your friends and sister assuming..."

"Yeah, no shit," Lenny said. She pressed two fingers to her lips, free arm curled defensively around her chest. The elevator dinged and they stepped inside.

In the awkward silence of the door refusing to close immediately as Lenny hoped, Jane said, "If it makes you feel any better, I... do actually like you."

"That doesn't make me feel any better. In fact, that makes me feel like shit, thanks."

It was an unexpected spear to the chest. Jane rubbed at the wound, grimacing. She hoped Lenny couldn't see her expression in the elevator door's wonky reflection.

Lenny dropped her hand from her lips with a sigh. "It's not you. Honestly. And I know that sounds cliche but it's the truth. You'd probably make for an... excellent date."

Jane smiled, warmed by the idea. "We could go on an actual date then? If you want, I mean."

Lenny grimaced.

Jane let her hope sink as the door opened to Lenny's floor. When Lenny didn't immediately leave, and the door nearly shut, Jane stuck her foot out to stop it.

Lenny's eyes were on the floor buttons, fleeting, her jaw working through her irritation. If Jane knew her better, she might think Lenny was about to cry.

"I just feel like shit," Lenny said, meeting Jane's eyes. She could only manage it for a few seconds, but Jane understood instantly.

"Don't," Jane said, shaking her head. "We barely know each other."

"Lots of people date and they hardly know each other."

"Yeah, but we also didn't wake up this morning expecting to go steady," Jane reminded her.

Lenny rolled her eyes. They'd gone glassy. "You didn't even wake up this morning."

"Semantics."

It was enough to make Lenny laugh. She slipped past Jane into her hall, and Jane managed a smile when Lenny patted her on the arm. "I'll see you later."

"Yeah, see you," Jane said, and waited a moment longer until Lenny reached her own door.

Jane stepped back into the elevator and clicked the button to close the doors. She brushed a hand over her brow, suddenly flush with emotion, and wished she'd managed to be a bit smoother.

She'd almost made Lenny cry. She'd pushed a little too hard. Her Auntie always did say she was a little too eager. But it was late, they'd both been drinking, and now Jane was ill from the reality of having ruined Lenny's night.

⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅

Though the night didn't go as planned, the morning went even worse. It all started with Jane being awake at the asscrack of dawn to finish the last page of Lenny's book. She was left sobbing into her bed pillows, curling into herself, and wondering how Lenny could leave her in such a state.

Where she should have been upset, furious even, and marched down to Lenny's floor to give her a piece of her mind, Jane instead left the building altogether to get coffee. And donuts. And maybe an extra coffee and and an extra donut to bring back with her.

When she returned, Lenny was already out smoking on the stoop with another one of their neighbors. Jane gathered the gentle, sleepy grumble of their conversation before she ever came into view.

Lenny caught sight of her first and tapped her ashes off to the side. "Hey," Lenny said.

"Hi," Jane said, and climbed the steps to meet them. She smiled at the neighbor, held out the box of donuts to the two of them, and said, "Peace offering?"

She looked at Lenny as she said it and hoped the message was clear. As their neighbor dug in, Lenny hesitated to do the same.

When she complied, though, Jane's anxieties lifted.

As Lenny took a bite of her glazed donut, their neighbor bid them both farewell and returned inside. Once the door was shut, Jane offered her the second coffee.

"Generous this morning," Lenny said.

"I just felt like shit after last night..."

"Oh. Hungover?"

Jane snorted. "No. I just didn't mean to make you so uncomfortable."

"It's fine. I'm easily discomforted."

Jane rolled her eyes. She pushed herself up onto the stoop's concrete hedge and set the donuts aside. Lenny's eyes were everywhere but Jane's.

"I'm just curious about your reaction," Jane confessed. "Not to drudge it back up again. I just—It might be cathartic just to talk about it."

"It won't," Lenny said around a mouthful of donut. She raised the dessert like she was giving a toast. "Thanks for this though."

"No problem." Jane's shoulders sunk. She cleared her throat. "I finished your book this morning."

"Do I need to hear this?"

"I sobbed for, like, an hour."

"I answered my own question."

Jane threw her head back and groaned, fake-sobbed, and pouted off to the side. "Why did you have to gut me like that? He dies?!"

"He's the main love interest of a trilogy. You really believe that shit?" Lenny said.

Jane perked up.

She rolled her eyes. "Pretend I said nothing."

"No, wait, I wanna hear it!"

"Those are spoilers, Jane."

"I feel so relieved! He's alive?!"

"Spoilers, Jane!"

Things were going great until the exact moment Lenny spat out her coffee and started coughing, thumping her chest.

Jane lurched off the ledge in a tizzy. "Breathe! Oh my God!"

Lenny waved her cigarette in Jane's face, which Jane later registered was a gesture to all of her. "You're—" Lenny started, hoarse and slightly red in the face.

Jane slapped a hand to her chest. The world had gone awfully cool, but she chalked that up to the building's shadow. When she left that morning for coffee, the air had felt so warm and fresh with the promise of summer.

But now—

Jane looked down at herself. She was alight like the sun.

"Shit!" she cried, hands slapping to her chest, her face, her hair. She doubled back to set her coffee down, but it sunk partway through the concrete before Jane's hand left it.

Hot coffee spilled everywhere. The top half of the cup tumbled as if cut by a magnificent pair of scissors. The bottom half was nowhere to be seen.

"My coffee!" Jane cried with great sorrow.

"Dude, turn it off for Christ's sake!"

"A-Ah! Right, oh my God." It was a complete disaster. Jane had no real idea what the whims of her spirit commanded until they were there in the lack-of-flesh to taunt her.

When no amount of deep breathing and exercises would cut it, Jane jumped from the stoop. Lenny stood there, completely beyond words, and watched as Jane sprinted across the street and fled the entire goddamn neighborhood.

"No, no, no, this can't be happening!" Jane cried to no one in particular, skidding around the block. She leapt across the street, avoiding traffic only by means of being transparent. She stumbled through the backseat and trunk of a top-down Mercedes and, suddenly deciding to be solid, tripped over the curb.

She hit the concrete skidding and scrambling. It was one thing to ghost-out in public for extended periods of time, but if Death's threat was real—which, to Jane's heart, it certainly felt like—then home was off limits until she was living again.

She was living a ridiculous cinema nightmare trying to find the best route to throw the devil off her trail. Any second now, the villain would appear and Jane—

—Jane wouldn't know what to do. A person could only use the tunnels so many times before Death came knocking in one of the service lines to pluck her filthy soul of the streets like she was a New York City subway rat.

She cut through the courtyard of a posh-looking apartment complex and, against the doorman's wishes, slipped straight through the solid glass doors into the foyer. She was leaping through the back wall before the doorman could get the door open to chase after her.

Jane startled at the sight of a fully-furnished apartment, a woman at the desk near the window. Silently, she tiptoed, until her shins glided through the couch like warm butter and through a print of Starry Night above the sofa table.

She mouthed a silent apology over her shoulder, only to get a book to the face when she turned back around. Whoever her neighbor was had been staring right at her when she fazed through.

"Sorry!" Jane cried, mortified, and ran for her life to the window. She hit it like a dog careening to a freshly-cleaned patio door.

Vibrating on impact, Jane fell back onto the carpet. The woman was screaming, throwing books and a TV remote at her head.

She dropped through the floor and into the eerie hum of tungsten lights in the basement. It was immediately silent.

Slowly, Jane rose from having the wind knocked out of her lungs. Before her lay a haunting row of washing machines and dryers against yellowed concrete bricks. The pop of the pipes overhead nearly sent Jane screaming.

Cursing under her breath, Jane lunged for the nearest egress window.

"Ah-ah," the voice coaxed from afar, but oh-so close to Jane's ear.

Jane's lukewarm soul froze at the sound, hand to the bricks.

She turned, slowly, in the direction of Death's grisly shark teeth spread across nonexistent cheeks. Her smile was all Jane could see from the shadows, punctuated by the dots of her glowing eyes.

Jane's back flattened to the bricks. Move! she begged to herself, but her legs were frozen.

"I'm still alive, I swear," Jane said.

"Not now you aren't." Death's words followed her slow steps under the high-pitched hum of the lights. Where they once flickered, they were now static. Jane's vision vibrated under them.

"I—I can prove it!" Jane pleaded. Her hand pushed away from the wall. The exit was just five paces away, but Death was closing in. Death's head ducked, neck curving under each bulb that blinked out behind her.

Jane scrambled for the door.

"I haven't figured out how to control it yet, but I swear—"

"I don't doubt it," Death laughed at her shoulder, but when Jane looked down the hall, Death's hand was only just curling over the doorframe, head ducking through.

Death's lips didn't need to move, teeth didn't need to part, for Jane to hear the creature's voice in her soul.

"You lose control," Death said, stalking after her to the stairs. "You'll forget how to come back. You think it's as easy as riding a bike, straddling life and Death as you have. You think I haven't been watching—"

"But—"

Jane's momentum was faltering. She was trapped by the sheer scale of what was ahead of her—the void of the afterlife, the brief blip into emptiness she'd felt upon hitting the bumper.

Death loomed over her.

The hall had gone dark beyond the sharp, pointed edges of her shoulders. All that was left was the light fixture above them, flickering in the static filling the air.

"B-But I thought you could only see me when I'm a spirit," Jane said, very small.

Death's smile didn't waver. It didn't move at all. "This is true. You slip up more than you're conscious of."

"Give me—Give me a little more time—"

"You've had time. More than most."

Sparkling tears filled Jane's eyes. They were blinding. "It isn't enough. Wh—What about the demons?"

The hum of static turned to a screech in Jane's ears.

"They aren't your responsibility."

"But you can't s-save people like I can," Jane said. When Death didn't reply, Jane said, "I knew it. If I get to the demons sooner, people will be saved, right?"

At this, Death's smile faltered. It curled, straightened, and warped into something furiously obscene. "Your messiah complex isn't funny."

"I'm not trying to be funny," Jane hissed back, surprised by her own will to die. She reeled back at the sneer on Death's red-painted lips. "I—I just..."

Death reached back over her own shoulder. She tugged the cane from its holster and, with the dramatic twirl of a magician, hooked the snake's head around a nearby door handle.

"You just," Death jested, eyes never leaving Jane's, "are going to have to come with me."

With that, and a sweep of Death's cane, the door opened to darkness. The floor fell out at the threshold.

Faced with what lay before her, Jane lost sight of everything. She caught Death by the wrist, and, much to the horror of her hindsight, found that Death was actually solid to her. Real.

And cold as ice to a damp hand. Jane's soul suctioned to the hearts on Death's palms as tears spilled over.

"Please, please don't make me—"

"Don't worry," Death whispered, soothingly, her hand rising to caress the tears on Jane's cheeks. "There's something you need to do first. Your afterlife will wait for you."

Any hope Jane had shattered as Death pulled her close and walked the two of them over the threshold. All the while, Jane writhed internally to flee. She had no control over her soul now that it was ensnared by Death's ice-cold grip.

And this time, Jane remembered her cross over the threshold. Aware for it all, Jane relinquished herself to void and was... relieved by how easy it was. The confusing push and pull of her body's transparency on Earth vanished in the second it took to pass through Death's door.

Jane's grip on Death's arm slackened and, though still solid and freezing cold beside her, Death lingered. In the nothingness and in the dark, Death's horrible posture lightened, just a little. Her smile softened all of the hard lines in her angular face until Jane could make sense of Death's makeup again.

"You weren't meant to return to Earth," Death said, "but it isn't your fault."

"It isn't?"

Death shook her head. "You'll be compensated for the... difficulties of finding your way to the afterlife. It will take time."

"I have a feeling I've got a lot of that ahead of me," Jane said.

"Funny," Death said, hardly amused at all. "This means you won't be delivered to your afterlife immediately."

"Purgatory?"

Death grimaced, head swaying to and fro with unease. "Not quite. When your soul escaped, you escaped with about a dozen demonic beings. Hell-born creatures."

"The sludge monsters."

"I take it that's your cute human name for them."

"Yes."

This, Jane saw, actually amused Death. Jane cleared her throat. "How did we escape? Did any other... human souls escape?"

"No, just you. Fortuitous for me—truthfully, it's been exhausting keeping track of you."

Jane grimaced. The more they talked, the more Jane remembered herself, her feelings, and the sensation of guilt rising like acid reflux in her throat.

She swallowed against the knot. "Sorry. You were just doing your job."

"There was an incident not long ago—Well, several years for you. To me, it's been constant," Death explained. "Hell-born are allowed to visit Earth, but are not permitted to kill. As mortal death is my domain, I cannot ferry the lives taken by my own kind. You could say... they've been tainted."

"Oh. Am I tainted?"

"No, not directly. You still belong to me, and an afterlife still awaits you," Death reassured.

It was a comfort Jane had never felt before. She wasn't very religious, and she was still too young to focus on what came after all this. She was taken care of.

"So the soul that was tainted—that affects me, though. Indirectly," Jane said.

"Correct. The beings responsible for this lost soul are to be reprimanded, and you, compensated. Because this soul was out of my jurisdiction, they had to... sort through my belongings to find... this particular soul. This led to your return to Earth."

Though Jane had never had a sibling, she imagined this was what it felt like to have a sibling riffle through her closet. For her favorite sweater to go missing. "Okay. So this reprimanding is sort of like a... trial?"

"Precisely this."

"Cool." Jane shut her eyes, shaking her head. "I mean, not cool. It sucks that you have to deal with this."

A moment of silence passed in which Jane lamented having been so difficult. To know now that her afterlife lay before her, certain, clear, and comforting... It was ridiculous to think that she ever wanted to stay on Earth. If only she'd remembered this much.

Death interrupted Jane's rumination to say, "You're correct in that I cannot touch living souls. Ideally, I find the demons before they can possess humans. Do not fret about them."

"Oh." Of course. Jane had been so worried about them. She'd failed to trust Death's competence in the matter. "Okay. I'm sorry for doubting you."

"Your confidence in Death is oh-so reassuring," Death jested, none too thrilled. "I'll be leaving you now."

"What? Here?" Jane said. Her tether to solid ground was in Death's arms, but even then it occurred to Jane that she was standing on nothing.

"Goodbye, little one," Death said with fake cheer. She patted Jane on the head before vanishing before Jane's very eyes.

And, in that blink of an eye, the void, too, vanished.