The Grim Reaper's Dance

you might want a shower. And maybe some real food.”

“Bailey, you don’t have to—”

“Come on. If you’re going to be sticking around you might as well not stink.” She grinned. “My sister’s at college, and she left some clothes. Mom won’t notice if they’re gone.”

“Just like they don’t miss you at night?”

Bailey laughed. “Exactly.”

“And doesn’t anybody miss you during the day? Like your teachers?”

Bailey shrugged. “I called in. Said I was my mom, and that my daughter wasn’t feeling well today.”

“Bailey, you shouldn’t—”

“Hey. My choice. Don’t give me a lecture.”

Casey shut up and retrieved her bag from the bucket, following Bailey to a blue Honda Accord. “Won’t you draw attention to the shed by driving back here?”

“Nah. I checked the fields before I turned in the lane. No one’s within a couple miles.”

Casey walked around to the passenger door and hesitated. Just being in the vicinity of another car made her heart race. She closed her eyes, concentrating on her breathing.

“You all right?” Bailey looked at her over the top of the car.

“It’s just, the accident, you know, it makes me—”

“Freak out? Sure, I get it. I thought about bringing bikes, but there’s no way to ride one and pull another one, so—”

“It’s fine. I’ll get in in a minute.” Casey gritted her teeth, and opened the door.

Bailey kept up the chatter the whole way into town, and had the radio turned to a top forty station so loudly she had to raise her voice. “You like pancakes? I make good pancakes. Sausage, too. Or we have that bacon that’s already cooked and you just have to warm it up. Or I could make eggs. Or cereal. We’ve got lots of that. How about toast? You could have cinnamon toast. Unless you want lunch? It is about lunchtime, actually, so we could have that. You want to stop at McDonalds? Or Taco Bell? Or maybe you’d rather have something from the house? I can make mac and cheese, or we have leftovers from last night. Lasagna. Or a sandwich. We have all the stuff to make sandwiches. Even that Amish Baby Swiss cheese.”

Casey’s stomach rumbled, whether from excitement or apprehension, she wasn’t sure. The long list of food was rather overwhelming, as was the volume at which it was delivered.

Bailey suddenly stopped talking and pulled a cell phone out of her pocket. She slid it open and began punching keys at a rate faster than Casey could keep track of. Casey prayed silently that nothing would pull out in front of them, and that Bailey could keep at least one eye on the road.

Bailey closed her phone and set it on the seat beside her. “Martin. Wondered if I’d picked you up yet.”

“He knows?”

“Sure. They all do. Martin and Johnny wanted to come, but I thought that would look weird, if we were all gone.”

“Sheryl probably thought you shouldn’t come.”

“Yeah, well, she’s got her reasons.”

Bailey’s phone buzzed again, and she snatched it up, laughing. “Martin says he looks forward to seeing how well you clean up.”

Casey hoped she lived long enough to do it. Weren’t there laws about this sort of thing? That you needed to actually pay attention to the road while driving?

Besides fearing for her life, Casey kept her eye out for traffic, thinking that in her present state she would be a source of interest, even if people didn’t recognize her. They might also wonder why a school-age girl wasn’t actually in school, but there was nothing she could do about that. She pulled down the sun visor to get at the mirror behind it, and blanched at the sight of her hair and face. The fact that Death was now in the back seat didn’t faze her. The fact that the rest of the seat was filled with bagpipes was a little more disturbing.

“You keep asking to die,” Death said. “What better chance do you have than with a teenage girl who texts while she drives?”

Casey blew her bangs off her forehead and ran her fingers through the rest of her hair, wincing at Death’s blast on the bagpipes, which sounded like a dying whale.

Bailey glanced over, then reached into the back seat, putting her hand right through Death’s leg and scrabbling around where the bagpipes lay. Casey clutched the dashboard as the car swerved dangerously toward the side of the road.

“Here.” Bailey tossed a baseball cap into Casey’s lap. “You can wear this till you get inside.” She looked at her fingers, clenching them into a fist and blowing on them.

Rather than a ball team, the cap advertised a seed company. “You wear this often?”

Bailey wrinkled her nose. “It’s Dad’s. He has tons of them. Guys from the different places give him free stuff all the time, so we’ve got more crap than we know what to do with. Hats, pens, tablets, money clips—like who uses those—even T-shirts. Not that I wear them.”

Casey pushed back her hair and put on the hat. Not great, but at least a little improvement.

“Niiiiice,” Death said, giving Casey a thumbs up in the mirror.

Casey flipped up the visor.

“That’s our place,” Bailey said, turning a corner. “White farmhouse down there.” She pointed to a homestead about a quarter of a mile ahead.

“And all of this is your land?”

“A lot of it. We own over a thousand acres, and work about nine thousand more.”

“That’s a lot of land. It must take forever to farm it all.”

“It’s what Dad does. And with the new farm equipment nowadays it doesn’t take all that long. Now, you might want to get down. We’ve got some guys who work for us, and unless you want to get me in trouble you’d better stay out of sight.”

“Won’t you be in trouble if they see you, anyway?”

“They’ll probably just think it’s my dad, coming home for lunch. They don’t always know where he is. Stop worrying.”

Casey hunched over in the seat, scooting down low into the leg area of the passenger seat and ducking her head as far as she could.

“This is fun.” Death sat in the passenger seat, feet up on the dashboard, above Casey. “Think we could do this more often?”

Bailey pulled into the long driveway, driving faster than Casey liked, bumping Casey’s head up into Death’s legs. She was thankful she was wearing a hat. Bailey lurched to a stop, opened the electric garage door, and pulled in. “Stay down.”

The garage door made its slow descent, ending with a quiet clunk.

“Okay,” Bailey said. “You can get up now.”

Death had already moved, so Casey unfolded from her position and climbed out of the car. She bent over, hands toward the floor, stretching her back.

“You okay?” Bailey stopped halfway to the door to the house.

Casey straightened and forced a smile. “I’m fine.” She grabbed her bag of information and followed Bailey into the house, stopping just inside the door. This place was not just a “farmhouse,” as Bailey had said. It was a state-of-the-art home, beginning with the kitchen into which they’d come. Stainless steel appliances shone in the brightly lit room—skylights and windows were everywhere—and the floor looked like original tile work, as did the counter top. Rows of expensive pots hung from hooks above a cooking island, and the tops of the custom cabinets were lined with cut glass bowls.

“Wow,” Death said. “So much for the idea that farmers are back-woods.”

Bailey dropped her purse onto the glass kitchen table. “Shower first, or food?”

No contest.

Death watched as Casey stashed her bag under a pile of towels in the bathroom’s sink cabinet. “I’ll guard your stuff.”