Free Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

Yamaraj, but at the four men who’d broken my reality. “That’s not going to happen. If I curl up and pretend none of this is real, then I’ll always be scared. Because I’ll still know .”
    “I see,” Yamaraj said, still watching me carefully. “Then you’re going to become one of us, and very soon.”
    I stared back at him, my skin restless and tight. The numbness I’dfelt since the attack was melting, like when you put your ice-cold hands under running hot water, and the cold turns into itches and sparks.
    “What the hell are we?” I looked down at the glimmer that lay on my pale hands, a fainter version of Yamaraj’s shine.
    “There are many words,” he said. “Soul guides. Reapers. Psychopomps.”
    I looked up. “Um, did you just say ‘psychopomps’?”
    “Some names are more graceful than others. I don’t like ‘reaper,’ myself.”
    “Too grim?” I asked.
    As he smiled, I noticed that his eyebrows had a natural arch in them, a crook in their curve. It made him look like he was teasing me, despite the topic of conversation.
    “You can give yourself any name you want,” he said. “What matters is, when we’re brushed by death, we change. Some of us can see the dead and walk among them. Some of us even live in the underworld. But most of us take longer than a few days to see ghosts clearly.”
    I didn’t know what to say. I had seen Tom only hours after the attack.
    “Unless . . .” He paused. “Has anything like this ever happened to you before?”
    “Are you serious? Not a chance. But you said guides . So where did your sister take all those people?”
    “To our home.” Yamaraj looked down at the rivers of black oil that coursed among the dunes. “Down to the underworld, where they’ll be safe.”
    “Safe from what? They’re dead .”
    He hesitated, then said softly, “There are predators.”
    The last word sent a trickle down my spine. Suddenly this all felt vast and paralyzing, like realizing for the first time that death was real, and scarier and more complicated than I’d ever imagined.
    Yamaraj leaned closer. “You’ll be okay, Lizzie. I can help you understand.”
    “Thank you.” I reached out to take his hand.
    At the spark of our fingers brushing, something went through my body, an ache, a longing. My heart beat sideways, and sudden colors wheeled across the sky, cutting the gray into tatters. For a moment I was back in reality, the rivers of black oil and red stars gone, like ghosts chased away by morning.
    I pulled my hand away from him, and the gray world all came rushing back.
    “Maybe this is too soon.” He looked down at his own fingers, which had sent that surge through me. “I should go.”
    I swallowed, trying to speak. I wanted him to stay and tell me everything, but I also felt defenseless before all these changes—like the scar on my cheek, I was raw and new.
    In the end all I could do was nod, and a moment later I was sitting alone on that tall sand dune, gasping fresh air, the sunrise pink and brilliant and warm on my skin.
    “Shit a brick,” I said, staring at my hand. One touch had been enough to throw me back into reality.
    My fingers went to my lips, and I sat there for a while, feeling alive for the first time in two days. Only a little piece of the afterworld’s cold remained, like a sliver of ice on my tongue.
    *  *  *
    My mother was stirring by the time I made it back to the room. My shoes and hair were full of sand, and sweat slicked my back inside my hoodie. But a shower could wait.
    “Breakfast?” I asked as her eyes opened.
    Mom nodded. “You must be starving. You hardly ate yesterday.”
    She got up and ran a brush through her hair, and a minute later we were headed toward the motel diner. As we crossed the parking lot, an eighteen-wheeler rolled to a stop in one of the truck-sized spaces. I could feel its rumble through my feet and the heat of its engine against my skin, as if it were a monster beside us.
    “You look