Free The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy by Trent Jamieson Page A

hour I’m aware of my body, and it’s telling me I’m tired, and hung-over. The adrenaline’s not potent enough to keep that from me forever. Sadly, I feel like I could do with a beer.
    Lissa looks as fresh as the first time I saw her, if you discount the bluish pallor. You’re never fitter than when you’re dead.
    Finally we’ve time to talk with no rifles firing.
    “So why are you back there? And how?” I ask beneath my breath, but it still comes out too loud. People turn and watch.
    “That’s not me!” Lissa is furious, and I can understand. I wouldn’t want someone wandering around in my body, either. But I’m also wondering why she’s so worried. Worry’s a living reaction; it’s not like she needs that body. She is acting most unlike a dead person, but then she has from the start. “That’s not me,” she says again. “Don’t you
dare
think of that as me.”
    I raise my hands. We’re tripping up on semantics here.
    “Your
body
…Why was your
body
back there?”
    Lissa looks out the window. “I—I don’t know. Whoever’s doing this is using Number Four and shipping Stirrer-possessed Pomps around via the upper offices. And they’re using my body. Shit, shit, shit.”
    I really want to hold her and tell her that this is going to be OK, but I can’t do either, because I really don’t believe it, and the Lissa I might possibly be able to hold without pomping is behind us somewhere, and she would kill me without hesitation.
    This relationship is complicated.
    “The upper offices? Can you really do that?” I think about Number Four, and those labyrinthine upper floors.
    “You can if you know what you’re doing. It’s dangerous if you’re not an RM, but people do it from time to time—saves on airfares. I’ve heard that you can enter any one of Mortmax’s offices through them. It’s probably how the Stirrers got into the Brisbane office. They could have come from anywhere.”
    “We’ll work this out,” I say.
    She glares at me. “How, Steve? Just how the hell are we going to work this out? I’m dead. My body’s walking about the Hill, inhabited by a bloody Stirrer. It’s not enough that I’ve been killed—whoever is doing this is rubbing my face in it. You were right, as much as I didn’t like it, the Hill’s the only place we had a chance of finding out what’s going on.”
    “Which was exactly why it was being guarded,” I say. “They knewwe had to get there. And my parents were there, too. This isn’t just about you.”
    Lissa shakes her head. “Who deals with Stirrers? It’s freaking insane! You can’t deal with Stirrers. They’ve nothing to offer but hatred and hunger.”
    Apparently someone has, and quite successfully. I don’t understand it any better than Lissa does. The idea chills me and I’m even more afraid about this whole thing. But at least it explains why Jim McKean was shooting at me. I couldn’t work out how I might have pissed him off. There are others with whom it almost wouldn’t have surprised me (Derek being one of them) but Jim hadn’t made any sense.
    “We just need to keep moving,” I say.
    “No point in running.” The voice startles me, coming from behind. It’s all rather too pleased with itself. I jerk my head around.
    There’s a dead guy sitting on the rear seat. He looks at me, and then at Lissa. When he sees her the wind comes out of him. “Sorry, darl,” he says, “they got me too, just out of Tenterfield.”
    That’s it. I’m dead. I don’t see how I stand a chance.
    The guy with us is Eric “Flatty” Tremaine, state manager of the Melbourne office, which puts him almost as far up the ladder as Morrigan. He’s a friend of Derek’s—maybe his only friend—and another paid-up member of the Steven de Selby Hate Club.
    I notice the way he’s looking at Lissa, and the way that she’s looking back. There’s definitely a history there. I catch myself; I’m not going to survive this if all I’m really thinking about