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The neon sign hanging over it was only half lit. There were old cars parked out front, some models he’d never seen, but all from decades before he was born. He couldn’t help but scan for a Cutlass Supreme, the car he’d loved and lost, though he’d mostly let it go.

Nothing came down the road as he crossed it, though in the spirit realm he wouldn’t have been shocked to see a carriage pulled by dinosaurs or a herd of giant spiders.

The crack in the sky was here too, letting in so much gray that it could have been an early winter morning.

A bell above the door jingled as he stepped inside.

The place was part gas station, part restaurant, and part souvenir shop. It looked like any sort of locally owned spot you might find on a road trip. An odor he knew well from back home, fried chicken, permeated the air.

“Hello?” he called. “Sara?”

That’s what she’d called herself when he’d met her, and despite everything that had happened, how he often still thought of her. She’d been friends with Great-Aunt Sue. He’d come to understand that it likely hadn’t been real, that Death probably couldn’t care about anyone mortal, not truly. She’d manipulated the Binder bloodline, making him and Bobby, breeding them to be tools of her will. Her plan had been thwarted by Life itself, which enjoyed its role of spoiler by injecting chaos into the most well-ordered plans.

“What do you think?” Sara asked from behind him.

A Black woman in a dress printed with sunflowers, she’d put on a few years, a side effect of the last favor Adam had done for her, one she’d forced him into. That had nearly gotten him and Vic killed. Remembering it, he rethought this visit.

“What is all this?”

“The girl’s idea.” Sara waved her cane at the air as if gesturing toward her daughter, who wasn’t there. “She thought my business should look more like a business.”

“You’re selling chips and candy?”

“The Lost Ones can eat anything,” she said. “Well, the ones that are still around.”

“And they don’t know who you are?”

Sara shrugged.

“Word hasn’t traveled as far as I thought it might.”

“Lot of cars out front for no customers.” It was funny how his accent and that slower way of speaking came back. Usually all it took was a phone call with his mom. It made Vic laugh to hear it.

“They’re here. I just thought you might want privacy. Come on, then.”

Adam didn’t try to read the magic in the air as she let him out back. The place swam in it, an almost dizzying mix of spells and auras meant to obscure her true nature.

“I thought you’d given all this up,” he said, following her. “The bit. The illusion.”

“I did for a spell, but I got bored, and I realized I like having visitors. I like being Sara.”

She led him to a picnic table made from two-by-fours stained a dark brown. His parents had owned one like it, and when she smiled, he knew that she knew that. It made sense. She knew everything and everyone, in the end.

“Mel’s singing?” Adam asked as he took a seat across from her.

Death’s daughter had a regular gig in a bar downtown. Adam had heard her. She was good, haunting even.

“Girl keeps her own hours,” Sara smiled fondly. Her natural hair crowned her head in tight curls.

“I have to say, Adam Lee, I didn’t think I’d see you again until you reached the end of the road.”

“Me either, but I don’t know who else to talk to about this, and as weird as it is, I miss you.”

“You said you’d never trust me again.”

“And I meant that, but maybe I can trust you a bit more than some other people at the moment.”

“Well, ain’t that a treat.” Her smile brightened. “Why me?”