Leslie absolutely can recommend me one. He also is, for some reason, inclined to send me off with some mace. The bellboy (I need his name) slips me a small salt pack in my palm as I walk by. I love this town. They give you emergency salt.

The convenience store hides between a cabaret with a seedy flashing neon sign and a broken ATM. No one makes eye-contact with me; in fact, there is no one to make eye-contact with.

I frown at my reflection in the glass as the automatic doors open. "This place is an actual ghost town," I say to the distracted clerk on her phone. Then again, it's likely everyone's still at the empty casket funeral.

"That's not funny." I leap a mile into the air and whirl around, hands on the salt pack. In mid-tear, a hand closes over it. "What if we do have ghosts?" Cheekbones asks me and my stampeding heart. His eyebrows furrow as he pulls the pack from now loose fingers. He looks surprised, cocks his head for a moment, and then smiles. Pleased, he glances down at his prize. "You're underprepared, then."

How does anyone actually prepare for how stupidly hot these people are from up close? "Didn't think I'd see you here of all places."

"It's a store," Cheekbones points out. He juts his chin out as if he didn't scuttle away with his tail between his legs earlier. Someone's had a confidence booster in the past ten seconds. "It's public property." Property comes out in a rising tone, as if it's a matter of a perspective.

The perspective from here is also good, because he has amazing bone structure. "Right," I say, distracted. "Definitely no cause for worry."

"Maybe a little cause for worry," he says back. He grins at me with a full set of teeth.

"For you? Or me?" I say. His eyes move to my mouth. "You interested in coffee after?"

Cheekbones stiffens the same way he did when he was looking offended about his choices over my dead cousin's casket. "I'll think about it," he breezes, shifting on his feet. He looks everywhere but at me, biting his lip. I want to yank his head down and bite it for him.

"Sounds good. I'll catch you later," I reach out for salt pack and extract it from his fingers, "or not." I maintain eye contact. Cheekbones looks five seconds away from exploding. "I'll be around."

Glancing around, I grab a basket and make a pit stop for what I'll need. Snacks, for one, because to keep a dead body going after revival, you need to give them fuel. I pick the bags with the highest calorie contents. In life, Petey inhaled food like a blue whale after a diet. The Clan took his insured muscle mass very seriously.

"So you do things like this often?"

"What?" It takes me a second to realize Cheekbones is behind me. I turn on my heel. "Do what?" Do you?

"You know." Cheekbones picks up a can of salted peanuts, tosses it, and then puts it back down. "Making a huge show like that. Busting a funeral." He faces the shelves, his breath baiting with his words. Cheekbones tilts his head down to my direction. He sizes me up. "Stealing the body."

"Not stealing. Repossessing. In my defence, it was a church." The store doesn't have any masking tape, but they do, in a surprising twist, have bungee chords. I take three packs of two. And a can of salt. "Necromancers love churches." Churches do not love necromancers. "Got any in town?"

"A few." He doesn't elaborate.

"Any specific one I should check out first?" Bottles of carbonated drinks sit in the commercial fridge. I keeping a straight face, imagining Petey exploding from excess gas. I pull out five so I can find out. "You know, the abandoned ones, the ones with all the suspicious cults and all? Anything suspicious?"

"I wouldn't know," Cheekbones says, stilted. He follows me like a puppy all the way to the cash register. "It's been normal outside of the funeral."

I'm glad I made an impression for ripping a dead body in half. "First funeral?"

He ducks his head. "No."

"How did you know Petey? Unless, of course, you can't tell me that."

"I could, but it's just..." At the cash register, Cheekbones rubs at his mouth. He glances at me. "I don't know if I can trust you."

I consider the words. I ignore the words. "Tell you what." As he watches, I reach out and grab a pack of breath mints.  I shake it in his face once. "I'll eat one. You eat one." I put it on the conveyer belt. "If you're uninterested in what comes after, tell me no."

Cheekbones doesn't tell me no.