Death Cultivator by eden Hudson (best books to read .TXT) 📕

then realized that might be kind of stalkery. I stopped where I was and stuck my hands in my pockets. “I mean, can you point the way to the nearest town?”

The branches behind her rustled, and I forgot all about being awkward and started looking around for a stick or a really big rock I could clobber a river monster with.

Instead of a fish, though, a heavyset guy came out of the trees. He was the same tan as the girl and had the same big lace-patterned eyes. His black hair was shaggy, and he had on a ragged sleeveless shirt, long cutoff shorts that used to be pants at some point, and wooden sandals. If not for the eyes, he would’ve looked like an overweight surfer dude from Earth.

“You fed that carp my walking stick,” he said, flicking his hair out of his face with a jerk of his head.

“I’ll find you another one,” the girl said.

“It’s not about the stick, Kest, it’s about you stealing my stuff.”

“If I’d had time to ask, I would’ve. Besides, the carp was going to eat this guy.” She turned to me. “Guy, would you rather I stopped to ask Rali if I could use his stick to jam the carp’s teeth open or make it so you lived long enough to question my methods with him?”

I looked at him. “Sorry, man, I got to go with the one where I don’t get eaten.”

He laughed.

“I bear no ill will toward you, new friend,” he said, putting his palms flat against each other like he was praying and bowing over them. “My twin’s the only one I want to make feel bad.”

Twins. That explained it. You could definitely see the family resemblance, even though the guy was on the chubby side.

“He’s not our friend, Rali.” The girl, Kest, shoved a wispy branch up and ducked under it into the trees. Her voice filtered back to us. “He’s a criminal.”

“No, I’m not.” I followed her into the foliage.

She had come out in a clearing and was wandering along the cliff wall, head down like she was searching for something in the sand.

“We saw the transport shuttle fly over,” she said.

Rali came through the brush and joined us. “That’s true. If you’d been here before that, we would’ve known. We don’t get many new faces out here.”

“No, I mean, I came by the shuttle, but I’m not a criminal,” I said. “It’s a mistake. I don’t think I’m even supposed to be in this universe. See, there was this methhead in my house, and I think one of us got stabbed, then this ditzy grim reaper screwed up and took me instead of him because our names sound alike or something. She got mad when I called her on it, then I dropped through the stars and landed on the shuttle.”

Rali was smiling like he didn’t believe me. Kest hadn’t even stopped walking.

“Okay, that all sounds made up,” I said. “But it’s true.” I scrubbed my hands down my face in frustration. “My dad used to make crap up all the time to make it sound like he wasn’t the bad guy, but I’m not like him. I’m not a criminal, I promise. It really happened.”

When I said that, it was like a shock wave went through the air. This was real. I wasn’t dreaming. It was all really happening. To me.

Suddenly, I got lightheaded. Sound fuzzed out, and the ground tilted back and forth. Neither of the twins seemed to notice. I grabbed for a tree, but my fingers felt numb. They slid off the sappy bark.

Then I was flat on my back looking up at Rali and Kest. The lace patterns in their eyes shifted slowly from thin to wide then back again.

“Are you all right?” Rali’s voice sounded far away.

“Oh God,” I whispered. It sounded crazy loud inside my head. “I think I really died.”

Kest blinked and looked down at her giant watch screen.

A little at a time, the sound of the rushing stream and the wind in the trees came back.

“I don’t think he’s lying,” Rali said like he was amazed.

“He thinks he’s telling the truth,” Kest said, turning her wrist to show him her watch.

“You can’t trust technology for that kind of thing,” her brother argued. “It can’t think for itself.”

“Yet,” she said. “But it can read his brain chemicals, heart palpitations, and sweat glands. He’s got all the markers of someone who suffered a recent traumatic experience, but none of the markers of insanity. None of the physiological ones, anyway.”

“Are you guys dead, too?” I asked them. “Like, is this the afterlife? Were you dropped here by a different reaper?”

“No, we were born on Van Diemann.” Kest frowned down at me. “The only things that drop people here are CPA shuttles.”

“My gut says we trust him,” Rali said. “That’s good enough for me.”

Kest snorted, but didn’t stop Rali when he stuck out his hand and helped me stand up.

“Thanks.” I meant for believing my crazy story, too, not just the hand.

He shrugged. “If you’re not a criminal, then you should probably stick with us.”

“What’s your name?” Kest said, leaning up against the rock wall. She didn’t look at me while she said it, just stared down at her watch screen.

“Grady Hake. Everybody just calls me Hake, though.”

Rali did that praying-slash-bowing thing again. “Iye Skal Akarali.” Then he cracked a grin. “Grady Hake’s a weird name for a human. Were you raised by some other race?”

“What?”

“Humans usually have tough-sounding, ‘Meat Roaches will rise again’ type names,” he said. “The ones our age do, anyway.”

“Like Warcry?”

“That’s a popular one. One of the original Meat Roaches from the Ylef-Human War named her kid that, now all the humans are doing it.”

“There’s no Grady Hake in the Van Diemann profiles,” Kest interrupted.

“You’ve met my sister, Iye Skal Irakest,” Rali said. “As you can tell, she doesn’t observe societal niceties.”

I laughed.

“I mean, she saved my life, so I’ve got to cut her some slack,” I