Death's Excellent Vacation by Charlaine Harris, Daniel Stashower, Christopher Golden, Jeff Abbott, Katie MacAlister, Jeaniene Frost, Lilith Saintcrow, A. Lee Martinez, Toni L. P. Kelner, Chris Grabenstein, Sarah Smith, L. A. Banks, Sharan Newman Read Free Book Online Page A

girls curtsies and begins flailing around with a set of pink ribbons. “Flying Beauty Martial Arts!” she chirps. One of them has a pink backpack with a picture of a white cat and the words
Hello Kitty
. Hello Kitty Martial Arts? The girl blinks at him with big eyes and twitches her nose speechlessly. The other three try to hide behind each other. The boy preens like the only rooster in the henyard.
    “We are very honor for you take us fishing,” says the lazy man. He’s wearing a too-loose Red Sox cap turned backward and a Red Sox jacket much too big for him. The effect is oddly dangerous, as if he’s about to spring back to a much bigger size.
    They gaze at him as if he’s supposed to say something.
Pointers,
he thinks.
I’m supposed to give them pointers. Advice.
They all have big eyes. It’s like being surrounded by black-velvet pictures of kittens.
    They look at him.
    He looks back. The only advice he can think of is
Don’t eat yellow snow
.
    He clears his throat. “Come on. You’re going fishing. Don’t fall in.”
    They all giggle. Aargh.
    “Come get baggage,” the tall man tells the kids, and he and the compressed man trundle off toward the baggage carousel. The kids follow him in a whispering herd, looking back at Mr. Green.
    The girl with the pink ribbons whispers to the boy-rooster.
    “Secret-u identity,” the boy whispers back.
    Good, they’re disappointed. Mr. Green scowls at the red-haired travel agent, prickly-proud of himself.
    “Guess they expected—”
    “Green mask and cloak, glowing force field—”
    “I can finish my own sentences.” They expected the Green Force, Atom, Astounding, the Bat, Iguana, all grinning with perfect teeth and washboard abs. They expected to go fishing for the Fish, the Monster. Not a weather-beaten old fisherman in a plaid shirt and jeans with a bucket full of farm-raised trout. “What do they do? Giggle the villains to death?”
    “Please,” she says.
    He clears his throat, looking at the strutting boy trying to take all the heaviest luggage himself. “That boy and all the girls? I’m not having hijinks.”
    She looks at him like she’s about to burst into laughter. There’s something sad behind it. “Throw cold water over him,” she says.
    The kids and the men come back, lugging the gross national product of Japan on wheels.
    In the plane, on the way up to the lake, the red-haired Chinese girl gets them all singing old songs. He watches her. Red-haired like a flame, short-lived as a match. To care about humans is to care about leaves, about the frost on the glass in the morning. Breathe and it’s gone.
    Still, he surreptitiously cradles the overloaded plane.
     
    THERE is ice on the lake, thick, hard ice, no fog. The kids wrap themselves up like packages in parkas, hats, mittens. Mr. Green takes the girls out back and gets them to make a shelter. He does something he hasn’t done in years, gestures a hemisphere of glowing green. “Pile snow over that.” “Oooh,” the kids go.
“Ano ne!”
When they cover it with snow, there’s nothing but an igloo glowing faintly like a neon light in a snowstorm.
    Advice: “Anyone know why we cover it up? You protect your secret identity. You don’t want to advertise.”
    They bob their heads in agreement.
    “People laugh,” says the kid with the long braid bitterly, slouching out from the cabin. He has a butterfly on his jeans. Probably gay.
    “No. Not just people laugh. Your enemies find you. People who are going to hurt you find you.”
    The kid considers.
    “Same thing. Laugh. Hurt.”
    The kid knows nothing.
    The boy and the men get settled down in the clients’ loft, and the girls giggle in the new igloo.
    The red-haired travel agent gets the spare room in the cabin. She uses the shower until the mirror is steamy. He showers after she’s finished and smells lavender soap, woman smells. It’s been twenty years since Lana died. It’s been forever since he was a human man with Lana. He feels