Lance stood by the door, looking annoyed.
"What's going on?" said Zoe.
"The dude says he knows you," said Lance.
Zoe peered at the man in the water. The mist looked eerie tonight. It curled around him like a wreath-as if he'd summoned it. She didn't know the guy. No way. She was about to tell Lance to get rid of him when the stranger spoke.
He said just one sentence, but it stopped her cold: "Your name's Zoe-and you love X."
Zoe walked slowly around the pool.
She drew near to the man. He had dropped some clothes by the water. She couldn't quite make them out in the dark. They lay tangled like a nest of snakes.
She tried to think of something to say but the stranger spoke up again-and stunned her a second time.
"That's X's coat, right?" he said. "Kinda big for you."
She crouched for a better look at his face. He was in his late 20s. Handsome in a battered sort of way-but shaky somehow. Unhealthy. The whites of his eyes were streaked with red.
He smiled up at her. His friendliness made him seem all the more menacing.
She inspected him closely, without speaking.
He had dark, crescent-shaped bruises near his eyes.
They looked like X's bruises.
"Who are you?" she said.
"I'm Eric," he said. "'Sup?"
The sunniness of his voice was freaky.
"X never mentioned anybody named Eric," she said.
"X doesn't use my real name," he said.
He drew an arm out of the water-he had a wild sleeve of tattoos almost identical to X's-and lifted his hat the tiniest bit. Zoe winced. His forehead was horrifically bruised.
"He calls me Banger."
He'd come with a message from X, he said.
Zoe couldn't tell from his face if it was good news or bad. The anticipation was awful.
She told Lance and the remaining lifeguard that they could leave. They looked shocked. Still, they reluctantly headed up the stairs.
Zoe waited for Banger to speak, but he seemed to enjoy her impatience. He was an odd sight in the water. He'd taken off his shirt but he was still wearing his hat and his jeans, which were so drenched they clung to his legs. He floated on his back to the center of the pool, and gazed up at the bright needlework of the stars.
"What's the message?" said Zoe. "Tell me."
Banger smiled, and floated even farther away in the dark, his white belly shining. He never took his eyes off the sky.
She followed him around the pool, picking up dirty towels and stray flip-flops as she went.
"Don't mess with me, Banger," she said. "I don't care if you're dead-I will seriously injure you."
"Can I just swim one more minute?" he said. "You know how long it's been since I've felt warm water?"
Zoe felt a twinge of sympathy. She straightened a row of white deck chairs that should have been trashed years ago and went inside.
After ten minutes, Banger climbed out of the pool, put on his shirt and shoes, and joined her. He'd pulled his hat back down over his nightmarish forehead. But he still looked feverish and sickly to Zoe, and then it struck her: he had the Trembling.
"You're supposed to be hunting somebody?" she said.
He turned to her, surprised. He wiped the perspiration from his face with the back of his hand.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "Guy who drove a school bus while he was high on crack. I'll spare you the details."
He drifted around the lobby, inspecting every poster, every piece of furniture, and every knickknack to see what they could tell him about the years that had passed since he was yanked down to the Lowlands. Zoe wished everything in the place wasn't so shabby and old. She asked if he wanted to see her cell phone. His eyes sprang to life. He spent ten minutes playing with the thing, then handed it back with an air of regret, saying, "I had a BlackBerry. Thing sucked."
Zoe asked Banger if he was hungry.
"No," he said. "Because I'm dead, if you want to get technical about it. But what are you offering?"
"I've got some seitan and quinoa my mom made," said Zoe.
Banger lifted an eyebrow.
"Those aren't real words," he said.
"There's also junk food in the vending machine," said Zoe.
Now his eyes were shining.
"Are Skittles still a thing?" he said.
Zoe opened the register for cash, then she and Banger trooped downstairs. The vending machines hummed expectantly in the vacant hall. The drink machine was the only new thing in the entire building: it was the science-fiction-y kind that sends a miniature elevator up and over to retrieve your selection. Banger gazed at it in fascination. He agonized about what to buy for five minutes. Zoe found it touching. They returned to the lobby with 14 dollars' worth of energy drinks, candy, chips, and gum.
They sat on the stone floor, the loot piled between them. The night sky had turned from blue to black. Zoe wasn't particularly hungry. Still, she got a kick out of the way Banger devoured the candy. She leaned back on her hands and watched. Eventually, she figured, he'd get around to delivering X's message.
"Sorry I've been jerking you around," he said at last. His face was still pink from the hot pool, his mouth smeared with chocolate. "I know you want to hear about X. It's just that I know once I tell you everything, you're going to get bored of me and kick me out."
"I won't," said Zoe softly. "I don't have anywhere to go. I mean, my boyfriend's in hell."
Banger smiled mysteriously.
"Not for long, maybe," he said.
Her heart jumped.
When Banger finally began to spill, Zoe could barely take in all the details because her brain was spinning so fast. All she wanted to hear, all she cared about in the world, was finding out whether she'd see X again.
The lords had put him on trial, Banger said. X had shouted them down-he'd questioned their authority!
Banger was shocked that X had it in him.
"I mean, the dude never even talks," he said. "Am I right?"
"Stop it," said Zoe defensively. "He's shy-but he talks!"
"Oooh," said Banger. "Somebody's got a crush."
Zoe blushed, but recovered quickly.
"Do not even make fun of my star-crossed supernatural love," she said.
Banger grinned. His teeth, Zoe couldn't help but notice, were chipped and gray.
"Anyway, X does talk now," he said. "You must have taught him how to stand up for himself. I can already tell you're a lot cooler than him."
Banger poured half a bag of Skittles into his mouth-a strange decision given that he was already chewing gum. Zoe watched, weirdly mesmerized. How could he swallow the candy without swallowing the gum? She'd never seen anyone even try.
"Were you always this disgusting?" she asked him.
"Oh, much, much more so," he said.
His mouth was grinding away like a cement mixer as he continued his story.
The trial had ended in chaos, he said. Finally, one of the lords brought X the verdict.
Here, Banger appeared to get hit with a sugar high and, at the pivotal moment in his story, went on a tangent that Zoe found excruciating.
"The lord that showed up?" he said. "Only cool lord in the whole place. We call him Regent. He treats X like a son, almost. Anyway … Sorry. Lost my train of thought." He giggled. "Choo-choo! Choo-choo!" he said. "Train of thought-get it?"
Zoe gave him a stern look.
"Tell me what happened," she said. "Or I will take away your candy."
Banger opened his mouth wide to air out his tongue.
"You gotta take a chill pill," he said.
"No one says that anymore," said Zoe.
"Yeah, they didn't even say it when I was alive," said Banger. "But it's a solid expression. Hey, is Taylor Swift still a thing? Is Chipotle still a thing?" He thought for a moment. "Is saying 'is that a thing' still a thing?"
Annoyed, Zoe reached forward and began pulling the candy away from him piece by piece. A Reese's. A PowerBar. A Twix.
"Not the Twix!" said Banger. "It's a candy bar and a cookie."
He delivered the rest of the story in a rush:
"They told X he has to collect one more soul. If he doesn't screw it up, if he doesn't run crying to you or whatever-he'll be set free. He can leave the Lowlands forever."
Zoe listened as Banger spoke, her heart charging ahead of her.
"Forever?" she said. "I didn't know that was even possible."
"Me neither," said Banger. "I still don't understand half the rules. Friggin' place should have a website."
Zoe stood, so full of energy and emotion that she all but ran across the lobby. She didn't want Banger to see her face.
"I can't believe it," she said. "It's so-it's so fair. Because he shouldn't have been there in the first place. He was an innocent little kid and they treated him as if he was some kind of monster like-"
She broke off.
"Like me?" said Banger.
"I'm sorry," said Zoe. "I'm not judging you. All I know is you were a bartender and you stabbed somebody in a bar-I don't even know why. I'm just glad that X doesn't have to suffer anymore."
Neither of them spoke, as Zoe absorbed the astounding news about X. The only thing that stopped her from tap-dancing around the room was that she felt sorry for Banger. He would never be free. He shoved the remaining junk food into his pockets now-she could hear the potato chips splintering into dust as he forced them in-and threw the empty wrappers into the trash.