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Mercy

This wasn’t the first tiot me in trouble

I DIED FIRST, SO I MADE COOKIES

They were popular fare on Pirate night, so I needed tobowl last Christmas that probably could have held the water supply for an elephant for a day I don’t knohere he found it

If I ever filled the bowl entirely, I’d have to have one of the olves hteen cups of flour I dumped into it with room for more All the while, piratical howls rose up the stairway from the bowels of the basement

“Jesse—” Aiden began, raising his voice to carry over an enthusiastic if off-key whistling rendition of “The Sailor’s Hornpipe”

“Call hter, Jesse, reminded him

Aiden ht have looked and sounded like he was a boy, but he hadn’t been young for a very long time We had assimilated him, rather than adopted hiether He was still finding sos about modern life difficult to adjust to, like the live-action-role-playing (LARP) aspect of the co

“It only works right if you think of noring his response that she wasn’t his sister, she continued, “As long as you call me Jesse—that’s who you think of when you interact with aame name—Barbary Belle”

There was a pause as soroan of frustration

“Eat claa Bart, but I didn’t have to think of him that way because I was dead, anyway