Chapter 4 Grim
The following night, I entered the Basins to find the doctor missing from his station. His witless bird, too.
Except Johann rarely left his desk. When he did, Pluto, the proverbial eyes in the back of his head, went with him.
I abandoned my scythe, which stood waiting for me as it had last night, its cool silver blade reflected in the shining black marble floor.
Slowing my steps as I approached the swirling vats, I glared down Johann’s vacant chair.
A missing Johann never failed to make me nervous. Theoretically, he was safe here, in the Netherworld—at least he should be—but that did little to erase the fact that he did have a stalker.
A dangerous one.
“Doctor?” I called, but I didn’t receive an answer.
A strange and unshakable foreboding needled me as I made my way to the White Basin, unhooking my hourglass from my belt along the way. I unscrewed the lid, and the soft squeaking of metal against metal loud in this chamber that I rarely found myself alone in.
While I poured out the portion of the souls due to the White Basin, I glanced toward Flora’s statue, which offered its usual stone lily to some unseen passerby. Whenever Flora was in, her statue’s eyes would open. They were closed. Which meant she was still out gathering souls.
As I made my way to the Blue Basin, I checked Johann’s statue.
Just as was the case with my scythe, Johann would deposit his quill in the statue’s grip to gain access to his chambers.
At the moment, the feather quill protruded from the inkwell on his desk.
So Johann hadn’t retired early. And since he never—ever—left the Netherworld, well, he and his feathered beast had to be around here somewhere.
If I didn’t find him before withdrawing for the night myself, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my music—or anything.
“Old man,” I called into the chamber, my voice echoing down the four open archways and halls that led out of the Basins—to the library, the courtyard, the apothecary, and the cloisters.
Again, I received no answer.
“Where did you get off to?” I grumbled before moving on to the Green Basin.
The Red Basin came next, and in went the souls destined for it. Thankfully, tonight, I didn’t have any souls for the Black Basin, which meant my shift had reached its end.
At least officially.
“Johann,” I called, louder this time.
“He’s in the cloisters,” came a voice from behind me. A British-accented one that would have made my eye twitch if I didn’t have just sockets.
Whirling, I found none other than Cedric, the Hallowed Halls’ resident pain-in-the-ass wizard, standing next to my scythe, his fist wrapped around the handle of the tool—which he would not be able to budge since it waited for and responded only to me.
A tall young man with short white-blond hair, a medium build, and a misleadingly boyish, clean-shaven face, he wore his usual modern ensemble of a black suit and tie. A pretentious-as-fuck silver watch chain and fob hung from his waistcoat pocket.
He liked to look important, but he did jack all of significance.
Like the rest of us, he’d come to the Halls for refuge.
For him, that meant conducting busywork in the archives.
Translating old magic texts, organizing volumes, and annotating historical crap or whatever—bullshit kid-in-detention nonsense.
If you asked me, he was a spare part if there ever was one.
Worst thing about him was that he knew it. And it chapped his ass.
Which was why he made it a point to chap mine.
“What is Johann doing in the cloisters?” I asked.
He didn’t pay me any mind. Instead, he smirked up at the scythe and put his other hand on his hip as if pretending the instrument belonged to him.
Most likely, that’s exactly what he was doing since Cedric had no qualms about making it known to anyone who would listen that he felt more equipped for—and worthy of—my job than me.
“I asked you a question, asshole.”
Cedric did a double take at me with those unnerving frost-blue eyes, almost like he’d forgotten I was there. Frowning, he gestured toward me. “Is that… glitter on your robes?”
I ground my teeth. Because I thought I’d shaken that shit out.
“Johann,” I pressed.
Cedric cricked his neck—one of his quirks since he’d once lost his head.
He had a grisly scar from it that I often fantasized about reopening.
He probably had a bunch of other ones from where he’d died and re-died over the decades.
He’d once been shot by Billy the Kid and, before that, turned into a lawn ornament by Vlad the Impaler.
If I didn’t know for sure they were both dead, I’d start a fucking fan club.
As if it took some effort, Cedric withdrew his hand from my scythe. Then he strode toward me, his expression as pompous and judgmental as ever.
“There was a soul missing,” he said. “But no one can say which soul it is or where it’s gone.”
The shadows of my inner essence contracted in the cavity of my ribs, the murk radiating something akin to fear. That wasn’t an emotion I’d encountered in a very, very long time. All the same, did one ever forget such a poisonous sensation?
“That still doesn’t answer why Johann is in the—”
“He’s in the cloisters talking to one of The Few,” Cedric said in that emotionless way of his, gaze set with indifference as he stared straight into my hood.
“They’re going over all the names from last night, but the name of the missing soul is also missing on the roster.
So, again, no one knows which soul is absent, or where it’s flittered off to. ”
One of The fucking Few was here? And Johann was alone with them?
I spun away from Cedric, heading down the hall that led to the cloisters.
“Where are you going, Grim?” Cedric asked, my steps soundless while the heels of his polished black dress shoes clicked against the marble.
I didn’t answer. The less said to Cedric, the better.
“Is it possible you know something?” he asked. “About the missing soul?”
I walked on, the bones of my right hand cracking as I curled it into a fist.
“Did you miss someone, you think?” he ventured.
The shadows in my rib cage dispersed, the essence of my soul shooting through my limbs. The force of my sudden anger had me whirling on Cedric, who I seized by the collar.
His hands went up in surrender, but I still shoved him against the wall, pinning him there.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I ground out.
“I just think it might be evidence—further evidence—that I’m right.”
“I never miss anyone. Ever.”
“Must have been Johann’s mistake, then,” he said. “Or perhaps Flora’s.”
“We don’t miss souls,” I snarled. “Any of us.”
“Noted,” said Cedric. “But say, while you’re here and I have the rare bestowal of your undivided if prickly attention, I do have something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Cedric wanted to accompany me on my rounds. Countless times, he’d voiced the unsolicited—and impertinent—opinion that I could benefit from an assistant.
It was his fault he was bored. And, for the most part, useless. Not mine.
I wasn’t a babysitter. But that memo—I couldn’t seem to get it through his thick and inflated skull. Or Johann’s for that matter. Flora wasn’t much better.
“The answer is no,” I snapped. “It was no when you got here, and it’s no still. For as long as I exist in this capacity—which will be for fucking ever—it will always be no. Do you understand?”
Cedric glared into me hard with that bleak winter stare, frosty eyes searching for the face he would not find. “Yes,” he said, his tone even, disconcertingly calm. “Thank you for the clarification. It’s honestly exactly what I needed.”
I held him pinned for one moment longer, sorely tempted to rip out the soul he still possessed so I could offer it up as the one to replace the librarian’s.
Since that wouldn’t work because he happened to be immortal, and since that action would only give me away as the one responsible for the missing soul, I released him.
“Touch my scythe again,” I warned, turning to continue my trek to the cloisters, “and I’ll use it to play hockey with your head.”
Maybe that was a low blow. None of us knew the details surrounding his decapitation, but it was no secret how touchy he could be about that particular death.
The wound would even still bleed if anyone dared to mention it, or even if something heavily upset him—an involuntary reaction that suggested the pain involved wasn’t just skin-deep.
But maybe he needed a stronger reminder to get back on his fucking side of the undead fence.
“Incurring your wrath to the point of death,” mused Cedric darkly, calling after me. “A preferrable and perhaps less permanent fate than the Black Basin.”
I halted again, glancing over my shoulder at him. Because why had that sounded like a threat?
But the wizard had vanished. Back to his worthless collections and writings. What else was he going to do with his time? Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t have true purpose in the Hallowed Halls. He’d just been sent here because there was nowhere else for him to go.
Unlike us, he could leave if he wanted—go back to the world. Back to life. But he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to move on. Specifically, into my role.
For some reason, he thought what I did was glamorous. But also, becoming the Grim Reaper would give him the option to do the one thing he could not. Essentially? Die.
It was his hypothesis that moving into my position would allow him to shed his curse since it would require the transformation of his physical form.
From there, he planned to harvest souls until the opportunity came to pass along the scythe.
Then, at last allowed to perish, he’d go into whichever Basin would have him.
Green, most likely, since that was the color of his soul, which I’d had in my grip a time or two. Just because Cedric was immortal, that didn’t mean he couldn’t—temporarily—die.