XIV
Monday came with a vengeance and hangovers.
Since they hadn’t had the time to take the weekend off to rest with the deadline for the audit, the exhaustion felt ten times worse.
Lucky and Charlie managed to drag themselves into the office with large coffee cups and grumpy attitudes before most of the morning crowd had arrived.
Lucky flopped over in his office chair and tried to get his brain to work.
He could hardly focus on figuring out a place to start, and he’d already been out for several hours reaping souls on Earth so he was ready for bed.
He didn’t even have the energy to grab a blazer today, he felt underdressed.
His head hurt so bad he could feel the throbbing in his horns.
“Where should—should we start?” Charlie asked between a yawn.
“I have no idea. Maybe we need to switch things up so we don’t go crazy,” Lucky mused.
“We could start to put some of the boxes in chronological order? Get those files ready?”
“Smart call. They’ll probably work backwards from my most recent stuff, and I need to file today’s reports away, so I’ll grab the current year.”
“I’ll grab one from last year.”
Lucky nodded. He pushed himself up and headed to the newly erected shelves to grab the boxes they’d need.
With the pile by the elevator having dwindled, he was able to get a second desk with another nice leather armchair for Charlie, so he set the boxes down for him to start going through while he got to work on his own.
They worked mostly in silence aside from the radio playing soft jazz. Lucky felt his heart shrivel at seeing how low his Soul Score was for the month already. He needed to pick up the pace. He rubbed his chest absentmindedly to try and soothe the weird feelings.
The prince flinched when he realized Charlie was standing beside him. “What?”
“You look a little… pale isn’t the word… pink?” Charlie mumbled.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re rubbing your chest and you look unwell, I…” Charlie bit his lip. “Wanted to make sure you were okay? I can work on this if you need to go home.”
“No, I… I’ll be fine once the coffee hits. I’m good. How’s your head?”
Charlie looked at him with suspicion but seemed to drop it after that. He set his hands behind his back and stared at the box. “I’m fine. The caffeine has helped. Those are your most recent files, yes?”
Lucky nodded. The stack had been set face-down so he could work backwards by date. The box was only half full but he had another from this year to tackle after. It had been a busy one until Charlie came tumbling into his afterlife.
“Is… mine in there?” Charlie asked.
Lucky stopped flipping through the box for a second. “Yes?”
“Can I—”
“No. You aren’t even supposed to be looking at these files, I’m not going to let you look at your own death record.”
Charlie pouted. “Fine.”
“You’ve seen enough files to know how this works by now, it’ll just list your personal details and ‘car wreck victim’ as the COD. It’s not exciting. Every person I reap gets added to these boxes, everyone, so naturally the one accident would, too.”
“Then how did you know about all of the stuff I’d done before you killed me?”
“I saw your life file, too. Gabe brought it. I don’t have access to all of that information since you’re not supposed to be here.
Your file is only a page long since it’s not a Hell file.
Now, someone like the man you jumped in front of the car for?
His file is massive… Speak of the devil,” he mumbled.
“Wait, what?”
Lucky turned the file over. “The asshole I was supposed to collect before I… hit you.”
Charlie seemed to pale. “So… I died for… nothing?”
Lucky flinched. “What do you mean?”
“He still… died? I lost my life, all of my hard work, all of that suffering in seminary and being good, for-for nothing?”
Lucky stood with such force the chair slid back.
He gently grabbed Charlie’s upper arms and held on with a reassuring grip.
Charlie had suffered a few panic attacks in the days since they’d gotten his body moved to a nicer facility and his brain fog had lifted, and it was always Lucky’s fault.
It was so painful to watch him have these episodes, and he hated himself for not realizing that was what happened in his closet until it was too late to handle it better.
The prince never knew how to help. It had grown so common to watch that beautiful golden glow around his soul flicker out like a worn down motel sign whenever he’d start to panic.
“Charlie, darling, look at me,” Lucky whispered. “I… I am so sorry. He was always going to die that day—”
“You couldn’t have let him live!? You had to kill us both?”
“Whoa, whoa, hey, I don’t kill people. I’m a psychopomp.
A reaper, I guide souls to Hell. My job is to be there when they pass on and make sure they don’t stick around and cause problems. Souls as bad as this dickhead going around unchecked as a ghost often turn into bad spirits, so I make sure they get down here.
That’s it. I’m sorry, Charlie, I don’t want you to feel like your sacrifice was in vain.
Please don’t think that. If anything, it’s simply another shining example of how beautiful your soul is. How kind you are.”
“I don’t… understand. Then why were you driving so fast? You almost hit him…”
“I…” Lucky hung his head and sighed. “I was mad. It was a bad day and I knew he was going to die of a heart attack a few blocks down. I was speeding because I had made a mistake with my schedule. I got my files mixed up so I arrived early. My plan was to turn into the parking lot right by the intersection, give him a little scare to speed things up since he wasn’t due to die for another ten minutes and I was impatient.
Then I’d snatch his soul and bail, and… you weren’t supposed to be there.
I don’t kill people, Charlie. I never meant to hurt you.
You were supposed to have such a long, beautiful life and I fucked up.
I fucked up so bad and I am trying to find a way to get my imprint off you so we can get you to where you belong.
I know that won’t fix what I did, I know, but I’m trying.
I… I don’t know if that helps but please believe me when I say you did the right thing. ”
“Why was it a bad day?”
Lucky looked at him. The mortal was shaking, looking for any rational reason for his death. Any reason to believe that it was truly an accident and not God turning His back on Charlie for his faults and sins.
“Being an heir is stressful, there’s a lot of pressure to handle a job I hate with excellence.
It’s a lot of responsibility. My old man is hard on me, nothing less than perfection and all of that.
You… you know what that’s like, right? I was tired…
I’ve been doing this for so long and…” Lucky didn’t know how to verbalize it.
Charlie stared at him with those dewy, soft eyes. He lifted his hands and set them on Lucky’s chest with a timid energy.
“It’s hard,” Charlie whispered. “Is it hard for you too?”
“Yeah, it is,” Lucky said with a shaky nod.
Charlie also nodded. “I wanted to be a librarian,” he said with a half laugh.
“But I didn’t have… I… I owed the church so much and they demanded a lot of me because of it.
I tried so hard, I’d literally just taken my vows the night before.
I’d been a priest for less than twelve hours, I still had half a semester left of my studies, and you know what’s funny? ”
“What?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be out that day. I’d woken up early to leave a letter on the Father’s desk to let him know I’d changed my mind.”
Both of them let out soft, uneasy laughs. Lucky lifted his hand to brush away that damn lock of hair that kept falling in front of those blue eyes and smiled. His knuckle softly tapped Charlie’s cheek and wiped away the tears.
“I was so scared that I’d been sent to Hell because I turned my back on God, but it turns out we were both just fed up and in the wrong place at the wrong time, huh?” Charlie asked, still looking for reassurance.
“I think you’ll be an amazing librarian.
You could apply to work at the Seraph’s Office, too.
Help them with their paperwork. If we survive this audit I’ll handwrite the recommendation myself.
Who knows, maybe that’s your true test of dedication to God.
Surviving this nightmare with me so you can kick ass upstairs,” Lucky said with a smirk.
“You’d do that? Wait, would they even care if you wrote it?” Charlie teased.
“Of course. I’m the best damn psychopomp on either side of Earth, even those tightwads know it. Not even their best angel can hold a flame to my records.”
A glimmer of that golden glow returned. Lucky smiled.
He leaned back against his desk and picked up the paper for the serial killer that had caused this mess.
The punishment in the torture room line didn’t seem to be dramatic enough for his tastes, but he did have to hand it to Bub once he saw the notes.
The punishment of having his ear sawed off—much like he’d done to each of his victims—that was then grilled and turned into musubi that he was force fed, only for it to grow back the next day, was wicked and delicious.
He wished he had Bub’s creativity. There was a reason the lackadaisical demon lord was Lucky’s favorite councilman and the one who usually processed his souls personally once he’d dropped them off.
Even thousands of years on and Bub still had a knack for finding new and creative ways to torment souls.
Recently he was on a food-based kick, so Lucky had seen a lot of gastronomy inspired cruelties. The thought was making him hungry.
“I think we both need a break,” Lucky said.
“It’s still early, we literally didn’t even finish a single box,” Charlie replied.
“Yeah, but we can take a break. We’re going to burn out if we keep this up, and I’d already done an entire reaping list before I woke you up,” Lucky noted. “I have a fun idea. Do you trust me?”
Though the question was rhetorical, the way Charlie paused caused Lucky’s throat to dry.
After some contemplation, the young priest nodded. “Yes.”
That sent Lucky’s heart racing. His internal fire kicked up at the shock of it and he coughed out a sulfuric smoke cloud that he waved away with a not-so-casual lean about him.
It was the first time in days he’d felt warm.
Charlie started giggling, and it nearly sent him into cardiac arrest. He groaned and told him to start walking.
The Prince of Hell wasn’t sure how much more of this he’d be able to take.
The tiny priest would kill him if he wasn’t careful. What sweet revenge that would be…
“Come on, short stuff, let’s go have some fun.”