Chapter 25 Grim #2
She frowned, confused, and blinked up at me. “No one. I… just thought it was obvious who he was. Wizened man in Renaissance robes named Johann with a German accent with the title of doctor? I’m familiar with the story, of course, and the legend was said to have been based off a real man.”
With her being a librarian, I could see how she’d know of the legend of Faust, the fifteenth-century German scholar and alchemist who sold his soul to the devil in return for riches, power, and knowledge.
Johann’s story had endured through the ages, inspiring countless books, movies—a famed opera.
But for Helena to have put two and two together with only the few clues she’d mentioned?
I’d known Helena was well read, but until now, I hadn’t realized just how perceptive she was.
“You didn’t call him by that name, did you?” I asked her.
“N-no,” she said. “And something tells me it’s a good thing I didn’t ask about his history?”
“He’s sensitive about his past,” I said. “He rarely talks of it.”
Something true for all of us.
“If Faust is real,” she ventured, glancing back down the way we’d come while lowering her voice, as if already taking my cautions to heart, fearful she might be heard even from a distance, “does that mean his, uh… nefarious, er… friend is, too?”
“You’re asking about the demon,” I said. “And it’s even wiser not to utter his name. At least not anywhere other than here.”
“So… demons are real, too,” she murmured, now white-knuckling the strap of her purse.
Probably not the best time to admit vampires were as well. Right along with a few other… “mythological” beings.
“Have… you met him?” she asked.
By “him,” she meant the infamous Mephistopheles—the demon Faust originally summoned.
A devil charged with seeing to the fulfillment of the doctor’s every whim.
But also, upon Johann’s death, to the procurement of the soul the old man had sold in exchange for the services of his diabolical manservant.
A soul he has, through the ages, managed to keep by remaining here in the Netherworld, a realm that cannot be reached by that demon or any other.
If nothing else, Johann was clever.
But so was Mephistopheles.
“I’ve had a run-in or two,” I admitted. “He’s always looking for Johann, and someone gave him a lead—a correct lead—that I happened to know where he can be found.”
“Holy granola,” Helena said, her eyes popping.
“You could say I… put him off,” I said, “and he hasn’t bothered me since. Though he’ll still hassle Flora from time to time.”
“So he knows,” said Helena, “where Johann is?”
“It seems he heavily suspects,” I replied. “But he’d have to convince someone to try to bring him Johann’s soul since he can’t come here, and I think our last encounter taught him not to try that angle again.”
“Goodness,” she whispered. “Could Cedric have spilled the beans?”
“It’s not unthinkable he was the one who did,” I said.
“But, while I wouldn’t put anything past Cedric, he doesn’t have any real power here.
He’s more of a refugee than an official.
For the time being, I also think it’s worth more to him to have Johann in the Halls.
And even Cedric probably knows better than to strike a deal with a demon. ”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “If he’s such a troublemaker, couldn’t the three of you… kick him out?”
“Cedric, like the rest of us, is here by the benevolence of The Few,” I said. “He’d have to piss them off to get booted. I’m the only one who sees through his bullshit. Flora is tenderhearted—and misguided—enough to believe we can change him, while Johann sees too much of himself in Cedric.”
“I see,” said Helena. “You all… really care about each other, don’t you? Even Cedric?”
“Cedric can rot,” I snarled.
Helena folded her arms and smirked at me. “Spoken like a true big brother.”
I grunted. “Not you, too.”
“Sorry,” she said with a sheepish, one-shouldered shrug. “I guess I… want to see the best in people. Even someone like Cedric. Maybe I’m just in the club of everyone who, for your sake, wishes he could be different.”
“He tried to hurt you,” I blurted out.
Helena’s eyes flitted up to me, wide and questioning.
“It’s become all too clear that he wants to destroy me,” I said, trying to cover for the moment. “That’s why he targeted you. I might have cut him slack in the past, but now? Officially, when it comes to Cedric, for me… all bets are off.”
“Because his taking me to The Few would get you fired,” she said, her tone matter of fact, assured. Was she trying to reassure herself I hadn’t started to care for her?
Because the idea understandably repulsed or frightened her? Or both.
I went silent. Maybe getting me fired had been Cedric’s aim initially, but there were other reasons now why hurting Helena would mess with me. He’d already guessed as much, too, or else he wouldn’t have tried to bargain with me in the McDonald’s.
Shit. The worst had happened.
I was a creep.
Because I liked her. A fucking lot.
Something I’d made painfully plain to Cedric after going full-on murder mode and felling him at the library when I would have done better to feign indifference.
Feigning anything around Helena was getting progressively harder to do. Though, apparently, I was still the last one to figure all this the fuck out.
Well. Maybe I wasn’t the very last one.
I didn’t want Helena to suspect how I felt, but… so what if she did?
In a few minutes, the two of us would be parting ways anyway, so who would be around for me to feel embarrassed in front of?
She probably had tons of admirers. Maybe it wouldn’t surprise her to have a monster among them.
Helena still didn’t understand what getting fired really looked like for me, either.
And maybe that’s why she thought of Cedric as the wayward-black-sheep type rather than the snake he’d revealed himself to be.
But I didn’t want Helena to know Cedric’s victory meant my demise and damnation, either. She had enough to worry about.
“Don’t let on to Johann that you know who he is,” I said, deflecting, “and whatever you do, don’t mention Mephistopheles.”
Helena’s expression sobered, and she nodded, a clear indication she took my warning to heart. “Spoken as if you think I’ll see him again. Johann, I mean.”
In all likelihood, she would not.
“I won’t pretend to know what will happen from here out,” I said, deflecting yet again, hoping for the hundredth time to spare her any measure of fear she wasn’t already contending with. “But I do know it is time for you to go home.”
“Home,” she repeated, before adding with a sigh, “Right. Um. I just… have one more question. If… you don’t mind.”
I waved an inviting hand with a hunch about what she would ask—one that proved true.
“Back at the restaurant,” Helena said, “Cedric tried to… negotiate with you.”
My soul contracted around my bones, constricting with reluctance.
“He alluded to there being a way to… avoid my death. At least, that’s how I took it.”
Fucking Cedric.
I hadn’t wanted to have this conversation with her. It would only bring pain—for the both of us.
Still, she deserved an explanation.
“My role,” I said, “is one that is traditionally passed along voluntarily. A human must willingly agree to assume the current reaper’s place by taking an oath. In exchange, the new reaper can, during the course of his career, elect to spare a single life—even a Fated.”
“Johann,” said Helena, “gasped when I mentioned Cedric offered to barter with you for my life. He said something like ‘I understand now.’ Does… that mean anything to you?”
No. But only because I didn’t remember my own past. I only knew the facts of my current reality.
Maybe Johann figured something out about me—which would make his earlier comments make more sense. Not what he’d meant, but the fact that he’d uttered them at all.
He could figure shit out about me all he wanted. So long as he left me blissfully unaware.
“Cedric,” I said, “I assume, found out about this detail of my position. I’m guessing he wants me to voluntarily surrender my role to him with the understanding he would grant his one life to you.
Making such a bargain with him would require me to trust that he would follow through on that.
Given that the life would, at that point, be his to grant, however, and not mine, I—”
“That’s why you said you wouldn’t trust him to hold up his side of the bargain.”
I remained silent. Because that was correct.
“But…” she ventured, a small smile touching her lips, “that means that, even for a second, you actually considered it. Negotiating with him.”
Was that true? God… was it?
“I don’t understand, though,” she said. “What would happen to you in that scenario?”
“I would move on,” I answered quickly.
“You mean you’d go into one of those cauldron thingies. Meaning… you’d die? Um. For good?”
“Yeah,” I said, hoping we could just leave it—this whole conversation—at that.
“You don’t want that,” she guessed.
“I like my job,” I said. “All things considered.”
That wasn’t a lie. Though “like” felt like a stretch.
She nodded like that made sense to her, and she cast her gaze to the ground.
“Helena,” I said, and she looked up, her eyes misty now, though I couldn’t be certain of why. Not that she didn’t have plenty of reasons to be upset. “That one life… I don’t remember the details but… I know I already granted mine. At least, I know I don’t have it—if I ever did.”
She nodded some more. “I thought that’s what Johann must have concluded. That you gave it to someone already.”
“If I hadn’t,” I said, “and if I still had it… please know I would grant it to you. After everything… well, that would be the least I could do.”
She flushed, a tear falling, though she wiped it away quickly before waving me off with the same hand, suddenly flustered. “That’s… sweet.”
Sweet? Until now, no one had ever called me that.
Though I had meant what I said. I would have given it to her.
And God only knows what I would do if I thought Cedric could be trusted to keep his word…