Chapter Seven
You Gotta Have Somethin’
Death’s Door, LLC
“I am not fucking happy about this, Asher.” Big D’s voice booms through his office, echoing off the vaulted ceiling and obsidian walls like thunder.
He sits behind his fancy desk in his monstrous wingback chair.
His voice reverberates, making it difficult to determine where it’s coming from, especially since he’s not facing me.
I glance at the expanse of his desk; it’s new, rich mahogany, hand-carved, with a gold filigree placard that reads: Shot Caller.
The surface is cluttered with bizarre objects.
Nana—the human skull he keeps filled with candy—sits on a pedestal, the hollows of her eye sockets staring at me.
Beyond that, there sits a Rubik’s Cube—or rather the remnants of a Rubik’s Cube that I’m guessing Big D did not solve.
Next to it, there’s also a snow globe that I recognize as one of Time’s creations.
I lean in closer to examine the contents inside and notice that they are moving.
Whatever I’m watching behind the rounded glass is nothing short of apocalyptic.
Turning my attention away from the literal war happening inside the globe, I glance back at his nameplate.
Shot Caller …
How is this the man in charge? I almost snort aloud, but I suppress it.
I bring my attention to the back of the chair. D is presumably staring at the wall, scowling, remaining half hidden behind the rich leather, leaving me feeling like a child who’s disappointed his parents so much that they won’t even look at him.
His refusal to turn and face me while speaking to me is both infuriating and terrifying.
How bad is this?
“It’s bad, Asher,” he replies, as if answering my unvoiced question.
“Bad enough to break my longest-running win streak. And, no, before you guess, it’s not my current uncontested reign as the OtherWorld’s most eligible ruler.
I’m untouchable in that regard. But my position as the top Scrabble player in the afterlife has been seriously jeopardized after your incompetence rudely interrupted my latest match.
Centuries of triple-word scores and seven-letter words, all for naught, because one of my most reliable reapers couldn’t clear a simple building fire. ”
“It won’t happen again, sir.”
“E-X.” Big D pronounces the two letters, the last syllable hanging in the air ominously.
“Sir?”
“That’s the word played to beat me. The word I hadn’t been prepared for because my assistant had just informed me that Reaper Number 1 0 1 3, Asher comma Thomas, had just left the charred remains of a soul behind in a pile of smoldering ruin.”
I don’t speak because I’m unsure if there’s anything I could possibly say to calm his nerves.
“E-X, Asher. Ex. As in the former. Also as in the letter X … as in Asher, the ex-reaper, destroyed his only chance at meaning in the OtherWorld when Big D marked his file with a big red X.”
“Your point is well made, sir.”
“As well made as a two-letter word placed in two directions with the eight-point letter on a triple-letter score? That well, reaper?”
“That’s a fifty-point play.”
“If only you could reap souls as deftly as you can multiply.”
“We got most of the souls cleared before the building caved in.”
“Most of the souls?” D’s voice drops an octave, and with it, the temperature in the room lowers.
“That’s right. Pretty close to all of them.”
The chair spins fully dramatically around, as if he truly is the villain in this story. D looks exactly the way he always does—tall, imposing, and utterly ridiculous in his pale pink shorts, sandals and a black T-shirt adorned with bold white lettering that says: “These Hoes Don’t Deserve Me”.
The ruler of the OtherWorld and most feared deity in all of creation, props his feet on the edge of his desk and leers at me through a pair of oversized, red bedazzled sunglasses.
I have a million things I want to say about the sight before me, but the glare behind those rhinestones tells me that none of this is funny to him. He removes the shades, tosses them on the desk, and repeats the last words I said back to me: “Pretty close to all of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you a professional baseball player, Asher?”
“Sir?” I say, caught off guard by his unexpected question and sudden change of subject.
“Do you see a jar full of unmarked jelly beans anywhere?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“Did I send you away to a horseshoe competition?”
At the mention of the insidious game, my mind flashes to a long-suppressed memory, deeply tied to the face I thought I’d buried under all that rubble—again. I force my brain to tamp down the thoughts.
“No, sir. We were not playing any sort of game.”
“Then ‘pretty close’ isn’t fucking good enough. In Catastrophes, the bar is set at perfection, Asher. Anything less than that ain’t getting you into the Reaper Hall of Fame.”
“I didn’t know there was a Hall of Fame, sir.”
D’s eye twitches. “There isn’t, you partially chewed gummy bear. It was a callback to the baseball reference I made a moment ago. You’re on thin ice as it is. If you don’t want this to get any worse for you, I suggest you keep up with my infectiously witty banter.”
“Infectious,” I mumble before I can stop myself. “Maybe that’s why I’m sick to my stomach.”
The room goes deathly silent, which, given the circumstances, seems appropriate.
“I heard that,” D growls low enough to shake the floor.
“You read my thoughts a second ago, so, yeah, I didn’t think I’d slip one past you. Sorry. I’m not really the type to trade witty barbs with.”
“Evidently,” he sighs wistfully.
“Listen, we were working the scene, and the fire got out of hand.”
“Every situation I send you into is out of hand. That’s kind of the nature of the job, Ashtray. It’s called the Catastrophes Division, not the Tend to Itty-Bitty Boo-Boos and Make Souls Feel Safe Division.”
“How were we to know the crossbeams were that far gone?”
“You weren’t, but that shouldn’t have mattered. Your mission is to get the job done. And you failed. Objectively. Categorically. Spectacularly.”
He pauses to rearrange the letters on his desk before shaking his head, still unsatisfied.
“Respectfully, sir.” Quinn’s voice cuts through the tension.
I almost forgot he was here. We’d been portaled directly from the scene to Big D’s office, and I was so wrapped up in my own dread that I barely registered Quinn standing beside me, silent and rigid.
D whips around. “Don’t follow my adverbs with more adverbs, reaper Quinn. The world has enough adverbs as it is. Also, who told you that you could speak?”
“I just thought—”
“Thinking. Another thing you’re not authorized to do.” He moves his tiles around again, still unsatisfied. “But please, enlighten me. What little pearls of wisdom are you about to bestow upon this conversation?”
Quinn straightens. He’s brave—I’ll give him that. Stupid, but brave.
“We did the best we could, Mr. D. We’ll do better next time.”
D blinks.
Once …
Twice …
Then he laughs gleefully. It’s not a pleasant sound.
“Oh, well, why didn’t you say so? You’ll do better next time. Great!” He claps his hands together with mock enthusiasm. “Here’s a sticker. Grab a lolly from the bowl on the way out and make sure you get your participation trophy from Debrief.” The sarcasm is thick enough to spread on toast.
“Mr. D, I—”
“I had them.” He picks up his Slinky and casually bounces it back and forth between his hands.
“I was about to seal the deal. They played a pathetic word—HUG—, and I was ready to ruin them with ZEPHYR on a triple-word score while using up my remaining tiles. It was my moment when suddenly—ping. Catastrophic failure alert. I rushed my turn and dropped HEY for a measly 9 points. Their riposte was the dreaded EX that gave me the axe. And my streak has come to an end.”
“Sir, I don’t think—”
“You’re right; you don’t think, and therein lies the problem.” Big D rises from his chair with lightning speed and slams his fist into the center of the mahogany. The impact cracks and splinters the wood, the sound reminiscent of breaking bone in the cavernous space.
“What happened back there?” His eyes bore into mine, as though Quinn ceased to exist entirely. “And don’t even think about giving me some bullshit line about structural integrity again. What happened?”
“Ran out of time,” I state carefully.
“And why might that have been?”
“There were a lot of souls.”
“Souls on the reap?” D leans forward, his knuckles pressed into the splintered desk. “Or are there other souls that captured your attention, Asher? You wouldn’t happen to be having any of those pesky mortal memories resurfacing too vividly now, would you?”
My throat goes dry. How does he do that? He must suspect something. This is not good.
“No.” The lie falls instantly and effortlessly from my lips. It has to because the truth would send me to a fate worse than death. The Nothing.
“It’d better not be.” D straightens, brushing splinters off his sleeve.
“Time and Fate are breathing down my neck. They’re still pretty salty about the whole mortal girl shifting the natural order of things and sending the future course of events in a new and entirely unexpected direction.
The last thing I need right now is a pair of incompetent reapers working the most volatile division of soul collection and creating more loose ends. ”
“It was the final room, Mr. D.” Quinn tries again, his voice steadier this time. “It was hard to see through all the smoke and fire. We still separated dozens of souls—”
“All but one.” D starts pacing again, stepping over the scattered Scrabble tiles. “So, now you owe me. And I intend to collect.”
The air shifts, becoming darker and heavier.
“Sir—” Quinn starts.
Big D’s eyes turn to deep red flames. His hand shoots toward Quinn, fingers splayed like he’s grabbing something. If he is, I can’t see what it is.
Quinn’s mouth opens in an attempt to protest, cry out in pain, or say something, but I’ll never know what was meant to escape his lips.