Chapter 1 - Timothy
TIMOTHY
“Am I dead?” he asked.
The ghostly visage of blond beachy waves and a muscular build hit me like a punch to the chest. I couldn’t breathe.
“Aaron?” The name escaped my mouth before I could bite it back. Suddenly, I was boiling in my tailored suit. My skin itched all over.
The spirit of the man in front of me looked at me with confusion and fear, then scanned the room as if in search for something familiar.
The sand-filled antechamber was lined with columns that bloomed at the top like flowers, their shafts covered in Egyptian hieroglyphics. It felt like a step into Ancient Egypt, an illusion hidden miles below the Sinopolis hotel.
I looked closer as the initial spike of adrenaline eased at seeing the man who had left Las Vegas three years, ten months, twenty-two days, and approximately eighteen minutes ago.
Loosening my tie ever so slightly, I reminded myself that, as the scribe and recordkeeper, it only made sense to have such a keen sense of the passage of time.
Instead of bright aquamarine eyes, I was met with a dull green. Whenever Aaron had been pensive, a line pulled between his brows. This man’s forehead wrinkled in concentration, and the similarities fell away.
Not Aaron.
But the deceased man in front of me bore a striking resemblance to the man I lov—
I stopped midsentence in my own head, cutting off the word I’d been about to form.
Immediately editing, revising, I took control of the narrative.
The man I had strong feelings for, and one night of passion.
I have to taste you.
A hot shiver ran through me at the memory of both the rasp of his words and his scruff against my skin before it settled into a cold, empty pit that seemed to have developed in my stomach nearly four years ago.
I hadn’t realized how starved I was for the shape of Aaron until I saw it on another man.
“You are indeed dead.” I rose from the seat on the dais, straightened my tie, and slid a hand down my suit. “And you have skated the thin edge of a life well lived and one of destruction, which is why you are now here, Mr. Morris.”
His eyes traveled past mine, falling on the elaborate ancient paintings of the Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis.
In the mural, the jackal-headed god weighed a soul against the feather of Ma’at, deciding whether the man before him would be sent to the jaws of Amit to perish or cross to the Afterlife for an eternity in paradise.
Mortals had spent centuries calling him the Grim Reaper, weaving him into fables and cautionary tales until he adopted the name, feeling it aptly earned.
Grim wasn’t here to judge this soul.
That duty now fell to me. Mortals didn’t whisper my name with the same fear. The world called me Timothy now, which lacked the gravitas of Thoth, God of Wisdom and Recordkeeping, but blended better in the modern world.
“You have been in the chambers with me, reaping souls since the beginning of time,” Anubis said as he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “There is no one I trust more to keep the balance, Thoth. While I’m away, keep the order. I have complete faith the souls of this world are in the best hands.”
Grim entrusted me with the scales, and I carried that weight without hesitation. It was my duty to keep the balance, and I had no intention of failing at it.
Even if the work pressed harder each day. Even if the silence of these chambers felt heavy without him.
Order required strength. I would be strong.
Suppressing a grimace, I pulled up my sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a feather. The outline lit up with blue power as it peeled away from my skin, forming into a three-dimensional object I plucked up with my other hand.
“Hey, man.” James Morris threw his hands up in defense, eyes wild at the display of my power. “I’m a good dude.”
“That is yet to be determined, but we’ll soon know.” My words were flat to my own ears, even as I reached down into his chest and pulled out his heart. Mr. Morris patted frantically at himself, searching for holes or broken ribs.
“No need to worry about your body anymore, Mr. Morris. You shed the mortal form when you foolishly decided to illegally bungee jump off the Hoover Dam.” I had to suppress an eye roll.
“Whoa, that’s how I died?” His face brightened. “Oh man, that’s the way to go. I bet so many chicks will be so sad they won’t get to bang me after that, but I bet they cry.”
This time I didn’t suppress the eye roll.
What an absolute gem of a mortal.
Definitely not Aaron.
He would have stuttered at least once by now, a side effect from being hit in the jugular by a surfboard. Though admittedly I could easily believe Aaron to be foolish enough to try and pull off the same kind of stunt as Mr. Morris here.
The man’s heart and the feather traveled behind me to the wall with the massive painting of scales. The feather and heart settled on either scale and the entire painting glowed blue as I fed it my magic.
The scales rocked up and down, to and fro, before landing decidedly. The heart side raised high.
“It seems as though your stupidity and selfish deeds have not tainted your heart. Looks like your soul will not make a meal for Amit today.”
His nose scrunched. “What’s an Amit?”
“A crocodile god who eats souls,” I explained, before giving into the extreme urge and pulling out my tablet from where it was wedged in my seat on the dais.
“But no, your fate, Mr. Morris, lies in the glorious Afterlife where Hraf-Hraf will ferry you into the waiting arms of Osiris, who will deliver you to your Eden.”
Mr. Morris’s shoulders tightened as he shifted from foot to foot. “Who and who?”
Instead of answering, I sat down before meeting his gaze. “You’ll see.”
The scales dissolved along with the wall, opening up to a vista with a beautiful blue sky that expanded over thick, lush green reeds.
The vast landscape sucked Mr. Morris into it then rearranged itself into painted sandstone, the picture of the scales back in place. A slight tingling on my arm told me the feather of Ma’at had resumed its place.
The chamber was deathly quiet in the wake of his crossing.
Despite having turned on my tablet to distract myself with whatever organizational task was closest at hand, I found myself staring at the screen without seeing.
It wasn’t him, my mind reassured me.
But one day it might be. Or maybe I just wished it?
Could Aaron have tainted his soul enough in three years to warrant judgment before passing into the Afterlife?
If he did, it would mean I’d get to see him one more time. He’d appear before me, right in this chamber.
Or you could find him now and just call, a practical if not sassy voice in my head retorted. It sounded too much like the voices of my friends, Vivian and Miranda, braided into one.
Was he still in Costa Rica? All it would take was his name and a thought. I could pull Aaron’s file, trace the thread of his soul wherever it wandered on earth, tilt the ledgers of eternity a fraction in my favor. One tiny misuse of power. One tiny crack in the rules.
I told him we could never be, and he listened.
Everything ended for the best. A relationship between a god and a mortal was a recipe for chaos and heartbreak, of which I was interested in neither.
A whine from nearby pulled my attention.
A reaper dog set its head on my knee, looking up at me with glowing gold eyes that were filled with concern.
My heart clenched. The reaper was intuiting my emotions again.
This one had been doing so regularly. And a whine from the animal now made me aware of the emotions I had been trying to ignore.
I lifted a hand to stroke its glossy black coat. The tension inside me eased ever so slightly as my fingers met with the soft, plush fur of my self-appointed companion.
It had been such a brief moment between us, yet nearly four years had done nothing to soften the sting of Aaron’s absence. Some centuries seemed to slip by in an instant, but each year since that night passed in a slow, torturous crawl.
While time had always been something I tracked and recorded to keep order since the dawn of mortals, it now felt like a punishment.
What would have happened if we’d had more than a single night?
A year?
An entire mortal lifetime?
I was certain I would never be able to recover after Aaron’s final passing. Not even after millennia.
Now, I was starting to believe I wouldn’t ever be released from his hold, even after spending only a single night with him.
The thought settled, heavy and useless.
For a fleeting moment, I considered ending my day there. Closing the chamber. Leaving the rest of the docket for tomorrow. I had already judged dozens of souls today.
But order did not bend for exhaustion, and balance did not care about the heaviness in my chest. I straightened and continued. Longing had no place in the work before me.
I gave the reaper another pet of assurance. “Enough of that, Assirak. I’ll never see him again, and we have much work to do.”