Chapter One #2
“You’re allowed to let those inside thoughts out, you know.” She reaches up and raps her knuckles against the side of my head. “Gideon isn’t lurking around the corner, ready to clock you for insubordination.”
“Gideon would have to actually be around the corner for that to happen.” The managing head of the Reapers prefers a more hands-off approach. He hasn’t been seen in the office for more than two hundred years.
Aelia smirks. “You’re also allowed to wear some color.”
I stare down at my sleek black robes. At five foot eight, my robes fit a lot better than hers. “This is the uniform. We’re wearing the same thing.”
She stops abruptly in the middle of the hall, offended. “We are not wearing the same thing.” She whips open the front of her robes with a flourish. “I am not afraid of a little pizazz.”
I stare at her pizazz. Underneath her uniform, she’s wearing a hot pink sweater with a sparkly rainbow emblazoned across the front of it. It’s tucked into a bright baby-blue tutu, more sparkles on the edges.
Whoever she claims next is in for a treat.
She closes her robe with a snap, and continues walking down the hall.
“Let me guess,” she calls over her shoulder, “you’re wearing a black skirt, black tights, and a black turtleneck.”
I glance at the top of my robe just to make sure it’s not open. “It’s a boatneck sweater, and it’s slate. Not black.”
“Slate,” she mutters under her breath, shaking her head. She turns down a hall, and then another. The assignment room is hidden in the center of a labyrinth. Every door we pass is unmarked, each one painted the same corporate white. I’m convinced the design was intentional.
“What did Brian want?” she asks while I’m busy counting steps, trying to remember where I am.
“His name is Brad,” I answer, distracted.
“Whatever.” Her lips press together. “Was he trying to touch your scythe again?”
I clutch it tighter to my body. “He does seem preoccupied with the specifics of becoming a Reaper. He said he wanted to come to the assignment room.”
Aelia stops; I almost mow her tiny body down. “He asked you that?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “I don’t trust him.”
“I know. That’s why I don’t go to the break room.”
Before us, the door to the assignment room looms at the end of the hall. My chest tightens. I don’t want to do this, I think wearily, the blade across my shoulder feeling like a thousand pounds. I’m so tired of death.
“How long has he been a Ferryman? A month?” Aelia scoffs. “A month. And he thinks he can get in front of the tree.”
“You were in front of the tree on your first day.”
“Yes, well.” She examines her nails. They’re painted a pastel pink. She has flower decals on every other finger. “I’m special.”
I snort a laugh. “That you are.”
We come to a stop in front of the last unmarked door. Two ornate sconces anchor either side, matching flames that never extinguish. The handle is a burnished brass, curved in the shape of a scythe. I stare at it, knowing I should already be inside.
But I hesitate.
Aelia tilts her head up and gives me a curious look. “What’s going on with you?”
I debate lying, but Aelia has always been able to see right through me. “I don’t know.”
I don’t know how to describe this itchy, uncomfortable feeling that crawls through my bloodstream. A tug, right at the base of my skull. It’s as if I’ve misplaced something. Like there’s something I’m supposed to remember.
“Do you ever—” I pause, trying to untangle my thoughts.
“What?” she snaps, impatient as always.
“Do you ever get tired of this work?” I ask carefully, pulling at the string that loops around all my most persistent thoughts. “Do you ever wish … you were with a different office?”
Aelia blinks at me. Pale blue eyes in a perfect cherub face, with the knowledge of a thousand lives coursing through her tiny body. “Our work is the most important in the department,” she says.
“Yeah.” Disappointment curls in my gut. I don’t know what I was hoping for. “Yeah, of course. I know that.”
“We are the most powerful beings in existence,” she continues, her young voice ringing with finality. “We represent death, Darcy. We cannot take that lightly.”
But I want to take it lightly. I’m tired of the doom and gloom and the tears and the bargaining.
I don’t want to be there at the final moments.
I want—I want the middle ones. Lazy mornings in bed and cups of coffee gone cold.
Flowers in bloom and lipstick smudged on the edge of a glass.
A single candle wedged crooked in buttercream icing.
Towels fresh from the dryer and junk mail shoved through a crack in the door.
My entire existence is defined by the end. I want the beginning back.
But a Grim Reaper who’s tired of death? That sounds like the punch line of a bad joke.
Aelia straightens, her face brightening. “You know what you need?”
A vacation, probably. One of those sensory-deprivation tanks, maybe. For everyone to stop telling me what I need, definitely. The flames on either side of the door flare then settle, as if they can sense my mood.
I narrow my eyes and try to redirect my thoughts somewhere neutral. Just in case.
“You need to wear some color. Something interesting. Just because we’re death incarnate doesn’t mean we need to look it. Live a little.” She snaps her fingers. “Oh! Let’s go to that little boutique by your house. I got the cutest strawberry earrings the last time I visited you.”
Departmental employees are allowed to haunt the house of their choosing during off-hours, as long as it’s outside the beaten path from mortals.
I picked a little cottage on the Maine coastline.
Craggy rocks and blue-gray waters. Sunsets that paint the sky all sorts of colors.
But sometimes I feel more lonely there than anywhere else.
Drifting through the empty rooms in my empty house.
“The last time you visited me was in 1968,” I point out.
“And I still have the earrings.”
“Yes, well, that shop is a wine bar now.”
“No shit?”
I nod. “Went out of business in ’92 and sat abandoned for a couple of years before a family bought it. They make pretty good schnitzel.”
“What the fuck is schnitzel?”
I’ll never get used to the vulgarity that explodes out of her tiny body.
“It’s a thin, breaded slice of—”
Her eyes glaze over.
“Never mind.” I gesture at the door. “I should get inside.”
“Yeah, you should. What are you, twenty minutes late now?” She flicks her wrist and looks at the watch on her arm. It’s shaped like a jelly bean with gemstones on the band. “I’d like to get my assignment wrapped this century, thank you very much.”
Her small hand presses between my shoulder blades, and she shoves me at the door. I reach for the handle to steady myself but fall through instead. The last thing I see before the door slams shut behind me is Aelia blowing another damn bubble with her gum.
I peel myself from the floor with a groan, trying to scrape together the scraps of my dignity.
“Sorry I’m late,” I say to the massive tree in the middle of the room.
The leaves above my head rustle in response, and I smile.
The assignment room is less of a room and more …
an enormous glass atrium, golden light filtering in from the windows up above.
The tree itself splits up through cracked tile like it bullied its way there, its wide trunk cleaving into three pillars.
The branches reach out wide, the gnarled fingers almost touching either end of the room.
The tree is beautiful, if not intimidating. An ancient being, with eternities carved into her skin.
“I’ve been having some trouble,” I confess quietly.
I smooth my hand over the front of my robes and reach for the pocket where I keep a well-worn folded-up piece of paper.
I hear it crinkle and feel the phantom pain of a life half-lived.
“I don’t suppose you have any easy assignments to offer me, do you? ”
The tree remains silent.
“Yeah, I get it.” Frustrated with myself, I find the part of the tree where a cluster of bright red berries peek out from between the leaves.
Each berry is small and round, a hard black seed in the middle.
I reach for the one that hangs lowest. I pluck it gently from the branch, then cup it in my palm.
Poisonous to mortals, they’re something entirely different for us. Hints of lives about to end. A taste of what’s to come.
“I could really use something different,” I whisper. “Something good.”
I place the berry on my tongue and wince against the flavor. It’s sickeningly sweet, with a sharp bite that sticks to the back of my throat. The vision is almost as jarring, floating across my consciousness like the slice of a blade.
There’s a man. Young, with smile lines by his eyes. His hair is so dark it looks like spilled ink. Wet asphalt. Cracked glasses. Music coming from somewhere far away. A flickering neon sign, orange in the melting light.
OPEN
Blood on my hands. Copper on my tongue.
My eyes snap open. The tree groans. I release my breath and let my magic unfurl.
There’s a wisp of dark, a pulling sensation at the small of my back, and then I’m gone.