Bright light shined, red and veiny through my closed eyelids. I blinked, and suddenly the world was white instead. But not Heaven-white, with clouds, and robes, and chicks with wings. Hospital-white. White walls. White ceiling. White sheets and pillows, on the bed beneath me.
I sat up with a sudden flash of memory and brought my hand to my chest. But there was no pain. I took a deep breath, and everything felt fine. Which was weird.
“Welcome back.”
Startled, I twisted on the bed to find the child reaper in a waiting room style armchair by a darkened window, his short hair bright red in the glaring fluorescent light. His feet didn’t reach the floor and his smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Shouldn’t you be getting back to Snow White?” I snapped, rubbing my chest again, still surprised when it didn’t hurt. “No one ever mentioned that death would come in the form of a sucker-punching little dwarf.”
The reaper raised one rust-colored eyebrow. “You may be the first person to ever use that particular description of me.”
“Would I also be the first person you hit with a…what did you hit me with?”
“The post from the traffic sign your car knocked over.” He shrugged. “And no, you’re not the first. I could have killed you without touching you, but it’s easier for both your family and the coroner if I give them an obvious cause of death. At a glance, impact with a blunt object should look like your chest was crushed by the top half of your own steering wheel—you really should have been buckled.” The child shook his index finger at me in mock disappointment. “But the hard part was getting you back in the car.”
“For a kid, you pack a lot of power.”
The reaper scowled. “If you really think I’m a child, maybe I should have left you in that coffin.”
I blinked, briefly surprised by the mention of my own death. “Speaking of which, what’s with the encore performance?” I’d traded my life for Nash’s—I’d tried to, anyway—but if I was still alive, did that mean he was still dead?
Pissed now, I stood and realized I didn’t recognize the stiff white dress shirt I wore. “What the hell did you do?” I demanded. “We made a deal. My life for his.” My hands curled into fists, but before I could do anything stupid, I realized I didn’t really have any recourse. What was I gonna do, punch a kid? A dead reaper kid, at that? “I wanna see your supervisor.”
The kid laughed, and my urge to punch him became an imperative. “I don’t even want to see my supervisor.” His smile looked a little more genuine, but that only made it harder to buy. “Before we go any further, my name is Levi.”
“I don’t care what your name is.” But at least now I’d know who to blame when I got in touch with his boss.
“Relax. Your brother’s alive—he was released from the hospital three days ago—and you’re as dead as disco.” The reaper shifted in his seat, but made no move to stand. “That’s what you were buried in.” His careless gesture took in my stiff shirt and the pressed black pants I’d never seen in my life.
I looked like a waiter.
“If I’m dead, why am I in the hospital?”
“This is a nursing home.” He pushed himself forward, then kind of hopped onto the floor, standing no more than four feet tall. “Specifically, Colonial Manor, room 118. You’re here on a temporary visitor’s pass, of sorts. No one alive can see or hear you.”
“I’m visiting a nursing home in the clothes I was buried in, but no one can see or hear me. Which part of that is supposed to make sense?”
“Have a seat, and I’ll explain.” He gestured toward the bed, and I sat reluctantly, tugging at the sleeves of the shirt I already hated.
“You’re visiting life, not a nursing home—we’re only here because this is one of the places I’m working at the moment. And you’re here—in the grander sense of the word—so I can recruit you.”
“Recruit me?”
“Yes.” His widespread arms indicated the entire facility. “There are nine elderly care facilities in this district and we’re down one man—specifically, we’ve lost the man who covered the night rotation, circulating between them as needed. The sooner I fill the spot, the sooner I can get back to the managerial position I’ve damn well earned.”
“You brought me back…” A surreal thought on its own. “…to work in a nursing home? Like, changing bedpans?” Was I dead or damned? “I think I finally understand the phrase ‘hell on earth…’”
Levi frowned. “You’re being recruited as a reaper. I thought that part was obvious.”
“If by obvious, you mean cryptic and baffling.” And suddenly I was glad I was sitting. “You’re gonna have to give me a minute here. This may take a while to sink in.”
Levi shrugged narrow, thin shoulders. “Actually, you’re handling it better than anyone else I’ve ever recruited. I’m attributing that to the fact that you already knew about a good bit of this, by virtue of being a bean sidhe. Which is why I want you for the position. With any luck, your orientation and training will take about half as long as it takes most people. And the less time it takes to train you…”
“…the sooner you can get back to the managerial position you’ve damn well earned. I caught that the first time.” If the afterlife has managers, does that mean there’s also a customer service department?
His smile was real that time, and all the creepier because of it. “I knew you’d pick it up quick.”
My thoughts chased each other fast enough to make me dizzy. “All I’ve picked up so far is that you brought me back from the dead to make me a reaper.”
“I didn’t bring you back. The reanimation department did that. And because you’re a bean sidhe, they tried to keep you for themselves. But I insisted that the reapers had a prior claim to you.”
“Yeah, that’s not creepy or anything,” I mumbled. “So, do I have any say in this?”
“Of course. It’s your choice. But consider carefully before you decide, because this ‘visitor’s pass’ is only valid for twenty-four hours, and reanimation only works once. If you take too long to decide, you’re dead for good. If you turn the job down, you’re dead for good. If you take the job, then give management any reason to fire you, you’re dead for good. Understand?”
I nodded slowly. “Mess up and I’m dead for real. That may be the only part I do understand.”
“Questions?”
“You bet your scythe.”
Levi chuckled and stood, straightening a blue polo shirt with a Gymboree label embroidered on the pocket. “We don’t actually carry scythes.”
“Damn.” I snapped my fingers in mock disappointment. “I gotta be honest—that was the real selling point. There’s a black hood, though, right?”
His brows rose again. “A reaper with a sense of humor. This should be interesting.” Levi started across the room. “Let’s walk and talk. You had questions?”
I followed him into the hall, and with my first steps, it became obvious that he was right—no one could see either of us. Our shoes didn’t squeak on the faded linoleum. We cast no shadows. I felt like a ghost. Displaced, like I was out of sync with the rest of the world.
Like I wasn’t really there at all.
“How long has it been? Since I died.”
“Ten days.”
“Ten days?” I was dead for more than a week?
Levi nodded. “The reanimation process takes some time.”
An aide headed down the hall toward us, pushing a bald man in a wheelchair. It was surreal, walking unseen among so many people who—even if they died that very night—had already outlived me. “And Nash just got out of the hospital?”
“He had a cracked rib and a skull fracture. They ran several tests. But he’s young and resilient. He’ll be fine.”
“What, were you spying on him?”
Levi dropped into an empty chair in the hall, feet swinging inches above the floor, and the incongruity between his child’s body and the dark knowledge in his eyes left me a little dizzy.
“Experience has shown me that new recruits have trouble concentrating on the job until they know those they left behind have actually survived them. So I checked in on your brother.”
“Can I see them? Nash and my mom?”
Levi frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “Usually, that’s forbidden. Watching your family makes it hard to resist contacting them, and contact with anyone who knew you before you died is a firing-level offense. Which is why we typically place new reapers far from where they lived. However, you’re being recruited for a specific position and your family actually lives in this district.” He shrugged. “Considering the circumstances, I don’t think anyone would object to you checking in on them occasionally, so long as they never see you. But you won’t find them where you lived. They moved yesterday.”
Two days after Nash got out of the hospital. My mother did the same thing after my father died—moved us to a new house, in a new town. She seemed to think it’d be easier to live without him if our house held no memories of him.
Had she already given away my clothes? Boxed up my stuff? If my family lived in a house I’d never set foot in, did that make me dead and homeless?
I slid down the pale green wall until I sat on the floor with Levi looking down at me. Where would I go now—if I took the job—when I wasn’t killing people and harvesting their souls?
Nursing shoes squeaked down the hall, drawing me from my self-pity. “Why can’t they see us?” I asked, staring as a wrinkled old woman with bright red, thinning hair hobbled past us, leaning on a walker. She seemed to avoid us instinctively, even though she couldn’t see us, and that made me feel a little better. If she was scared of us—even subconsciously—then we had to be real. Right?
Levi slid out of his chair and I stood to follow him. “They can’t see you because you’re just visiting.” We stepped past a room full of square tables, where senior citizens sat playing cards and dominoes. “They can’t see me because I don’t want them to see me, and that’s a reaper’s prerogative. Selective corporeality, visibility, etc…” He glanced up at me, one brow arched. “Usually that’s a selling point.”
I felt a grin tug at one side of my mouth. There were obvious perks with that particular fringe benefit. “So, ‘reaper’ is really just a nice word for ‘covert pervert?’ Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not if you want to keep your job for long. But the officials tend to overlook innocent observation in the rookies, because after a few years, most of them outgrow the phase.”
I stopped in the middle of the hall, frowning down at him. “Okay, first of all, how open to interpretation is the phrase ‘innocent observation?’ And second, why would anyone ever outgrow that phase?”
“They outgrow it along with their humanity, Tod. The longer we’re dead, the less we have in common with the living, and you don’t lust for what no longer interests you.”
Great. “So you’re saying the afterlife is hard on the libido? FYI, that’s probably not a good bullet point for your recruiting brochure.”
“Yet it rarely scares away potential recruits. Any idea why?” Levi blinked up at me, studying my eyes like he could see the gears turning behind them, a hint of grim amusement in the curve of his little-boy mouth. And suddenly I understood.
“Yeah.” I started walking again, staring ahead to avoid his gaze. “Because we all think we’ll be the exception.” Myself included. Surely if I could still be near my family—even in an altered state of existence—I wouldn’t lose my humanity. How could I, if I surrounded myself with it?
When I looked up, he was still watching me, but the smile was gone. “It won’t work,” he said, his child’s voice soft but confident. “They won’t be enough.”
I frowned, but held eye contact. “Reapers can read minds?”
“No, but I was always pretty good at connecting the dots.” Levi shrugged, hands in his pockets. “It may work for a little while. But the more time you spend with them, the harder it’ll be for them to accept your death. Even if they never see you. And beyond that, they will grow old, and when they die, there will be nothing left of your humanity. Death will have you eventually, Tod, and the longer you cling to what you had, the harder it’ll be to let go in the end.”
“So, you reap souls and crush hopes? Is that part of the job, or just a service you offer for free?” My chest ached, like my heart had bruised it from the inside—the first physical discomfort I’d felt since waking up dead—and I couldn’t decide if that was a good sign or a bad one.
“I thought you’d want the unvarnished truth, rather than the glossy veneer. Was I wrong?”
I closed my eyes, then opened them to meet his gaze. “Bring on the truth.” Even if it made me want to end my own life. Again.
Though his expression never changed, I could have sworn Levi looked…satisfied.
“So, even taking into account this unvarnished loss of humanity, does anyone ever turn you down? I mean, the choices are reap or die, right? So does anyone actually ask to be nailed back into the coffin?”
Levi nodded slowly, and I squinted at the red-tinted haze cast by the light shining through his copper curls. It was like a crimson anti-halo, gruesomely appropriate for a child of death, and a reminder that Levi wasn’t there to help me. He was there to fill a vacancy.
“It happens. But more often than that, they accept, then change their minds.”
“Why?”
“Some people can’t handle not being a part of the living world. Others don’t have the stomach for the job.”
“What exactly is the job? Do you actually…kill people?” Because, having even indirectly contributed to my brother’s death, I knew for a fact that I didn’t have whatever it took to play executioner.
Levi shrugged. “It’s not murder, by any means, but yes, we extinguish life when the time comes. Then we collect the soul and take it to be recycled.”
“So…you killed Nash?” Part of me was horrified by the thought, but the other half was relieved that someone else was willing to take the blame.
“And you saved him.”
But that wasn’t right. I hadn’t so much saved him as given back what I’d played a part in taking. That didn’t make me a hero. It just made me dead.
And that’s when a new fear broke the surface of confusion that defined my afterlife so far. “Hey, you’re not gonna go back and kill him if I turn this down, are you?” Because I was far from sure I wanted to spend my afterlife extinguishing human existence, one poor soul at a time.
Levi shook his head firmly, and for once the wide-eyed, innocent kid look worked in his favor. “We made a deal, and that deal stands no matter what you decide. Nash will live until the day you were scheduled to die,” he insisted.
“And when was I supposed to die?” Knowing my luck, my noble sacrifice had only bought him a couple of extra weeks, half of which he’d spent in the hospital.
“I have no way of knowing that until your exchanged death date appears on the schedule. Which hasn’t happened yet.” He glanced up at me. “Anything else?”
“Yeah. Why me?” What had I done to deserve an afterlife, when everyone else evidently got recycled back into the general population? “How was I chosen?”
“Very carefully,” Levi hedged.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m gonna need more detail than that. If I hadn’t taken Nash’s place, would you have recruited him? Is that why you were watching him?”
He motioned for me to follow him again, so I fell into step beside him, ambling slowly down the bright hallway. “I was watching both of you.” Levi paused to watch a nurse’s aide walk past us in snug-fitting scrub pants, and I realized that he’d obviously avoided the loss of humanity—and human urges he’d never grown into in life. “But no, I wouldn’t have recruited Nash. I couldn’t have. He was scheduled to die, but I was there for you.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I snapped, frustrated by his suddenly cryptic explanation. “Why couldn’t you recruit Nash?”
Levi sighed. “A person has to meet very specific criteria to even be considered for this job, much less actively recruited. Reapers literally hold the power of life and death in our hands.” He cupped his creepy little child-palms to illustrate. “The list tells us who to take, and when. But the decision to actually follow the list—the responsibility—ultimately rests with each of us individually.
“Imagine what would happen if the wrong person was given such a power. If a reaper had a God complex, or a personal vendetta? What if a reaper was susceptible to bribes or threats? Or even just lacked a respect for the position? We screen our candidates very carefully to make sure nothing like that ever happens. We evaluate their personal relationships and the decisions they make when something real is on the line. And then we test them.”
“And you chose me?” I huffed. “I hate to question your dedication to the recruiting process, but it sounds more like you ran up against a deadline and grabbed the first sucker with the balls to call you out.”
At the end of the hall, Levi stepped through a glass door and into a dark, mostly empty parking lot. “We’ve been watching you for almost two months, Tod,” he said from the other side of the pane.
“Then you know my brother snuck out when I was supposed to be watching him.” After a moment of hesitation, I followed him, and was surprised when I felt nothing. Not the glass I stepped through, not the asphalt beneath my shoes, and not the night breeze obviously blowing through the branches of the trees on the edge of the lot.
“Yes. But you picked him up when he called.”
“Under protest. And that ride home ultimately got him killed.” I shook my head, confused on several points, but absolutely certain about one thing. “You’ve got the wrong guy.” I turned to give him a clear view of my back in the parking lot lights. “Notice the conspicuous absence of wings and a halo.”
Levi actually laughed, the first look of genuine amusement I’d seen from him so far. “What I notice is that the undertaker left your pants intact when he split the back of your shirt.”
“What…?” I couldn’t see my own back, but a quick check with both hands verified that my shirt had been cut open along my spine and was evidently pinned together at the collar. Since it was tucked into my pants and the earthly breeze never touched me, I hadn’t noticed the gaping hole in my wardrobe.
“Funeral directors sometimes do that to make bodies easier to dress. Doesn’t usually matter—most corpses don’t get up and walk around half-exposed after the funeral.”
Funeral. Corpses. Undertaker.
What obviously amused the reaper left me horrified and hollow. “If I unbutton my shirt, am I going to find a roadmap of Frankenstein stitches?” I demanded, my voice trembling in spite of my best effort to remain calm.