“Emery Sutton, in fact,” Administrator Dagmar goes on, “is apparently not anywhere.” She lifts her eyebrow, rather pointedly, and tilts her head.
John frowns, a real one this time. “Anywhere?”
“No.”
“He wasn’t fast-tracked through Intake and Assessment, maybe?”
“No.”
“The Commission Department surely had to—”
“No.”
John shuts up and stares at Administrator Dagmar. “But I sent him to Transition, Administrator, I know I did. He must be somewhere.”
He hadn’t messed that part up; he knows he hadn’t. He’d have felt something if he’d lost a soul—a tearing, a bottomless wrenching pain, or at least that’s what the other Reapers had told him in hushed tones. Losing a soul isn’t something a Reaper ever wants to feel, and once they do, it’s something they never forget. You can see it in the eyes of the ones who’ve been through it.
Administrator Dagmar merely stares back for a long, long moment before she sighs.
“He is nowhere. He did not cross over. And we have no record of him. He is not merely missing from any schedule, ever, for all Eternity; he is missing from our records entirely. The only place he does exist is There.”
“But….” John chews his lip. “That’s not really possible, is it?”
“It is not. Generally.”
“Generally?”
Administrator Dagmar doesn’t answer. She folds her hands atop her desk and leans in. “You Touched him.” It’s not a question, but she waits for John to nod. “And what did you feel?”
See, and that’s the really odd part of it all.
“I felt nothing, Administrator.”
Which isn’t entirely true, John had felt something, something warm and pleasant and just plain good. But that’s not something he plans to say to Administrator Dagmar, and it’s not what she’s talking about anyway.
History. Experiences. Emotions. Regrets.
Life.
That’s what John should have felt. It’s what he felt with Mrs. Greenway. Every second she’d ever lived, every love she’d ever found and kept or lost, every tear she’d ever shed, and every smile that had left its mark on her happy, wrinkled face.
He’d felt none of that with this Emery.
And maybe John should have guessed something like this might be coming, because not feeling anything when a Reaper Touches isn’t possible either. Every person a Reaper Touches is precious, their lives important, no matter how insignificant they themselves might think they are. So a Reaper must see, a Reaper must remember, because there are times when no one else will, and no life should be forgotten after the memories are taken from the one who lived it.
Somewhere there’s a Reaper out there who knows whether or not John was a thumb-sucker, whether his mother loved him, if he’d managed to get rid of his virginity before he’d died too young, what his name used to be.
“Something else that’s not possible,” Administrator Dagmar mutters and shakes her head. She heaves a great, weary sigh, and gives John that same flat look as before. “Well, Junior Reaper John, there is your new mission, then. Emery Sutton is a loose end, and he has seen you in your true form. He is an anomaly, an inexplicable blip, and he cannot be permitted to remain There, having seen what he’s seen. Since you got us into this, you are going to find this impossible Emery Sutton, and you are going to save me the mountain of paperwork I would otherwise have to wade through to explain all of this to the Head Office.”
John’s eyebrows shoot up. “I am?” It takes a second for it all to register, but when it does, John makes sure the grin twitching at his mouth doesn’t surface. Find Emery Sutton, of the shaggy black hair and the pretty blue eyes—not just permitted to find him, but sanctioned, ordered. And, honestly, how hard can it be? Emery Sutton must be somewhere; there are only so many places a soul can go, and he’s definitely not lost. And who’s to say John has to bring him to Administrator Dagmar the second he finds him?
“You are.” Administrator Dagmar picks up her pen again and waves John away. “Off with you. This is your mission until it’s completed. Report to me when you have personally escorted Mr. Sutton to the Transition queue and not before. Personally escort him, mind you, not merely send him.”
Which will give John plenty of time for that apology and… stuff.
John tries to keep the happy bit of a burble out of his voice when he says, “Yes, ma’am,” but he doesn’t think he succeeds, so he hightails it out of Administrator Dagmar’s office before she changes her mind.
THE SECOND time Emery dies, it’s more of a pain in the ass than a shock. Because he’s pretty sure he was getting somewhere.
“Oh,” he says to the guy with the wings, “it’s you.” He doesn’t say My God, you’re gorgeous, and he doesn’t say What the hell, man? and he doesn’t say The Angel of Death has no right to be so goddamned sexy, and he most certainly doesn’t say Hi, I’m Emery, would you like to see how bendy I can be? What he actually says is, “Pick a card.”
He’s on the corner of First and Danube, his magician’s kit set up to the side with the cheesy top hat turned upside down for what the little card on the hat calls Donations but what Emery prefers to think of as payment for entertainment services rendered. Also lunch money. He puts on a good show, after all, since the magic he performs is real, but since no one can know that, they end up suitably impressed by what they think is sleight-of-hand and clever tricks.
His mother would kill him if she found out what he was doing. His dad would be Very Disappointed, which is a lot worse than it sounds because Emery’s dad is a freaking master at conveying “You’re killing me, Emmie, you are actually killing me, my heart is in fact seizing right now as I look at you” with just the careful positioning of eyebrows and a slow shake of the head. But Emery has to earn his dorm fees somehow, and he’s a lot better at pretending to be a street magician than he is at pretending to care if some loser’s soup is too salty.
Emery stares and stares at the man with the wings—wings!—and it’s partly because no one else seems to be staring, or even noticing, but mostly because—and he doesn’t blush at all when he admits it to himself—the guy is unbelievably, grab-you-by-the-eyeballs-and-make-your-dick-pay-attention gorgeous. Dark and fit with the greenest eyes in existence, ever, and looking at Emery like he’s just as gobsmacked. Which is impossible, of course. Emery knows what he looks like, all pokey bones and floppy hair and freckles like constellations on pasty skin. But it’s almost worth ignoring the wings for a second so he can concentrate on believing in the possibility that this guy likes what he sees.
And, okay, Emery has to concentrate really hard, but he manages. Mostly.
“A card?” the guy says, a crinkle to his brow Emery can’t help thinking both adorable and incredibly sexy, and they just kind of stand there and awkward at each other for a bit until the guy tears his gaze from Emery’s and looks at the cards fanned out beneath his nose. The sleek black feathers of his wings twitch, just a little, only enough that Emery can hear the tiny dry ruffle beneath the noises of student life in the city’s gloaming. Packs of Emery’s peers are cramming into the crappy pizza place across the street, and dribs and drabs are heading into the bar next door to drink tomorrow’s quiz answers into beer-soaked oblivion.
The guy stares at the cards for a good long minute before he frowns and… picks one. He squints at it closely, like he’s never seen one before and has no idea what to do with it, before he looks back up and blinks at Emery.
Emery blows out a sharp breath, because he thinks he’d forgotten how to do it for a while there, the breathing thing, and his fingers have gone a bit tingly. He smiles a little, he can’t help it, and tells the guy, “Don’t show it to me and don’t tell me what it is.”
The confusion grows, and the wings twitch again, and… yeah. It’s the most bizarre and yet utterly goddamned adorable thing Emery’s ever seen in his life. No, no, wait—the guy pulls his card
to his chest like he’s afraid Emery’s trying to copy his test answers, and yeah, that’s the most goddamned adorable thing he’s ever seen.
Emery palms the rest of the deck and gives the guy a little grin. “We’ve met,” he says, trying to keep it nonchalant, and between the fact that no one came looking for him after the Morgue Incident, and the sheer unbelievability of it all, Emery has almost managed to convince himself it never really happened. He knows it did—they didn’t come looking for him because he hadn’t had ID on him at the time, and he hadn’t given them time for their John Doe search before he went all not-dead on them and fucked off—but though it’s the most bizarre thing that’s ever happened to him, it’s not the only bizarre thing that’s ever happened to him. So he thinks he’s managed to take it all pretty much in stride with minimal freaking out. Which is probably mostly because he’s blocked a great deal of it and has been pretending it wasn’t real, but whatever.
Only now, here’s this guy with his gorgeous face and his electric eyes and his wings that apparently no one is noticing but Emery, and yeah, it totally happened.
“Yes,” the guy says. “We have met.” It’s all stilted, like he’s unsure, and Emery ponders that for a moment before the guy says, “You’re seeing me.”
Emery lifts his eyebrows. “Yeah, I kinda thought I might be the only one. Take a look at your card and memorize it.”
Emery smirks just a touch when the guy blinks, then complies, but it was real, all of it was real. No matter how wet-dream-worthy this guy is, no matter how surreal, this… angel, person, goddamned bloody Adonis—he was there when Emery got leveled by a bus. So Emery’s wary. He peers around them, assessing.
“Does everyone just think I’m talking to myself?”
He doesn’t seem to be getting weird looks. Well. No weirder than he usually gets.
“They don’t notice me,” the guy says, “so they don’t notice you. Which is kind of how… um.” Angel-guy shifts with a tiny wince. “Well. The bus driver couldn’t see you. Um. Sorry.”
Emery merely lifts his eyebrows and accepts it probably a little too easily. He hopes the not-noticing thing extends to the cheesy top hat. He’d hate for someone to walk off with it because they figured he’d just left it there. Some guy in a suit had thrown a $20 in there about an hour ago. Emery angles over that way, but Angel-guy shifts right along with him and blocks his way. His wings snap out, then spread wide behind him. Emery takes a quick step back, half-expecting a bus to plow down the sidewalk and roll him under again, but the guy’s wings droop a little, then slowly retract.
“Did you kill me?” Emery blurts. He clears his throat and says, “Hide the card somewhere on your person.”
The guy’s mouth twists. “I… transitioned you,” he says slowly as he tucks the card into his shirt pocket. Emery can see the blue patterns on the back of it through the thin, gauzy white fabric. “And I’ve been looking for you ever since.”
“Transitioned.” Emery frowns. “Sounds like a PC way of saying ‘killed’ without actually saying it.” He tilts his head. “Why were you looking for me?”
Angel-guy looks Emery up and down in a way that can’t possibly be what Emery’s pants are hoping it is. “Can we do this someplace perhaps a little more… private?”
Emery wants to ask Do what, exactly? but someone gets a little too close to the hat, pauses to look around, all dodgy and hopeful, so Emery huffs out a breath and says, “Yeah, follow me.” He skirts around Angel-guy and scoops up the day’s take. He packs up his cheap kit that’s only a few steps up from Baby’s First Magic Set and heads off.
He doesn’t wait for Angel-guy to follow him—he’s almost half hoping he doesn’t—just twists through the straggling traffic on the sidewalk and heads out behind the noodle shop beside which he’d set up his act. Crazy Helen peers up at him from her box against the noodle shop’s dumpster, sticking her leg out so Emery can see her one red shoe—a tiny, six-inch-heel strappy thing jammed onto the ends of Helen’s fat dirty toes and hanging on by stubborn bag lady determination.
Emery gives her a little smile and a wave and tells her, “That’s quite a find, Helen. I’ll keep an eye out for the other, shall I?”
Crazy Helen mutters something about how she’s sure Emery’s socks don’t coordinate at all with his underwear, calls him Annabelle, and sinks back into the shadows of her box. Emery often wonders if she used to be a fashion critic or something. She’s always got something to say about his lack of dress sense.
He walks on past her and listens to see if she’ll comment on how Angel-guy’s wings don’t quite complement the fabric of his trousers. She doesn’t. Angel-guy stares at her, though, frowning and narrow-eyed. He looks like he wants to stop and say something, but he doesn’t. When Emery’s far enough down the alley that it’s almost quiet, he turns and sets down his kit.
Angel-guy has tucked his wings close enough they could be mistaken for a raincoat in the dark, but his green, green eyes are almost backlit with the halogen haze seeping into the alley from the streetlights humming over the sidewalks. He closes in slowly, a tiny quirk to his dusk-blushed mouth, friendly enough, like he’s trying not to spook Emery, like he really does like the idea of talking to Emery alone.
Emery’s chest is abruptly thumping so hard he wouldn’t be surprised to see a baby alien come punching out of it.
He holds out his hand and says, “Hi, I’m Emery. Care to explain what the fuck is going on?”
Angel-guy smiles this time, really smiles, turning on the charm and cranking it up to eleven. “Hullo,” he says, and he takes Emery’s hand, then he frowns down at it like he’s suddenly holding a live snake and says, “Oh damn,” just as Emery’s superpowers surge.
Crazy Helen gives a creaky shriek as the metal grating of the fire escape overhead gives and comes crashing down into the alley—right on top of Emery’s head.
THE TRANSITION queue, like everything else here, is white. Blank and white, white, white, and John would honestly be happy to never see the color—or lack of it—again.
He doesn’t like it here. He’s never liked it here. He doesn’t remember much of when he was There, but he’s sure he liked it better than he likes it here.
Martha Greenway peers at him from her place in the queue, her clothes bleached white like everyone else’s and her wrinkled face far less wrinkled than it had been last time he’d seen her. She’s halfway radiant. Her giant false teeth, though—those are the same as she gives him a leering grin and waggles her eyebrows at him.
John merely returns her smile, looks away, and examines the queue. Again.
Most of what he sees are bodies dressed in white with faces he can’t really make out except for Martha, since he’d transitioned her himself. Her he knows and remembers, but everyone else looks blank and featureless to anyone but their own individual Reaper. They all wait patiently in this place with no time and shuffle along agreeably as the queue stretches on and on and on.
Emery, John knows, is not among them. John has looked. And looked again.
He’s annoyed and disappointed, but mostly annoyed, because he hadn’t meant to Touch Emery, only to touch him, to feel his warm skin and maybe make him smile, talk to him and… do other things he thinks he remembers how to do. In fact, he remembers more now than he had before, and John thinks now it has to have something to do with touching Emery. But that same odd something had leapt out of Emery when their hands connected, and before John knew it, the touch had turned into a Touch, and, well.
He’d sent Emery to Transition and followed right on his heels, but now that John’s here, Emery simply… isn’t.
John doesn’t understand it. Emery Sutton has already been transitioned once, and he was somehow back There, alive, like it had never happened. And now he’s been transitioned again, and, since Emery’s not here, John has to assume he’s once again There. It doesn’t make sense. It just isn’t done.
And there had been that woman, something strange about her, something�
��. He knew that scent, that singular reek, but it had seemed so out of place John hadn’t thought to parse it.
John shakes his head. He should have looked, because he’s sure there was something there to see, right beneath her surface, but he’d been… distracted.
He thinks about going to Administrator Dagmar and telling her what happened, but… no. He doesn’t want to risk her putting someone else on the case, and anyway, she’d said to report to her when John had escorted Emery to Transition—escorted, she’d said, she’d been very clear—so John sees no reason to tell her he’s failed again. Somehow.
So.
Nothing for it but to try again.
“YOU BROKE my shoe,” Crazy Helen says, staring down at Emery with a frown and holding her tiny red pump in front of his nose like a weap—
Emery jolts and gasps and flails and scrabbles back and away as he grabs at his chest like he’s looking for honest-to-God pearls to clutch. He feels at his head, but when there are no smashed bits of skull or gory, gaping holes beneath his shaking fingers, he sucks in a long, painful breath and tries to figure out what the hell just happened.
“Helen, what—?” He’d meant to ask Oh God, I was dead again, wasn’t I? and You didn’t kill me, did you? and Tell me you didn’t stab me with a shoe—do you have any idea how embarrassing that would look on a death certificate? and just basically What the hell, Helen? but what comes out is a kind of wailing “Am I in your box?”
Helen scowls at him. “Well, I had to hide the body somewhere, didn’t I?”
Okay, so yeah. That happened.
“You hid my body?” Emery can’t figure out exactly how offended he should be by that. He peers around himself at the lumps of old blanket and piles of plastic bottles and recyclable tins. “Oh God. You don’t have anyone else in here, do you?”
Don't Fear the (Not Really Grim) Reaper Page 2
