Don't Fear the (Not Really Grim) Reaper

by Carole Cummings

  Helen gives him a sneer and puffs, “Feh.”

  Emery really really wants to take it as a no.

  “Was starting to wonder,” Helen grumbles and shoves at Emery until he moves to the side and off her—

  “Oh God!” Emery yelps. “Did you make me a bed out of old underwear?”

  Helen rolls her eyes. “No, I made me a bed out of old underwear. You just happened to land there when I rolled you in.”

  Okay, there is not enough vodka in the world to help Emery cope with this.

  He peers around. It’s already getting light out, just edging into gray dawn, so he can see the long, wide smears of blood leading from Helen’s “bed” and out of the box into the alley, where the wreckage of the fire escape hunches like the husk of a smashed spider. Then he looks at his shirt. His mouth floods with saliva and his throat clogs.

  “Don’t you dare throw up in here,” Helen snaps.

  “Yeah, wouldn’t want to ruin the ambience,” Emery manages.

  (Not enough vodka in the world.)

  Emery swallows a terrified little whine as he tugs his torn and still-sticky shirt away from his chest and gives his head a healthy shake. “Helen,” he says, kind of small and mournful, “just… what the hell?”

  “Well, you’ve gone and made it so I’m gonna have to move, for one.” Helen pinches her mouth in a sour grimace and jerks her chin toward the mess in the alley. “Once the clean-up guys show up, they’ll wanna get rid of my box.”

  Okay, Emery apparently only hours ago actually died in an alley—squished by a fire escape, for God’s sake, which is even more embarrassing than getting crunched by a bus, though admittedly not quite as bad as getting stabbed with a shoe—and Helen’s pissed off at him for endangering her box. Emery does not cry. Although when he says, “Would a little sympathy kill you?” it comes out a bit wobbly.

  He could really use a hug. Helen gives him a look that says she knows exactly what he’s thinking and holds up her tiny red pump. “I will stab you with my shoe.”

  Emery tries not to sniffle pathetically.

  He’d always thought Helen kind of liked him, in her grumpy bag lady kind of way. He buys her noodles every couple of days. She tells him his jeans are too tight. He tells her to quit smoking. She flicks her butts at him. He tells her she looks lovely today. She calls him girls’ names like it’s supposed to be insulting. And, okay, it’s not exactly a heartwarming after-school-special kind of relationship, but Emery had honestly thought Helen’s gruff bitchiness was a weird kind of affection.

  God, he could really use a hug. And some vodka.

  So much vodka.

  “Oh, don’t take on so, Nancy,” Helen chides him, shuffling through her few precious belongings and managing to unearth a chocolate bar from beneath a pile of shredded newspaper. She shoves it at Emery. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good shoe in the doing. Or a goddamned fire escape, comes to it.” She nods, decisive. “I’d use a brick.”

  Emery blinks at her. He has no idea how to take that. “Um. Thanks?”

  “Hey, dead guys usually don’t get to pick how they get that way.”

  “Yeah, I don’t think I’d pick a brick, either, so maybe next time….” Nope, not finishing that sentence. “Okay, I’m not dead, so if it’s all the same to—”

  “Oh, you were dead, all right.”

  Emery glares, but Helen shakes her head with a thoughtful frown. “You were dead, but it wasn’t him that killed you.” She must be talking about Angel-guy, which…. Emery begs to differ. Helen shrugs and goes on, “I mean, it was him, but it wasn’t his doing. And that flame”—her dirty fingers tap-tap-tap at Emery’s breastbone and she smirks—“that spark you got in there… it never went out.”

  “Spark.” Emery frowns and rubs at where Helen’s fingers just left a divot. Until he again notices the not-quite-dried blood still coating his shirt, and he pulls his hand away with a grimace. “What are you even talking about? And if I was dead, how come I’m here?”

  He doesn’t really expect an answer. He’s been trying not to ponder that exact question since the last time he’d woken from the dead, but this is twice now, and both times Angel-guy had been the last thing he’d seen.

  Nonetheless, Helen answers, “Because you weren’t dead, not really. And you won’t be. You can’t be. At least not until you say so.” She gives him a sideways look, sly. “Oh, poor Belinda.” It’s a mocking coo. “You think you’re the only one, don’t you?” She smirks and fists her hand, and with no word of warning, her fingers splay and bright green flame bursts over her palm. She grins at Emery’s gasp, her round face lit like a jack-o’-lantern in the writhing ghost light.

  “Holy… shit,” breathes Emery, and he blinks and blinks and blinks, but the scene never changes. “What… is that… how?”

  Helen shrugs and fists her hand again. The flame goes out like a candle snuffed.

  “I saw the light in you the first time I saw you with your little tricks and your baby bunny eyes and your big wouldn’t-lie-to-you grin, pretending you were pretending and fooling all the mundanes out of their spare change.” She shakes her head. “I kept wondering when you were gonna slip up and go for the big showy stuff, ’cause kids like you always do. That’s when the guys in suits come for you, y’know.” She sets a finger to the side of her nose with a knowing nod. “Take you away, pick you apart to see what makes you tick.”

  “You….” Emery’s mouth goes a little dry. “Those guys are actually real, then?” He’d kind of always thought his parents were just paranoid.

  “Suck your powers until you’re nothing but a withered husk, begging them to put you out of your misery.”

  “Holy shit.” Emery swallows and makes an effort not to shudder. “You’re serious.”

  Helen purses her mouth, eyes narrowed. Then she gives Emery a short, sharp smack to the back of his head.

  “Ow!”

  “No, I’m not serious. Do we live in a Stephen King novel?”

  Emery rubs his head with a scowl. “More like Terry Pratchett right now, but whatever.”

  Helen snorts. “If you say so.” She shrugs. “Still. This is new. Someone found you. And took you out on my doorstep. Which kind of pisses me off.”

  Emery is almost… touched. He thinks. “But if there are others, and we don’t really have to hide, why—”

  “Oh, I never said that.” Helen chuckles. “I mean, there are people who keep a sharp eye out, and they will come grab you, but it’s more to….” She rolls her hand, mouth pursed. “Make you come work for them. CIA stuff, y’know?” She frowns. “I guess they might kill you if you don’t.”

  “That’s… so much better.” Emery shoves out a calming breath and gives his head a sharp shake. “So you’re… I mean….” Emery’s throat is tight with eleventy-billion kinds of welling emotion. “You’re like me, then. There are more.”

  “Oh, I’m not like you. I’ve never seen anyone like you. That’s how I knew who you were.” Helen taps again at Emery’s chest. “You’ve got more than a flame in there. You’ve got a goddamned holocaust. I didn’t really believe what I was seeing when you first caught my eye. I couldn’t figure out how it didn’t burn you up.”

  “Yeah, but what does that even mean? What am I supposed to do with it? I mean, what good is it, you know? I have to hide it or become someone’s lab experiment, and it obviously hasn’t—” Emery cuts himself off. It obviously hasn’t done you any good is what he’d almost said, but that seems inordinately ill-mannered, all things considered.

  He suspects Helen knows anyway, because she rolls her eyes, then smacks him on the back of the head again.

  “Hey, ow, would you quit—”

  “That’s why I’m here, sunshine. To show you what you’re supposed to do with it.”

  Emery stares. “You.” His eyebrows go up. He can’t help it. “You want to be… like… my guide or something? Mentor?”

  He’s not disappointed. He’s not. T
hat would be rude. Not everyone can be Dumbledore.

  “Protector.” Helen tips an authoritative nod. “All of us have been waiting for you, after all. Just my luck I’m the one who found you. I had no idea who you really were until I saw you burn, but now there’s no way you can be anyone else.”

  “Who I really am?”

  Helen rubs her hands together with an eager grin. “Ooh, the others are gonna be so jealous. I can’t wait to rub it in Jenny’s smug face.”

  “Others.” Emery frowns. “What others? What are you talking about?”

  Helen huffs with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “The other demons, doofus.”

  Ah. Okay. All of it really was too outrageous to be real.

  Emery sits back with a disappointed frown and reminds himself there’s a reason why, however politically incorrect, she’s called Crazy Helen.

  “Right, so.” Emery claps his hands to his thighs and starts crawling out of Helen’s box. “Thanks, Helen, I appreciate you letting me—”

  “Wait, where d’you think you’re going?”

  “—crash here for a while.” Emery grimaces at the unintentional wording as he emerges into the alley and stands. He’s a bit wobbly, but everything works. “I really need to get going.” He starts backing away slowly as Helen follows him out of the box.

  “You can’t just leave.” Helen scowls as she gets to her feet, that one red pump still clutched in her grubby fingers. “There’s a process, y’know. I have to alert the others that you’ve come. There are ceremonies and procedures and—”

  “Yeah, no, I’m good,” says Emery, shuffling backward toward the mouth of the alley where he can see the early morning foot traffic starting to pick up. He holds up his hands and realizes he’s still clutching the chocolate bar, so he tosses it back toward the box, hoping Helen will dive after it.

  She doesn’t. She just keeps coming at him. “Now listen, Penelope, you can’t just—”

  “No, no, seriously, no need to trouble yourself, thanks, I’ll be fine, no worries, I’ve got to get back and get ready for class, so I’ll just….” Emery trails off, hooks a thumb over his shoulder, and when Helen sets her jaw and looks like she might be bracing for a sprint, Emery turns and runs.

  JOHN DOESN’T want to go to Administrator Dagmar for this. He’s not sure why, but something in him says it will go badly for Emery if Administrator Dagmar knows what John just saw. So John goes back to the alley instead.

  He’d fled earlier, he’s ashamed to say. The demon who’d taken possession of Emery’s mortal remains had been a little too free—and accurate—with her fireballs, and she punched like a prizefighter, but John could have held out if it had been merely that. But when the demon threatened to call down a swarm of locusts, John had discovered that, among the things he doesn’t remember about his life, an unreasonable aversion to things with multiple legs seems to be one of them.

  He’d held out. Even when he heard the resonant buzz of too many legs and wings, he’d held out. And then the demon had thrown a small vortex at him, the sucking center a melting globule of time-space that threatened to pull him apart and deposit what was left of him in any reality of her choosing, and John’s sort of attached to having a body. And wings. He likes his wings.

  So he’d taken his singed feathers and noped out.

  He’s new at this, okay?

  He feels guilty, though. Partly for balking in the face of an ordinary demon but mostly for leaving Emery at said demon’s mercy. She hadn’t seemed to want to do more ill to Emery—though truly Emery was once again dead, assumedly temporarily, and his soul out of reach of either the demon or John himself, so what could either one of them really do? But the fact was John had allowed a simple demon to chase him away from a soul that was his responsibility. He didn’t need Administrator Dagmar’s pursed lips and raised eyebrow to know that wasn’t on.

  Both Emery and the demon are gone from the alley when John gets there. There’s a work crew there instead, people in hard hats surrounded by yellow tape and frowning at the wreck of the collapsed fire escape. Or, more specifically, at the water dripping everywhere, the entire alley washed nearly clean, except for a water-logged heap of cardboard a little way off from the dumpster. John recognizes it as the remains of the demon’s refrigerator box.

  A few police officers are clustered by it, scratching their heads and muttering among themselves.

  “The call only came in fifteen minutes ago,” John hears one of them say, and, “No one heard or saw anything,” says another. One of them pipes up, “Is it possible to have a storm localized to one alley?” and they all kind of tighten their mouths as they turn to peer around at the remnants of the deluge the demon left behind her.

  John dismisses them and bids them not to notice him as he saunters through puddles and around their little conclave to crouch by the soaked cardboard. The demon-reek wafting from it is still strong, despite the flood, but—John sniffs, concentrates, and… yes—the scent of Emery’s blood is diluted but still there.

  Stupid demon. The deluge was smart, John has to admit, and will likely be enough that the authorities will never even guess there’d been blood everywhere only an hour ago. But she’s obviously not been schooled in the finer points of Reaper hunting methods, or she would have used fire.

  John homes in on where the scent is strongest, all but gushing from a small puddle scrimmed with gasoline rainbows and an otherwise undetectable stratum of blood. A drop, maybe two, diluted to near nonexistence among a wash of dirty water, but enough. John dips his finger in. It tingles. And when he tastes it, it nearly sparkles on the tip of his tongue. It’s like a mouthful of Pop Rocks for a second or two, and then the sensation downright explodes, sending John to his ass in the alley, the sheer strength of it shooting right through him and bursting through his chest in wild colors and near-tangible power that rockets around the alley and actually knocks a hard hat from the head of one of the workers.

  John has to push through the surprise and really concentrate for a moment on the don’t notice me as heads turn and frowns go from confused to alarmed. Everyone looks at everyone else, the Did you see that? all over them. But when no one seems to want to admit what they’re already convincing themselves didn’t happen, they all warily go back to what they were doing.

  John stands, satisfied and feeling much better about himself now that he knows where to go and what to do next. He doesn’t know what the demon wanted with Emery, but he knows Emery is currently alive, again, and now John knows how to find him.

  “WHAT ARE you doing here?”

  Emery nearly shrieks, paranoia gummed to him like Gorilla Glue, but he recognizes the voice behind him just in time, so he manages to choke it back. He doesn’t manage to keep his gym bag from flying out of his hand and across the linoleum, though. He slams the door to his parents’ kitchen, then spins and slumps back against it, panting.

  “I think,” he tells his sister, “I’m going to need some money. And a very fast car. And it’s possible I might need to grow a mustache.”

  Lisa’s eyebrows go up. “Can you?”

  “Oh, hey, Sister of the Year Award goes to Lisa Sutton for the sibling love and concern. I’m sure I’ll be fine, thanks.”

  Lisa looks Emery over, her eyebrows still quite high on her forehead. She’s changed her hair. It’s short and spiky with graduating shades of blue-to-turquoise on one side, the other side straight white-blond and angled to the chin. She’s not wearing any makeup, and she’s still in pajama pants and a baby-doll tank.

  “What are you doing home, anyway?” Emery asks. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “Shouldn’t you?”

  Lisa’s eyes are narrowed now, assessing. She’s got a slice of bread in one hand and a spoonful of peanut butter in the other. Still staring, she slowly smears the glob of peanut butter onto the bread, folds it in half, and holds it out to Emery. She doesn’t say anything when Emery takes it with a shaking hand. She merely turns to plop the spoon back in
to the jar, then hops up onto the counter, bare feet knocking against the cupboard door.

  “Okay, so who do I have to beat up this time?” It’s a little muffled, since she asks it through a spoonful of peanut butter.

  Emery gives her a glare as he slopes his way over to the kitchen table and flumps into a chair. “You never had to beat up Dustin. You just wanted to.”

  “Of course I did. He was harassing my brother. And it was fun.”

  “I’m the older sibling here. I’m supposed to do the beating-up.”

  Lisa gives Emery a pitying look as she licks the spoon clean. “It’s so cute when kittens think they’re tigers.”

  “Hey, I could’ve killed him with my brain!”

  “Whoa, okay there, River, settle down.”

  “Well, I could’ve.”

  “Dude. You cried when Artax sank in the Swamp of—”

  “That was very traumatic for a kid’s movie!”

  “You saw it when you were fifteen.”

  Emery slouches in his chair. “Okay, fine, I probably couldn’t actually kill someone. Which is not a bad thing, in point of fact, so I don’t even know why we’re arguing about it. But I could have at least hurt Dustin. With my brain.”

  “Not if you didn’t want to make Mom cry.” Lisa pauses, thoughtful, then adds, “On second thought, Mom would go ballistic. Dad would cry.” She nods as she dips the spoon in the jar again. “Speaking of—” She glances at the clock on the microwave. “He’ll be home in about a half hour. You’d better spill.”

  Emery doesn’t want to. Honestly, he doesn’t know how. Instead he asks, “What are you doing home, anyway?” and takes a bite of the sandwich so he doesn’t have to talk more.

  “Senior Skip Day.”

  Senior Skip Day is supposed to be about underage drinking and cavorting in a field somewhere with music blasting from portable speakers while various couples disappear into the bushes to do lewd things to each other.

  Not that Emery would really know. He hadn’t been invited to his.