“Ellie,” Niles said. “I’m asking you to reconsider. If you change your mind, you can come back to me anytime. You know my code. And there’s Susan upstairs, too.”
“I won’t,” Ellie said, still hardly believing that his desire not to fight was outweighing the need to keep her from interfering with the end of the world. If he did not look so serious, Ellie might have hypothesized that he was actually on her side, hoping she would re-start time before the stars fell, but that was foolish hope clinging to her old view of him.
“You need to understand,” Niles pressed. “This is your last warning. You are responsible for whatever happens due to your actions.”
“Oh well,” Ellie said, but that was all she could manage, because at those words her throat had begun to throb, the scarf feeling like barbed wire against her skin. Niles observed her for a long moment, as though testing to see if her answer would not change. She must have looked confident enough, because he nodded.
John looked about to object, but Niles had already turned his attention to Jude.
“My name is Niles Hepburn. I am a soul reaper,” he introduced himself. “And you are?”
Jude recognized the name, probably from the discussion on names before they had gone to find the Spindle of Necessity. He glanced at Ellie, who felt tension spreading through her limbs—because while Niles seemed more willing to let her run about than get into a fight, there was no guarantee that Jude would be treated the same.
After all, Jude was a soul. An unusual one, but still—not a reaper.
Seeing that Ellie did not intervene and Niles was waiting for an answer, Jude said, “Jude Wilson, second year student from University of Colorado, Boulder.”
That was the way he had introduced himself earlier, too, but to add that he was a student from another university seemed in this moment absurd. There would no longer be any university at Boulder, let alone a Boulder, if Niles had his way.
“Well, Jude from Boulder,” said Niles, “I am sorry that you have been dragged into this. As a human soul, you should have been reaped and placed upstairs, where I am sure your family and friends are, rather than dragged around through time and space.”
He knows where to hit where it hurts, Ellie thought, as she saw Jude’s face darken, just for a moment, probably as he thought about his family. His eyes sought out Ellie, a frown emerging on his features, and Ellie remembered him growling, What did you do to my mother? But before Jude could become angry at her again, Niles was continuing:
“I would like to let you know there are no consequences for anything you have done after death,” Niles said. “Any choices you make now are merely consequences of decisions made during life, in which you taught yourself how to view the world, crafting your identity. As the Book says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jude clearly recognized the verse. A strange look appeared over his face—longing. An expression that Ellie had seen on the faces of little old ladies when alive, when her father was preaching and hitting a particularly high note, some immense pathos, a pitch of love and acceptance that everyone who was near death could not look away from the vision of a perfect and accepting God. The faces of rapture.
The expression on those faces was one that reapers never saw—for they saw only those same faces contorted with pain, confusion, terror, when the end actually came.
In those moments, when her father had spoken like that, even Ellie could forget that he was a man who screamed and howled at his wife and sometimes hit and was hit back in the cold nights when Ellie held a pillow over her head and thought about going to a quiet place where nobody would ever fight again. Strange, to see that face of the little old ladies now on Jude’s features. Niles did not look surprised, however.
When Niles held out his hand, for a single breathless second Ellie thought that Jude would take it. After all, Jude was religious—he must want to reach Heaven.
Niles said, “You need to go where you are meant to go. It is dangerous for you to be here.”
Ellie wanted to shout: No, don’t do it! I need your help!
She knew, if she was being completely honest, that the real shout was more. That in reality, what she wanted to say was: I don’t want to do this alone!
But she did not have the air in her lungs. Jude glanced at her, and she wanted to howl at the look of wondering and confusion in his eyes. But then, as Jude observed her, some part of her panic must have reached him, for his face melted into that of resolve.
“Look,” said Jude, holding up his hands, the classic nonthreatening gesture. “I’m not a part of this reaper group you guys are. I’m just a bystander. And I don’t want to fight. But the world is ending—” he gestured at Ellie—“and this girl wants to stop it. I don’t know how useful I am, but I intend to help her do that.”
His hands knotted into fists. “So I’m not going anywhere, Sir.”
Niles regarded Jude with something like respect, mixed with sympathy. He said, “And I cannot allow a soul to wander the reaped world, even if he is unusual.”
How can you tell? Ellie almost wanted to ask. Other reapers noticed Jude was a soul, but there was nothing to indicate he was superhuman. Yet Niles seemed to have come to that conclusion somehow anyway. He was cautious, too, but she wondered if this was because he was concerned for Jude, or for what Jude could do. Perhaps both.
Retrieving his astrolabe, Niles flicked at the dials and gears, some setting Ellie did not know. But he finished and was replacing it in his pocket—
It chimed.
Niles paused, looked at his reaper’s tool, frowning. He turned the circular face to meet his own, and Ellie saw that the surface was changing. The seven planets, always ringing the outside of the circle, and the stars patterned across, had begun to move.
For one wild moment, Ellie thought that time had re-started.
She glanced down at her pocket-watch, feeling wild hope rise in her like a geyser. Perhaps it was possible that the Spindle had been mostly fixed, somehow. Maybe the demons had gathered enough shards that the Spindle could function to re-start time in some limited way. Or maybe someone else had intervened.
Yet the hands on her pocket-watch were still frozen. Beside her, as he checked his own reaper’s tool, Ellie saw that the sand in John’s hourglass was one solid clump.
But the astrolabe was still working. Only staring at its surface for a few moments did Ellie see that it was not a normal motion: instead of circling, all the objects were drifting toward the center of the dial, where a thumbnail-sized circle represented the earth.
Realization must have come to everyone at the same time. Niles’s eyes widened. John snorted. Ellie felt as if she had been cut in half across the hips and all her insides had dropped out of her body. Like slicing the bottom off a styrofoam cup of coffee.
Niles’s mouth opened, but Ellie already knew what he would say.
“The stars have begun to fall.”
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Bargain Upheld.
“No,” said Jude, which was about the only reaction Ellie could find sane.
“So what now?” came from John, who stepped closer to Ellie, ready to grab. She bared her teeth at him, and his eye squinted harder at her in response. His squinty eye had switched sides sometime when she had not been looking.
Niles placed his astrolabe into his pocket. “I need to report upstairs.” He fixed Jude with a look, considering. “And we don’t have time for persuading anymore, I’m afraid. There are still people on earth who need to be found and reaped before the stars arrive.”
If there were still people, Ellie thought, even if they were only souls being chewed on by demons, then perhaps the world was not over yet. Technically, if time re-started, there would still be people on earth—and a world without people was useless. Perhaps that meant that the reapers would have to restore the rest of humanity. Somehow.
Let’s hope Marcus’s theory about a netherworld to store matte
r was right, Ellie thought.
Yeah, piped up the little voice in Ellie’s subconscious, So that means those people captured by demons will be tormented for billions of years waiting for the world to end a second time, while if the world ends now then their suffering would be over.
Shut up, she told it. Their suffering will end eventually. But not now, not at the price of everyone else.
Their suffering is their own fault—run away from reapers, get chewed on by demons. I’m not going to let the world end for their sake. The rest of humanity is too important.
Niles finished evaluating Jude, because he said, “John, Ellie, please step back.”
That sounds like instructions to disobey, thought Ellie, and she moved—but to stand in front of Jude, between him and Niles, rather than backing away like John.
A sigh emerged from Niles. He reached out and took Ellie by the elbow, and then Ellie knew she had made a mistake. Fighting Niles’s grip was impossible—she might have found it easier to pull her own arm off than to escape. Niles did not seem to strain or even wobble when she threw her weight back and pried at his fingers with her own.
He dragged her to the side and deposited her next to John, who reached out to take hold of her, but stopped when Niles shook his head. Seeing this, Ellie felt fury rise within her; the realization that her destiny was so far out of her own hands that Niles could direct her future without saying a word. She knew that things had always been like this, all three years of her career as a reaper, but she had never seen the reality so starkly before: the difference in strength between a grunt like her and a mentor.
Niles saw that she was staying in place—there was no sense, Ellie thought, in embarrassing herself by trying to run and being forced back to this spot, like a toddler trying to escape from a time out—and then he turned and walked back to Jude.
But he was moving more cautiously, now. Perhaps Jude was some kind of threat.
Jude’s hands were still bunched into fists. He said, “Old man, I don’t want to fight.”
“On the contrary,” said Niles. “It seems that a duomachy is exactly what you are making necessary.” But he did not not make fists. Alertness without aggression.
He reached out. The same maneuver as he had with Ellie—like he was used to grabbing and having that be the end. Only this time he looked more determined, and his other arm came up, as if ready to shield himself from a blow. Defensive.
Jude dodged back and around a pickup. He glanced into the truckbed, eyes widening just a bit, and then stuck his arm in to retrieve a long pole. The end of the wooden staff proved to be the grill of a rake, metal teeth clogged with mud and grass.
As if in apology, Jude deliberately turned the metal end toward himself, wielding the pole against Niles. He said, “Back off, Mr. Hepburn. I don’t want to hit you.”
Good idea, Ellie thought. Probably best not to touch Niles directly, not after his display of strength with Ellie. She still had no idea if this was a fight Jude could even win.
Niles frowned. He said, “That won’t work. Violence never does.”
Oh, yeah? Ellie thought, as Niles kept advancing and Jude lifted the rake high. Then why are you looking now at the wood, rather than at Jude? Niles certainly acted like the implement was a weapon, despite that he was still approaching.
He came too close, and despite clear reluctance, Jude swung.
The impact struck Niles’s forearm, raised to cover his face. The wood splintered and cracked out like a party-popper, the kind which shot out streamers when you pulled the string on the end. The effect was unreal, as if the wood had gone soft and splashed outward in waves like a slow-motion capture.
Niles rocked back from the blow, paused. He lowered his arm. His jacket tore at the site of contact, covered in splinters. But while he was frowning, he was also unhurt.
Jude wielded the remainder of the rake, half its length, the end tipped to a point.
“Are you going to stab me?” Niles said, as if the idea was ridiculous.
“If I have to,” replied Jude, but his words almost verged on a question.
Niles’s frown deepened. As Jude retreated around the pickup, on the opposite side now, Niles put his hand inside the truck bed. Ellie thought he was drawing out another gardening tool, imagined Niles attacking Jude with a shovel, and Jude having to stab him—her insides lurched at the thought of Niles being seriously hurt.
But what choice did she and Jude have?
Instead, Niles heaved. Tires squealed, metal crunching, screeching as the car rolled from the force of Niles’s push. Yet time had ended, so the car had no inertia, stopped moving when Niles withdrew his force. But he had a clear path to Jude.
Move, you idiot, Ellie thought, as Jude froze and stared at the demonstration.
Still, could she blame him? Reapers were strong. But she never imagined that she could see one move a car like this. No wonder Niles had pulled her so easily.
Niles lurched forward, and only the fact that he seized the rake first allowed Jude to escape. Jude relinquished his grip and retreated around a sedan. Niles sighed in frustration, tossed the broken tool away.
“Nice trick,” said Jude, putting his hands on the sedan. He considered, and as Niles approached, threw his weight forward. The car lifted a couple inches. Niles placed his hand against the other side of the vehicle, pressing, and it sank back down.
Ellie felt panic rise within her—was there this much a strength difference? Perhaps the rule about keeping things like Jude within their bodies was for the safety of the worker reapers only, and for mentor reapers creatures like Jude were merely inconvenient.
But Jude looked angry. Understandable, perhaps—he had been brought along like baggage on Ellie’s save-the-world trip, all for the purpose of fighting a mentor, and now he was failing at that. Or maybe everything about the situation was weighing on him: his mother reaped, the world ending, watching those people die, Shawn...
He heaved the car again. At first nothing happened—except that John snorted in amusement—then Ellie saw: the sides of the car, around Jude’s hands, began to bend. She thought the metal was giving under the stress.
Then she realized this was the same effect as before: reality was warping, straight lines curling, curled lines straightening. The car lifted off the ground again, this time up to Jude’s knees. As though the car weighed less, somehow.
Niles backed away, just as Jude paused, out of breath. The effect stopped, the car sank back down to the earth with a muted thump.
“Impressive,” Niles told him, sounding sincere. “But you’re a couple centuries too young to use that effectively. And if you over-use it, there are consequences.”
“Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind,” said Jude. He heaved again.
This time was different. Ellie could see him concentrate—and the warping moved away from his hands, spread over the surface like a thin sheet, rather than bunched around Jude’s point of contact with the car. He was getting the hang of it, Ellie realized, whatever this was. Like a child learning to flex a new muscle.
The car lifted off the ground, higher, higher, and then reached a point of no return, tilted the rest of the way over on its side, falling with a clunk like a drum. Loose objects inside rattled and pattered as they rolled like change in a dryer.
That shouldn’t happen, Ellie thought; time was stopped, so the objects inside should have remained static, same as the clothing on that body a while back when shoved by Shawn. But perhaps Jude’s warping affected the universe in more ways than one.
In her corner vision, Ellie saw John scrambling further back.
“How about that?” Jude huffed. He looked winded. And astounded—as if he only half believed that he had just done what sat before him, tilted a car like cow tipping.
“I’d say that looks to be your limit,” said Niles. He placed his hand on the bumper—
The vehicle lifted as he pressed, turning on its tail end, a domino pl
aced upright and ready to be knocked over. But Niles must have balanced it correctly, or else timeless physics was more odd than Ellie suspected, for the car stayed up, looming.
Jude gawked. Ellie could not blame him—because she was, too. But that gave Niles enough distraction to dart forward and seize him by the wrist.
Jude jerked—performed the same helicopter movement that had freed him from Marcus. By twist of angles, he should have succeeded. But Niles’s grip must have been stronger, too much for Jude to slip out between his thumb and forefinger.
In frustration, Jude threw himself backwards. Niles was dragged onward, but still did not let go. He said, “Enough.”
Jude swung at him. His fist would have connected at just the right angle to burst Niles’s nose, and Ellie nearly cried out—but Niles caught and held him double-handed. He repeated, “I said, enough.”
“Not nearly,” Jude replied, his voice as strained as his arms were, working against Niles’s grip. Fruitless, Ellie thought—Jude was straining against a brick wall.
Yet Jude’s anger rose again, and there was more warping—against Niles’s hands—both their limbs began to distort, like their bones were becoming boomerangs—
“You need to stop,” Niles told him. He sounded concerned, but he did not let go. “You’re going to tear yourself if you keep this up. It will be doloriferous... unpleasant.”
His voice told Ellie that whatever this meant, he had seen it happen before. She could only gape in horror as their arms continued to bend—almost at right angles, now—the warp expanding from forearms down, their elbows bending the wrong way—
“Kind of on a mission, here,” Jude gasped out, but he was pale and out of breath—
Niles was frowning, and Ellie could almost see him running the risk calculation—perhaps, she thought, perhaps he would let go—yet kept his hold—
Movement past both their figures caught Ellie’s attention. A little rat-spider, legs scrabbling, emerged on the top of the upright car behind them. It surveyed the scene, and Ellie could have sworn it winked at her as she stared at it.
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