Chad’s salute weakened, and he followed the same path as Brent but didn’t stop across from me. He stopped in front of Mama and Garik. Together, they stiffened. Mama’s fingernails cut into my elbow.
I pushed against her, seeking her comfort and giving her mine.
“The defendant Garik Purdue, Head Watchman of the Province of Québec, is being charged with high treason, a Level Ten Offense, for which the punishment is Erebus,” Marin said, devoid of emotion.
I looked across Mama to meet Garik’s eyes. He already had that appearance of resignation that everyone gets when they face their Grim Reaper.
“Garik, after our conversation, please tell everyone what you have chosen.”
Garik broke rank with Mama and me. His hands dangled by his sides. The faintest quiver of his fingertips threatened his forced calm. “Any offer from the Head Reaper that isn’t a promise to restore our population of Scriveners, and help Reapers to achieve balance is an offer against Styx.” Garik rested his full attention on Marin. “Did you think I would be so shallow as to take your bribe to save myself, forsaking everyone else? You are a fool, Head Reaper. And I would rather die than submit to you any longer.”
Brent’s eyes were on me. I felt him compelling me to look at him, but I couldn’t. He would tell me in no words that I shouldn’t follow in Garik’s path—that I would be foolish to give up. As an alternative, I squeezed Mama’s hand with my elbow.
“Is this your final decision?” Marin asked.
“This has been my decision for ages.” Garik took another step closer to his Grim Reaper. When I would have expected Chad to snap at the chance to take Garik down, he hung his head.
Garik flipped his palm upright. In the center was a silver coin, like the coins that appeared between humans’ lips at their death. Because we were already halfway between the living and the dead, our Obol, our payment to our ferryman, appeared before we crossed over. And it was a payment that none of us wanted to hand over, especially not to a rogue like Chad.
The towering Head Watchman stood proud, contrasting Chad’s slouched shoulders. I waited for Chad to pluck the Obol from Garik’s hand. The anticipation of it nauseated me.
Chad gave Brent a sidelong glance and then put his hand on Garik’s shoulder. Chad’s nostrils flared as he held Brent’s attention. He then took the Obol from Garik and stuffed it inside his jumpsuit’s pocket.
The grip Mama had on my arm had cut off blood flow to my hand.
I breathed in with Garik.
The room stood in silence when Chad’s touch on his assignee’s shoulder took effect. There was nothing gory about it. This ferrying was not like what I had seen from Brent. No wicked ghost with extended jowls. No monster screaming out as it drew a life away.
After a few tense breaths, Garik’s large frame crumpled, and when his body struck the floor, he scattered into a pile of ash. His heaped clothes were all that remained of the Head Watchman.
No one spoke. The room seemed poised between astonishment and perhaps disbelief at seeing one of our own die so unceremoniously.
“The defendant Lorelei Balanchine is charged with high treason, a Level Ten Offense for which the punishment is Erebus.” Marin wasted no time. “After our chat, what have you chosen, Reaper Balanchine?”
I turned to Mama. Inside me, there was no sign of the rebel I wanted to be, no strength in my legs or assertiveness in my shoulders. I was weak with fear. And I didn’t give a damn.
“Mama,” I squeaked. In the motionless and hushed room, it felt like a scream.
“It is okay, babygirl.” She put her hands to my cheeks.
“No!”
“I’ve made my decision.”
“Mama, I can’t go on without you.” I couldn’t see her through my tears. Where I had promised myself I wouldn’t cry—that rebels don’t cry—I was now swift to let it go.
But I wasn’t just a rebel right now.
I was someone’s daughter.
“S’il vous plait, Mama.” I ached to pull her into an embrace, close my eyes, and open them to find out it was a horrible dream. I couldn’t even hug her with my wrists bound as they were.
“I’m not afraid,” she said, with the same doggedness that I had always admired in her—the same strength I had used to challenge Chad and Marin. “I’m ready.”
“But I’m not ready to lose you.”
Her thumbs swabbed the tears from my eyelids. She gave a kiss to my cheeks as she had whenever she kissed me goodnight when I was young. How had she summoned this courage when she was frightened hours ago? What was it that gave her so much confidence to go to her death willingly?
“Everyone has to go,” she said as I crumbled between her hands. “Some will today.” She glanced at Brent. “Some years from now.”
“It’s not your time.”
“That’s not for you to decide,” intoned the Head Reaper. “As it wasn’t for you to delay Eve Cassidy’s death.” Marin’s voice might have shaken me a moment ago; now it enraged me. “I offered Reaper Balanchine exemption as I offered Garik and you exemptions. It’s her choice to choose banishment.”
“It’s not her choice.” I broke from Mama’s hold to face Marin. “It wasn’t Garik’s choice or hers or mine. We either serve you, or we die. There’s no choice in that. Don’t think you’re covering your ass by giving us some asinine option, Marin.”
“Ollie,” Mama tried to pull me back. I resisted.
“This is horseshit. You want Styx to believe you gave us choices, that you’re a merciful leader. But you’re a goddamn tyrant. You’ll force us to choose Erebus instead of assigning it to us because you’re a coward. Do it yourself, if you’re so powerful. Don’t make your worker bees do it for you, Marin.” Brent put a hand against my chest before I reached across Marin’s pedestal desk. I hadn’t realized I had travelled or that my arms had fired up as furiously as my hands inside the mitts.
Coolness slithered into Marin’s perfect face, but I could see he wanted to rip my arms from my body and devour them whole. He would’ve if he were a bolder Reaper. Instead, he rose from his chair and leaned over his desk. A smile parted his lips.
“Don’t let her go to Erebus,” I said through clenched teeth.
“It is not my decision to make.”
“Don’t let her go.” I slammed my mitted hands onto his desk. It rattled the little brass pocket watch.
“Eidolon Hume, subdue your assignee.”
I shoved Brent off when his hands landed on my shoulders. “Marin, don’t do this. You’ll regret it. I’m warning you.”
His empty black eyes honed in on Mama behind me. I circled back to her, intent on dissuading her from choosing death if I couldn’t convince Marin. I deflated at what I saw in those lavender eyes. Mama wouldn’t change her mind. I saw something I had overlooked throughout my life. Mama was more of a dissenter than I knew.
Rebelliousness rooted itself all the way down to her core.
“Mama?” I found my way back to her hands. Her fingers cupped my cheeks.
“I’m not afraid of banishment,” she whispered in my ear as I sobbed on her shoulder, breathing in her lavender perfume.
“Don’t cry for me. I’m not scared,” she said. “I love you, babygirl.”
“I love you, too, Mama,” I said, somehow. “Je t’aime.”
As she started to pull away, I cupped my mitted hands around hers because I had no real influence to keep her from her destiny. She gave me a wink and then turned to her Reaper.
Mama stretched her hand toward Chad, just as Garik had done, and flipped her palm upright. There sat a silver Obol. I lunged to her side to stop her, to intervene and somehow win her back, only to be stopped by a pair of hands on my shoulders.
“You don’t have to do it,” I cried. “You can change your mind.”
“Would you change yours if I begged it of you?”
No.
I wouldn’t, Mama.
Brent had begged me to choose life, and I begged her to
choose it, too. Clarity struck me so hard I couldn’t breathe. So I stared through the tears dangling from my eyelashes to see Mama looking back. Her freckled cheeks were bunched up from her grin. I managed to smile myself. God, I loved her freckles.
Chad put his hand on her shoulder. He would ferry her as he had Garik. In a small way, that brought me relief. I wasn’t there when my birth parents had been executed. But today, I stood alongside the Reaper who had raised me, loved me, and taught me what a true rebel was.
And I was the last thing she saw before she collected into a pile of ashes at my feet.
Chapter Thirty
“Ah, Bartleby. Ah, humanity.”
—Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
“The defendant Olivia Iris Dormier is charged with high treason, a Level Ten Offense for which the punishment is banishment,” Marin said, just as promptly as he had moved on between Garik and Mama’s executions.
Chad stepped back from Mama’s ashes, made an about-face toward the door where he had entered, and left. I would have followed and found a way to put my Deathmark on him just as I had on Baird. I would have showed everyone another example why Scriveners were more dangerous than Reapers—even Eidolons like Chad—but Brent held me prisoner with his hands clamped around my shoulders.
“What have you decided, Scrivener Dormier?” asked Marin.
Brent’s fingers slid across my collarbone as if shielding my neck from any sudden strike from Marin.
“Scrivener Dormier.” Marin bared his teeth in a perverted smile. “What do you choose? Answer my question.”
The ocean of yellow eyes tracked Marin as he stepped around his pedestal desk to stand in front of me. Though I couldn’t see them, every Stygian in front of a television also surely locked their attention on the two of us—the Head Reaper and a Master Scrivener.
I scanned the crowd. Some Reapers waited expectantly to see me go to Erebus. Others, with their turned down mouths, seemed to feel differently. But everyone stood so stock-still, I feared they could hear the thump of my heart and mistake it for weakness. Apprehension coiled around my internal organs like a cancerous fiend.
In one corner was a round video camera lens. This one wasn’t my ally today. It was a vile, cruel eye that, like some Reapers around me, wanted to witness my death.
I pulled my shoulder blades together and stepped out from under Brent’s grip. His sweaty fingers fell away when I made my advance toward Marin, who didn’t smile or radiate pleasure, but looked dispassionate, which meant he was struggling to maintain his stateliness for this grim event. Our toes met, and I lifted my attention from his perfectly ironed black turtleneck to his stoic face.
“Do you accept my offer?” he asked.
There was a murmuring in my head, something alien pushing memories and ideas around, trying to compartmentalize them. Marin. The bastard was in my head attempting to sway my thoughts.
I ran my tongue across the bridge of my teeth. That lick was a deliberate move. It told him however he tried to control me, he wouldn’t.
“You banished two rebels.” My words boomed inside the hushed room. “That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“They chose their banishment. I didn’t choose it for them.”
His lips didn’t move. It took me a moment, but once it registered, my knees threatened to buckle. He spoke. I heard his voice as if he put his mouth to my ear and voiced them. He was in my mind talking to me. Was this a gift that only the Head Reaper possessed, a mind game to torment the already tormented Stygian?
Whatever his reason, to scare me by way of this show of power or not, he didn’t want the world to hear this conversation.
I tried to contain a scoff at seeing his weakness and gave him a mental shove. His eyes widened a little. Good. He felt it. Now he needed to get the fuck out.
“Then what about the other parts of our deal?” I asked with my voice, not my mind. I would make sure the world heard everything. I wouldn’t play his head game.
“You were permitted to visit with Hume.” His pursed lips were still.
“Yes, but there’s another request.”
Those pallid eyelids lowered to my lotus pendant. “I will honor it. In time.”
“You said you would do it.”
“You assumed I would.” He released a cackle comparable to the one I had given him. “Scrivener, you are too young and foolish to play games. If there is any advice I might bestow upon you at this hour, it’s that you will not win when you bargain with me.”
I had to shut off my heart because its frailties would allow me to be controlled by wicked people—ones like Marin. I glanced down at my lotus pendant. I never gave up on Eve. I loved her today as much as I had when she was flesh and bone. One thing Brent had said rang clearer than anything else.
Death despises bartering.
Yet this king of Death was the greatest barterer of us all. He bartered with our lives, dreams, hopes, and prayers—he used them to control us. And he would continue to so long as we allowed him. But today, if only for me, he would stop. He wouldn’t win.
“Do you accept my offer, Scrivener?” Marin asked with his lips this time. His voice cut through the silence.
I leveled my eyes with his. Then I gave an uneven smile, filled my lungs with one nourishing breath, and said so that Styx would hear, not just this Head of Death,
“I would prefer not to, sir.”
For the first time, I watched incredulity infect Marin’s face. And for the first time since Garik had willingly stepped up to his banishment, the spectators erupted into nervous chatter. A guard jumped to Marin’s side, saying things in a language I didn’t recognize.
The soles of my boots ground into the floor when I pivoted to face my assigned Reaper. I heard Marin grating his teeth behind me over the din. Marin and Styx wouldn’t have me. Not anymore. I was okay with this. There was deliverance in it.
Exactly as I had watched stoicism fade from Marin’s face, I watched disappointment fill Brent’s. I would make him do what would destroy him. He would hate me for it. I would either bow to Marin and show Styx that Scriveners are weak-willed creatures, or I would die alongside my rebel allies. It was a simple choice. Brent would never see it like that.
This wasn’t his choice. It wasn’t Marin’s.
The Reapers’ prattle started to settle when I unfolded my mitts. Inside my cupped hands a silver coin appeared from nothing. It was a gorgeous illustration of my life—of my good deeds, bad ones, and everything in between. The Obol sparkled as luminously as freshly polished silver in sunshine. I wondered if Garik’s or Mama’s Obol sparkled for them, a little welcome wink from the Hereafter.
“Please, take it,” I said to Brent. “I’m ready now.”
He stretched his fingertips over my hands.
“Forgive me, Ollie.”
I turned my eyes up to meet the burning ruby gems of his. “I already have.”
How long he held me in his gaze, I didn’t know, but within that time, I saw everything I loved in him and more. There was no need for words. His distorted face, hideous to some but faultless to me, would be the last I would ever see of Styx. I was happy with that because it was one thing that Marin couldn’t barter away from me.
Not now, not ever.
Our connection fell away when he looked at the Obol—my debt to Styx. And then he turned his attention on my lips. I drew in a lung full of air when he leaned in. He didn’t kiss me when I put my lips to his.
“Brent, I—” My words died when he drew air from me. I grew light. Faint. I thought to throw my hands around him as my body became weightless. And when I tried to breathe in, to give him more air to take away, I couldn’t. This was nothing like when he had half-deathed me into Lethe or pulled me toward his icy blackness in the Kentucky hills. I wasn’t frightened or chilled or in full despair. I started to lean into him if only to feel his body as I floated away, quick to follow Mama and Garik to Erebus.
But it stopped as fast as it started.
>
I crumpled to the floor. I wasn’t a pile of ash. I was bone, flesh, and breathing freely. Brent cradled my head in his hands. My heart pounded in my ribs. Blood rocketed through my veins. Fresh oxygen moved in and out of my lungs.
“I told you from the beginning,” his voice was a whisper meant only for me, “I’ll never take a penny from you, darlin’.”
His hands left my cheeks and he looked at the Obol, but this time he swept it from my cupped hands. The silver coin soared through the air and clanked on the concrete floor at our knees. My ears buzzed from the racket of precious metal on concrete. The Obol spun on end until it slowed, wobbling under its weight, and flopped to one side.
Just as it appeared from nothing in my hands, the Obol faded into nothing on the floor.
I didn’t have the capacity to speak when Brent rose to his full height, posed his wide shoulders so that he looked more massive now than ever before, and turned to Marin.
Every Reaper I saw looked as baffled as me. As far as I knew, a Reaper never refused a job, and here I was, alive.
“No soul, human or Stygian, can be half-ferried and left for another Reaper to finish the job, not even the Head Reaper,” Brent said, slicing through the widespread disbelief. “As Olivia Iris Dormier’s assigned Reaper, Stygian law states that I, and no other, can resolve the fate of my half-ferried assignee while I am alive.”
Those voices started again. “Half-ferried?” and “Can he do that?” were repeated over and over. I joined in with the confusion. Half of my soul was with Brent, but I didn’t feel different. Not half lighter or half as smart or half dead. I looked over myself. I was not half anything. Was that missing part of soul safe with Brent?
Eve’s broken soul in my pewter lotus pendant brought me clarity, and I was quick to run my fingertips over the pendant.
Brent had told me that it was Nicholas’s job alone to send Eve to the Afterlife, but since he did not, her anchor was my necklace, so long as it was never destroyed. And for me, my anchor was Brent. Only I would die if he died. I would become a lost soul.
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