AlcyLeyva_AndThenThereWereCrows_EbookFormatting_Nook

by And Then There Were Crows (retail) (epub)

  My sister. A Grey after my own heart.

  “I’m a corporeal being, love. We don’t eat.”

  This immediately stood out to me. “You don’t eat? Barnem is always shoving food—”

  “Barnem is totally something else.” She stood up, propped her hands on her hips, and strutted over to where we were sitting, letting her boots double clap against the floorboards. “I don’t want to break up this meeting you two lovely ladies are having, but there’s a certain urgency to this issue. Barnem didn’t have time to explain, I’m guessing, but the Pope is here to kill you.”

  Petty shot me a look.

  I slowly raised my hand.

  When Death called on me, I said, “Yeah. Appreciate you taking my question, by the way. Um. What the fuck?”

  Death knelt down to our level. Even on her knees, face to scared face with us, she was still incredibly tall. She took Petty’s hand. My sister shrieked when she was touched but let her grab it. She set her palm flat and placed two fingers on it as if to demonstrate something.

  “This world may be the playground of God and the Devil, but our roles in all of it are like threads, a tapestry if you will. You make a hole in that material, it all gets weak. Eventually all of it’s going to unravel.”

  “I’m sorry,” Petty said pointing to her palm, “what is this illustrating?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Death laughed. “I just wanted to hold your hand.”

  Petty snatched it away while the woman continued. “We are coming to the end of it all, Grey. The Pope … well, the old guy’s just doing his job.”

  “His job is to kill me?” I shouted. “The Pope? The guy in the gown and pointy hat?”

  “How can she avoid this?” Petty asked earnestly. But Death looked at her as if she was a puppy in a windowsill.

  “Even dead, you’re adorable,” she replied, bopping her on her white nose. “Nothing can change. There’s never change. Who taught you two religion? C’mon now. That’s the whole principle behind the darn thing. It’s the reason people sign up in droves. Something happens for a reason. Nothing happens for a reason. Every prophecy gets fulfilled.”

  “So … what? You’re saying that I was supposed to invite Gaffrey Palls in? I was supposed to get a roommate? Petty was supposed to die?”

  Frustrated, she stood up and sighed. “You’re cute, but hard-headed. The prophecy is that your world will end, darling. Prophecies happen. That’s what they do. The Pope is just doing what he’s meant to do, what he’s supposed to. Like the good little knight.”

  For some reason, I started to taste bile. It had rushed up my throat, flushed against the back of my teeth. My insides felt like someone had taken a fistful of my intestines and was twisting and crushing them.

  “That’s impossible,” I muttered, swallowing the hot wretch. Petty looked at me weird. “We’re one demon away from repairing … from patching up that hole you’re talking about.”

  The Angel of Death covered her mouth as she laughed. “Ah no, no. That’s not how life works, Grey. Trust me.”

  “But Barnem said—”

  Again. The pain. Now it was scratching. A rat gnawing its way out of my ribcage.

  In her southern twang, Death told me, “Darlin’, all you did was drive us up on a cliff and put us in park. The number you did to the design, the Grand Design, I’m talking big picture stuff, isn’t fixed with a band-aid. Oh no. There was an order this was supposed to happen in. Removing one stage has basically thrown the whole playbook in a paper shredder. Now the universe is scripted after a cut up poem. Time and space are collapsing. The Oddities are appearing. Now everything’s going to happen at once. Even if you do manage to call off the Apocalypse, the world will never be the same. You will never be the same. And I’m talking outside of the whole ‘soul burning in eternal damnation’ thing. Aside from that. Along with that.”

  I still wasn’t feeling well but I could see that the revelation of my fate had hit Petty hard. I realized in that moment that there were a few things we needed to talk about.

  Beyond the sweat, I asked, “And you? You’re … the Angel of Death.”

  “An Angel of Death,” she said with a wink. “Well, actually, that was last week. What I am now is … ‘between opportunities’. When everybody’s going to die, you don’t exactly need a reaper of souls. Higher management called it ‘redundancies’.”

  Petty shook her head. “God fired you?”

  But Death seemed bored. “God? Honey, if only. I’ve been alive for an eternity and—” She pulled out her cellphone. “Hey look at that. Literally an eternity and a day. Say, does this place have wifi?”

  My sister, quietly losing it, puckered her lips. “Look around. The wallpaper is dog-earing and that couch is only in one piece because of masking tape and pantyhose.”

  “Hmm.” Death tapped her chin. “So that’s a no?”

  But that discussion was cut short by a sharp knock at the door. Petty scooted off to check on who it was while the Angel of Death plopped down in her empty seat across from me as I tried to steady my eyes.

  “I’m not going to keep calling you Death. I kinda need a name.”

  “Oh yeah,” she replied, thinking for a bit. Then she extended her hand and introduced herself as simply, “Cain.”

  I grumbled. “Out of all the names?”

  She thought about it. “What? I love Cain. It’s a strong name. Ahh. Reminds me of the good ol’ days. The simpler days. When the faith and the soul were both one. When people saw God everywhere and never questioned His divinity. It was a better time.” She stretched her arms. “That and I love Dean Cain. Man has aged beautifully. Fine wine.”

  Slapping me on the knee as if that should be a thing that should be celebrated, she then got up and went to her instrument case. Petty returned in time to steal her seat back.

  “Who knocked?”

  Petty seemed less concerned with this so she scurried through it. “Some homeless guy. Christ, this hotel is the worst. But what about her, Mandy?”

  I sighed. “Yeah. I hate flirty people.”

  “Flirty people? Flirty people? Mandy, an unemployed Angel of Death is in my room. Wait. You don’t think she’s here to collect my soul since I didn’t die, do you? Because there’s no take-backsies.”

  “I’m here for something else,” Cain said, holding out her reaping weapon again. The size of it barely fit in the room. I think I heard a noise like a mouse caught on a glue trap, but I’m not sure if it was an actual rodent or my sister sitting nearby.

  “No need to crawl out of your skin, ladies. I’m here to help.”

  She tossed us a cheery smile and picked up the television as if it were an empty plastic bag. Dropping it on the floor, she then drove the weapon’s handle through the top, breaking most of the frame but not the glass screen which quickly flickered to life with static. Ignoring Petty’s grumbling (“It only had three channels but I’ll still have to pay for that!”) Cain then gradually tipped the blade. Ghostly blue lines appeared in the air, and every time the scythe glanced one, another set of voices and blurry images came through the screen. Most were unintelligible, and the rest I wish I never saw or heard. Murders, car accidents, someone drowning. It was the most morbid channel surfing session I’ve ever been a part of.

  “As cool as it may look to you ladies,” Cain explained, “the sacred tool of a reaper is not a weapon. It’s a tuning device that … ah. Here we go.”

  The scene on the low quality television was of a dark room. There were dozens of candles lodged into small ivory plates placed all around the room, but it was still difficult to see the center of the room where just the faint outline of a bed sat. To me, it looked empty until someone jumped out of the sheets screaming and scaring the bejesus out of me.

  “What is—”

  “Shh!” Cain demanded.

  Out of breath, the
man—whose face I barely recognized—seemed to be calming down from a nightmare. And then he said something into the darkness.

  “Grey. What have you done?”

  My stomach dropped.

  I watched as the man fumbled through the darkness and patted around for a while before finding what he was looking for: his glasses. With shaking hands, he brought them to his face.

  Of the numerous times he showed up on TV, he never wore glasses. But as soon as he put them on, someone called to him through the door.

  “How is this possible?” Petty asked before I could ask.

  “You may think you have all of this figured out, this whole ‘mortality’ thing. In fact, I think it’s quite cute. I won’t blame you. But the ethereal stuff? The way Heaven and hell work …” Cain threw up a hand to silence me before I could ask anything. “Look, I hate being the one to tell you this, but you’re both very very small. Tiny specks. Gorgeous specks, if you ask me, but specks nonetheless. If you knew what the afterlife was like, you would never have signed up for this.”

  Deflated by our sudden glumness, Cain sighed. “Okay, okay. Party pooper. I’m an Angel of Death. I’ve been told I don’t have proper bedside manners blah blah blah. Let’s start over.” She cleared her throat. “This thing? Oh I just turned your TV into a see-er.”

  “A seer? Like a prophet?”

  “What? No! A see-er. See-er. It’s sees … well, stuff actually. See it picks up the strings of fate—strings of decisions which lead to a person’s death, to be exact. The tool of an Angel of Death, which I checked out without permission when I resigned, thank you very much, is used to sever these strings. But if I tip it just right, I can see the intertwined fates of two people.”

  “That’s the Pope,” Petty said just recognizing him. “On the news … he landed in New York this afternoon.”

  Cain groaned. “This must have been from last night.” She tried to move the scythe along the blue line but it only distorted the picture. “Well this sucks. It’s not even a live feed.”

  “Can’t you skip ahead?”

  “You would think but no. I can rewind but not fast forward. Gonna have to let it play.”

  “What’s your deal?” I asked Cain.

  The large woman slapped a hand on her hip. “My deal?”

  I watched as the Pope hid two pistols in his waist and walk out of his room. “Yeah. Why tell me this? What’s your connection to Barnem and when did he tell you about me?”

  “Like I said, sugar, I am no longer employed by the afterlife. Trying my hand at the private sector. You know … seeing what’s out there. Barnem and I go way, way back. Long way. He asked me to help with your pirate problem. Back then, I was still employed, 9 to 5’ing it. A slave to the system and whatnot. But I left right after I got ol’ Barnem’s message. He called in a favor.”

  “And right after, Barnem fell in a coma.”

  “Still not paying attention, are you?” Cain bristled. “It doesn’t work like that. Honestly. Barnem told me to not explain too much about how eternity works, but you’re completely in the dark and I’m guessing you won’t be trusting me any other way. So pay attention. There are spaces of being that you know: hell, Heaven, and Earth. You’re obviously from the mortal realm—Earth. You eat, fuck, poo, etc. I’m a being of Heaven, which means I don’t do any of those things and are therefore better. It also means I can communicate with the all powerful Celestial.” She said this with an odd mocking gesture with both of her hands, and when we looked at her blankly, she added, “Celestial is the inter-office email system we have in place back at HQ. It’s how Barnem contacted me. Anyway, hell is all the rest. If you’re not mortal and you’re not like any of the departments in HQ, then you’re a demon.”

  “Like D.”

  “D?”

  “Her roommate.”

  Cain had an odd expression on her face. “It has a name? Yeah, that can’t be good.”

  “Just finish. What does this have to do with Barnem? And the Pope assassinating me? I’m done with all the demon stuff. I caught the last Shade.”

  “Barnem is a being of Earth with divine purpose, much like your Pope. Since you’ve been sitting on your hands down here, and with Barnem on the shelf, Fate called an audible to pick up the slack. The Pope is obviously here to finish the job. That means killing you, this D, and anyone else who gets in the way.”

  “And you tell me this now? Where were you a week ago when we were up against a nightmare parrot?”

  Cain only flicked her hair. “Barnem sent a message, but I just didn’t get it. I mean, it’s just a bitch because you have to login every time. And when you change your password and forget you change your password. And then you press that button ‘forgot password’, but then it sends it to an email you don’t know the password for. So you press the button and—”

  “A-hem!”

  On the screen, the Pope was talking to a young man who was posted by his door. The guy was roughly my age with slicked back hair. He introduced himself as Oswalt. The Pope said he had to come to New York.

  “Why are the words and their lips different?” Petty asked.

  Cain tapped her scythe. “Dubbed in English. And the point to all of this, dollface, is that Barnem asked me to help and that’s what I’m here to do. The Pope is on a holy mission to end your life. The see-er is absolute. So if we’re seeing this, he will succeed or die trying. You need to catch the last demon, quick and fast.”

  My immediate thoughts went right for Mom and Dad. I wasn’t prepared to die, but they were far more important.

  “Phil has a car?”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Call him to come pick us up. I’m going to pack Mom and Dad’s bags and fly them somewhere, anywhere but here. Just in case.”

  Petty held her arms out before I could walk by. “Wai-wai-wait! Stop, cease, and desist. Tell me why she has to stay with me?”

  “Because.”

  “Need I remind you that since you picked your roommate, there have only been two types of people you’ve met. Two! The good guys and then the guys that want to tear your throat out. How do we know which one she is?”

  “Good point.”

  “Finally.”

  “Hey, Cain. Are you one of the good guys or the bad guys?”

  The Angel of Death thought about this question long and hard, and just as she was about to answer, a large thump shook the nearby window. From the feathers and bloodstain, it was obvious that a bird had slammed into the glass and broken its neck. The woman then turned to us and shrugged.

  “Good enough for me,” I said.

  “But, Mandy—”

  I shoved a purposeful finger in her face. “Uh-huh. Petunia Grey, you owe me. Big time. Now I didn’t want to use the whole ‘You put me in this mess when you stole Mom and Dad’s money’ card. But yup. Gonna use it.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Nope! Here it is!” I grabbed an invisible card out of the air, turned her palm over, and slammed it in there. Petty threw a fit.

  Cain, watching our squabble, pouted her lips together and called out to us, “Goin’ somewhere, Grey? I’m supposed to be escorting you around. Protecting you.”

  “How about no? No need.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, eyeing my sister. “At least I’ll be in good company.”

  “How about no to that as well.” Petty snagged me before I left. “Look, Mandy. Slow down for one friggin’ sec. What’s this about? Hell?”

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about. I gotta—”

  But her grip stayed fastened to my arm. “We haven’t talked, Mandy. Not since Mason. Not since I got to be … this.”

  I quickly turned away from her and started walking to the door. “We will talk, Petty. Promise. Just not now with the world still ending and stuff. Let’s get Mom and Dad as far away from h
ere as possible and then we’ll talk. But I need that car so don’t be late.”

  I wasn’t blowing her off. I wasn’t trying to, really. It’s just that even after the clusterfuck of a month I was going through, I didn’t have time to deal with … feels, my own or my sister’s. There was a lot to unpack and very little time to sort through it all. Still, I did feel bad about dumping this on her lap. I ended up turning around, wrapping my arm around Petty’s shoulders, and saying, “I’m going to ask now, okay? Can the former Angel of Death stay in your apartment?”

  Petty bit her black lip. “Fine, fine.”

  “Great. Trust me that this is all part of the plan. I want her out of the way while I fix this, sure. But also … you’re already dead. You can’t be deader.”

  Petty opened her lips for a rebuttal but couldn’t find one.

  CHAPTER 34

  Having properly dropped off my new angel problem onto my favorite sister, I formulated a fool-proof, idiot-proof, Armageddon-proof plan to clean up my life. I would go and get my parents, pack them both “Get Out and Go” bags, and buy them a second honeymoon to any-place-not-New-York, just to get them as far out of the city as possible.

  After a short trip on the train, I made it to the building in record time and set my keys into the door. The smell of cooking was filling the hallway, which I figured was Mom’s way of getting the family together. I knew that the trip abroad had really affected my parents; that they missed us all being piled on top of each other in that little apartment. I also knew that it would take some serious acrobatics to get them both to pack up and leave again.

  Of course, I also had to consider that Cain was just screwing with me in some way. I mean, sure those images from the see-er were pretty damning. And I already had my worries about my relationship with D. God, just the fact that I had a relationship with a demon was the end-all/be-all of all worries. All of this ran through my mind as I set my keys into the door because I wasn’t a thousand percent sure where anyone’s loyalties lay. Cain made it known what she believed: the extinction of the human race was inevitable and no amount of crappy crazy glue could put it together. The night I killed that lunatic Gaffrey Palls, I’d just changed the expiration date on something already attracting flies. As crappy as my life was, I couldn’t agree. There were a few people here that didn’t suck and I was ready to bite and claw and kick my way through to prove it. Besides, there weren’t any crazy signs or Oddities going around. Cain said something was coming, but from where? Considering I had personally seen to it that they were locked away, and that there was only one more left to scratch off of that list, I thought I was doing pretty damn good for myself. Pope or not, if I got to the demon first and put him away, he wouldn’t have business with me.