The Reaper's Sacrifice

by Abigail Baker

  “I—I don’t understand.” I wagged my head, thinking to shake away incredulity. “What does Errol mean by similar to me and Eve?”

  “Ah, it is a rather uncomplicated process for a complicated story.” Nicodemus placed his hands over mine. “Brent Hume knows the rules of Styx better than anyone, thankfully. What he did to your dear Eve, and to you, were not the first times he half-ferried souls. Just like you, my fate is tied to him as well.”

  “He has half of your soul, too? How? Why?” This was a logical question, but the sad turn in Nicodemus’s expression told me plenty. He didn’t want to talk about it here.

  “It’s of no consequence right now.” He looked at Errol and squeezed my hands, his soft, squishy flesh asking me to trust him and to believe. “You should rest up before we have such a conversation. Becoming so upset drains you of energy, I’m sure.”

  Breaking from our connection, I rubbed the back of my head, positive I had banged it hard enough to be dreaming this conversation. This reality felt too weird, even in my world of Deathmarks and Grim Reapers.

  The air felt like it was growing heavy. It was all I could do to breathe as my life went from a crumbled mess to a little less of one.

  Errol put his hands on my shoulders, and I jumped. His eyes softened as if to apologize.

  “When Dudley arrived,” he said, “I knew of no other way to get you to understand uisge beatha than to show you how it works. Please forgive me for puttin’ you through that.”

  A headache the size of Alaska was coming on at a rapid pace. If I hadn’t been in pain, I probably would’ve punched Errol for what he had done. I’d do it later. “Couldn’t you have at least given me warning? Or showed me with one of your Trivials instead?”

  “Unfortunately, this low river flow is only enough for a small body. Dudley’s worked best.”

  So thanks to the River Phlegethon, I was just witness to a horrifying single truth: Death does barter.

  Chapter Eleven

  “The stirrings of another rebellion swell through Styx. Leaders be wary of our own River of Hate.”

  —HermesHarbinger.com

  I climbed out of the basement of terrors and made for my room. My stomach urged me to find the nearest bathroom, planter, or dead animal head where I could purge my body of shock, tears, disbelief, and most of all, breakfast eel, in peace. I made it to my bathroom and vomited into the porcelain toilet. After two or three productive heaves, I slumped over the seat. A trickle of drool hung from my lips. Acid burned my throat.

  Dudley sat at my side, staring in a way that told me he wanted to help but didn’t know how. As he started to lean in to lick my cheek, a sound caused him to spin around and run for the bathroom door instead.

  “Are you all right, dear?” Nicodemus stood in the doorway, patting Dudley on the head in acknowledgment of the dog’s greeting. I had forgotten that he had followed me from the basement, announcing his concern for me. I hoped he hadn’t watched me retch into the toilet. But if he did, he could hold my hair back if he wanted to help.

  I used toilet paper to wipe my mouth. “I don’t know what to think or feel right now. Well, I know what I feel because it’s in the toilet. Just don’t know what to think. It’s too much.”

  Nicodemus’s gray robe fluttered around him when he sat next to me on the cold tile floor.

  “What is your complicated story, Nicodemus?” I needed to get to know this stranger next to me. I needed to understand him.

  A smile pulled at his lips, one that I barely noticed through the whiskers of his long beard. “Like you, I am unpopular with the current Stygian administration. I was in your place in Lethe many decades ago. I was saved much the same way.”

  “You stood up to Marin?”

  “Indeed, when he was first initiated as Head Reaper.”

  “You didn’t like him even then?” I had assumed that Marin had charmed his way into the seat of Head Reaper. He had been elected, like any other Head Reaper before him. The only problem with the system was the lifelong tenure—only once the Head Reaper died did his or her term end. So it stood to reason that Marin had to have been a charmer at some point along the way. That, or he bought his elected position.

  “Marin is…not exactly who he said he was,” Nicodemus explained without going into details.

  “Like most politicians.” I patted down a few tears. Oddly, I was happy to hear that I wasn’t the only one in Styx who was half-ferried, and for the same reason. “So if I asked to see your ID, you’d have a black and red sticker?” Just like mine, Papa’s, and Brent’s?

  “I haven’t seen my ID in decades. Lost it, I believe. But if I had one to show you, it, too, would hold a history of rebellious acts.”

  “You are a true rebel.” I had to laugh.

  Dudley nudged closer to my side. He was trying to bring the attention back to him and maybe gain some more of those croissants.

  “As are you, dear,” Nicodemus said after we allowed Dudley his moment.

  “So Brent owns part of our souls, and we are both rebels.” I pulled Dudley onto my lap.

  “Indeed, that is the way of it. Seems for the very same reasons. I suspect that his experience with me is how he knew he could save you at your trial. As for me, one day I was charged with a Level Ten Offense, and because he was my Reaper, he did the very same. Ferried part of my soul before Watchmen could arrest me.”

  That’s how he knew how to help Eve. And me. The pieces were finally, after two long years, falling into place—or at least piecing together in some sense. “It must’ve taken a lot of guts for him to ferry part of me in front of Marin, then.”

  Nicodemus nodded, his eyes wide as if he was playing the image of Brent’s defiance in his head.

  “How many other souls do you think he’s carrying around with him?” I had to ask, because even though I laughed as I said it, there was some validity to the question. How many had Brent saved in this manner? Was he building a legion of half-ferried allies to stand up to Marin?

  “I do not think that Brent seeks to own half of Styx’s population,” Nicodemus chuckled. “Yet I do think that, much like Errol Dennison and many others, Brent seeks to protect those who can make Styx a better place.”

  Nicodemus’s reply communicated more than I was capable of digesting. Brent had known what he was doing when we first met in Le Nektar. He’d had everything under control until I ran back to Québec to save my parents. While I was a very important cog in the wheel, I was just that—a cog. Marin and Brent had been building their armies to ultimately confront each other. This truth made me feel less in control of my own fate, like they were unknowingly working together in some strategic game to place me—or them—on top. Getting annoyed with Brent was pointless, though. New history and possibilities had made themselves available. With these came questions. Lots of them.

  “Do you feel like pawn in a chess match?” I said.

  “Each of us plays a part in a greater story. When the time is right for us to move from pawn to king…or queen, it will be made clear to us.” He sighed like someone who hadn’t breathed into his own lungs for many years. “Until that time comes and thereafter, my loyalty is with the rebels.”

  Eyes glassy, I laced my fingers with his, feeling his furrowed skin and the bumps in arthritic fingers. Our hand-in-hand connection was enough for me to tell Nicodemus I would gladly accept his companionship in this rebellion that we were a part of whether we wanted to be or not.

  “You sure it didn’t hurt when they shot Dudley?” I asked.

  “Not in the least.” Spoken like a good diplomat. “Errol buttered him up with a plate of croissants first. I don’t know much about the little mutt, but I’m sure he likes his croissants.”

  “I’ll never forget that he loves pastries after witnessing that.” I sighed as the recent anger began churning again. “I’ll never let anyone hurt him again, either, not even to make a point.”

  Knowing that he was an Eidolon made me wonder how I could protect Dudley
or anyone from him, should he turn on us. Nicodemus, kind and gentle, still outranked my status as your average Master Scrivener.

  For but a moment, I wondered if he, too, would transform into that beastly specter that Chad and Brent did so well. But I couldn’t picture it. Nicodemus was not the Grim Reaper who instilled fear into his victims. He was like Grandfather Time, come to ferry you home to the beautiful Elysian Fields.

  And he would make a far better dinner party guest.

  As two longtime friends who’d just met, we sat silently, staring across a bathroom fit for a wealthy aristocrat. The accommodations that people like Errol enjoyed were too lavish for my tastes, but I appreciated the exquisiteness. Mosaic tile, claw-foot tub, and stained-glass windows…it was a little bit modern and a little bit old world. And here I was, sitting on the floor with my friend and a toilet bowl full of eel vomit.

  For the briefest of moments, I wanted to go home to Montana and crawl into my bed with my favorite pillow and sleep away the troubles of the world that had been resting on my shoulders for these two long years. But something in me stirred like it had before—the need to set things right, the need to make Styx better for everyone, not just the ones I loved. The rebel in me never really had died. She just needed some time off and a reason to come back to work. If this gentle man before me could stay true to the rebellion, I felt inspired to do the same.

  “Is all of it true?” I asked quietly, as I pondered what reentering the world of the revolution would mean. “About Marin wanting to bring everyone down to stop Errol from violating the rules of Death?”

  Nicodemus squeezed my fingers, holding on for life. “One of many reasons, I am afraid.”

  Once my stomach had settled and my nerves cooled, I had tried to catch Papa on the phone to tell him what had happened, but without success. Exhausted more than anything, I had sneaked in a nap, with Dudley curled up at my feet.

  Nicodemus had promised as we wrapped up our conversation on the bathroom floor that I could always find him wandering the orchards if I needed to talk. He had asked, too, if he could take Dudley with him on some of his many walks. Nicodemus clearly had a fondness for my dog—a direct pathway to my heart and loyalty, which I’m sure he knew. Those who saw the value in a life that wasn’t human or Stygian had a good soul, in my opinion.

  Shortly before the evening, and once I had settled down, Errol had invited me to dine with him in private. Fortunately, “in private” had meant that Dudley was there, with a plate of fresh croissants slathered in peanut butter after a long walk with Nicodemus in the orchards, the lucky mutt. More importantly, since Errol had slipped each of my Eidolon guards a bag of Snickers fun-size bars, they hadn’t put up any resistance to me attending the rendezvous unguarded. Errol’s ingenuity impressed me.

  His blatant attempt to woo me did not.

  Once our steaks and risotto had been fully consumed, Errol leaned over the table, smiling with a flicker of something inquisitive in his emerald eyes. Granted, we had finished an elegant dinner in the glass solarium beneath a moon set in gold relief against the gray, soul-cloudy backdrop. The dark outline of the redwoods and mountains in the distance reminded me with every glance that I was in a picturesque alcove of Mother Earth.

  “Did you enjoy your meal then?” he asked in his rich brogue, and I muted the part of me that reveled in accents.

  I set my fork down and pressed my back against the chair. Burr or brogue or muscled bodysuit of tattoos, this Scottish transplant was not Brent. “It was delicious. How did you know risotto and steak are my favorite meal?”

  “I have my informants.”

  Was that a creepy answer? Hell yes. That said, the feast was scrumptious, one of the better meals I’d had in a very long time. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner were effortless to prepare but hardly nutritious or thrilling on the palate.

  “Care for more drink?” He looked at my empty glass, which had been filled with a well-aged, full-bodied pinot noir that I had sucked down and practically licked clean.

  “No. Thanks.” I reached for the sweating glass of water—likely not the magic reanimation water from the Phlegethon—on my right. After a sip that cooled my throat, esophagus, and then my stomach, I said, “I’ve been wondering why Marin would let me come here if he knows you’re gunning to train me. Seems odd. Why didn’t you ever come to Montana?”

  His suggestive look withered into a stare. After a moment, he leaned back in his chair and rolled the stem of his glass of wine between two fingers. “Had I plucked you out of Montana, not only would your warden, Mr. Balanchine, and Brent be on me, I would’ve started another war with Marin. Believe me, Olivia—the last thing Wrightwick needs is another attack. Our defenses are low, which means we need to keep the peace and keep up the image that we are ready for war at any minute. Make sense?”

  Of course. I nodded because I understood what he was saying. I gestured to the pinot noir. “On second thought, another round, please.”

  He grabbed the bottle and poured a generous amount. I gulped half of the wine in one tip of the glass.

  “I see the same strength in you that Brent saw,” he said, gazing over his own glass with prowling grace. “You are powerful, lass.”

  To avoid rolling my eyes, I eyeballed my wine. “Must be a common theme that Stygians speak in ambiguities, because I don’t know what it means to be powerful except that apparently I become a little supernova when I’m pissed off, and burn through walls.”

  He let out a robust belly laugh. “Eidolons are Grim Reapers who have the power to ferry any of us—human or Stygian. They outrank Reapers. The same is true for Scriveners. There are your average Scriveners. Then there are Scriveners like you and me. And your birth father, Richard.”

  My father, a Master Scrivener, had been executed during the Scrivener Purge before I’d had a chance to speak his name. Gerard, my mentor, had been, evidently, a run-of-the-mill Scrivener. My experience with my own kind was limited, and for that reason, I was skeptical of Errol.

  I rolled the pinot’s fruitiness over my tongue. “All right, smarty-pants. What can Master Scriveners do aside from the aforementioned skillsets?”

  He straightened in his chair. “One rather elusive creature, Xiangu, heals Deathmarks. She is the only one I’m aware of who can do so, and she’s no’ easy to find. Last I heard, she was in Chicago.”

  “You mean a Deathmark can be removed?” Shock forced me to sit upright, my body on alert at this news.

  “Can be removed, altered, adjusted. Unlike real tattoos, Deathmarks are nae always permanent,” he said with pride and a little bit of amusement.

  Had I known, had I had the chance to find this Xiangu in Chicago, I could’ve asked her to remove the Deathmark I had been forced into giving Eve. And had I been able to avoid the fallout from protecting Eve and marking Nicholas Baird with my own Deathmark, I would be living a much different life, likely with Mama and Brent at my side. Looking back on what could’ve been, though, would lead to a deeper depression than the one I had been living in for the past two years. Fate was a harsh jerk for playing the cards she did.

  “You look upset?” Errol said, and it occurred to me that minutes had passed since his comment about Xiangu, the Deathmark healer.

  I put my fingers to the lotus pendant to soothe my disquiet. “Things today could be a lot different if I had known about Xiangu two years ago.”

  “Own what path you have been given, Olivia. It is nae a curse.”

  Mama’s absence would haunt me no matter how much time passed. Eve’s soul still lingered in my necklace, awaiting salvation. And she might never have it. These burdens were not gifts. They were painful stab wounds that would never heal so long as I was alive.

  “What else can Master Scriveners do?” I redirected the conversation before tears dripped from my lashes.

  “Some put Deathmarks on others with only their minds. Some can use any mark as their Deathmark, not just the one they were assigned.”

&
nbsp; I gulped the remainder of my wine and enjoyed the way it rolled down my throat and spread into my stomach like a warm, snuggly blanket. “So, is there a Master out there who can do all of those things?”

  “Canna say. I’ve never met one.” I knew little about Errol, but his expression was familiar enough—he was holding back indignation. His hands didn’t turn red, though. Mine would if I was provoked even the slightest bit, and it made me jealous that he was so composed when I wasn’t.

  “Marin said you were trying to torment Stygians by sending out those Trivials.” I wanted to egg him on, test his limits, and avoid my own very real, gut-twisting misery. “I just don’t know what to believe. Or who to believe.”

  “We are on the same side, Olivia. I’m no’ interested in teaching a child to trust her kind. If you need proof, have a look at our history. Read our literature. If you choose not to, then you’ll find yourself a lone Scrivener in a hostile Reaper world. And I know”—his eyes darkened—“you don’t find all the Reapers, particularly Eidolons, a jolly bunch of sugar-loving blokes.”

  With my rump sharply handed to me, I leaned back into my chair and fiddled with my napkin, wishing I hadn’t downed my entire glass of wine so hastily. I had no words with which to reply.

  “Ever since Marin took over as Head Reaper, he has been tryin’ to eradicate Scriveners like you and me. Master Scriveners should nae have to live runnin’ from their fellow Stygians. Our talents should be used for good.” He shoved his glass of wine aside, and I momentarily wondered if he’d be upset if I chugged it on his behalf. “If you’d rather turn a blind eye to what inequities are happening, then I’ll send you back to Québec without delay. But if you want to join your kind, then please trust us.”

  My life had been lived too flippantly. Save for the period when I had tried to protect Eve, marked a Reaper, and stormed Lethe to save Brent, I had been on a path of least resistance. And rebellion meant very little out in Montana, where the concept of thriving was not known to me. My job had been to survive, not to make change for the better. Idling kept me alive. It kept Papa alive. And it kept Marin out of our business. Until now.