Uncanny Collateral

by Brian McClellan

  The pain went away instantly, lingering as a memory—a reminder—in my chest. “Good,” Ada said. “And don’t fuck this up. It’s important.”

  “Who am I meeting with?”

  “Death.”

  “Oh.” I hung up the phone and stared at the road. I could feel Maggie stalking around in the back of my head. Ada’s abuse always put her in a foul mood. I think it made her feel as helpless as I did.

  When she’d finally calmed down, Maggie asked, Was Ada serious about meeting Death?

  In all the time you’ve been riding along with me, has Ada ever made a joke? I responded, driving with one hand clutching my chest. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea myself. I’d met all manner of magical beings in my line of work, including a handful of minor gods. But Death, the Great Constant? This was new. Even Lucy was wary of Death, and she’d been giving Yahweh the finger for six thousand years.

  What are you going to do? Maggie asked.

  I’m going to be at my meeting on time, I told her, and I’m not going to shake his hand.

  Chapter 2

  I woke up after a few hours of restless sleep. I live in a rotting little one-bedroom cottage—a former servant’s quarters—in the far corner of one of the big estates in Gates Mills. It belongs to wealthy friend of Ada’s, and it should probably be condemned. Aside from the necessary furniture, I’ve got a tube TV with a couple of old gaming stations, a work laptop, and nothing on the walls except for a little picture shrine to Avalanche, the white golden retriever I had when I was a teenager. The rooms are clean, the fridge always empty. I don’t get to spend a lot of time there, but it’s home.

  I stared, bleary-eyed, around my bedroom, trying to remember my own name, until Ada’s instructions rolled through my foggy memory and I dragged myself out of bed. After a quick shower and a comb of the beard, I headed to work.

  I arrived in the Valkyrie parking lot at quarter till six. The lot was empty except for the cruiser of a rent-a-cop sitting idling by the entrance. Ted, the rent-a-cop, gave me a wave and returned to whatever book he was reading while I pulled into my spot and stared in irritation at the still-dark building.

  Valkyrie works out of a two-story brick office off Route 20 in Wickliffe, Ohio. It has the advantages of dirt-cheap rent and being close to two major highways—the former of which was probably foremost in Ada’s mind when she chose the location. Since a lot of debtors take our work personally, the building is protected by a state-of-the-art security system, half a dozen wards against various evils and, of course, Ted, who I enjoy referring to as a rent-a-cop, but who was a Navy SEAL for twelve years and in the Secret Service for five. He’s heavily armed enough to take on a pack of werewolves single-handed, and I’d be surprised if he’s entirely human.

  You awake? I asked Maggie. She claims she needs sleep almost as much as I do, but I think she just does it to pass the time.

  Just having my coffee, she answered. Or what passes for coffee in this place.

  I’m so tired I almost crashed three times just getting here.

  I missed that, she replied. You want me to give you a little pick-me-up?

  I eyed the building. My client would arrive soon. I have to be in top shape for this meeting. So yeah, you’d better give me a jolt.

  A tiny bit of warmth trickled out through Maggie’s ring. It was pleasant at first, then quickly followed by a sensation that I can only describe as having a needle rammed underneath a fingernail. It spread through my body like a wave, hitting me hard for less than a second before disappearing, leaving me with the memory of the pain—and more awake than I’d been in weeks.

  Lord, I always forget how much that hurts.

  Don’t be a baby, she responded.

  I headed inside, using a good old-fashioned key to open up the building. I walked past the empty reception desk and across the dark collection room. Rows of cubicles filled the entire first floor. In a few hours they would be buzzing with conversation as the day team arrived to do cold calls and skip tracing. They were our first line of offense against the wayward debtor, and they managed to bring in about eighty-two percent of what was owed to our clients just by getting in contact and reminding people they had debts to pay.

  The other eighteen percent? That’s where I come in.

  I punched in a code on the door at the other end of the room and headed up a narrow staircase to the second floor, where I flipped on all the lights and put on a pot of coffee. The second floor had a bank of eight offices down one side—one for each of our full-time reapers—opposite a large corner office, a break room, and our secretary’s cubby. I was the only one in at this hour on a weekend, of course. None of the other reapers were literally company property.

  Hey, so… it’s my anniversary next week, Maggie said.

  I froze in the middle of opening a Ho Ho for breakfast. Shit, Mags, I said. I didn’t realize it was coming up so soon.

  Think you can get the day off?

  Despite the fact that Maggie practically lived in my head, she’d always been standoffish about her past. I’d quickly learned not to ask too many questions, which meant that I knew a lot less about her than she did about me. Not an ideal situation, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. There’s a certain class of Other that you don’t get pushy with unless you have to, and jinn definitely qualify.

  This meant that I didn’t know the exact circumstances of her imprisonment in the ring. From what I’d gathered, she got into a fight with a magician masquerading as a priest and ended up in her current predicament. Somehow she’d managed to get a single day of freedom each year on the anniversary of her imprisonment. I wasn’t entirely certain whether that was through her own sorcery or some sort of twisted mind game on the part of the magician, but Maggie liked to use that day to do things she couldn’t experience within the ring.

  Last year, we spent thirteen hours playing Frisbee golf, ate a steak dinner, and then I wing-manned for her at the bars so she could get laid.

  I’ll try, I told her. You know how Ada is about that kind of thing. What do you want to do?

  There was a pause. I’m not sure.

  Yes, you are. You have all year to think about it. What do you want to do?

  Bowling, maybe?

  I could sense she wasn’t telling me what she really wanted—probably because it was too expensive. Unlike the rest of the reapers, Ada paid me just enough to get by, so I usually had to raid my change jar each year so Maggie could do something fun. We went bowling two years ago. Come on, just tell me.

  I want to go to the beach, came the answer.

  This is Cleveland. The beaches here suck.

  I know. I want to go to a real beach.

  That’s why she didn’t want to tell me. Money was tight, but time was even tighter. Getting a single day off from Ada was like pulling teeth. Getting two or three days—enough to drive somewhere with proper sand and waves—was like asking for the moon.

  I caught the scent of cigarette smoke and frowned, looking around the office for the source. None of the windows were open, and none of my coworkers were there. I walked down the hall, following my nose until I noticed smoke curling out from beneath Ada’s office door. Since Ada was a nonsmoker, I knew it couldn’t be hers. He’s here, I said to Maggie. I’ll see what I can do about the beach, but no promises. Try to think of a backup plan.

  I opened the door to Ada’s office and coughed as I was enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke so thick it made my eyes water. I could see nothing in the darkness except for the glow of a single ember in the center of Ada’s chair. I flipped on the lights.

  An old man sat behind Ada’s desk. For a moment, I thought that Keith Richards had rolled his greasy ass out of Beverly Hills to come meet with me. The figure was as thin as a rail, with a sun-wrinkled face; long, stringy white hair; and yellowed nails at the ends of bony fingers. He looked like someone who
’d managed to try and survive every drug known to man over a long and storied life.

  His feet were on the desk, the chair tilted back. He wore ripped jeans, unlaced construction boots, and an AC/DC T-shirt with Angus Young rocking out on the front.

  “This is a no-smoking building,” I told him.

  He cocked an eyebrow. “You know who I am?”

  “If you have to ask…” I said, coming to sit opposite him.

  “Then either you don’t actually care, or I’m not that important,” he finished, grinning at me through cracked lips. He crushed the cigarette out on Ada’s desk and removed his feet, leaning forward in her chair to examine me with black irises. No, not black—flecked, like a dark galaxy of stars. “Ada told me you were unflappable.”

  To be honest, I was more than a little impressed—not at his outfit, but his sheer presence. It filled the room, expanding to every corner like the smoke of his cigarettes. Both my human and troll sides could sense it, and that meant something. “Not unflappable,” I said, “but my boss can make my life miserable when she finds out someone smoked in her office. You… well, all you can do is kill me.”

  He rolled his eyes. “If I had a nickel for every time someone’s said that… I don’t actually kill people. I just usher them from one world to the next.” His voice was a guttural purr, like Bob Dylan’s on a good day.

  “I know, but I didn’t get up at five in the morning to argue semantics with Death.”

  Would you get a load of this guy? I asked Maggie.

  Oh, I have, she answered in a whisper. And I can’t believe you’re talking back to him. Show some fucking respect, Alek.

  Is the big, bad jinn scared of her own mortality? I teased.

  I’m serious.

  That sobered me up. For a reasonably powerful Other, Maggie tends to be pretty cautious. I think it’s a consequence of being stuck in a tiny portable house on a mortal’s finger. While she knows that I can handle myself, she’s never been shy about reining me in when I’m being stupid. Is he the real deal? I asked. Like, actually Death and not some underling or avatar?

  Yeah, it’s him. He gives me the heebie-jeebies.

  I smiled at my new client. “I’m sorry for the snark,” I said, “but it’s kind of an early hour. Let’s start this off on the right foot. My name is Alek Fitz. I’m the lead reaper at Valkyrie. I’m guessing that you’re Death?

  He seemed more amused than offended. “You can call me Ferryman,” he responded. “It’s less…”

  “Ominous?” I suggested.

  “Just so.”

  I leaned back in my chair, hands in my hoodie pocket, considering something that had been on my mind ever since Ada told me who I’d be meeting with. “Forgive me, sir, but I didn’t know you were a client.”

  “I wasn’t until last night.”

  “Let me rephrase that: I didn’t know you had the capacity to be our client. As far as I’m aware, you don’t trade with humans.”

  “Correct.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  Ferryman watched me for a few moments with those disconcerting eyes, then produced a lighter from his pocket and tapped it on the table. I wouldn’t have imagined Death as a nervous smoker. He said, “Do you know the difference between a soul, a spirit, and a shade?”

  From the way he said the words, I assumed they were technical terms rather than nebulous ideas. “I know what a soul is. The others sound above my pay grade.”

  “They are. Your spirit is the thing that exists before and after your time in this mortal realm. When you’re born, it’s split into two pieces—the soul and the shade. The soul comes with you into mortality. The shade remains here.” He gestured to the darkness around him. “Part of my job as Ferryman is to reunite soul and shade and send the entire spirit off to wherever it’s meant to go.”

  All of this was news to me. I had wondered what goes on before and after death—I’m still human, after all. But the Other doesn’t always make sense in human terms, so thinking about it too much is often a good route to a bad headache. “You’re an administrator?”

  “I’d probably romanticize it a little more than that, but essentially, yes.”

  I pursed my lips at the explanation, annoyed that he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. “Then,” I asked again, more emphatically, “why are you here?” In the back of my head, Maggie had gone quiet. From her ring, I could feel her presence like a person with their ear pressed against the door.

  “Because souls are missing.”

  I watched him carefully, waiting for the and attached to the end of that sentence. Missing souls were my job, but I got the very clear sense from his cageyness that this wasn’t the run-of-the-mill “old debtor took off running” kind of job. Something was up. If he didn’t have my attention before, he definitely had it now.

  “From where?”

  “From the vaults of a number of your clients.”

  I scoffed. “Is that possible?” As far as I had ever been aware, once Beelzebub or whoever got their claws onto your soul—sometimes with my help—that soul was theirs until further notice. It had never even occurred to me that they could be stolen.

  “It is possible,” Ferryman answered, “and it has happened.”

  “Is there an illicit trade in souls?”

  “There isn’t. The souls literally don’t have value in this life. Once they’ve been reunited with the shade and move on as part of the whole spirit, then they have value. The reason you have a job,” he said, pointing one long finger at me, “is because the physical possession of a soul upon the death of the mortal vessel is extremely important in determining where the spirit winds up.” Ferryman sighed, clearly getting tired of my line of questioning. “I’m here because most of your clients have been robbed. So many are affected, they’ve asked me to be their proxy. Is that satisfactory?”

  “Yes,” I answered. It wasn’t; I still had a bunch of questions. But if Ferryman wanted to get on with business, I had little choice but to go along with it. I’m just a working peon, after all. “How many souls?”

  “Two hundred seventeen,” he answered sharply.

  “Jesus… man, I go after maybe one a week at most!”

  Ferryman snorted a laugh. “These aren’t debtors you’re after; they’re souls. You should find them contained in the same kind of soul mirrors that you use for collecting.”

  “All right,” I said, gathering my thoughts. This was a little unorthodox. Usually I was chasing a debtor—a person I could track. Stolen goods was out of my comfort zone, which led me to another question: “Why are you coming to a reaper agency? This sounds like it should be handed over to OtherOps.” OtherOps is to the cops what reapers are to monetary debt collectors. A reaper maintains the contractual balance between the Other and humanity. OtherOps deals with anything that can’t be solved by the wording on a piece of paper. Theft certainly fell under that.

  Ferryman seemed to consider his response. “The Lords of Hell have requested that OtherOps not be involved. Not yet, anyway. Missing souls are bad for business. They want discretion, which is something OtherOps doesn’t do well.”

  Most normal people think of the Other as forces of nature—creatures or entities to be tolerated, worshiped, or sometimes controlled, but generally out of mind unless humans were directly confronted with something they couldn’t explain. People expect OtherOps to protect them from the more dangerous aspects of the Other and to clean up quickly when there’s an incident. Unfortunately, OtherOps is a mostly human organization, which makes it rife with human failings. They let stuff slip through the cracks and leak things to the press all the time, so Ferryman certainly had a point.

  I tapped one of my lower canines with a fingernail, trying to think of what else I’d need to know before I got started. “Do we know how the souls went missing?”

  “A number of differe
nt storage facilities were burgled at the end of last summer. No two of the facilities are owned by the same Lord of Hell, so they didn’t pick up on the pattern or even the thefts until their spring audit.”

  “How did they not notice the thefts?” I asked suspiciously.

  Ferryman shrugged. “They handle a lot of souls. Would you notice five or six candies missing from a family-sized pack of M&M’s?”

  Is he telling the truth? I asked Maggie.

  She responded with a snort. Shit, I don’t know. My lie detector works on humans and most of the lesser Others, not the Great Constant himself.

  Something about this sounds fishy, I said. I’ve met Lucy and most of her siblings. They don’t let souls fall through the cracks.

  I don’t disagree, Maggie responded.

  I gave Ferryman a considering look and decided not to call him out. He was paying the bills. If he wasn’t concerned by the circumstance, then I wasn’t either. “Okay, just a couple more questions and I’ll get started. Why me?”

  “Because you’re the best in the business,” Ferryman responded, frowning at me as if it should be obvious.

  “I’m flattered,” I answered sarcastically. (I was, actually, a little flattered.) “Has Hell conducted its own investigations yet?”

  “As far as it can without breaking the Rules,” Ferryman said. “They’ve come up with nothing. The best we can give you is that the souls were all stolen from facilities in the Great Lakes region, so you’ll be working locally.”

  I’d actually been looking forward to the idea of getting out of town, but I nodded along. “That’s good. To be clear, the original owners of these souls know nothing about this?”

  “They’re not to be bothered,” Ferryman confirmed.

  “And none of these stolen souls have popped up anywhere?”

  “Not a single one.” Ferryman’s twitchy fingers finally got the better of him, and he lit up another cigarette. He took a drag, then added, “I need you to find these souls quickly and quietly. The Rules prevent the Lords of Hell from dirtying their hands. You, on the other hand, are free to do as needed.”