Брайан Макклеллан - Uncanny Collateral

My call rang twice before a woman picked up. “Ada, it’s Alek.”

“You get it?” The voice on the other end sounded exactly what one might expect a two-pack-a-day smoker to sound like, which I always find funny because Ada doesn’t smoke.

“Let OtherOps know I reaped a soul off of William Hadley in Mercer County,” I told her.

“Any trouble?”

“Shotgun. He missed.”

“Good. I’m not paying for another company polo.”

Have I told you your boss is a bitch? Maggie interjected.

I ignored her and bit my tongue so that I wouldn’t tell Ada to go to hell. Company polo? Really? “I’ll have you know I was wearing a hoodie tonight.”

If Ada heard the joke in my tone, she ignored it. “Those are even more expensive.”

I sighed. “Right. Thanks for the concern. It’ll take me a couple hours to get home. I’ll be in late tomorrow.”

“You’ll do no such thing. You have an appointment at six AM sharp.”

“You’re shitting me.”

Huuuuuuge bitch, Maggie whispered.

“Be there,” Ada ordered.

“Ada! It’s Friday night. I’ve been working eighteen-hour days. Give me a goddamned break.”

The word break had barely left my mouth when I felt an intense pain in my chest. My left arm went numb, and I gasped for breath, barely managing to get out the words “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be there at six.”

I have a lot of tattoos. Some of them are for show. Others, like the tattoo of Mjolnir on my right hand and Grendel’s claw on my left, are reaper specials that allow me to dish out some serious damage. There’s one, though, that is completely unique. On the left side of my chest, just above my heart, is a barcode about an inch long. It was put there when I was an infant, after my parents sold me. Since Ada owns me now, she has control of that little tattoo, and she can do some mean things with its sorcery.

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.

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.