Брайан Макклеллан - Uncanny Collateral

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?”