Gina Grant - Scythe Does Matter

M’Kimbi and two of the Death Valley girls had drawn something that made me think of kidney stones, while the remaining Death Valley girl, Rod the jerk—I mean jock—and his geeky buddy Horace all drew three matching . . . somethings we couldn’t identify. Nor did we want to, given the circumstances. We were quick to return them to the skull when Dante made a return trip collecting them for the next session.

“Everyone, find your teammates, prego ,” Dante instructed. “They’ll be the other two classmates who have drawn similar objects. ”

Kali and I turned our chairs around. Ira sat behind us so our little team was already a group that liked each other and worked well together. I began to suspect Dante had rigged the game in my favor. Maybe he didn’t have quite as much integrity as I’d believed, not that I was complaining. Like Sybil had said the day I arrived: “This is Hell. We play favorites.”

The composition of my team was definitely to my advantage, but was it to my partners’ as well? Kali and Ira were both supernatural beings with a lot more insight into the wide world of death and reapage than me. I worried I might drag them down. Looking around the room, I realized I wasn’t the only one who had reason to be nervous.

M’Kimbi had his hands full with Tiffany and Amber. I didn’t envy him his place on Team Valley Girl although Amber had a photographic memory. She could spout the assigned text verbatim, even if she sometimes had trouble applying it in a practical manner. Crystal, despite her tendency to crucify the language, had a fair amount of common sense. Together they made a pretty formidable team, but today they were split up. I was a little worried for them. It wasn’t a win-sum-game situation. We could all pass and I hoped we would.

Except maybe Rod. I’d be quite happy to see him held back another semester. He could repeat the semester with his friend that had failed. Maybe he’d like that. I know I would.

But that was unlikely to happen. Rod may have been a jerk and a bully but he wasn’t stupid, damn it. And Horace was nerd-smart. The jury was still out on Tiffany. The Death Valley girls depended so much on each other that it was hard to know where one’s attributes ended and the others began.

Professor Schotz clapped his hands. “Let’s get started. We have a lot of questions to get through today. There are nine of you and nine questions, so you only get one chance. Each team will choose a being to go first. That being will come to the front of the room to answer. Once a being answers the question correctly, he or she will return to his or her seat and send up the next teammate. Should a spokes-being answer a question incorrectly, he or she will be eliminated. Therefore, your performance today will reflect on you both as a team and as an individual.”

Kali and I both turned to Ira. “You go be our spokesman—spokes-angel—whatever.”

Ira’s eyes shot wide. “Shhh! That’s supposed to be a secret.”

This was the first time any of us had admitted that we all knew he was an angel. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the greatest time to ask, but I was curious. And if either of us got eliminated, I’d never know about him. The other teams were still electing their spokes-beings so I seized the opportunity.

“Why are you here, Ira?” I asked. “I thought we were all working toward getting great incarnations and maybe, down the road, earning our way into heaven. What did you do to get yourself kicked out?”

“I didn’t get kicked out. I got bored. It’s so skeggin’ dull up there. I put in a request to become mortal but I had to go through the same channels as everybody else. That meant coming here, filling out the paperwork and taking whatever they give you at the Reincarnation Station. Unlike Hell, Heaven doesn’t play favorites. You wouldn’t want to receive preferential treatment, now would you?”

He paused, probably for dramatic effect, no doubt assuming he’d asked a rhetorical question, but both Kali and I responded.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d like preferential treatment. How ’bout you, Kali?”

“Me? Absolutely. I’m a god. I live for preferential treatment. And the occasional human sacrifice. Kidding. Kidding. That was a long time ago. I’ve given it up.”

I raised an eyebrow. From what I’d gathered from the tobacco stains on her fingertips, giving up vices wasn’t Kali’s strong suit. She raised her eyebrows back at me in exaggerated innocence and held out her hands in a gesture of surrender—tripled. “Honest. And let me tell you, giving up human hearts was a skeg of a lot easier than cigarettes. I’m just saying.”

Ira giggled. He’d recently taken up smoking himself as part of his new, rebel-without-a-cloud image. The giggling so went with that.

“Okay,” he continued. “I couldn’t actually get preferential treatment. I know. I tried. Anyway, angels only get one chance to be mortal and live a human life so I want to make it a truly awesome one. That’s why I’m studying to be a Reaper. I need to make some decent Karma Kredit points if I’m going to live the good life.”

Dante’s role as proctor involved him swaggering up and down the aisles between desks, looking severe, right hand resting on the hip where his confiscated scythe no longer hung. Having met Sergeant Schotz, I was sure that Dante’s confiscated scythe was under lock and key somewhere and only Schotz had the key. It was no one’s vault but his own. Dante halted when he reached my little group, laying both palms flat on my desk and leaning in. Keeping his voice low, he asked, “Is there a problem here, amici ?”

I blushed. “We’re just trying to figure out how to handle this so we all pass. Any advice for us?” I tilted my head and tried to look appealing—either sexually appealing or appealing for help, I wasn’t fussy.

He leaned in closer still. “Do I have any advice? Sì.” He cut his eyes at the other members of the class and lowered his voice to a sexy growl. “What you three need to do is try to answer all the questions correctly.” He stood up and moved to the next group.

Well, that was helpful— not! Somebody would not be getting laid to rest anytime soon.

“So, Ira. Are you going up first? Or you, Kali?” I stared at my teammates apprehensively.

Ira looked thoughtful, while Kali picked worriedly at her cuticles—all thirty of them. A few long moments passed in silence.

I drew a deep breath and bit the bullet. “My guess is that he’ll ask the questions in the order he taught the work. He’d want us to learn from this exercise as much as from anything else we did in class. Which means he’s going to ask the easiest questions first. And that means I, as your weakest link, should go first.” I started to stand but Kali grabbed my arm—in several places.

“No. That’s what he’ll anticipate us thinking so he’ll put the hardest questions first. Ira, you go.” She certainly wasn’t sparing my feelings about being the weakest link. She looked at me with her face all screwed up, her eyebrows drawing in close. “We’re all in this together,” she said. “No offense?”

“None taken,” I assured her. “I was late joining the class.” I shrugged. “And I’m not a supernatural being or anything . . .” My stupid eyes burned a bit. I was not going to let my teammates down. Or my aunt.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll go.” Ira stood just as Amber and Crystal headed to the front of the room, cheered on by their respective teams.

While we’d been futzing around, gossiping and trying to choose our first spokes-being, Dante had returned to the front of the room and set up a tiny tableau consisting of an hourglass, a bell and a hammer. Never had three ordinary objects seemed so ominous.