Gina Grant - Scythe Does Matter

SYBIL ORDERED DANTE to go find me a glass of water, then plunked down on the bench beside me, her leg brushing against mine.

“Calm down, gal-pal. Put yer noggin ’tween yer knees and try not to breathe.”

I recognized that advice from the day she and I met, the day Dante escorted me to Hell. Despite my misery, an involuntary grin tugged at the corner of my mouth.

“Oh, Sybil.” My smile faded and I dropped my head in my hands, whispering, “I’m so screwed.”

“Well, that’s a little personal, doll-face, but thanks for sharin’. And thanks to Judge Julius, you can keep on with that, you know, personal stuff.” Sybil nudged me with her elbow. When I raised my head and met her eyes, she said, “Now I hate to beat my gums, but you really dodged a bullet here today.”

I took a moment to catch up with her, but when I got there, I still didn’t understand. “What are you saying? You were there. I lost my appeal.”

“Right. And now you can go home with Dante and carry on wit’ yer afterlife. I’m not usually a nosy parker, but I gotta sing like a canary on this one. Take my advice. Don’t bother gettin’ that stapler evidence. Just let it go. Stay here. Be happy. In fact, I can go get you a confession form right now. Just say you knowingly sold yer soul for that Conrad guy and then Dante can get his job back and you guys can live happily ever after. Or, you know, be dead happily ever . . . whatever.”

“But I have to try again. If I lose the final appeal, I don’t get my life back and Conrad gets his twenty-five-year extension after all—an extension gained at the expense of my life. If I win, I’ll get my life back, Conrad will be punished and I’ll see Dante again when I die. It was Dante’s idea. He said when you’re over seven hundred years old, you can do another half century in your sleep. Got the advice from his buddy van Winkle. Dante promised he’d wait.”

I wasn’t sure he would. I thought maybe that was his way of saying, Thanks for the sex. Of course I’ll call. If he had really wanted me to stay, he hadn’t said anything.

It was hard to be mad at someone for being supportive, but I was managing.

“No, kiddo. You’re not gettin’ it. If you win, then that proves he made a mistake and scythed the wrong soul. There’s a zero tolerance policy with Reapers. He loses his job and with it, his spot here in Hell.”

“You’re saying that he won’t be here when I get back? That I’ll have to wait for him? I can do that.” Sure I could. With time out of whack, whatever time Dante had left in his next life might be only a couple of weeks for me.

“Nuh-uh. Lemme lay it out for you, Kirsty, crystal clear. If Dante gets sent back to the Coil, you can forget about ever seein’ him again. Once he’s back in the death cycle, he probably won’t even remember you.” She placed one hand on my shoulder.

“He . . . He won’t even . . .” A lump grew in the back of my throat, choking off my words. So Dante really did want to get rid of me, even at the price of the job he loved and the place he’d called home for seven hundred years. My eyes burned and my—

“Holy Jeez!” I shouted when a hand touched my other shoulder. I jumped ten feet in the air. And I mean that literally. But unlike when Dante surprised me in my hospital room back on the Coil, this time I didn’t pass through the ceiling but clunked my head painfully against it. Ow. Why were the rules so different here?

Dante waited till I’d reseated myself before sitting on my other side. His warm thigh pressed against mine in a much different way than Sybil’s. I was sandwiched between two people I cared about. And they cared about me. I would have been happy if Dante hadn’t looked positively tortured. How much had he heard?

“I was not going to say anything, cara. I knew you wanted nothing more than to get your Coil life back. How could I not support that?”

My chest tightened painfully, like I was caught between a rock and a heart place.

I searched his eyes for the truth. “You don’t want me to go?”

“Never, cara. How could you not know? All the times I told you I loved you. Ti amo.”

Ohhh! So that’s what that means. Hell’s universal translator had rendered it as “I love bullets.” It had seemed a weird thing to say in bed, but now I knew.

“I ti amo you, too, Dante.”

I should be happy to stay with the man I loved—who loved me, too—but Conrad’s triumph cast a shadow over my happiness.

“Mi dispiace, cara. I’m sorry your appeal didn’t go so well, but I cannot help being glad you’re going to stay with me.” He stroked his hand down my cheek. “At least until your next appeal.”

Sybil stood, smoothing down her skirt. “I’ll leave you two love birds to yer billin’ and cooin’.”

Startled out of our bittersweet moment, I jumped up.

“Not on your afterlife, girlfriend. We’re going to fix this and I need your help. Now listen to me, both of you. I’m going to get my life back, Dante’s going to get his job back, Conrad’s going to Hell, and then Dante and I are going to be together. I want my cake, the icing and to eat it, too.”

“Then justice will be served . . . along with that cake!” Sybil crowed, fisting the air.

“We will find a way to get the right stapler.” Dante’s hand edged toward his belt loop where his confiscated scythe should have been. “Or we will find another way.”

I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. I may have never accomplished anything before in any of my lives or after but now was exactly the time to start. That bastard Conrad was having the time of my life and it was time I got it back.

Today was the first day of the rest of my afterlife!

DANTE HUGGED MEhard. “I’m so proud of you, cara, for taking charge of your life.” The “finally” was implied. I prickled but kept my mouth shut.

Sybil stared at me. “Yeah, doll-face. That’s great that yer gonna do that, but how?”

I watched a small insect crawl across the floor before saying, “I don’t know. I was hoping you guys might have some ideas.”

We all sat on the hard pine bench outside the courtroom, thinking our little hearts out.

Finally, I sighed, saying, “I got nothing? You?”

Dante shrugged, “ Mi dispiace, cara. I got nothing either.”

“I gotta whole lotta noth— Hang on a sec.” Sibyl held her finger to her lips, glancing left and right, up and down. “Ah-ha!” She brandished her day planner at an oversize dung beetle hiding under the bench. “Get outta here, ya big stoolie, before I break all six of yer legs.” She raised the book like a sword. “And wipe that shit-eating grin off yer face!”

“You’ll never take me alive!” the beetle shrieked, scuttling away.

“What was that?” I asked, half curling up on the bench so my feet weren’t on the floor. Bugs give me the creeps. I hadn’t seen many in Hell since the time flies.

“It’s a Beelzebug. They’re supposed to sweep for bugs in here but . . .” She eyed the courthouse’s ornate crown molding. Anything could be hiding in the fancy carvings and recessed corners. “We better move this confab to the staff room.”

Dante and I followed Sybil into the employee lounge, a drab room with dumpy furniture. In jarring contrast to the rest of the space, a pretty spray of flowers decorated a beat-up table near the door. “Bug spray. Keeps ’em out,” she explained, jerking her chin toward the flowers. “We can hold our bull session in here without being eavesdropped on. Now, Kirsty. About your life . . .”