Frederic’s eyes widened. “There are two of you?”
Ossy smiled. “Sorry to ruin your moment, Mr. Dead Dude.” Ossy met my gaze. His eyes were as wide as Frederic’s. “We’ve got a potential problem. Maybe. Pretty sure, man.”
I sighed and shut my eyes, trying to reason with myself. The inappropriateness of the moment was off the charts. It was doubtful that Ossy had ever even read the reaper handbook, butover the course of the last two hundred-plus years since Ossy had become a reaper, one would think he would have picked up on a few rules. One rule was not to interrupt a soul’s ferrying moment.
Ossy opened his mouth to speak, but I held up a hand. He did that thing where he always talked whenever there was a stretch of silence—even a brief one.
“I thought you were an angel taking me to God.” Frederic had grown up believing in a higher power, so of course, he would associate me with an angel. I’d been called a demon just as often. I suppose I wasn’t either of those things, yet I was both of them at once.
Ossy tried to speak again, but I put my hand over his mouth.
“My job is to escort you to the next realm.” I smiled at him. “Shall we begin?”
Frederic darted a glance at Ossy. “Is he coming, too?”
I glared at Ossy and slowly pulled my hand away, telling myself to put it back if Ossy said a single word. “He is not. He’s going to wait for me in the hall.” I said the last part through clenched teeth.
Ossy threw up his hands. “Fine, but it’s big this time, Grym.”
“In. The. Hall,” I muttered. I sometimes wondered how Ossy hadn’t ended up in another realm simply because of his tendency to annoy. I’d wanted to send him far away many times, but I loved him too much to do anything but help him whenever he asked.
Ossy sighed, muttering about rule-followers and serious matters. What could be more serious than Frederic needing an escort to his new cottage by the sea?
The hospital room faded away and we entered the between. There was nothing but blackness for as far as the eye could see. I preferred the door to appear there rather than where theperson’s body lay. “My family couldn’t see you or your friend, either. Could they?”
People talked about the oddest things as they were leaving the human realm. It amazed me how many of them wanted to know more about me. As if I were significant, which I wasn’t.
“Only you.”
“Because I’m dead?”
“Everyone sees me or one of the other reapers, eventually.”
“There aren’t immortals walking the earth?” Oh, yes, Frederic was an inquisitive man.
“Do you mean besides those like me?”
“Right. Yes. Other... creatures. Do they exist?”
“There are people who come from other realms, but none from the afterlife. That door goes only one way. But I’m told there are other realms.” In truth, I wasn’t privy to who came and went. My knowledge was limited to those I’d met throughout my life.
“Are you... alive?” That was a new one.
I rarely laughed while I was working.
Many people found change difficult. That was all death was, really—a change. “I’m a living person. I eat, breathe, and sleep. All the things people do.”
“So you’re human?”
“I used to be. A long time ago.” I still had human tendencies—more than not, at any rate.
The door always just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. Frederic’s door was sage green.
We stopped in front of it.
“I’ll see them again? My family, I mean.”
“I don’t know if you’ll see all of them, but you will spend eternity with your wife. In time.” The visions were more like knowing. I couldn’t really explain it because it was hard to grasp, even for me. It was a perk of the job. “All you have to do is walk through.”
