“About 10,000 souls spread across fifteen worlds.”
“Holy shipsticks,” I mutter to myself, that’s a lot of people.
The door swings open with an ominous squeak and an older woman, dressed all in black, eyes us all, nodding once before she takes a step back to let us in. “She’s upstairs, third door on your right. You can’t miss it. The entire coven has congregated in the room with her.”
That must mean we’re reaping a witch’s soul today, explains the atmosphere of this place. It’s homely, safe, earthy.
“Just in time,” Brogan mutters, looking inside the room. The woman lying on the bed, the ten other women crowding around her. Someone is holding one of her hands and there’s some faint sniffling, but it’s a fairly low-key affair otherwise. “This should be pretty straightforward by the look of it.”
“They sometimes try to what… run? Fight you?” I ask.
“Could be both or either. It’s a rare thing for them to get away entirely.”
“Is that how you wind up with ghosts?” We’ve had plenty of different clients over the time we’ve been doing the whole tour guide thing: demons, witches, humans, shifters. But I’ve never been able to do the whole world-hopping thing with a ghost in tow, not sure why.
“Yep. I think there are some reapers that specialize in collecting up strays and helping them move on, but it’s not something we’ve ever had to do.”
“Real-life ghost busters, huh?”
“Quiet,” Soren snaps, even though we’re both talking barely above a whisper. “She’s almost ready.”
He steps close to the bed, his face softening as he turns his attention entirely to the witch. His eyes glow with that luminescent blue, and the witch lets out a soft sigh. Her entire body glows with that familiar blue light and then it’s as though the light forms a cast of her body, which sits up and then stands. The shimmery, blue form of the witch stares down at her own body for a moment before turning her attention to Soren.
“It’s time?” she asks quietly.
“Time for you to move into the next phase of life.”
“Do you like his catchphrase?” Brogan asks in my ear. I shiver at the feeling of his breath on my skin.
I nod, watching in rapt interest as Soren takes hold of the witch’s hand with his, completely ignoring Brogan, even though he can probably hear him. He gently taps her with his scythe and her form shifts until it’s a sphere of blue light held in his palm.
“I dunno. He could shorten it. Make it something more catchy,” Brogan murmurs.
I shake my head. Not wanting to laugh and ruin the quiet of the room or the sanctity of the moment as Soren holds a person’s soul in his hand. “What now?” I whisper.
“We take them back home with us.”
Soren keeps the woman’s soul in one hand while he grabs my hand with the other, threading our fingers together without looking at me. I feel a jolt of warmth go through me at the contact, but when I glance at him, he keeps his eyes averted, either completely unmoved or acting like it.
We travel back to the garden, but rather than heading to any part I’ve been before, he continues to hold on to my hand, tugging me forward to the base of the cliff close to the cave he told me earlier belongs to Finn the gate guardian. At the very bottom, there’s a kind of doorway cut into the rock. We step inside, where it leads through to a stone staircase leading down beneath the earth.
It’s weird and a little disconcerting to be walking down a staircase underneath the massive cliff, but—like a lot of things around here—it’s a little bit beautiful.
I mean, some things around here area lotbeautiful. Take the two gorgeous specimens escorting me down the stone steps, one holding my hand and the other with a big palm splayed against the small of my back. They’re treating me like I’m breakable and like they’d very much like to avoid me toppling to my death or breaking my neck on the steep staircase.
Once we reach the bottom, the way opens up into a massive cave and, against the worn rock walls are shelves filled with hundreds of the same luminescent blue balls, causing the whole place to glow.
“Wow.”
There must be hundreds and hundreds of souls here, all quivering slightly where they rest on the shelves.
Soren places the freshly reaped soul onto a little brass contraption in the middle of the room. As soon as he loses contact with it, the soul is lifted via a gigantic arm and is deposited right at the top of a nearby shelf.
“Shouldn’t…” I say and then stop myself, unsure how to word this without him getting pissy with me. “Shouldn’t the souls be moved somewhere else? The great beyond or whatever?”
I kinda thought that was part of Wren’s job. Maybe it’s paused while she’s not here, but this looks like a lot more souls than less than a week’s worth stored up in this cave.
“Pretty difficult when we’re down two weavers,” Soren grouches.
