“That is yet to be determined, but we’ll soon know.” My words were flat to my own ears, even as I reached down into his chest and pulled out his heart. Mr. Morris patted frantically at himself, searching for holes or broken ribs.
“No need to worry about your body anymore, Mr. Morris. You shed the mortal form when you foolishly decided to illegally bungee jump off the Hoover Dam.” I had to suppress an eye roll.
“Whoa, that’s how I died?” His face brightened. “Oh man, that’s the way to go. I bet so many chicks will be so sad they won’t get to bang me after that, but I bet they cry.”
This time I didn’t suppress the eye roll.
What an absolute gem of a mortal.
Definitely not Aaron.
He would have stuttered at least once by now, a side effect from being hit in the jugular by a surfboard. Though admittedly I could easily believe Aaron to be foolish enough to try and pull off the same kind of stunt as Mr. Morris here.
The man’s heart and the feather traveled behind me to the wall with the massive painting of scales. The feather and heart settled on either scale and the entire painting glowed blue as I fed it my magic.
The scales rocked up and down, to and fro, before landing decidedly. The heart side raised high.
“It seems as though your stupidity and selfish deeds have not tainted your heart. Looks like your soul will not make a meal for Amit today.”
His nose scrunched. “What’s an Amit?”
“A crocodile god who eats souls,” I explained, before giving into the extreme urge and pulling out my tablet from where it was wedged in my seat on the dais.
“But no, your fate, Mr. Morris, lies in the glorious Afterlife where Hraf-Hraf will ferry you into the waiting arms of Osiris, who will deliver you to your Eden.”
Mr. Morris’s shoulders tightened as he shifted from foot to foot. “Who and who?”
Instead of answering, I sat down before meeting his gaze. “You’ll see.”
The scales dissolved along with the wall, opening up to a vista with a beautiful blue sky that expanded over thick, lush green reeds.
The vast landscape sucked Mr. Morris into it then rearranged itself into painted sandstone, the picture of the scales back in place. A slight tingling on my arm told me the feather of Ma’at had resumed its place.
The chamber was deathly quiet in the wake of his crossing.
Despite having turned on my tablet to distract myself with whatever organizational task was closest at hand, I found myself staring at the screen without seeing.
It wasn’t him,my mind reassured me.
But one day it might be. Or maybe I just wished it?
Could Aaron have tainted his soul enough in three years to warrant judgment before passing into the Afterlife?
If he did, it would mean I’d get to see him one more time. He’d appear before me, right in this chamber.
Or you could find him now and just call, a practical if not sassy voice in my head retorted. It sounded too much like the voices of my friends, Vivian and Miranda, braided into one.
Was he still in Costa Rica? All it would take was his name and a thought. I could pull Aaron’s file, trace the thread of his soul wherever it wandered on earth, tilt the ledgers of eternity a fraction in my favor. One tiny misuse of power. One tiny crack in the rules.
I told him we could never be, and he listened.
Everything ended for the best. A relationship between a god and a mortal was a recipe for chaos and heartbreak, of which I was interested in neither.
A whine from nearby pulled my attention. A reaper dog set its head on my knee, looking up at me with glowing gold eyes that were filled with concern. My heart clenched. The reaper was intuiting my emotions again. This one had been doing so regularly. And a whine from the animal now made me aware of the emotions I had been trying to ignore.
I lifted a hand to stroke its glossy black coat. The tension inside me eased ever so slightly as my fingers met with the soft, plush fur of my self-appointed companion.
It had been such a brief moment between us, yet nearly four years had done nothing to soften the sting of Aaron’s absence.Some centuries seemed to slip by in an instant, but each year since that night passed in a slow, torturous crawl.
