“Death comes in many shapes.”
“Apparently.” Dustin shook his head. “Second of all—and I cannot stress this enough—what the fuck?”
Greg didn't have an answer for that.
Dustin studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing. Then, abruptly, he laughed.
“You're serious,” he said. “You actually believe this.”
“It's not a matter of belief. It's my job.”
“Your job is to kill people.”
“Tocollectpeople. After theydie. I don't—” Greg faltered. “I'm not supposed to cause deaths. I just... I'm supposed to be there when they happen. Except yours didn't happen. And now I don't know what to do.”
He sounded pathetic. He knew he sounded pathetic.
Dustin tilted his head, something shifting in his expression. Less amused. More... curious.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You're the grim reaper?—”
“A reaper. There are many of us. It's a whole department.”
“—and you were assigned to collect my soul, but I didn't die, and now you're following me around a nightclub with a clipboard trying to figure out how to fix it.”
“Yes.”
“And 'fix it' means...?”
Greg swallowed. “I don't know.”
Dustin watched him for a long moment. Then he pushed off the wall.
“Okay, grim reaper,” he said. “I'm going to get another drink. You look like you need one too.”
“I don't—reapers don't really?—”
Dustin was already walking toward the bar. He glanced back over his shoulder. “You coming or not?”
Greg hesitated.
Then he ran the other way.
CHAPTER 6
Two days later, Greg sat at his desk, staring at the open file, watching the words blur together.
Dustin. Male. Twenty-six. Status: Pending.
Greg had never seen a file stay open this long. Collections happened in minutes. You showed up, you waited for the death, you guided the soul through, you filed the paperwork.
It was supposed to be clean, sacred andsimple.
So far, nothing about this had been simple.
“You're still here?”
Greg looked up. A fellow reaper, Valerie, was passing his cubicle with a stack of folders. She didn't stop walking.
