Page 64 of In Between Death and the Devil

It looked like a map made of glittering gems that seemed to pulse and shift.

“Is that the World of the Living?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, already studying one of the books on the central tables. “It shows how many souls are in each place. It helps us avoid overcrowding when we send them back to be reborn.”

That explained why in some spots the colors were deeper.

“Here we go.” His voice yanked my attention back to the task at hand. He’d moved three books down from where I saw him last.

I hurried to his side.

He ran his finger down the page of the book in front of him. It was an index with souls listed alphabetically by first name. Like the names on the spines of the books, the names on the page flickered and rearranged themselves every so often, making locating a single name difficult.

Fen turned the page. Every time the names shifted, his finger paused. He stopped a few more times before he found Colt’s name at the bottom of the page.

“What do the letters and numbers mean?” I asked. Next to each name was a set of letters and two numbers.

“The bookcase, shelf, and position.” He glanced over at the door to the rest of the Library before leading me back down the corridor towards the portal. Halfway down he stopped. “Here we go.” He pulled a book with Colt’s name on the spine from the shelf and went to the nearest alcove. Yanking the curtain aside, he placed the book on the desk.

It was a slim volume, the same size as all the other books in this part of the Library and rather ordinary looking. But inside were the answers I sought.

My hand hovered over the cover, acutely aware of the man standing next to me. I could feel his confidence that it would show he wasn’t involved, with a thin thread of trepidation. At what, I wasn’t sure. He wouldn’t have offered to show me if he’d been involved. Proof I could trust him was what I wanted, but the possibility that Death had been right made my stomach knot.

There was only one way to find out. Shoving my worries to the side, I flipped open the cover.

As soon as the front cover hit the table, the image of a pregnant woman in the throes of labor appeared. It was nearly the size of the book itself and hovered an inch above the page. The page itself was blank, aside from Colt’s name at the top.

“What is that?” I asked, staring at it in wonder.

“This is the record for Colt’s most recent life. If you wanted to look at previous lives, you’d flip backwards until you found the one you were looking for.”

“But it’s just a static picture. How can that be the record of his whole life?”

“Like this.” The Devil swiped his hand up through the image.

I flinched, but his hand passed right through it, and the image began to play. I could hear the woman’s cries as she struggled to birth the child she was carrying. The sound was loud enough that it felt like we were in the room with her, loud enough that anyone in the Library could hear. I slammed the cover shut, looking past the Devil into the hallway.

“It’s okay.” He put his hand on my wrist. “Only those viewing the record straight on can hear it. Otherwise, multiple people wouldn’t be able to review records at the same time in the same room.”

I nodded, trying to stop my hand from trembling.

He reopened the book; the image of Colt’s mother in the throes of childbirth popped back into view, frozen. “If you want to move through their life, swipe your hand through the image. Left or right will move it forward or back.” He swiped his hand again to the right and the image blurred as it transformed into a swaddled infant, a toddler, and then a small child.

It was strange and awe inspiring to see Colt’s life like this. I wondered what it would be like to see my own.

Reaching forward, I flipped forward to see Colt as a gangly kid with limbs too long for his body and clothes. Swiping up to set it in motion, I watched as he ran after a gaggle of other boys, yelling at them to slow down. A few years later he looked taller but no less skinny and his clothes still didn’t fit. He sat at his mother’s feet as she let the hem out on a pair of pants. The room they sat in was bare, but when they looked at each other the love between them was clear.

I stared at the image for a moment. He’d never looked at me like that. I don’t know how I didn’t notice.

Not wanting to see any more, I swiped my hand through so quickly the record went spinning forward. When it stopped, a moan filled the air.

I felt the blood drain from my face as I watched a younger version of myself writhe underneath Colt as he thrust into me. We were lying in a field next to my parents’ property. I had snuck out to meet him there many nights during our courtship.

A spike of anger startled me, and I was suddenly hyper-aware of the Devil standing next to me, watching the scene. When I glanced over, his eyes were fixed on it as it played, a scowl on his face. He gripped the table so hard his knuckles were white.

My hand flashed out to move the record forward, wishing I could rip what we’d seen from both our minds. I moved a little more slowly this time, since we were in the right year. Colt had only courted me for six months before he betrayed me.

The image of the two of us standing in front of my father’s warehouse made me stop. The day it all happened. I swiped back slowly until I saw him meeting with a figure in a hooded cloak. They stood beside a table in a nondescript room.