17: Assigned with Seamus

Brig­it re­turned to the of­fice the next morn­ing just as the sun was be­gin­ning to rise. Mag­gie had cried her­self to sleep and had slept fit­ful­ly through the night. Brig­it had kept a watch­ful eye on her, leav­ing the room on­ly once when she heard a qui­et knock at the front door. Wary that it might have been a re­pent­ing Lore­na Rubens, Brig­it had left her part­ner’s side to peer through the peep hole at Ma­ma Dee. The lit­tle old wom­an knocked light­ly once more, but shook her head and crossed the hall to her own apart­ment when it be­came ap­par­ent that Mag­gie was ei­ther not home or just be­ing an­ti-​so­cial. Brig­it felt bad for her old friend. She could on­ly imag­ine the lone­li­ness Ma­ma Dee was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing now that Mag­gie was ex­plor­ing be­yond the bound­aries of her life with­out Brig­it.

“You’re here,” John greet­ed as Brig­it ap­peared in the door­way to his of­fice. She looked to the cor­ner where Sea­mus had been seat­ed the evening be­fore and not­ed that he was ab­sent for the time be­ing.

“Did you think I wouldn’t be?” Brig­it asked as she ap­proached his desk and reached for the pile she as­sumed was her work load for the day. John waved his hand at it and passed her a port­fo­lio he had been read­ing through.

“I knew you would be in, just not so ear­ly. I take it that you’ve made a defini­tive de­ci­sion re­gard­ing Mag­gie?” Brig­it nod­ded silent­ly. “Good. Here, I need you to take this and as­sist Mr. Flan­nery in its ex­ecu­tion,” John said as Brig­it re­ceived the ex­tend­ed port­fo­lio. “He’s out on a few mi­nor as­sign­ments at present. How­ev­er, I be­lieve he will need your as­sis­tance on this par­tic­ular one. Reap the souls by any means nec­es­sary.”

“Why not as­sist him your­self?” Brig­it asked as she briefly glanced at the names em­bossed across the cov­er.

“Be­cause, dar­ling,” John sighed as he picked up a hand­ful of port­fo­lios to the right and waved them as proof that he had bet­ter things to do, “I have found po­ten­tial re­cruits that may al­low me to re­open one of the Eu­ro­pean of­fices. If I can man­age to con­vince them of the ben­efits of join­ing the firm, I can re­turn a good por­tion of our present wait­ing work­load to their re­spon­si­bil­ity.”

“I see. How long will this take you?” Brig­it asked.

“I’m hop­ing to on­ly be gone a cou­ple of days. I don’t know. My Ital­ian is some­what rusty, so I’m hop­ing I’ll be able to com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly enough to ac­com­plish what I have in mind,” John ex­plained as he reached for his suit coat and be­gan to shrug it on. “In the mean time, you are in charge. If you need me, just call out.”

Brig­it nod­ded and watched as John pock­et­ed the port­fo­lios and strode out of the of­fice. She glanced again at the names on the port­fo­lio he had giv­en her. They were un­fa­mil­iar to her; but then, most names were un­fa­mil­iar to her un­til she read the con­tents of their lives. In the mean time, she had to find Sea­mus in or­der to give him the new as­sign­ment. Since she had not been present when he took his cur­rent as­sign­ments, she was un­sure where to be­gin in look­ing for him. In­stinc­tive­ly, she re­trieved the Reaper’s Field Guide from her coat pock­et and flipped to the last page.

“Where is Sea­mus Flan­nery?” she grum­bled as she gazed at the blank page. It took on­ly a sec­ond for the words to ap­pear across the blank page: Pier 13, San Fran­cis­co.

Brig­it closed the book and re­turned it to its place in her coat pock­et. She picked her um­brel­la out of the um­brel­la stand and walked down the long hall. It was in­evitable, she thought to her­self as she ap­proached the main door. Even­tu­al­ly, she knew, she was go­ing to be part­nered with the red-​head­ed Irish­man whose com­ments and in­sights seemed to find all the right but­tons to push un­der her skin.

Pier 13 was bustling with mor­tal life when Brig­it ar­rived. As she moved through the throng of work­ers go­ing about their busi­ness with ease, her eyes scanned the area for the flam­ing red hair that crowned Sea­mus Flan­nery. She had learned dur­ing the past cou­ple of months to note the dif­fer­ence be­tween a mor­tal and a spir­it. The en­er­gy vi­bra­tions were dif­fer­ent. A mor­tal’s vi­bra­tion was strong. It cre­at­ed waves of out­ward-​em­anat­ing en­er­gy as the mor­tal moved about. A spir­it’s vi­bra­tion was more sub­dued. There were no waves sur­round­ing a spir­it as it moved. The vi­bra­tion seemed to re­main con­tained to the im­me­di­ate space where the spir­it hap­pened to be.

Sea­mus was scuf­fling in the fur­thest cor­ner of the ware­house with the soul he had been sent to pass over. Brig­it stood qui­et­ly watch­ing them tus­sle. She not­ed the look of fear on the as­signed soul’s face as he tried to fend off Sea­mus’ blows. How­ev­er mean this soul had thought he could be, Brig­it mused, he had met his mas­ter in Sea­mus Flan­nery. With that thought, Brig­it not­ed the look of de­light on Sea­mus’ face as he took an­oth­er swing at the soul he had been sent to cross over. John had been right. Sea­mus Flan­nery was per­haps the per­fect per­son for the job of the hard­er as­sign­ments. Brig­it could tell the Irish­man re­al­ly got in­to his work.

When Sea­mus fi­nal­ly wres­tled the man to­ward the opened door­way, he eas­ily pushed the soul through it and slammed it with a force that made her flinch. Even the mor­tals in the clos­est vicin­ity seemed to hear the slam and re­act­ed by stop­ping their work to quick­ly glance around them be­fore shak­ing off their sud­den fear and re­turn­ing to work de­spite their new un­easi­ness. Brig­it re­mained still as she con­tin­ued to watch him. He ca­su­al­ly walked to the wall and stooped to pick some­thing up. As he straight­ened, the item dan­gled from his fin­gers as he ap­praised it. It was a gold lock­et. Brig­it watched her col­league open it to look at the pic­tures glued in­side be­fore stash­ing it in his coat pock­et. When he turned, Sea­mus fi­nal­ly no­ticed her.

“Oh, hel­lo, lass,” he greet­ed, forc­ing a charm­ing smile to his face. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“John sent me,” Brig­it replied even­ly. “What was that you put in your pock­et?”

“Just a to­ken,” Sea­mus an­swered. “It fell off him dur­ing the fight. He won’t miss it,” the Irish­man de­cid­ed out loud. “Be­sides, t’was a fair fight. Con­queror takes all, ye know what I mean?”

“Hm,” Brig­it grunt­ed. She eyed the oth­er Reaper for a mo­ment, won­der­ing how many oth­er ‘to­kens’ he had snicked as a re­ward for his ac­com­plish­ments.

“So, what does our fear­less lead­er need of me to­day?” Sea­mus in­quired as he reached in­to his coat and with­drew the crum­pled pack of cigarettes from their rest­ing place. Brig­it not­ed it was the same pack he had been pulling from the night they had re­cruit­ed him. It was nev­er emp­ty, on­ly crum­pled.

“He as­signed you this and he’s asked me to as­sist you with it,” Brig­it ex­plained as she with­drew the file John had giv­en her be­fore his de­par­ture. “He’s left for Italy for a few days to do some re­cruit­ing.”

“I see,” Sea­mus said as he ex­haled the smoke through his nos­trils and reached for the file Brig­it held out for him to see. “Why would he think I need back up?” he asked as he scanned the con­tents.

“It con­tains mul­ti­ple souls. I sup­pose he thought back up might even the play­ing field for you,” Brig­it ex­plained. “Are you fin­ished here?”

“Aye,” Sea­mus smiled. “Just let me fetch me walk­ing stick,” he said. Brig­it nod­ded and stepped back as the oth­er Reaper went to re­trieve the she­laigh­ley he had set aside so that he might use his fists in­stead. Once it was in hand, he turned and smiled the charm­ing smile again. “Ready when ye are, lass…”