23: The Reaper’s Apprentice

“So, how do you know what weapon will be right for you? I mean, how did you choose an um­brel­la over, say, a bow and ar­row? How about swords? Can we pick a sword?”

Brig­it sighed as she tucked the last com­plet­ed as­sign­ment in­to the pock­et that held all the oth­ers. Be­lin­da Yaris had not ceased with the ques­tions since she had com­plet­ed read­ing The Reaper’s Field Guide. As the ques­tions rolled one af­ter the oth­er with bare­ly a mo­ment in be­tween to re­ceive an an­swer, Brig­it silent­ly be­gan to wish that the field guide had been writ­ten with more con­sid­er­ation to the men­tor and their time. At some point dur­ing the bar­rage of in­quiries, Brig­it had sim­ply be­gan of­fer­ing an ‘I don’t know’ and ‘That’s a good ques­tion’ as a re­ply to her new ap­pren­tice – es­pe­cial­ly when a ques­tion had come in the mid­dle of a scuf­fle with a dark spir­it that had no de­sire to cross over peace­ful­ly.

“We’ll come to that when we re­turn,” Brig­it said qui­et­ly.

Sud­den­ly, she felt tired. They had been work­ing non-​stop for two days, un­able to re­turn to the of­fice to re­fresh their as­sign­ments – or so that she could check on Sea­mus Flan­nery. Her mind had been di­vid­ed in­to too many di­rec­tions through­out their trav­els. On the one hand, she was fo­cused on their as­sign­ments and the as­sess­ment of Be­lin­da Yaris – won­der­ing if she had made a good choice in of­fer­ing a po­si­tion to the Goth girl with an end­less sup­ply of per­ti­nent ques­tions. On the oth­er hand, she found her­self wor­ry­ing that she should have done more for Sea­mus in his man­gled state and the sub­se­quent ill­ness that Brig­it knew would be­set it­self up­on him. Be­hind all that, she won­dered how she would ex­plain it all to John when he re­turned. Run­ning del­icate­ly be­tween all these thoughts was the deep miss­ing of Mag­gie.

“Are we done?” Be­lin­da asked when she fi­nal­ly glanced up at Brig­it. She had been scan­ning the pages of the field guide for any item she might have missed dur­ing the ini­tial read­ing. Her men­tor, Be­lin­da not­ed, sud­den­ly looked tired.

“For now,” Brig­it re­spond­ed when she had fin­ished mas­sag­ing her tem­ples. A phan­tom sen­sa­tion had arisen in her head, rem­inis­cent of the mi­graines she would oc­ca­sion­al­ly suf­fer when the stress of a hec­tic work day would fi­nal­ly take its toll. “ I need a break. How about you?”

“Oh, I could go for days. I feel great,” Be­lin­da chirped with a smile. “Where are we go­ing now?”

“Back to the of­fice. There’s some­thing there I need to check on, and, see­ing that you pos­sess a foun­tain of en­er­gy, you can set to work on record­ing the com­plet­ed as­sign­ments,” Brig­it de­ter­mined.

“My first task, good­ie,” Be­lin­da said cheer­ful­ly as she fell in be­side her men­tor. Brig­it sighed, but kept her si­lence. She hoped for the time be­ing that her ap­pren­tice would fol­low the set ex­am­ple and be qui­et as well.

Be­lin­da sighed hap­pi­ly as she tried to keep in step with Brig­it. She was stoked about the new turn her ‘life’ had tak­en. She had watched Brig­it like a hawk, ob­serv­ing ev­ery nu­ance of her teach­er, ev­ery small move­ment the dark wom­an made through the com­ple­tion of each as­sign­ment. Be­lin­da had found her­self in awe when Brig­it had fought with the dark spir­its. The wom­an seemed to main­tain a per­fect sense of calm com­po­sure dur­ing the fight, her eyes nev­er leav­ing the fo­cus of her at­ten­tion. Once, Be­lin­da had asked a ques­tion in the mid­dle of such a con­fronta­tion. The sud­den ask­ing had bro­ken Brig­it’s con­cen­tra­tion which re­sult­ed in the sud­den death-​hold of a mon­ster Brig­it was try­ing to cross over. Luck­ily, Brig­it had quick­ly man­aged to re­gain her train of thought and, some­how, re­move her­self from harm’s retched grasp. Be­lin­da made the de­ci­sion to save her ques­tions un­til the as­sign­ment was com­plete af­ter that.

As she walked be­side Brig­it, Be­lin­da be­gan to as­sess her own skills. She had nev­er been a fight­er. If any­thing, she had al­ways been able to talk her way out of a con­fronta­tion. Ex­cept on that day when she had ceased to be a mor­tal and be­came trapped on the sub­way. Talk­ing had done noth­ing for her that day… Yet, as she pon­dered all that she had ob­served Brig­it do­ing, Be­lin­da was sure she would still not be one to fight. Deep down, she hoped there would be some­thing else for her with­in the firm that she would be bet­ter suit­ed for be­cause fight­ing and con­fronta­tion was def­inite­ly not one of her strengths.

To­geth­er, they walked along av­enues and boule­vards of the city. Along the way, Be­lin­da would oc­ca­sion­al­ly no­tice the wait­ing spir­its. Some would spot the Reapers and run to hide, ob­vi­ous­ly afraid of the idea of be­ing crossed over. Oth­ers would sim­ply stare at them with var­ious ex­pres­sions of in­dif­fer­ence, bore­dom, anx­ious ques­tion­ing or sim­ply end­less pa­tience.

“There are so many of them,” Be­lin­da not­ed out loud.

“The fruits of Death are con­stant­ly bloom­ing,” Brig­it replied qui­et­ly. “Can you tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween a liv­ing soul and a wait­ing soul?”

“I think so,” Be­lin­da mused.

“How are they dif­fer­ent?”

“Is this a quiz?”

“Yes,” Brig­it replied solemn­ly.

Tak­ing a deep breath, Be­lin­da launched in­to her the­ory that the dif­fer­ence be­tween a liv­ing soul and a wait­ing soul had to do with the au­ra that sur­round­ed them. The liv­ing were vi­brant, cre­at­ing waves of rip­pling en­er­gy as they moved from place to place. The wait­ing soul’s en­er­gy seemed stag­nate, con­fined to the space im­me­di­ate­ly around them. Brig­it on­ly smiled as she lis­tened. It was the same the­ory that she had formed dur­ing her own be­gin­nings as a Reaper.

“Why are you smil­ing? Did I say some­thing fun­ny? Am I wrong?” Be­lin­da ques­tioned im­me­di­ate­ly when she spied her men­tor’s ex­pres­sion.

“No, you are cor­rect,” Brig­it an­swered. “I’m proud of you for be­ing so ob­ser­vant.”

Be­lin­da fell silent again as they con­tin­ued walk­ing. The won­der­ment of her new lev­el of ex­is­tence fas­ci­nat­ed and elat­ed her. In the back of her mind, though, she couldn’t help but think that it all would have made a re­al­ly good sto­ry.

When they en­tered 666 ½ Bleeck­er Street, Be­lin­da felt her spir­it surge high­er with its ela­tion. The dark wood sur­round­ing them and the eerie gar­goyles peer­ing down from the ceil­ing de­light­ed her. It was ev­ery Goth girl’s fan­ta­sy to be in a place so seem­ing­ly me­dieval. Be­lin­da near­ly made her­self dizzy as she spun around and around to take it all in.

Brig­it had not no­ticed her ap­pren­tice’s sud­den stop to mar­vel at the dark ar­chi­tec­ture. In­stead, she had im­me­di­ate­ly gone in­to Sea­mus’ of­fice – not­ing that the door was open though she clear­ly re­mem­bered the clo­sure of it up­on her de­par­ture. For a mo­ment, her heart skipped a beat with the fear that John had al­ready re­turned and dis­cov­ered the ill Irish­man. The skip­ping of the beat, how­ev­er, was mere­ly an­oth­er phan­tom sen­sa­tion. Brig­it was aware that she had not heard, nor felt, her own heart­beat in al­most a year.

Sea­mus Flan­nery was sleep­ing in ex­act­ly the same place she had left him. The blan­ket she had placed over him, though, had fall­en to the floor. Qui­et­ly, Brig­it picked it up and gen­tly cov­ered him again. His skin burned a bright pink and Brig­it guessed a high fever was run­ning its course through him. She was about to touch his fore­head when she heard a gasp be­hind her. Look­ing over her shoul­der, she saw Be­lin­da stand­ing in the door­way, her mouth open in shock.

“Is he okay?” Be­lin­da whis­pered.

“He’s very sick at the mo­ment,”

“Who is he? Is this your boss, Mr. Black­wick?”

“No, this is Sea­mus Flan­nery. Mr. Black­wick isn’t due back for an­oth­er day or so,” Brig­it replied, look­ing down as Sea­mus gri­maced in ob­vi­ous pain.

“Will he be okay?” Be­lin­da asked, com­ing clos­er so she too could have a bet­ter look at the burn­ing pink red-​head­ed man sleep­ing on the so­fa.

“Even­tu­al­ly, yes. I think he will be back to his nor­mal self. In the mean­time, we shouldn’t dis­turb him. Here, take that black book on his desk,” Brig­it ges­tured to­ward the large leather bound tome sit­ting on the desk against the wall. She heard the young wom­an grunt with the weight of it.

“What is this?” Be­lin­da asked as Brig­it turned and be­gan to ush­er her from the room.

“It’s the record book of com­plet­ed as­sign­ments. Mr. Flan­nery has been keep­ing his records up to date. I in­tend to con­tin­ue his ef­forts. Here, you can use this room,” Brig­it guid­ed the girl across the hall and opened the frost­ed glass door be­fore them.

It was a sparse­ly dec­orat­ed of­fice, con­tain­ing on­ly a small desk and a row of emp­ty book­shelves. Both wom­en stood just in­side the door­way tak­ing in the drea­ri­ness of the room.

“My own of­fice,” Be­lin­da fi­nal­ly ut­tered. “Sweet,”

“I’ll speak to John about some more fur­ni­ture for you. Per­haps a so­fa life Mr. Flan­nery has?” Brig­it promised with a sigh.

“It’s fine the way it is,” Be­lin­da as­sured her men­tor as she crossed the small room and set the black book heav­ily on the writ­ing desk. “What ex­act­ly am I sup­posed to do again?”

As the ques­tion sank in on Brig­it, she hasti­ly pulled the com­plet­ed files from her coat pock­et and ex­tend­ed them to­ward the young wom­an.

“You write their names and dates,” Brig­it quick­ly in­struct­ed. “I know it’s not the kind of writ­ing you as­pired to dur­ing your life,” she of­fered al­most as an apol­ogy.

“Hey, it’s writ­ing. I’ll fig­ure it out,” Be­lin­da replied with a con­fi­dant smile. Brig­it nod­ded in weary agree­ment as she watched the young wom­an shrug the cof­fin purse from her shoul­der and drape its strap over the back of the wood­en chair. Next, she watched as Be­lin­da searched the desk draw­er for a writ­ing uten­sil.

When the search yield­ed a sharp­ened black quill and a small pot of ink from some­where in the fur­thest depths of the draw­er, Be­lin­da smiled an even broad­er smile and opened the book. Ea­ger­ly, she seat­ed her­self and scanned the pre­vi­ous en­tries be­fore pois­ing her­self to be­gin her new task. As she dipped the nib of the quill in­to the ink pot, Be­lin­da not­ed a feel­ing of re­lief creep­ing through her sens­es. She had wor­ried that she would not be able to rise to the oc­ca­sion of reap­ing souls. Now, she was do­ing some­thing she knew she could do in her sleep: Writ­ing. Per­haps, she thought, this was the way out with­out hav­ing to give up the op­por­tu­ni­ty of re­main­ing af­ter all. She wasn’t ready to cross over just yet and this was the chance to keep that at bay for as long as she could.

“Be­lin­da, I’m go­ing to step out for a bit,” Brig­it’s voice broke the young wom­an’s ram­pant thoughts. “I’ll lock the main door, just so you’re aware. Do me the fa­vor of check­ing on Mr. Flan­nery in a lit­tle while?”

“Sure, oh-​great-​one,” Be­lin­da chimed as she picked up a file and be­gan to care­ful­ly copy the name em­bla­zoned on the cov­er.

“Stop that,” Brig­it groaned as she left the small room.

“Yes, oh-​great-​one…” Be­lin­da in­toned with a dev­il­ish smile on her face.

Sea­mus had heard them en­ter. His fever burned so fierce­ly, though, that he had been un­able to open his eyes if on­ly to silent­ly ac­cuse Brig­it Mal­one of her in­ac­tions that had led to his present state. Through the roar of the in­fer­no in his head, Sea­mus had heard the sec­ond fe­male’s voice. She sound­ed young, he thought. That was good, he thought fur­ther. The young were im­pres­sion­able. The young could be mold­ed and ma­nip­ulat­ed to one’s ad­van­tage. When his next mo­ment of lu­cid­ity ar­rived, Sea­mus de­ter­mined he would reach out and make a good im­pres­sion on the younger fe­male. Af­ter all, charm was nev­er in short sup­ply for Sea­mus Flan­nery.