Sing nodded. “I heard the lecture in class. You have one minute, max. Right?”
“Right, so I’ll leave an arm physical, and if I seem to lose contact with reality, grab me and pull me away.”
“Will do.”
I checked my clasp key, still attached to my sternum valve, then, looking into the woman’s eyes, I spoke softly. “My name is Phoenix. What’s yours?”
Her smile widened. “Miriam, but my husband calls me Bonita.”
“Bonita?” As I drew my face closer to hers, I focused on the energy flowing through my cloak’s fibers and let it seep into my body. “Bonita means pretty, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does. My husband says I’m pretty, but he’s kind of biased.”
The transformation started at my hand and coursed across my shoulders. “He’s not biased at all. You’re very pretty.”
“Oh… thank you.” She furrowed her brow. “Actually, you look… you look a lot like my husband.”
Her eyes took on a glazed aspect. She was nearly ready, and so was I. I glanced at Sing. She appeared fuzzy, as if standing on the other side of fogged glass. Rain pattered on the umbrella, and water ran around my shoes. With my energy dispersing, I had to hurry. “I know where Robert is. I can take you to him.”
“Really?” She blinked rapidly. “I’m not sure I should travel with a stranger.”
“You can trust me.” I hated those words. I had uttered that lie too many times. Soon, Miriam would learn to hate them as well.
Her lips pursed, and her voice took on a childlike tone. “I do trust you.”
Whispering “Trust me” again and again, I guided my cloak completely around her. Unlike the spherical presentation of Molly’s soul, Miriam’s had grown, thickened, and shaped into her physical appearance, spreading out into her umbrella and suitcase. Absorbing her might expend all of my reserves.
I pushed my energy flow through her body. As she grew more transparent, her outer edges seeped into my fibers. She let out a breathy gasp. “What… what’s happening? Something is stinging me.”
“The fallout rain can carry a bite.” I pressed her close. The umbrella vanished. The suitcase dissolved. As Miriam’s soul thinned, her face stretched into a hideous mask, her mouth gaping as she screamed. Her terrified eyes popped like tiny balloons and dispersed in sparkling fog, then her head exploded, followed by her body. The scream continued as if floating in the mist-soaked air, punctuated by fevered gasps.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my cloak’s absorbing pull as it sucked in Miriam’s soul, now a pasty film lining the interior. I held my breath. Every micron of absorption felt like a stabbing knife, and the heightening screams proved that the torture was much worse for her than for me.
Finally, the film melted and fully assimilated into the fibers. A new shimmer flowed across the shoulders and down to the hem. Miriam was safe inside, though probably cursing me for the pain I caused.
Dizziness flooded my head. I staggered, trying to reabsorb some residual energy from my cloak.
Sing grabbed my arm. “Are you all right?”
Exhaling heavily, I looked at her. She was clear again. The rain had stopped. I was back in the real world. My legs still wobbled a bit, but my energy recovered to a functional level. “I’m fine. I always get a little dizzy after a journey into the ghost realm.”
“Not bad.” Paul walked toward us, again writing on his tablet. “I gotta give you credit. I think only Shanghai could’ve done it any better than that.”
“Right. Shanghai.” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. The DEOs had been singing Shanghai’s praises lately, as if she were God’s gift to reaping. Sure, she was an excellent Reaper. In fact, her recent transfer to Chicago had ignited a string of reports about her prowess that had made her an instant legend. And who could bad-mouth a legend? Since she was my childhood friend from training school, I certainly couldn’t.
Paul nodded at my cloak. “When are you going to the Gateway? You look ready to pop.”
“I hope to catch the morning train. We both do.”
“I’ll jot that down.” After writing another note, he extended the tablet. “Need a thumbprint. I’ll wire the data to the Gateway. They’ll be expecting you.”
I pressed my thumb on the screen in a small box next to an icon bearing my image, but nothing happened. “I think it’s stuck.”
“Blasted piece of junk.” Paul slapped the back of the tablet. A message flashed across my image—Data Validated. “There it goes.”
“Temperamental, huh?”
“Mine’s one of the better units.” Paul dug into his pocket and withdrew a photo stick. “Don’t forget this.”
“Right.” I took Miriam’s stick.
“See you next time, Phoenix.” Paul took his jacket from his motorcycle, put it on, and climbed aboard. “And thanks for the radio.”
When the engine rumbled to life and he rolled from the sidewalk to the street, I looked away. I couldn’t stand the sight of him for another second. Sure, I had planned to use the scanner as a bribe if necessary, but the “if necessary” events always stung. I felt like a bug being squashed by a heel, a nobody who could do nothing to alter his dismal life. I just had to take the punishment and move on.
Sighing, I wrapped my fingers around the photo stick. A hologram of Miriam took shape above my fist. Carrying the umbrella, she stared into space, her eyes wide and tear-filled.
I whispered to my cloak, “Bonita, are you all right in there?”
Her voice filtered to my ears, weak but laced with anger. “You said I could trust you.”
“And you can.” I cleared my throat, hoping to keep my own voice in check. “The pain’s diminishing, right?”
“No thanks to you.”
I pushed the photo stick into my cloak pocket. “Listen. I’m a Reaper. I’m just doing my job. When I take you to the Gateway, you’ll thank me.”
Miriam didn’t reply, though a prickly sensation ran along my skin. Angry souls often caused that. She would settle down soon. They always did.
I detached my cloak from the valve and looked at Sing. “Any questions about reaping a level two?”
She touched her cloak, as if imagining herself repeating the process. “Do you collect an entrenched male ghost that way? I don’t think a woman would trust me the way Miriam trusted you. It was almost like seduction.”
“I guess you could call it that. Really it’s all just acting, no matter if you’re reaping someone from a newly dead body or if you’re collecting an entrenched ghost. We just do whatever it takes to get souls to trust us.”
Sing’s brow lifted. “Well, shouldn’t they trust us? I mean, in the long run, since we’re taking them to the Gateway.”
I shrugged. “We promise them a better place, but keeping the promise is up to someone else. I’ve never seen what happens beyond the Gateway. No Reaper has.”
A faraway look drifted across Sing’s eyes. “Maybe one of us should.”
I laughed. “Right. A Reaper will get sucked into the collection station and ride into eternity. Good luck coming back to give the rest of us a report.”
Sing shook off her daze. “So what you’re saying is that you take each case individually and act according to whatever will gain the soul’s trust.”
“Exactly. Since Miriam was desperate to find her husband, I tried to take his place. You know, offer affection and security. You could have asked if she has a sister, a daughter, or a best friend, and you could have pretended to be that person. Level ones and twos are in a confused state. They want your act to be true, so they’ll usually believe you.”
Sing nodded. “I get it, but what about level threes?”
“Never tried one. I hear they know exactly where they are, and they’re skeptical about everything.”
“And always visible?”
“Only when they want to be. They’re a big hassle, because a Reaper can’t always tell if a level three is a ghost or a living person. Even when they?
??re invisible to everyone else, they’re visible to us.” I touched my valve, still warm from the reaping. “Now that Paul’s gone, I could transfer Miriam to you. Then I can make quota again at the executions.”
“Transfer? Is that legal?”
“It’s legal, but the DEOs don’t like it. It messes up their paperwork.”
Sing looked from side to side. “Out in the open?”
I nodded toward our alley. “Is over there all right? No one will see us. And no sign of bandits.”
She gave the alley a skeptical glance. “I suppose.”
“Let’s go, then.” I walked that way, watching Sing over my shoulder. After taking a deep breath, she followed, her head low as if expecting to be struck by lightning.
When we made our way to a point below our apartments, I reattached the clasp to my valve. As soon as the cloak shimmered to life and radiated light throughout the alley, I pointed at Sing’s valve. “You’ll need to disconnect.”
“Oh. Right.” She fumbled with her clasp for a moment before unfastening it. Her cloak’s shimmer faded to a dim luster.
Light from my cloak illuminated her valve’s emblem, embedded a few inches under her throat. With her tunic buttons opened to just below the bottom of the emblem’s circle, the entire symbol shone against her dark skin. Identical to the design of our clasps, the symbol looked like a double gate joined at the middle by two hands, their fingers curled to latch to each other. The central valve, circular and the size of a penny, lay embedded in the hands’ knuckles, ready to be opened by the insertion of a key, such as another valve or a cloak clasp, or by depressing the valve to make its spring-loaded cylinder protrude.
When my clasp heated up, I touched its surface and mentally searched for Miriam’s soul. Although my cloak had absorbed her throughout the fibers, she would have gathered herself in one spot by now.
After a few seconds, I found her brooding in the left sleeve. As angry as she was, it wouldn’t do any good to talk to her, so I used the energy flow to guide her toward my clasp. When she drew close enough, I turned to Sing. Her expression seemed cautious, anxious. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“It’s okay.” Keeping her eyes on mine, she gave a nervous laugh. “So do you just plug my cloak into your valve?”
“We don’t use the cloaks.” I half closed an eye. “Since you didn’t even know if this is legal, I guess you didn’t see the training video.”
She shook her head. “I was on the fast track. I doubt that a transfer is part of the core curriculum.”
“Probably not.” I pointed at my emblem and hers in turn. “I’ll push Miriam through my clasp and into my valve compartment. Then we’ll do a direct connect, valve to valve.”
“Direct connect?” Her voice took on a tremor. “Is that the only way?”
“We could use an adapter tube to avoid close contact, but I don’t have one. And no Reaper can use another’s cloak. The genetics won’t allow it.”
“Right. I know about the genetics, but…” She looked toward the street as if searching for a way of escape. “It’s just that—”
“Hey…” I touched her shoulder. “I know a connection’s kind of… intimate, I guess. Don’t feel any pressure to do it.”
“How could I not feel pressure?” Her face took on a forlorn expression. “Can’t we just go straight to the executions? I know you say it’s dangerous, but I’m ready for it. I have to learn even the worst parts of being a Reaper.”
I searched her eyes. She really seemed scared. “All right. We’ll go.”
“Good. I hope you don’t think I’m…” She looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to me. “Prudish, I guess.”
“Not at all.” I feigned a confident tone in spite of my doubts. Fear of intimate contact wasn’t normal for a Reaper. In winter survival training, three of us had to huddle close under a single cloak to keep from freezing. Gender didn’t matter. We were too cold to care. And Sing’s willingness to scratch my back without prompting seemed to contradict her hesitance. With all the uncertainty about her odd behavior, maybe another test was in order.
I lifted her clasp. “Shall I reconnect your cloak?”
“Uh… Sure.” She pulled her tunic open another inch and raised her chin. As I inserted the clasp into her valve, she closed her eyes, trembling.
I quickly locked it in place and drew back. “Done.”
She opened her eyes. As her cloak’s shimmer increased, the alley became as bright as the street. She wrapped her arms around me, stood on tiptoes, and whispered into my ear. “Thank you.” She then kissed my cheek, letting her lips linger for a moment before drawing away.
“You’re welcome.” I touched the anointed spot. The warm tingle felt good, but her gesture added to the mystery. Was the affection real, or was she trying to cover up her fears? Too many unanswered questions hung in the air, but we had to get back to business. “Now to the executions.”
She smiled, looking more relieved than the situation called for. “The crematorium, right?”
“Right, but wait a second.” I focused on the cloak’s fibers near my clasp and used the energy flow to send Miriam back to the sleeve. As she returned, she grumbled but said nothing. “Miriam’s settled now. I’m ready.”
Sing pulled me toward the street. “It’s getting close to midnight. We’d better hurry.”
Chapter Five
As Sing and I jogged abreast, I let her set the pace. The difficult reaping and my temporary entry into the realm of ghosts left my head a bit dizzy. She glanced at me every few seconds, always smiling when I returned the glance. She was either incredibly open and honest with her affections, or she was pouring on deceptive charm. Maybe she thought she could gain my favor by piercing the shield every district hound had to wear. Since friendship and romance were forbidden, we couldn’t allow emotional entanglements.
Still, taking a gun from an Owl was also forbidden, as was plotting to rescue citizens from a corrections camp. We both seemed willing to break a few rules. Maybe Sing hoped to secure a place at my side by forging a working bond between us, a Reaper alliance of sorts.
But why? This obsession with going to the Gateway in my company, and her willingness to add the risk of attending the night’s executions seemed beyond the norm.
As we drew close to our region’s crematorium, a one-story brick edifice that took up an entire block, Sing slowed her pace and stared at the spinning column of smoke rising from the brick chimney. A poster hung near one corner of the building—an advertisement for tablet computers, perhaps directed at the clinicians who worked there. No one in my district could afford such a luxury, though every officer in the death network seemed to have one.
Another poster displayed the Gatekeeper’s face along with the usual statements about his benevolence. With youthful features that belied his long life—abundant dark hair, smooth skin, and bright smile—he certainly had a charismatic appeal. Since aging had no effect, his claims of being a demigod seemed believable.
Saying nothing, Sing accelerated. After rounding the corner, she slowed again. A line of three cloaked figures stood in front of the crematorium’s rear entrance—a dark wooden door with a gray canvas awning. A nearby streetlamp cast its glow across a sign on the door—Reapers Entrance.
When we stopped a few paces away, a bearded man at the front of the line groaned. “I’ve been waiting three hours, and now a couple of district hounds are going to pull rank.”
I glanced at the triangular patches on their sleeves. All three were male roamers, each one tall and wiry, definitely formidable. “Look,” I said, raising my hands in a surrender pose, “I’m not planning to butt in line. I’m here to teach Singapore.” I gestured toward her. “This is her first cycle.”
The roamer at the end of the line pushed back his hood, revealing a twenty-something-year-old man with bushy hair and thin lips. I knew this scoundrel—Moscow. With his frequent attempts to trade stolen goods for souls, how he escaped being put on p
robation was anyone’s guess.
“She can have my place in line,” Moscow said in an alluring tone. A slowly emerging grin revealed a pair of sharp canine teeth. “I’ll trade it for a cozy night with her in her apartment.”
“In your dreams.” Sing crossed her arms. “We’ll wait our turn.”
A click sounded at the door. I pulled out my watch and pointed the face at the streetlamp. Five minutes till midnight. Opening a little early was a good sign—probably plenty of executions waiting.
Sing and I took our places at the end of the line and filed in. As usual, only a bare bulb attached to a broken ceiling fixture lit the back entrance lobby—a cramped room with stacks of papers atop an old desk and empty urns on wall shelves. Ronald, the dour old attendant, stood next to a wall-mounted computer tablet near an interior door. “Enter your thumbprint and your desired number of souls,” he said in monotone as he held the door.
The first Reaper pressed his thumb on the tablet screen, then entered a request for two souls and passed through the door. The second Reaper did the same, followed by Moscow, who entered a request for three. When he disappeared into the compound, I pressed my thumb on the screen and entered a zero, but the tablet beeped, and my entry flashed red.
“Zero?” Ronald squinted at me through thick glasses. “That’s not allowed.”
“I made quota already. I’m here to show Sing what to do. She needs only one.”
“Our policy is to allow entrance to Reapers, not teachers or spectators.” He pushed his glasses higher on his nose. “Enter your intent to reap at least one soul, or be on your way.”
“But I just—”
“Rules are rules.”
I heaved an exasperated sigh and entered a “one.” As soon as it accepted the data, red letters flashed across the top of the screen—Execution Total Reached.
“What?” I turned toward Ronald. “Does that mean Sing can’t get a soul?”
He shook his head. “Not tonight. Sorry.”