His hands went up in surrender, but I still shoved him against the wall, pinning him there.
“You’d love that, wouldn’t you?” I ground out.
“I just think it might be evidence—further evidence—that I’m right.”
“I never miss anyone. Ever.”
“Must have been Johann’s mistake, then,” he said. “Or perhaps Flora’s.”
“We don’t miss souls,” I snarled. “Any of us.”
“Noted,” said Cedric. “But say, while you’re here and I have the rare bestowal of your undivided if prickly attention, Idohave something I’d like to discuss with you.”
Cedric wanted to accompany me on my rounds. Countless times, he’d voiced the unsolicited—and impertinent—opinion that I could benefit from an assistant.
It was his fault he was bored. And, for the most part, useless. Not mine.
I wasn’t a babysitter. But that memo—I couldn’t seem to get it through his thick and inflated skull. Or Johann’s for that matter. Flora wasn’t much better.
“The answer is no,” I snapped. “It was no when you got here, and it’s no still. For as long as I exist in this capacity—whichwillbe for fucking ever—it will alwaysbeno. Do you understand?”
Cedric glared into me hard with that bleak winter stare, frosty eyes searching for the face he would not find. “Yes,” he said, his tone even, disconcertingly calm. “Thank you for the clarification. It’s honestly exactly what I needed.”
I held him pinned for one moment longer, sorely tempted to rip out the soul he still possessed so I could offer it up as the one to replace the librarian’s. Since that wouldn’t work because he happened to be immortal, and since that action would only give me away as the one responsible for the missing soul, I released him.
“Touch my scythe again,” I warned, turning to continue my trek to the cloisters, “and I’ll use it to play hockey with your head.”
Maybe that was a low blow. None of us knew the details surrounding his decapitation, but it was no secret how touchy he could be about that particular death. The wound would even still bleed if anyone dared to mention it, or even if something heavily upset him—an involuntary reaction that suggested the pain involved wasn’t just skin-deep.
But maybe he needed a stronger reminder to get back on his fucking side of the undead fence.
“Incurring your wrath to the point of death,” mused Cedric darkly, calling after me. “A preferrable and perhaps less permanent fate than the Black Basin.”
I halted again, glancing over my shoulder at him. Because why had that sounded like a threat?
But the wizard had vanished. Back to his worthless collections and writings. Whatelsewas he going to do with his time? Unlike the rest of us, he didn’t have true purpose in the Hallowed Halls. He’d just been sent here because there was nowhere else for him to go.
Unlike us, he could leave if he wanted—go back to the world. Back to life. But he didn’t want to go back. He wanted to move on. Specifically, intomyrole.
For some reason, he thought what I did was glamorous. But also, becoming the Grim Reaper would give him the option to do the one thing he could not. Essentially? Die.
It was his hypothesis that moving into my position would allow him to shed his curse since it would require the transformation of his physical form. From there, he planned to harvest souls until the opportunity came to pass along the scythe. Then, at last allowed to perish, he’d go into whichever Basin would have him.
Green, most likely, since that was the color of his soul, which I’d had in my grip a time or two. Just because Cedric was immortal, that didn’t mean he couldn’t—temporarily—die.
None of us knew quite how long Cedric had lived—only that, somewhere along the way, he’d tampered with the wrong kind of magic. Immortality was a slippery slope. Maybe I’d chosen to dabble in its waters, too. But, for me, the alternative of being bound for the Black Basin made such an arrangement necessary.
Cedric’s missteps weren’t my problem, though. His delusional machinations weren’t my responsibility, either. So he could pine to occupy these robes and wield my scythe all he wanted. I wasn’trelinquishing my post ever. Not for anything or anyone. Least of all that arrogant slime bucket.
Point blank, I wasn’t going into that Basin.
So an eternity of scything it was.
“There you are, Grim,” came Johann’s familiar voice, which had me pivoting to find him scuttling toward me, Pluto perched on his shoulder. “I don’t know if you heard, but there was a mix-up with a presumed-missing soul.”
“Mix-up,” I repeated. Andpresumed?
“Yes,” said Johann as he shuffled past me, leaving me to glance behind, down the long straight hallway within which stood no one else. “But I told Sir White the mishap wasn’t on our end.”
