Johann came, too, Pluto remaining perched on his shoulder as the three of us spilled into the long hall of scythes.
“Great gobs of bobs,” marveled Flora, her voice breathless as she took in the collection of scythes. “I knew he had a few of these, but lord. He’s got a right problem, I’d say.”
“Fascinating,” rasped Johann. “He’s always scared me a little, you know. And this collection. Itdoesmake me feel more founded in that fear. Less guilty for harboring it.”
“He’s fickle with his sickles,” said Pluto. “Every day it’s trade a blade.”
I rushed past the collection of scythes before taking a second hall. Then, I burst into the central room with the red couches, Grim’s desk, and that painting.
I gaped at the portrait, which did not depict the interior of this room or any other. Neither did it show a moonlit ocean, or anywhere at all.
“Gods almighty,” whispered Flora as she trailed in after me. “Who’d have guessed the bone brain’s gottaste?”
“Sharp objects,” said Pluto, “sharp décor. Never been in here before.”
“Oh,” said Johann, pointing to the snow globe before smoothing his beard. “I gave that to him ages ago. For Christmas. Never thought he kept it.”
“It’s… black,” I said as, with slow steps, I edged nearer, drawn by the nonimage that I willed to become something other than absolute nothing.
“That painting,” said Johann. “You’re saying it is of significance?”
“It shows where Grim is,” I explained, my voice quavering as a terrible foreboding—worse even than before—stole over me. “Whereverhe is. But… I don’t understand.”
I swung around to face them. “There’s something wrong with it. Unless… unless either of you know of someplace he’d be that is… pitch black.”
Flora gasped, both hands leaping to cover her mouth. “Gods.”
Johann’s expression went gray and graven. “It’s worse even than I thought.”
“W-worse?” I asked, my voice shaking. Because… were they saying he was somehow… dead?
“Where is he?” I demanded, taking a step toward them. “Tell me right now.”
Neither answered, and both averted their gazes. Even Pluto refused to meet my eye.
“Is he gone?” I asked outright. “Did Sir White or one of the others take him away? Into one of the Basins?”
“He… his soul is in one of the Basins, aye,” allowed Flora, a pair of tears cutting tracks down her face, both of which she quickly whisked away with the heel of her palm. “And no soul has ever come back from a Basin. Not ever. None but Cedric’s. Basins won’t have him ’cause he can’t die. But Grim…”
My heart sank. Then it imploded.
But this… none of it was making sense.
If Grim was well and truly gone, why did the painting still show his whereabouts? Why had his statue responded to me the way it had, allowing me entry?
If he, his soul, was gone and he wasn’t the Grim Reaper anymore, if he’d been replaced, then souls wouldn’t be piling up in want of collecting.
“Flora,” I said to the fairy, who had to battle away new streams of tears that, like her wings, sparkled with a strange iridescence. “Before, when we made the plan to smuggle my soul into the White Basin, you said you knew how Grim could get into that Basin undetected.”
Flora’s eyes widened, and she started to shake her head at me—slowly at first, then with rapid refusal.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said the fairy, “but you don’t know what you’re askin’.”
“The Black Basin,” said Johann as, hands clasped behind his back, he eyed me with curiosity and, I wanted to believe, new respect. “It won’t keep Helena’s soul.”
“Johann!” piped Flora. “For her to go in at all, I’d have to remove her spirit from her body—which woulddie. Are y’both forgetting that the plan was only supposed to go into effectafterHelena died?”
“She won’t die if her soul exits her body willingly,” said Johann. “At least… not right away. It will remain attached, in essence, to her physical form until that form perishes or until her soul is cleaved from it.”
