Even though my rage had now shifted toward Johann, the old man’s scowl softened, wiry eyebrows coming together with concern, the collection of deep lines on his weathered face multiplying.
“Pluto’s right,” Johann said. “This isn’t like you.”
He waited a beat, pale gray eyes searching the darkness of my hood for the face—the soul—he wouldn’t find because I kept it hidden. From everyone. Including and maybe even especially him.
“This isexactlylike me,” I argued. “And Cedric’s had this coming.”
“This,” echoed Johann, his volume dropping. “Don’t tell meyoukilled him.”
That, I didn’t answer. And maybe it messed with me—a little—that I didn’t feel even a twinge of shame that reproving tone might have otherwise evoked in me.
Cedric had crossed a line, and Johann had no right to be pissed, shocked, orwhateverthat I’d finally answered that asshole’s special brand of chaos with my own.
With a small shake of his head, a flash of fear-mixed wonder in his eyes, Johann spoke again.
“I’ll admit that, so long as you’ve served in this role, I’ve never seen you this angry. Not even at Cedric. For that reason alone, I can only assume his transgression was a grave one. That said, I’ll remind youwhyeach of us, including Cedric, is here.”
I wasn’t the one who forgot.
“Save the lecture,” I barked, turning away. “I know why we’re here.”
“We dabbled in deeds that cannot be undone,” he called after me, his voice echoing through the domed chamber, his words—hisworry—rankling me to the core. “Trifled with forces forbidden. Our fates, we each sealed them with our own wills.”
“Your point?” I hurled the question at him from over one shoulder.
“My point,” he snapped, his own temper flaring now, “is to remind you how these roles that keep us from much worse fates do not protect us from repeating the transgressions that landed us here in the first place.Orthe resulting consequences it’s doubtful we’ll escape a second time.”
“It’s up to me if I want to take my chances.”
Now I was just being obstinate. Taking my frustrations out on Johann instead of Cedric, even if the old manhadjust stopped me from raining trouble—moretrouble—down on all of us.
With a huff and a dismissive wave, like shouting at me was akin to shouting at a wall, he spun away, grumbling to himself in German as he tromped back toward his desk, though Pluto turned on his shoulder to keep me in his beady, blinky sight.
“Frightful fight,” said the bird. “Cedric is deadric. Point to Grim. Don’t cross him again.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself. And how was it that the fuckingbirdgot the picture?
I continued my own march toward the exit—because I still had souls to gather.
What was more, because I’d needed to detour to the library, I was late—andbehind.
More souls than just the librarian’s had called to me in the time it had taken me to get her off the elevator. And then Cedric’s interloping had complicated everything.
And his presence near the librarian, the fact that he’d searched the demolished elevator for evidence of her death—that alone suggested he knew more than he ought to about the soul I’d failed to deliver.
Perhaps he even knew it was her…
That thought. It summoned that tight inner discomfort back tomy soul, which gathered itself behind my sternum, a makeshift heart wrenched in the fist of fear.
The emotion had returned, as black, uncomfortable, and uninvited as before.
And what did it say that my thoughts of the librarian had done a quicker and better job of summoning it than Johann’s sage—if annoying—cautioning?
It’s only because of the Black Basin.
That’s what I told myself as I exited the Hallowed Halls for the Netherworld Forest. Endless blue-gray—almost teal—mist curled through rows of ancient trees. Their leafless limbs dripped moss, their thick trunks lashed by vines, their roots sprawling like a graveyard of petrified pythons.
I walked among their ranks, heading down the worn path toward the freestanding stone doorway—the portal.
