My priority must be to see her soul to safety, whatever that looked like.
And when I returned to my quarters after depositing today’s souls in the Basins, Iwoulddo what I must. Because of the threat Cedric posed, I now had to. I would summon Sir White and confess to my list of crimes directly. I wasn’t willing to risk the fate of Helena’s soul any more than I already had. Aside from that, I’d likely fare better after admitting my guilt than waiting for Cedric to accuse me.
Most importantly of all, if I spoke one-on-one with Sir White, I would remove Cedric’s motivation to kill Helena.
That could not save her—just likeIcould not save her.
But it would ensure Helena herself did not suffer any consequences. Anymoreconsequences.
Helena would still die. That was out of my hands. In truth, that outcome had never truly been something I held any real capacity to change. I could still protect her spirit by fessing up and making it clear she had no hand in or influence upon my actions. Aside from that, I could implicate Cedric before he could incriminate me, which would disqualify him as my replacement. And hopefully get him booted from the Hallowed Halls as well.
Why, though, even with my own soul on the line, did facing one of The Few still feel easier than facing her again?
22HELENA
Normally, I wouldn’t stoop to snooping. In this situation, however, there’d been no stopping myself.
Whatelsewas I going to do after being abductedPhantom of the Opera–style and deposited into a special supernatural episode ofCribs?
Though I helped myself to a self-guided tour of the sprawling apartment—which spanned about twice the size of mine—I did resist the urge to open any drawers or peek into any cabinets, not that there were many.
Unsurprisingly, the bloodred-meets-ink-blackAddams Familyaesthetic continued throughout with more soaring, coffered ceilings, dark wood paneling, parquet floors, sconces, chandeliers, and refined antique furniture.
Overall, my expedition of the Grim Reaper’s chambers yielded only a few new bits of information about him.
In addition to being partial to Gothic décor, he was, apparently, a musician.
Something we had in common. Though I’d only been playing the uke for a few years and mostly just strummed what I called “sunshine songs” for storytime.
In his music room (because why wouldn’t he have one of those?), several electric guitars hung along one wall—including a deep purple one signed by Prince that I dared not touch.
Grim also owned a vintage stereo console and a large (not to mention impressive) collection of vinyl that stuffed the shelved walls. And these Ididriffle through.
I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover he had an eclectic taste in music, though I was. Perhaps because that (along with his possession of a lint roller covered—oddly—in glitter) made him seem, well, more human than… whatever he was.
This array of diverse genres and the general setup of the space bemused me, too, because I tried to picture him extracting the black discs from their sleeves, setting the needle in place with those bony hands, kicking back in the nearby armchair with a bourbon, and relaxing to the dulcet screams of the metal band Live Briefly and Fail while perusing the tracks on the back of a Tom Waits album.
But the spectrum of what he considered ear candy stretched even further than metal and Waitsian.
In addition to hundreds of titles and categories, I found Vivaldi, albums by a slew of metal bands, every Metallica album ever produced, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, Billie Eilish, Tool, Depeche Mode, Evanescence, Muse, the Cure, and—as Hunter would have been delighted to see—My Chemical Romance, just to name a few.
Would Grim notice if I slipped in a Taylor Swift album?
Would I survive his wrath when he did?
I giggled—albeit nervously—at the image of him irritably yanking Taylor’s1989(one of my favorites) off the shelf before engulfing it in hellfire.
Andwhydid I find that image kind of… cute?
After exiting into the hall, which wrapped the exterior of the central balcony room I’d awakened in, I walked its perimeters again. This loop confirmed that Grim had no bedroom or bed. He did oddly, though thankfully, have a restroom.
Relishing the opportunity to freshen up, I washed my hands and face in the gorgeous black marble sink. I tried to tidy my hair, but without the help of a mirror, I couldn’t be sure I accomplished much. He possessed just as many of those as he did windows, a detail that suggested Cedric had been right about Grim’s aversion to them.
That aversion made little sense to me, because that face, the one I’d seen, certainly gotmyblood pumping. Maybe he merely found mirrors useless because he only managed to steam them up whenever he encountered one. Learning that was the case would not have shocked me half as much as his affinity for music.
Grim also possessed a scythe room—I wasn’t sure what else to call it—and I tried not to be disconcerted upon entering the slim walkway flanked by two rows of differently styled scythes. The master of these implements had filed this array of tools in two lines, the handles clenched by skeletal-hand-shaped holders that extended from the walls. The blades faced away from the long stretch of polished wooden floor, making the trek to the door that waited at the end of the corridor—as red as everything else in this odd apartment—seem a touch less ominous.
I made my way past their ranks, drawn by that door whose knob took the shape of yet another skeletal hand—this one empty and open, a handshake waiting to happen.
