“My work comforts me,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. “Being busy will take my mind off things until I decide if I want to do something different. Until… I see you again. Because I probablywon’tsee you again until it’s time. Right?”
He didn’t answer. Which was answer enough. He was the Grim Reaper, and now that there was a plan for me in place, he had bigger fish to fry than babysitting a children’s librarian.
“I retrieved your phone,” he said at last. “From outside the library.”
My eyes bugged. “Y-you did?”
“It’s… damaged.”
“But it works?”
“Your mom has been texting you.”
Mom. I sighed inwardly.
“And someone named Peter.”
I scoffed. “What doeshewant?”
Grim turned that shadowed gaze down on me. “I didn’t read your texts. I just saw the names. Is Peter your boss?”
“Ha!”
He tilted his head at me.
I coughed and lowered my voice. “I mean no. Peter is a tool. But you don’t need to know about all of that. I have to ask, though. Since… you’re taking me home, does that mean you’re agreeing to the plan?”
For a long time, he didn’t say anything.
But then, at last, he spoke.
“Can you drive a stick shift?”
25GRIM
I led Helena out of the Hallowed Halls and guided her through the Netherworld Forest.
As soon as we entered the murky woods, the faintest of auras appeared around her, a subtle luminescence that she didn’t seem to notice at all, even though it illuminated our path the way the soft glow of a lantern might.
I kept glancing her way, mystified and fascinated by the phenomenon, which I’d never observed in anyone before. Then again, no other living human had visited the Netherworld.
A thin and encompassing halo, the aura shifted hues, changing tones from pale pink to sky blue in a slow bleed, like the northern lights.
Maybe the colors reflected her mood?
Blue, I suspected, would be melancholy.
She stayed quiet as we walked together down the worn, gray, tunnellike alley between craggy trees, her gaze flitting here and there, scanning the tangled and vacant black-limbed branches, the formless gray skies, and our mist-shrouded surroundings.
She had no jokes now. Probably because I’d admonished her dark humor. But… I hadn’t meant to silence her.
Her normal chatter. Perhaps I could coax it—her—back out of hiding.
“I come and go from your world by way of Netherworld portals,” I told her, breaking the silence.
Normally, soundlessness never bothered me. Always, quietude had been my lone companion in these woods and in much of my work. But Helena’s sudden muteness needled me—tied my thoughts into knots of concern. For her…
The threat Cedric posed might have been neutralized for now, but ultimately, his removal from the equation only delayed the inevitable—an early exit from life that Helena was now acutely aware of.
