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Damn it. He made it, but Caspian didn’t. How is that fair? Caspian was a mage, too, and a much nicer person than stupid Merrit.
“Pandora Darkmoor. Demoness. Neutral Death.”
Even now, I couldn’t understand how Pandora had been placed in the Neutral Death Cabal. There was literally nothing neutral about her.
“GC Apis. False god. Violent Death.”
GC pumped his fist in the air. I laughed, and I wasn’t the only one. At least he was excited. Earlier, Francis had accepted his scythe from Headmaster Colin like he’d accepted a death sentence. Well, in a way, it was a two-hundred-year sentence, and it had everything to do with death.
“Pazuzu Eremus. Demon. Violent Death.”
Paz threw me a charming smile and went to collect his scythe. It was almost over, and they knew it. They were looking forward to it. Once we’d all take our places as Grim Reapers, we could be together again.
“Sheba Hellflame. Demoness. Righteous Death.”
Kitty and Sammy didn’t make it.
“Raziel Celest. Angel. Violent Death.” A pause. “Sariel Gracewing. Fallen One. Violent Death.”
The very first Fallen One in history to become a Grim Reaper. If anything, Sariel should have been proud of himself. When all odds were against him, he’d just worked harder and made it. I hated his parents for having refused to come and bear witness to his success.
Headmaster Colin called out a few more names until he finally got to me. I was the last one.
“Mila Morningstar. Human. Violent Death.”
Human. Yeah, sure. The second I stepped closer to him and he gave me my scythe, his twitching nose said I was no human at all. Frankly, I’d tried to cover the stench of death with a fuckton of perfume, but it hadn’t quite worked. I found a place between Francis and Lorna. Francis had the best poker face in the world, and Lorna… I just wanted to piss her off.
“Jesus, woman!”
“You know you love me,” I chuckled.
“Feast and party,” Headmaster Colin said, addressing the guests, the professors, and the newly graduated students, then turned to us. “Your job is not done yet.” He motioned for us to gather around him in a perfect circle. “I will take you now to the Great Hall of Life and Death, where you will…” He hesitated, and I wondered if it was because of me. “Well, you know what you’ll have to do.”
He lifted his right hand above his head, made a swirly motion, and a cloud of shimmering energy fell upon us. That was how a powerful mage with centuries of experience teleported twenty-two people and himself to a place no one could point on any map.
I felt slightly dizzy. Everyone else was fine, so I
knew it was because of my poor health. I also hadn’t eaten in days, my body finding it more and more difficult to digest and process food. I basically lived on water. I leaned on Francis’s arm and looked around me.
We were in a long hall with a tall ceiling and pillars on both sides. It led to a door in the far back – the only one in sight. Headmaster Colin started walking toward it, and we followed him. The walls were covered in detailed tapestries that depicted humans and supernaturals at various stages in life. Here, a baby was born. There, a man and a woman were getting married. Strong men were working the fields, and curvy women clattered about in small kitchens, children and cats pulling at their skirts. A little farther, an old man was begging a cloaked figure with a scythe to give him more time. But the scenes weren’t all rural. There were people in tall office buildings, and people in cars, some driving happily on long, winding streets, others smashed in terrible accidents. Heaven and Hell were depicted, too. Choirs of angels sang songs of praise, and demons schemed and plotted how to release chaos into the world above. I saw the Seelie and the Unseelie courts, each with their births, marriages, and deaths. The whole universe was painted on these walls, and for a moment, my greatest sadness was that I couldn’t stop to take it all in. I felt like the meaning of all things was hidden behind these images, if only I could halt, decide that I didn’t need to know what was behind the door we were headed for, and study each and every detail for hours. Unable to help myself, I lingered. I was the last one to arrive at the door, which Headmaster Colin opened, and I could barely see over my colleagues’ heads.
The room was large and empty, aside from the wide chair in the middle, which was occupied by two people covered in shrouds. I couldn’t tell whether they were men or women. One had a black shroud, and the other a white one. What caught my attention was that the two pieces of flowy fabric overlapped where the two people’s shoulders touched. They were sitting very close together. In front of them, facing us, were the twenty-two Grim Reapers whose places we were going to take. I counted again. Twenty-one. Morningstar wasn’t here. My heart sank and my knees almost gave out.
Headmaster Colin moved aside. Instinctively, Lorna stepped in front of a Grim Reaper. The woman looked at her for a moment, her black gaze intense and searching, then bowed slightly in front of the new Reaper. She gave Lorna her scythe. The moment the mage girl touched the foreign scythe that had been reaping souls for the past two hundred years, it turned to shimmering dust.
“Good luck,” the Righteous Reaper said, and offered Lorna her place.
“Thank you.” And just like that, Lorna Chiaramonte was a Grim Reaper.
Following her lead, all the others did the same. In minutes, I was the only one left, and it was painfully obvious… I had failed. I did my best not to cry. My fingers tightened around the handle of my scythe, and my sharp nails dug into my palm. I kept my head high and turned to meet Headmaster Colin’s gaze. He was looking at me with infinite sadness, and that did it. A single tear rolled down my cheek.
“Now what?” I asked in a choked voice.
He shrugged. “Now you go after him. You find him and try to retire him. If you can’t…”
“That’s it. There’s no future for me.”
“Mila,” he whispered. “The Academy will gladly welcome you as the only specialist in inter-dimensional dream travel.”
