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Seven
Bunny sat on a chair that smelled faintly of mothballs, her head as close to being between her knees as she could manage for a former runner who hadn’t so much as jogged in the last fifteen years. She had relied on her job to keep her cardio levels up, sure, but when it came to exercise, she had really dropped the ball, figuratively speaking.
Her mind was a blur of what she had seen and heard and smelled and regurgitated. Somehow, the whole commotion had gone unnoticed by the rest of the care home. She was grateful but sitting in the recreation room with a person who claimed to be—and certainly acted like—Death himself wasn’t exactly soothing her nerves.
“You okay?” he asked her. He sounded aloof, disinterested. As though he only asked because he’d seen it on a TV show once and had stored the line away in case he ever needed to use it himself.
On someone who was alive.
Bunny groaned, pressing her fingertips more tightly to her temples as she sat upright. “You’re not real,” she sighed, forcing her brain to slow down or risk having an aneurism.
He mirrored her sigh, except his was heavy with disdain and impatience. Before she knew what was happening, he was kneeling in front of her, his pale fingers working fast to undo the top few buttons of his black shirt. She flinched as he reached for her hand, her fight-or-flight response ready to engage. But as soon as their skin connected, she felt a slow serenity begin to seep into her body. It was just like the feeling of medication fed through an IV. Like ice slowly spreading through her veins, up her arm, seeking her heart.
Is this what dying felt like?
Bunny tried to pull her hand away from his on instinct but he held on, pressing her palm to the triangle of exposed flesh just above the open collar of his shirt.
She gasped.
It wasn’t that his chest was cold, even for a dude who claimed to be actual Death. It wasn’t even that he was a relatively sexy-looking man who was holding her hand to what she begrudgingly admitted was a well-formed chest.
No, it was the fact that, after three seconds of her hand being on his chest, she still couldn’t feel an actual heartbeat.
The nurse in her took over. Bunny snatched back her hand, reaching for the stethoscope around her neck. She didn’t bother to breathe on it to warm it up. Instead, she pulled his shirt down with a businesslike efficiency, the same way she had done so with patients her entire career. The bell was pressed to his sternum, the earpieces in place. But all she could hear was radio silence.
While his chest moved like he was breathing, there was no rush of air in and out of his lungs. There were no sounds of his digestive system processing its contents. And there was a distinct absence of a heartbeat.
She snatched her stethoscope back, worried she was imagining his distinct lack of vital signs.
“This isn’t real,” she whispered. Her eyes were wide as she gaped at him, just as shocked by his nonchalant demeanor as she was by the fact he was undeniably unalive.
“It’s as real as it gets,” he told her. His fingers drifted up to his shirt buttons, and he began to do them back up again. She watched the pale skin of his broad chest disappear inch by inch, shrouded once again as though her examination had never truly happened.
“Did you kill Cam?” she asked. The chilled serenity inspired by his touch suddenly turned arctic and ran up her spine. Bunny felt as though there was more riding on his answer than just finding out what happened to her neighbor.
“I don’t kill anyone,” he scoffed. He stood, towering over her for a moment, before he turned to sit in the chair beside hers. “I’m responsible for their souls. That’s it.”
Bunny didn’t skip a beat. “What about my mom?” she asked, her heart kicking up a gear. “Were you responsible for her soul, too?”
Silence descended on the small space that held both armchairs, as though the dim lamp on the table between them enveloped them in a cone of reluctant trust. They looked at each other across the space, Bunny’s gaze accusatory while his, for the first time, seemed pained.
“No,” he admitted at last. “I didn’t take her.” He was brusque, to the point of almost sounding annoyed.
“So some other grim reaper took her soul, then?” Bunny reasoned, frowning as she let her head fall back against the soft, plush blue chintz of the chair.
He took a long breath. Bunny didn’t know if she was more disconcerted that he was breathing when he didn’t need to, or because he had apparently learned how to do it naturally enough so that no one would suspect he didn’t need to breathe at all.
“I’m not a grim reaper,” he clarified, “and there’s only one of me, just like there’s only one of you. I don’t know where your mom’s soul is.”
“So… what?” Bunny bristled, straightening in her chair. “She just vanished into the ether?”
“I don’t know. It’s why I went to her funeral.”
Bunny was staring at him openly now. She didn’t care if it made him uncomfortable. She cared about finding some answers about what had happened to her mom.
“And then you chased me,” she added, one brow hitching itself high as she stared him down.
“I wanted to ask you about her,” he said offhandedly, as though chasing a woman through a cemetery and clear out into the street was the most normal thing in the world.
