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“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Why should it?” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, his head tilting just a degree more in her direction before his attention was front and center again. “It’s not part of my job, and I don’t have a high-enough clearance to be privy to that information anyway.”
He stopped walking a respectable distance away from the desk, holding a hand out to Bunny to indicate she should do the same. The woman continued to type, her fingers tapping intensely on the weird keys as though she was afraid she would lose concentration. She finished her sentence by pressing one button twice with a flourish, her eyes snapping upwards directly to Bunny’s face. Her lipstick was a deep burgundy that looked almost Goth against her pale skin, and brilliantly piercing blue eyes.
“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” she said, a cryptic smile perching on her dark-red lips. Even her voice sounded old-timey. “All grown up and ready to take the mantle? Brings a tear to my eye, seeing you here. You look just like her.”
Death caught the glance that Bunny threw in his direction and volleyed it with an almost imperceptible shrug.
“Roberta knew your mom, too,” he said, as though that explained everything there was to know on the subject.
“You have a little catching up to do, is all.” Roberta smiled, standing. She smoothed down her pencil skirt and leaned over her desk, extending a lace-gloved hand, which Bunny took reluctantly. Roberta’s handshake wasn’t just enthusiastic, it bordered on manic. The exuberance and joie de vivre of this woman was so different to Death’s stoic, sarcastic mannerisms that Bunny felt she was liable to get whiplash.
“Okay, fine,” Roberta breathed, whipping away her hand to pat her immaculate hair. “A lot of catching up. But I’m sure you’ll be on top of things in no time.”
The pinup-worthy woman plopped back into her chair, snatching a silver cigarette case off the desk. She flipped it open, plucked out a flamingo-pink cigarillo and lit up, her eyes not leaving Bunny for a second. They narrowed and then widened with sudden understanding.
“Oh honey,” she cooed, her features softening with sympathy that seemed a little too convincing to be completely authentic. Roberta’s gaze flicked to Death, sharp as a whip. “Connie never told her.”
“Seems that way,” he replied, with a dip of his head.
“Can someone tell me?” Bunny asked, losing what little patience she’d been able to hold onto. It was bad enough to be finding out that her mom had kept some kind of secret from her—a huge secret, even—without having it held over her head like the sword of frickin’ Damocles. She glared at both of them, her arms wrapped around herself like she thought it would replace the internal armor her mother’s secret was slowly chipping away.
Roberta smiled at her kindly. “You’re a celestial,” she explained in a soothing voice. “She was too. And her mother before her.”
“Gramma Alice?”
“Dear Alice,” Roberta said fondly with a breathy laugh, jabbing her cigarette at the space behind her to catch Death’s attention. “Remember that one time she let the cooler overflow? Biggest baby boom on the Eastern Seaboard!”
Death actually smirked, before he smoothed out the expression. “Yeah, well,” he said before clearing his throat. “Perhaps a more stable introduction for Bernadette would be best.”
“It’s Bunny,” she murmured, absently correcting the use of her full name even while in awe of her surroundings. “And as fascinating as this is, I’d really like to know what the fuck happened to my mom.”
“My, my,” Roberta almost purred, her eyes widening with delight. “Aren’t you quite the pistol?” Her impressed expression turned on a dime, becoming more solemn before she heaved a melodramatic sigh. “Neither of us know what happened to your mother, dear girl. Her untimely demise and your sudden appearance is as much of a shock to us as it is to you.”
“Not to mention the shit-storm that’s coming with it,” Death muttered under his breath.
“A tad concerning, yes,” Roberta agreed lightly.
Bunny narrowed her eyes suspiciously, glancing from Death to Roberta and back again. “I know why the whereabouts of my mom’s soul is important to me, but why is it important to you? And why is it going to cause a shit-storm?”
“You mean aside from the fact that she was our coworker?” Death asked, bristling.
Roberta tutted under her breath, and the admonishment seemed to bring him to heel. He relaxed a little before continuing.
“Your mom would have had to go through those gates to get to her final destination, meaning I would have had to bring her to the lobby,” Death explained. “I didn’t.”
He shrugged, and the action caught Bunny’s eye. It was just as nonchalant as any other time she had seen him shrug during the course of their limited acquaintance, but there was something off about it now. It didn’t quite fit the uncertain hunch pressing on his shoulders, or the way his fingers were fidgeting in his pocket.
“Where is she then?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid we don’t know,” Roberta said, almost apologetically. “All we do know is that if the cooler isn’t tended to—and soon—Upper Management is going to have their panties in one helluva twist.”
Bunny glanced past Roberta, straining her eyes to see this ‘cooler’ they kept talking about. If she thought everything else about this palatial space was huge, the ‘cooler’ was the piece de resistance. It was your average everyday office water cooler, but at least a thousand times larger. The water inside was nearly full to the brim and tinged with a teal blue that gave it an ethereal translucency. But the most miraculous thing about it was the millions of silvery tadpoles swimming energetically around inside, making Bunny’s breath catch in her throat. Her eyes widened as she took in the scale of the cooler and the density of the minuscule beings, the cogs in her brain seizing as she failed to compute just how many of them there were.
“What are they?” Bunny asked. She hadn’t noticed Roberta leaving her desk, but the woman was suddenly next to her. She watched one little silver tadpole in particular as it wriggled its way down, struggling through the throng toward the large white plastic spout at the bottom of the cooler.
“Those are souls,” Roberta said, reaching out to gently put a comforting gloved hand on Bunny’s shoulder. “And it’s your job to make sure they get to where they need to be in time to be born.”
