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Those words were enough to finally snap Bunny out of the thrall the cooler had held her in. She blinked and stepped out from under Roberta’s hand. “Did I finally have an aneurysm?” she asked with only a modicum of sarcasm. “I’m lying on a gurney somewhere, intubated and prepped for an embolization, right?”
“’Fraid not,” Roberta told her with a cutesy shrug. “Nice try though, kiddo.”
Bunny turned to face Roberta and Death, mostly because watching the tadpoles in the cooler was having a strangely hypnotic effect on her.
“You’re telling me that all of those itty-bitty glowworms needs to be put into people?”
“About sums it up.” Death watched her expectantly, like a tall drink of water with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders set in a strong line that seemed to say, ‘so what?’ “Anything to add?” he asked, his dark gaze slipping to Roberta.
“Normally you’d have a year of training with the incumbent,” Roberta smiled apologetically, “but considering the circumstances with your dearly departed mother, we just don’t have that kind of time.”
“It’s really backing up in there,” Death agreed casually.
Bunny’s mind was awash with the information being flung at her. She could hear her mom’s voice in her voicemail, telling her that ‘they needed to talk’. But surely it hadn’t been to discuss the fact that she was some kind of celestial being who could travel through space and time to insert souls into people?
She ran her hands up and down her arms, trying to convince herself that she couldn’t feel the sensation of her fingertips on her biceps.
But she could.
“This is insane,” she told herself out loud, turning back to stare at the cooler. “None of this is real. I cracked up, and they’ve got me on something really strong until I’m over my psychotic break.”
“Some of us never get over our psychotic breaks,” Roberta sighed with a tone dipped in sarcasm, hurrying on when Death raised a brow in her direction. “What? It’s true. You’ve been bitching about your issues to me for centuries.”
“Never heard you complain before,” he sassed, shuffling to the fence. He leaned a broad shoulder against the wrought iron. One fedora, and he’d look for all the world like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, only way hotter.
“Your quota never backed up like this before,” Roberta volleyed back, tapping her manicured finger on the upper number of an old-school analog counter on her desk. The top number was five, but as Bunny watched it flipped over to a six with an audible click. The number underneath it was twenty-one.
“For Upper Management’s sake—show the kid the ropes, will ya? Or else there’s not gonna be anything for you to drop-off, period.”
He grunted under his breath, pushing off the fence. “Thanks for your expert advice.”
“A pleasure,” Roberta smiled, settling back behind her desk. “As always. Now scoot! I’ve got end-of-month reports to finish, and they’re not going to write themselves.”
Death came to her side, bringing with him a stirring in the atmosphere around her that made Bunny think about the strange sensation in the air when the seasons were changing. He reached into her space, his hand hovering by the small of her back as he guided her toward the cooler itself. They stopped just shy of the white plastic spout and he turned to her.
“Look, I am sorry about all this. I know it’s a lot to process, and it would have all been easier to deal with if you’d had Connie here to explain. But we don’t have that luxury.”
It was a lot. An awful lot. And on top of losing her mom and being worried about her dad and Ben, not to mention her job, Bunny wasn’t entirely sure she was strong enough to weather it all. It would be easier to accept that she’d suffered some kind of breakdown than believe she was standing with Death in front of a giant water cooler full of souls she was supposed to somehow distribute.
But then, when had she ever taken the easy road? Not when she’d been a kid suffering from asthma and mono and had been told to stay inside for months at a time. Instead, those stolen days where she would run wild with her brother and his friends down by the river that ran through Mosswood were some of the happiest of her life.
She hadn’t taken the easy road when she’d chosen to go away for college, working two jobs to pay for her tuition.
If this really had been what her mom had needed to talk to about, was she disrespecting her mom’s memory to not explore it? Was she thinking about taking the easy way out right when putting in hard work was of the utmost importance?
Death seemed to sense the war raging in her head. He reached out, gently lifting her chin so she was looking up into his eyes. The action was tender, concerned. And for the second time, Bunny saw the friendship he had enjoyed with her mother—a very real, tangible friendship—reflected back at her through his gaze. She felt the tension melting from her shoulders, a strange sense of forgiveness not only for her mother but also for herself, spreading through her consciousness.
He held the look, his eyes skipping between hers like he was looking for the answer to a question he had asked himself. When he finally looked away it was to glance up, angling his head back so that he could gauge the level of the water in the cooler. “Pretty soon, that thing’s gonna be full. It can only hold a finite amount of souls.”
She looked up as well. “What happens when it gets full?”
“Some will start to expire,” he said, a tightness creeping into his voice. “And they can’t be replaced.”
The thought of any of the beautiful little silver tadpoles dying forever prompted a sadness within her that threatened to become overwhelming. She pressed her lips together and took a breath as the sadness was replaced with butterflies.
“Okay,” she said steadily. “What do we need to do?”
He smiled at her, a fleeting, unusually stiff version of the expression, but a smile, nonetheless. “You wearing your mother’s pendant?”
