AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah,” she said, drawing it out from beneath her scrub top. The silver gleamed with a blue sheen in the light emanating from the cooler.
“Okay,” he nodded in a businesslike manner. “That’s your pass. It’ll get you in and out of the lobby, and it’ll be where you store the souls you’re delivering that day.”
Bunny blinked, looking up from her contemplation of the pendant. “How the hell do I store souls inside of a necklace?”
He smirked at her, his brows upward in disbelief. “You’re standing in the lobby to the universe, and you’re questioning my logic?”
The universe? Yikes.
“I see your point,” she conceded.
His smirk still in place, he jerked his chin in the direction of the spout. “Fill ’er up.”
Bunny’s hand trembled slightly. With the pendant cupped in her left hand, she slowly opened the spout on the cooler with the right. A long silver droplet of what looked like water immediately began to edge itself out of the spout, bulging on the bottom until it was like a bit fat raindrop. Bunny jumped when it began to wriggle, stretching itself towards the pendant.
“Wow,” she breathed, watching it waver in thin air. “It’s beautiful.”
“Beautiful,” Death agreed dryly, “and time-consuming. Let them flow steadily, or we’ll be here forever.”
Taking a deep breath, Bunny opened the spout a little more. The silver droplet flew out of the faucet and snapped into her pendant like a rubber band, disappearing once it hit the surface. Another came out, and then another, before they started pouring out in twos, threes, and then dozens. Each of them disappeared straight into the polished white-mottled surface of Bunny’s pendant, adding extra depth to the silvery glimmer.
And then the tide of souls stopped as quickly as it had begun. She bent to look at the bottom of the faucet and, certain no souls were trapped in the pipeline, Bunny closed the spout.
“There must be thousands of them in there,” she marveled, holding her pendant up to the light to inspect it. There was no movement in the stone, but there were definitely more fissures in it than before. She exhaled, letting the rest of her doubts flow out of her body with her breath.
“Okay,” she said, letting the pendant rest against her chest as she planted her hands on her hips. She looked at Death expectantly. “Now what?”
“Now you go put them in,” he said, as though it was as easy as running an errand to the post office.
Bunny snorted before she could stop herself. “Sure. And how do I do that, exactly?”
They started walking back in the direction they had come, toward where she thought they had come out of the supply closet.
“Wouldn’t know,” he replied blithely, a hint of apology in his tone. “I’ve only ever taken them out.”
“Well, how do you do that?” It couldn’t be that different from what she had to do, right?
He fell silent, and Bunny got the feeling that perhaps she’d asked a question he didn’t want to answer.
“I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she added quickly, not wanting Death to think she was prying into something he wanted to keep private. He seemed to wrestle with the question, opening his mouth to say something but them closing it again. He pressed his lips together and then exhaled.
“I can’t say anything,” he said at last, slipping his hands back into his coat pockets as they walked. “I’m not permitted—my job is mine, and mine alone. Just like yours belongs to you.”
“But I was there when you took Mr. Lucas,” Bunny reminded him, brightening when she realized she had the upper hand.
Death nodded, a gleam of acknowledgement in his inky gaze. “You were.”
Bunny thought about seeing poor Mr. Lucas in the state he’d been in, terrified of what the next step would entail for him.
“Okay, I think I know what I need to do.” She lifted her chin, feeling her newfound confidence starting to settle her nerves.
That was, until she looked at the plain wooden panel in front of them. It no longer remotely resembled a door, and she looked to her companion while trying to rein her confidence in with both hands.
“Uh—how do we get out of here?”
“Just touch your pendant to the panel,” Death instructed, nodding at her mom’s necklace.
Bunny held the pendant full of souls carefully in her fingertips and leaned forward, angling her head away so that she could touch the stone of the pendant to the panel. An incandescent white glow immediately spread around the outside of the panel, illuminating the edges like a doorway. A moment later, the panel clicked open and light spilled out of the gap.
