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He shrugged a shoulder, looking bored. “Here. There.” His eyes dipped down to hers for a second, suddenly intense. “Everywhere.”
“Well, that’s just sad,” she said, looking away awkwardly when one of the ladies she had just ensouled stepped past her with a second glance in her direction. She remembered her encounter with Stuart the security guard too late—no one but her could see her celestial companion.
“Don’t you dare fucking take any of my pregnant ladies!” she warned him under her breath, lifting a hand to try to hide the fact she was talking.
He snuck another glance at her from the corner of his eye, an amused frown skewing his brows. “Why are you talking like that?”
“You know why,” she replied, looking down to dig through her purse for her cell. At least then she’d have an excuse to be talking.
“You look like one those people with the dummies on their laps,” he told her, flashing a cheeky grin before it was gone again a split-second later.
“Yeah?” she challenged, fingers finally closing on her phone, which she promptly lifted to her ear before glaring at him openly. “Well, you look like the Joker.”
“Knock, knock,” he said. She thought he was just humoring her, until he nodded in the direction of some expo booth scaffolding that was holding a bunch of lighting. Part of the rigging keeping it all in place had come loose, and the whole frame wobbled dangerously as an impatient woman with two toddlers under foot and a baby in a stroller rammed a side support pole accidentally.
Bunny reached out to grab his arm, pulling him into an out-of-the-way space between two booths across the way, and then spinning him to face her. “You can’t do this.”
He looked at her like she had three heads and had just offered to guard the gates of Hell. “It’s my job.”
“But it’s cruel,” she faltered, hastily holding the phone tighter to her ear and lowering her voice when she became worried she was going to be overheard. “This place is mostly women and children. And most of the women near that booth are pregnant!”
“I don’t decide,” he argued back, angling toward her so his back was to the crowd. “I just—”
“Do your job? Yeah, so you said.” Bunny shook her head, her blonde hair bobbing on either side of her face. She glared up at him, her chest tight. “Okay, so you don’t choose. You don’t decide how. How do you face this?” She lifted her free hand, gesturing at the crowd around her, her eyes meeting his. “How do you just blindly follow along with your job description when it means innocent people will suffer?”
His gaze softened, as though he finally understood the source of her human concern. “I know it seems cruel,” he told her. “But you’ve lived as a human for a while. Did you ever think the world was anything other than cruel?” He tilted his head, studying her. “Neither of us chooses.”
Okay. She had watched enough nature documentaries to know what he was saying was true. But being separated through a TV screen from baby animals dying in a desert or a war in another country was one thing. Being in a place where dozens of people were about to die was another.
Or was it?
How many patients had she lost in the ER? How many people had she been with, during their precious last moments of mortal life? She suddenly realized that for every patient she had seen die, Death had been there with her. She met his gaze, understanding. Bunny swallowed the bitterness in the back of her throat and nodded just once. And then she walked away.
She’d made it almost all the way to the other end of the huge expo hall when she heard an almighty crash, followed by a bunch of people screaming and shouting. Loads of people started rushing past her to get to where she had just been, and Bunny stepped to the side to let them pass. She needed some air.
* * *
The tranquilityof the park across the road undermined the chaos that was no doubt unraveling within the expo venue. Bunny sat on a bench facing a huge fountain, trying to keep her ears closed to any carnage from the street. But no matter how determined she was, she couldn’t block out the sound of the ambulances roaring toward the location.
She wasn’t entirely sure how long she sat there, hands in her lap and her purse on the ground at her feet like a faithful dog. An hour? Two? Twelve? She stared at the water spurting up out of the fountain, sprinkling on the surface of the pool below. It reminded her of college. Her and her friends would meet there, sometimes, when she chose to join them on a rare night out.
A shadow in her peripheral vision almost made her blink.
“How many?”
“You don’t need to know,” Death said. There was a note of apology in his tone, but not so much she expected him to actually offer one. He sat on the bench beside her at a comfortable distance, leaning forward. His forearms rested atop his knees, his fingers steepled and pointing subconsciously at the fountain.
Bunny clenched her teeth. “That bad, huh?”
“They’ve closed the event.”
“So they fucking should.”
She had spent a good while trying not to feel nauseous, but now that they were talking about what had happened, she could feel the bile rising again.
“Want me to go linger by the door with you?” Death asked, sounding a little hopeful. “You could slip a few more onto the books for the day.”
Her ick turned to anger at his lack of sensitivity.
