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“People just died,” she breathed, trying to keep a rein on her emotions. “You could at least be a little respectful.”
“People always die around me,” he said matter-of-factly. His face was once again that stone wall she had come to know so well. Impenetrable. Unforgiving. “You have your quota—”
“I already filled my quota,” Bunny snapped, pushing to her feet so suddenly that his gaze flicked up. He regarded her with surprise.
“Really?” he asked. He might have even sounded a little impressed.
“Why?” Bunny demanded, ignoring him. “Why them?”
He sighed, his head falling forward. He lifted his hands and began massaging his temples. “We really gonna have this conversation?”
Her eyes bored into the top of his head. “It’s overdue.”
After a moment, he straightened. For someone who was an immortal celestial being, he suddenly looked tired as he gestured helplessly. “I don’t know why. I don’t make that call. Just like you don’t decide who gets a boy, or a girl, or who doesn’t get a baby at all. It’s beyond their control, and it’s beyond ours, too.”
“What’s the point of being a celestial if you don’t get to do magic?” she argued. “If all you can do is just mess with innocent people?”
His answering smile smacked of bitterness. “Actual humans are born into the world every day because of your cosmic role. Isn’t that magical enough?”
His words made her do a mental double-take. “Yes,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks flush with warmth. She’d never been the type to believe in anything magical before, but here it all was, right before her eyes. After everything she’d already seen, there was no denying it. Regardless of what had happened to her mom, it was magical. And she got to be part of it.
“And you are responsible for filtering the souls out,” she reasoned, her eyes lifting to study him.
“It’s balance, Bunny.” He pressed his lips together, his shoulders inching upwards in acceptance. “As old as time. Older, even. I don’t remember a time before time.”
“How old are you?” she asked, the question on the tip of her tongue since first meeting him finally falling from her lips.
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
What must that even be like? She was intimately connected with her past—the good and bad of it. It was woven in the very fabric of her being, just like it was for every other human on earth. Their culture, upbringing, family values, and connections to other humans all melded together to form their history and give them a sense of self and belonging. Even though Bunny was glad to have left her hometown behind, didn’t mean she didn’t love the people and some of the memories she had made there.
And Death didn’t have any of that.
A sense of sorrow enveloped her. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “Could be worse.”
Bunny frowned slightly. “How’s that?”
“I could look like a skeleton with a scythe.”
She supposed he meant it as a joke, but it was too ill-timed to be in good taste. She frowned more deeply, her hands slipping across her belly so she could hug herself. “Unfunny. So if your job is your job, and you’re determined to carry it out to the letter, you’re worried about my quota because…?”
“We need to work in sync,” he explained, leaning back on the bench. “If one of us is off our game, it doesn’t bode well for business. If I’m not transporting any souls back, there are no recycled souls for you to put back in.”
Bunny snorted incredulously. “That sounds great and all, but it’s not exactly the well-oiled machine you claim is it. Not if a soul can just go missing.”
His already stoic demeanor became downright cold. “I want to find out what happened to your mom just as much as you do.”
She watched him for a moment, as though trying to look past his stony facial expression to gauge whether he was sincere. He looked back at her calmly, and in the end Bunny nodded.
“Thanks,” she sighed. “That actually means a lot to me. My brother and father have already accepted her death at face value because they don’t have any reason not to. But something about losing her so suddenly seemed off to me before I even knew about all this.” She faffed a hand at their surroundings, as though that were sufficient enough explanation for the fact that they were both celestial beings. She shrugged a shoulder, her head turning from side to side helplessly. “We both know I don’t really know what I’m doing here right now. I’d be grateful for your help, if you’re willing to extend it. I need to get to the bottom of all this.”
He looked at her calmly, seeming to take in her resignation and her pain, maybe letting it sit within the empty cavity where his heart and other organs should be. And then his eyes narrowed. “There’s limits to what we can and can’t do.”
“Imposed by who?” Bunny asked, frustrated. “‘Upper Management?’ Who are they?”
He paused just a second longer than he should have. “You know.”
