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After having already dealt with Mrs. Howard and Diana, Bunny wasn’t about to take any risks. She scooted forward to head him off.
“The balcony,” she explained, before thinking better of it and offering him a self-depreciating grimace. “Well, it’s less of a balcony and more like a ledge, but it’s nice in the summer to—hey!”
She snapped closed the lock Death had started to unlatch, forcing him back out of the way.
“Nope! You can’t go out there, not even for a second.”
“Why not?”
“Mrs. Howard—”
“The lady at the hospital?” he interrupted her, looking confused.
“Yes,” Bunny breathed. She stepped in front of the door, blocking it. “She went into that closet because she could sense that you were near. I think she must be getting close to her time.”
His eyes met hers and seemed to search her gaze for an answer. “Her time for what?”
Bunny shrugged matter-of-factly. “Her time to die.”
Death blinked. “What does that have to do with me?”
“You’re a celestial being,” she explained, digging deep for any remaining patience she had left for that day. “You’re actually the Death. Singular. I don’t really think you’re an angel, more like a soul guardian of some sort. But none of that is important. The part you need to know is that you’re the one responsible for ferrying souls from this human plane through to the gate on the celestial plane, so they can be recycled and re-ensouled.”
“That’s crazy,” he laughed with disbelief.
Bunny snorted wryly. “Tell me about it.”
“But I don’t remember any of this,” he added, throwing up his hands helplessly. “What happens if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do?”
“That’s why I was trying to go through that door last night,” Bunny told him. “So we could find out. And that’s why you absolutely can’t go outside, not even onto the balcony, without me with you.”
“Because of the waitress,” he added, a shadow of guilt passing over his handsome face.
“Yeah,” Bunny nodded. “And Mrs. Howard. The truth is that we just don’t know how this is going to affect everything.”
He inhaled deeply before letting it out in a long, slow breath. “Okay,” he agreed. “I won’t leave this room until you fetch me later.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
* * *
It all went much smootherthan she’d anticipated. She showered, lay down on her bed and managed to relax… somewhat. Delivering souls into the vessels they needed to be born from was tiring work, but someone had to do it. Just so happened that someone was her. Bunny managed to get through almost a third of her daily quota before she began to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. She let it overcome her, her body sinking down into a sweet rest that she’d more than earned.
She woke a few hours later and tiptoed out of her bedroom, peering around the corner of the small hallway into the living area. Death was sitting upright on the couch, his typically rigid posture more than slightly comical just because it was such an inhuman way of sitting. Everyone else slouched on the couch, but not him. He looked like he had an iron rod up his spine, holding him at attention while he watched Gone with the Wind.
Deciding to leave well enough alone, she crept back to her room and got back into bed. If he was happy enough watching TV, she could take the chance now to fill the rest of her quota.
Once she was comfortable, she took hold of the moonstone pendant around her neck—the one that had belonged to her mother, and her grandmother, and who only knew how many women in her matriarchal line before that—and let a sense of calm purposefulness overcome her.
As usual, a flurry of souls surrounded her consciousness. They frolicked like playful, glowing white butterflies, each seeming to compete for her attention. Bunny smiled gently and waited a moment, homing in on one soul in particular. After finding the almost electric buzz of the soul’s frequency, Bunny began to search for the echo that would lead her to the vessel. She zoomed in a little more, until she found the woman she needed to ensoul.
A white glow around the woman turned a pretty shade of blue as the soul Bunny had held onto flew into place within its vessel.
Bunny felt a deep sense of satisfaction with each ensoulment she performed. While her cosmic side-hustle had come as a huge surprise to her at first and wasn’t exactly something she would have signed up for, if given the chance, it was a role she’d settled into. And the warm fuzzies she got from knowing she played an important part in keeping humanity ticking along? Just incredible.
She continued with her task, starting to batch up souls in bigger groups so she could get through her quota in a faster timeframe. After everything that had happened the previous evening, she was pretty beat, but any work she did now was work she wouldn’t have to do when she woke up that afternoon.
