If we were still together.
Dante returned my smile with one just as fake. And very, very faint. He knew he was in rough shape. I’d deactivated my scythe at some point. Dante didn’t look strong enough to activate his own, but I knew Reapers can transport souls of the newly dead. So why not the oldly dead? After seven centuries, Dante was well and truly dead. They didn’t get much deader than him. Oh, sure his friend Virgil was . . . I yanked my attention back and I reached out to touch Dante. As had happened back at the jail, my hand passed right through him.
Now what? I could teleport myself back to Hell, but if I couldn’t touch him, I couldn’t take him with me. Dante’s mouth moved, but even though I was a spirit now like him, I couldn’t make out what he was trying to tell me. I could barely hear a whisper, like branches rustling in the breeze.
If his last words were about Beatrice, I was going to be so mad.
Wait. He was holding up two fingers. A peace sign? Was he trying to make up before he faded away? And why was he then holding up only one finger and then tapping his forearm with it?
I had to squint to see it, but it was familiar. So familiar. Where had I seen that combination of hand motions before?
“Two words, first word, one syllable,” said a pleasant voice. What the . . . ? I turned to find Maddy’s disembodied soul staring intently at Dante’s dim outline. “Go ahead.”
Apparently when Maddy had lost her tattoos, scars, and other bodily add-ons, she’d also lost her smoker’s cough and whisky voice. She had a pleasant voice. In another life she could have done telemarketing.
Maybe she had and that was what had driven her insane.
I took a second to look at her now. If I hadn’t seen her pop out of her old body, I never would have recognized her. Just as I’d lost my dyed hair and tattoo, so had Maddy. In fact, she looked like a lovely young woman, face sweet, hair naturally blond. Who dyes naturally blond hair that awful red color?
Realizing he’d lost my attention, Dante was performing for Maddy, playing charades as if his afterlife depended on it.
“Call in,” Maddy muttered. “What does he want you to call in?”
I flipped open my hellphone. “No use. No bars,” I said, holding it up for Maddy to see. There weren’t a lot of places on the Coil where you could phone home.
“No, that’s not it,” Maddy said to me. “He’s shaking his head.”
I joined her now, the two of us, Reaper and murderous soul, playing parlor games in the women’s bathroom, trying desperately to save the afterlife of my dying boyfriend.
Dante pointed at me, then Maddy. Okay. Got that part. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. I could see the “Please wash your hands” sign right through him.
“Call in. Calling,” Maddy guessed.
Dante dropped his arms. He appeared exhausted, at least as much as I could read his expression at this point. Finally he raised his arms again. He made the peace sign again. “Second word,” Maddy announced. Then he cocked his index fingers at us and mimed firing at us repeatedly.
“Calling Fire. Call in Fire.” Maddy jumped up and down. “He wants you to pull the fire alarm!” Her eyes gleamed. To her it was all a game.
But to me it was afterlife and death. “No,” I said, keeping my eyes on Dante’s form. “Not fire. Shots. Call in shots.”
Maddy turned toward me and I swear if her hands hadn’t been manacled behind her back she would have crossed her arms over her chest. “Calling Shots. That makes no sense.” Her upper lip curled in a Billy Idol sneer.
“Yes, it absolutely does.” I focused on Dante. “You want me to go take Maddy back to Hell with me and return with help?” I asked, knowing how Lassie must have felt.
“Hell? I’m not going to some fuckin’—Ow. What was that for?”
I’d clunked Maddy on her no-longer-dyed-a-weird-color-of-red hair with my deactivated scythe. “Shut up. Can’t you see I’m trying to talk to my boyfriend?”
Perhaps in Maddy’s world, thunking someone over the head and telling them to shut up passed for conversation. She peered at Dante. “He’s kinda pale, dontcha think? Cute though.”
Great. A serial killer found my boyfriend hot. I felt so much better knowing that. Not!
“Should I go?” I asked again.
Dante nodded, big brown eyes looking all soft and sad. And now that I looked, they were more transparent than brown. I didn’t have long. I had to go.
I felt like I was leaving a puppy behind. I laid one hand on Maddy’s quite-substantial arm and concentrated on the office of Sergeant Colin Schotz. I bounced my head once. That was completely unnecessary, of course, but just standing there thinking deep thoughts lacked flair
By the time it occurred to me that I couldn’t transport Maddy with her body still alive on the Coil, I’d already done so.
Desperation is the mother of intention. Maybe it was because her body still had a soul, or maybe it was because I was running Scythe 2.0, but no matter why, it worked.
The last thing I saw was Dante standing there, one hand raised toward me. I could see right through his flesh to his skeleton beneath. For once he looked like a Grim Reaper and not like those late-night TV ads for hooded blankets.
Chapter 16
Putting the “Pun” in “Punishment”
“HOLY SHIT!” MADDY yelled, filling Schotz’s office with foul-smelling blue smoke. I choked and waved it away. Seems all the cool kids were choking these days. Then I recalled I didn’t actually need to breathe. I’d fallen back on bad habits after my brief stint in Theresa’s body.
“Please control your Reapee, Kirsty,” Judge Julius ordered. “We’re trying to have a meeting here. Now go wait outside.”
“No, I need to explain. It’s that—You need—Dante, he—”
Where to start? What’s the most efficient way to explain what happened without getting Dante and me into trouble but still gaining sympathy so they’d help us? My PR skills had grown rusty since my own fateful reapage.
Colin Schotz—the sergeant, not the kindly professor—studied Maddy, who was calmly surveying the office, once again her body telegraphing her intention to make a break for it.
“My, Conrad, how you’ve changed,” Schotz observed, dry as dust.
“No, please, sir. Sirs. We’ve gotta save Dante. He’s fading fast. I don’t know how much longer he can hold on. What do I do?” A tear rolled down my cheek and I held out my free hand in supplication. My other hand kept its death grip on Maddy’s arm. I’d had quite enough of escaped souls for one afterlifetime, thank you kindly.
The sergeant glanced at his death watch. “Oh, skeg. You have been gone way too long. Monroe! You still here?” he yelled.
The redheaded Reaper who’d brought the wrong (but I’m not bitter) stapler to my appeal poked his head in the door. “You howled, sir?”
“Leave those forms you’re working on and take this soul to Hell’s Cells with you. We’ll get that story later.” He turned back to the judge. “Julius, we’re gonna hafta continue this some other time. Kirsty here apologizes. Doncha, Kirsty?”
I nodded, given that it was far from being a question.
“Oh, but I wouldn’t miss this for the Coil.” Julius rose, activating his gavel. He’d used it to teleport the day of my appeal. I’ll bet Judge Wilson would die of envy—or the deadly sin of her choice—if she knew about that gavel.
I released Maddy into Monroe’s custody. She immediately began making eyes at the attractive Reaper and bragging about how many people she’d strangled. She seemed to think people in Hell were impressed by violent murders. Why would she think that?