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Ashen squeezes my wrist. "Lu."
What, I mouth as I look up with a question crinkling my forehead.
"I meant what I said. You will be safe. Just stay with me. Do not stray out on your own."
I have major doubts about that being safe shit, all things considered. But I do my best to suck it up. I realize that if I freak out too much, that will probably look a little suspicious. Judging by the Reaper's face, that ship has long sailed.
I give a nod. The Reaper gives me one in reply. We walk through the hall, past a row of cauldrons. I'm kind of regretting my earlier freak-out with the Fire Corridor of Terror, because I don't know which one would take us home.
We arrive at a tall set of mahogany doors inlaid with black glass. Ashen pushes one open for me. We step outside, standing motionless at the top of a wide set of stairs leading to a short pathway to a road.
For a moment, I'm unable to breathe. I slowly draw my pen across the paper, not even looking down at what I'm writing. I show it to the Reaper. It says:
WHAT THE FUCK.
"Yeah. Like I said, it doesn't get any better when you leave the building," the Reaper says.
The light from the veiled sky is barely more than twilight. The shadows around us seem too dark and pervasive. The pathway to the road is lit with cast iron gas lamps much like the ones outside the Reaper's country estate. They flow at regular intervals down the road itself, disappearing into the fog that blankets us. It's so thick that I can't see far past the black surface of the road ahead, which honestly is probably a good thing. Because this place is fuuuuuuuuuucked.
An old-timey black carriage is lumbering down the road in front of us. Its curtains are drawn. We can't see who is inside. There's no carriage master to steer it, but that doesn't seem to matter. It clearly knows where it's going. There are chains leading from the seat where the driver should be to the iron yokes clamped around the necks of six souls.
Threadbare, colorless clothes float on their thin and featureless bodies. They walk in bare feet. They're expressionless aside from the burden of pulling the weight of the carriage with their throats. They look straight ahead, focused on the fog before them and some destination that's probably worse than my nightmares can imagine. They seem like something between a ghost and a person. Something transparent, yet solid. Something spectral, yet real.
We watch the carriage pass into the fog as I slowly raise my note again in front of the Reaper's face.
WHAT THE FUCK.
"They are souls."
WHAT THE FUCK.
"Reaped souls."
WHAT THE FUCK.
"What did you think happened to reaped souls?"
I glare up at the Reaper with a look that says obviously not that. I mean, come on, how was I supposed to guess that was what happened? I thought reaping was synonymous with death. Nonexistence. Nothingness. Apparently, I was wrong. Very wrong.
We watch the fog consume the coach, listening as the throughbrace leather straps squeak under the weight of the carriage. As the sound fades away into the distance, a black snout appears in the fog, followed by a set of amber eyes and tall, attentive ears. A black jackal stalks out of the mist, trotting down the middle of the road in the opposite direction of the coach. Its shoulder is nearly my height. It turns its head in our direction and sniffs the air, homing its gaze on me without breaking its stride. It disappears into the fog like a lethal shadow.
I hold my note up. This time I hit Ashen in the face with it.
WHAT THE FUCK.
"That's Urtur, our resident jackal."
I move to slap him again, but Ashen catches my journal and closes it before handing it back to me.
"Let's just assume you'll be what the fucking for the next while, shall we?"
I look up and try to give Ashen my fiercest glare, but there's too much what the fuck still rolling around in my head and it ends up more like a grimace. Ashen gives me a dark look, one that says he's forgotten somewhere along the course of his immortal life just how messed up this all is. Maybe he never knew in the first place. Maybe he was born and raised taking ghost carriages and playing with giant jackals. Who knows. I've never really thought about how Reapers are made. Regardless, I can tell he's looking at it through my eyes, and what he sees looks batshit crazy.
"Come on," he says. I feel the pressure of Ashen's hand on my back as we start to walk. The warmth seeps through my shirt and meets my cool skin. The wings of my vertebrae feel like tuning forks, humming beneath his touch.
We descend the stairs and I look behind us, twisting toward Ashen to glance up at the facade of the building over my shoulder. URBIGU hangs in gold letters near the roof, the face of a jackal in gold above the door. I turn back toward the road again, looking up at Ashen as I do. With his hand on my back and his body close to mine, he feels like the only reassuring thing about this place. It's in the details that are becoming familiar. The way his dark hair falls over his brow as he looks down at me. The rich brown hues of his eyes that seem to warm when his deeply buried feelings crawl close to the surface of his stoic facade.
I look back toward the path as we reach the bottom of the stairs. Though I try to keep my eyes on anything neutral, like the fog or the black surface of the road, my thoughts are consumed by the souls pulling the carriage. Once witches, or werewolves, or vampires like me. Vampires that once sang about the sea. Werewolves that once hunted in a pack, wild in the woods. Witches that cast spells to heal the wounded, like Ediye did for me. Maybe some were my enemies. Maybe some were friends. Maybe they committed crimes worthy of reaping, maybe they didn't. But I don't feel like this is what they deserve.
I try not to let my thoughts run further, to my sisters, or Vlad, or any others I've known and lost over the mille
So, I guess it's for the best that I never fixed my rabid trash panda makeup situation, because tears start to gather along the edges of my eyes as we walk. I clutch the notebook and pen to my chest to hide the effort it takes to steady my breath. I try to focus on the cadence of my steps along the road. I turn my head so Ashen won't see the futile struggle to keep a tear from falling.
We don't break stride as Ashen's hand sweeps up my back to rest on the crest of bone where my neck meets my shoulders. His palm warms my bare skin. I swallow a thick and painful knot in my throat as I open my journal to a fresh page.
I'm fine, I write, which is a total lie. I show it to Ashen without looking at him.
"I know," he says, but he doesn't withdraw his touch.
I'm not crying.
"Okay."
I hear the wheels and leather straps of another coach in the distance along a side road in the fog. My muscles tense and I wipe one of my eyes with the knuckles of my clenched fist.