For the Birds Read online

  “I bet. How was your vacation in hell?”

  “Lovely. Thanks for asking.” I wasn’t giving in today.

  “Heard you saved the day and found everyone’s lost treasures.”

  “I had a good team.”

  Kate frowned. I think she had expected me to toot my horn and take all the credit. She fingered the scarf around her neck and finally pulled it off and stuffed it in her pocket.

  “I still don’t think you deserve to be captain of this unit,” she said.

  “I think you’ve made that plenty clear, but let me make something clear too. I didn’t apply for this job. I applied to join this unit, but only because an acquaintance on the council was pushing me to. This isn’t my idea of fun, but I’m doing the best that I can. I haven’t let the authority go to my head, and I think I’ve been pretty fair about dividing the harvests, except for the days that you taunt me, of course.”

  Kate huffed, but it was less hateful than I was used to. “I guess I can agree with that much.”

  About then, the rest of the team marched up the ramp and came onboard. The hounds trampled over each other to greet me, rubbing their muzzles sloppily under my hands.

  “Morning, boss lady,” Kevin said.

  Josie gave me a smile and lightly nudged my shoulder with hers. “Feeling nice and rested?”

  “Yeah, I am,” I answered, letting my mind skip over the gruesome scene with Grim and Loki and settle on the days I’d spent with Bub instead.

  “Good morning.” Arden loomed behind the rest of the team, like usual, but he attempted a smile. “Congratulations on successfully thwarting the rebels.”

  “Yeah, thanks. We didn’t do too bad.”

  Kevin’s brow furrowed. “Didn’t do too bad? I was awesome.”

  “Yes, you were, Rambo,” I laughed.

  Josie slugged Kevin’s arm. “You were awesome alright. You were almost awesomely dead, too. Lucky you had me watching your reckless ass.”

  “So you admit it! You do watch my ass,” he said, rubbing his arm with a grin.

  Alex was being especially quiet. Kate sulkily went to stand by her, even though she was obviously still angry about something.

  I passed out the harvest dockets, being extra generous and taking most of the crap jobs. I’d been out of the field for a few days, so I felt obligated. Everything felt peacefully mundane, and I could only hope it would stay that way, at least for a few hours.

  I sent Kevin off with a harvest list of his own for a change. If he could handle jumping into a pit full of demons, surely he could handle a few light harvest sites on his own.

  Josie stayed behind, waiting for everyone to coin off before she approached me. “Did you know that you made the news again?”

  I groaned. “What are they saying now?”

  She grinned and handed me the latest copy of Limbo Weekly. “Nothing so terrible, since it’s a more reputable publication. People only buy Limbo’s Laundry for the pictures anyway.”

  Atropos was on the cover of the magazine, sitting on the edge of her desk with her legs crossed and her shears in hand. She looked far saner than she had the last time I had seen her. The headline read “The Inside Scoop on the Fates, Their Factory, and Who Really Took Atropos’ Shears.”

  I huffed. “That hardly counts as making the news.”

  “Page twenty-two,” Josie said.

  I flipped to the article and skimmed through it, stopping on the section Josie was obviously talking about. It was a question and answer interview between Atropos and Downy Dale, a nephilim journalist.

  DD: Other reports have claimed that reaper Lana Harvey, the new captain of the Posy Unit, was responsible for the theft of your shears, but now it appears that rebel spies were behind the heist all along. Is that correct?

  A: Yes. The reaper visited our factory on the same day that the shears went missing, so you can see how we might have come to that conclusion.

  DD: That’s pretty rare for a reaper to visit your factory. What was she doing there?

  A: She had accompanied Council Lady Meng Po, who had requested a meeting to go over our soul purification methods.

  DD: I’ve heard Meng’s teas are pretty potent. I imagine they’ll be a great addition to the reinsertion process.

  A: Oh, well, we’re still considering adding her teas. We have so many steps already. I really don’t see how our process could be improved.

  DD: I see. Now, the word on the street is that it was that very same reaper who accompanied Lady Meng, who led the mission into enemy territory to retrieve the souls that were taken from your factory. Can you confirm that for us?

  A: Yes, I suppose it was the same reaper.

  DD: That seems rather ironic, wouldn’t you say? To have the same reaper you accused of theft, recover stolen property? Have you issued any special reward as of yet?

  A: Well, no. Not yet, I mean. Getting the factory back in working order has been our top priority.

  DD: Of course. I’m sure you’ll be able to come with something suitable to show your gratitude in time. Since she’s friendly with Lady Meng, perhaps it will be enough reward to simply reconsider her teas. With a gift like that, everyone wins.

  A: You may be right.

  I looked up at Josie. “I’m sending Downy Dale a gift basket tomorrow.”

  “I think he has the hots for you,” she said, taking the magazine back with a grin. “You never did tell me why you went to the factory with Meng.”

  “I owed her a favor for patching me up so well last spring.” I shrugged. “That scar on my neck could have been a lot worse.”

  Josie narrowed her eyes at me, still smiling. “How about that soul that was missing from our harvest lot last Friday? What happened to her?”

  “Grief, woman. I tell you a couple of my secrets, and now you wanna know them all. I swear.”

  “Like a sailor sometimes,” she laughed and ran a hand over her cropped locks. “On second thought, I don’t really want to know. I’m still trying to forget the ones you told me Sunday night.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I sighed.

  “Hey, how ‘bout a poker game Friday night?” Josie raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, that sounds nice.”

  It felt good having a normal conversation with her. It felt even better knowing that she was still my friend after I had let all of my skeletons come spilling out of the closet to dance the hokey pokey around her. It was nice being able to really trust her again. I knew the absence of that trust had been entirely my own doing, but it still felt justified.

  Laying my burdens on another wasn’t just a matter of trust. There was a certain measure of risk and responsibility that came with knowing my secrets. Josie seemed up to the challenge, and I was ready to be thankful for a change instead of paranoid.

  Chapter 28

  “May the forces of evil become confused

  on the way to your house.”

  -George Carlin

  The day’s harvests finished up at a fairly reasonable time, considering that we were backlogged due to Monday’s adventure and my short vacation. Paul Brom’s unit had picked up a little of our slack. After he heard about us going up against the rebels, he was more than happy to lend a hand. I think he was also feeling like evening the scales after we had helped him out.

  Kevin and Josie took Coreen with them to deliver the souls, but Saul had insisted on staying close to me. He was the needier of the hellhounds, and he didn’t like being away from me for so long. We left the harbor and took a long walk around the city, stopping off at the park to wander around the rose hedges and the memorial statues of the reapers I had named him and Coreen after.

  I hadn’t seen Winston since I’d dropped off the potential throne replacement, and I didn’t have the means to, now that my coin was gone. I had been too distracted by the mess Grim was making of Loki to even bother wondering what the trickster had done with the coin. It wasn’t like I could just ask Grim if he had come across it.

  Saul sni
ffed a long circle around the clearing while I stood between the two bronze memorials. As dusk crept up on us, a sensor clicked on, and the light tucked inside the erected hand of Coreen’s statue blinked to life. It represented the concentrated mirrors she had used when demons tried to breach my ship and claim the soul we were transporting to Duat. The plaque at the foot of the memorial dubbed the battle “Coreen’s Last Stand.”

  I was somewhat surprised that Grim hadn’t ordered the sculptor to place Saul and Coreen in the traditional reaper robes he was so insistent that we wear while harvesting, but I guess he decided that the least he could do was allow them some sliver of individuality, now that they were gone. Besides, Saul had looked ridiculous wearing his robe and cowboy hat at the same time. When I served my apprenticeship under him, I always wondered if the absurdness of it didn’t shock most souls in to behaving.

  I smiled sadly at the image of my dead mentor. “Boy, I sure could use your advice right about now,” I sighed.

  The lampposts scattered around the park buzzed and flickered on. It was starting to get darker earlier in the evening, and the trees in the park were dotted with yellow and red leaves. The seasons in Limbo City were pretty mild, but they still followed the typical pattern of the human realm, since Grim and the Fates had decided that would make the factory souls feel more at home. I shivered against the early bite of autumn.

  My trusty hound nudged my leg with a whimper. I lazily scratched behind his ears, and we turned around to head home.

  Just then, a portal decided to open behind me and suck me through backwards. I landed flat on my ass in Winston’s front yard. Saul landed on top of me, knocking the air out of my lungs in a single bound.

  “Lana!” Winston ran over to help me up. “God, I’ve been waiting for you to visit the memorial for days,” he said, dusting off the sleeves of my robe as he chattered away. “I wanted to go find you, but it’s just been too risky with the guard swarming the city and the rebels having Hades’ helm. When Maalik showed up and told me that your coin had been stolen by Loki, I destroyed it.”

  “Destroyed it?” I asked, still trying to find my equilibrium.

  “Yeah,” Winston said, throwing his hands in the air. “Poof! It’s gone. Just like that. I can’t have evil minions showing up on my doorstep, now can I?”

  “Sure. Right. Why didn’t you tell me that Maalik’s been visiting you?”

  Winston frowned at me. “What business is it of yours who I choose to visit with?”

  I felt my face flush. “It’s not. I just don’t see why you had to hide it.”

  “Look, Lana. I’m stuck here on a very secluded little knoll all by my lonesome. You’re great and all, but do you really think your visits are enough to pacify me? There aren’t many people I can trust, and of the few that I can, there aren’t many I can tolerate. You and Maalik happen to be two of them. I know you two had a falling out, so what good would it have done to tell you that I visit with him too?”

  I nodded. “Okay. Point taken.”

  “You want to come inside?” Winston asked, softening his tone.

  “Sure.”

  We crossed over the lawn, leaving Saul outside to sniff out the realm. He had crossed over with me a few times before, but he always liked to explore the tiny domain anew when we visited.

  “I wanted to thank you,” I said as we stepped inside the little cottage, “for caving in that mountain and saving our asses.”

  Winston looked back at me with a grimace. “Yeah, about that…”

  Egyptian belly dance music grew louder as we rounded the corner and walked into the open great room of the house. Decorated rugs and pillows were piled about. Beaded curtains hung from the doorways and thick incense curled through the air.

  “Winston?” I glared at him.

  He put his hands up. “I couldn’t do it, Lana. But you all were going to die if I didn’t do something. So, uh, so I put her on the throne.” He smiled apologetically.

  “You did what?” I shouted over the music.

  “I had to,” he shouted back.

  “How?”

  Winston kicked at a pillow on the floor and waved his hands through the smoky air. “It was easy. I had Horus talk Meng into giving him some of her special tea. I told him I wanted to hang onto it for safekeeping. You know, just in case we found a replacement.”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “No one does. Well, except for you.” He shrugged.

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  This was a catastrophe. Grim’s vacant, soulless eyes came to mind, right before he stabbed Loki posing in my skin. It didn’t seem like such a stretch anymore. If Grim found out that I had brought Winston a replacement and that he had gone ahead and switched places with her, he was going to kill me dead.

  A young, Egyptian girl trotted out of the kitchen and plopped down on the sofa with a plastic bottle of soda. She threw her skinny legs up on the coffee table and happily waved to us. Winston gave her a big, toothy smile and waved back.

  “I’m going to be sick,” I said.

  “It’s alright. She’s really great. You did good finding her.”

  “Who is she anyway?”

  “Her Egyptian name was Amunet. She was the daughter of some ancient tribal king who ruled before Egypt was united. The name she had in her last life was Naledi.”

  The look on Winston’s face when he watched her was curious. It took me a moment to see it for what it was. Love. Winston was in love with the new soul.

  “I am so very screwed,” I said.

  Winston put a hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me. “It’s okay. We don’t have to tell Grim yet. I’ll stay until the time is right. I can help her adjust and keep her company for now. I can hide her when Grim stops by and pretend that I’m still on the throne. He won’t even know the difference. Horus isn’t expecting me to leave with him for another ninety-nine years anyway.”

  Ninety-nine years. If I was lucky, I might live that long. So much for that retirement plan.

  Chapter 29

  “The best way to destroy an enemy

  is to make him a friend.”

  -Abraham Lincoln

  Liberty Park was full of humans on Friday. They ran and played and fished as if they were hanging onto summer for dear life. It was a beautiful afternoon in this particular part of the mortal realm, even though it was early evening in Limbo City. I had one harvest site left to take care of yet, but it was three states over.

  I sat at a picnic table near an arched concrete bridge that a few people were fishing off of. None of them could see me, of course, so I had to overlook little things like the kid picking his nose and the old man cursing the squirrels for throwing nuts at him. For the most part, it was an enjoyable view.

  Horus had finally learned his lesson and decided to schedule an appointment with me, instead of doing the old surprise meeting in a dark alley. Those rarely went well for him. He was running late, but I had shown up ten minutes early. Becoming captain had done wonders for my punctuality—not that Grim appreciated the effort.

  “Captain Harvey.” Horus rounded the table and gave me an exaggerated bow before taking the opposite bench. He was in a dark blue business suit and shiny brown loafers, and his hair was slicked back in a low ponytail. “How goes the quest?”

  “Surprisingly well,” I answered.

  That got his attention.

  “Really? That’s terrific.” His grin stretched to consume his face. “I take it my little prank call to the factory had something to do with your success?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Maybe.” Leave it to him to try and take credit for my hard work.

  “No need to thank me. Your dedication to the survival of Eternity is reward enough.” Horus beamed, until I staked him with a glare. He had a lot of nerve praising me for a job he was blackmailing me to do. He cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “So, who are the candidates so far?”

  “Don’t worry about it. All you need to know is that we’re c
overed when the time comes for you to leave with Tut.”

  Horus’s smile plummeted, and a scowl quickly drew the lines of his face into a darker light. “Playing Grim’s little game of secrets, are we?”

  “Unless you have plans of overthrowing him, I don’t see why you’re so concerned,” I said, meeting his sour expression with one of my own.

  “You forget how well I’ve kept your secrets, reaper.”

  “Oh, please. You really think you have enough ground to stand on to see my head on a pike?”

  Horus blinked at me. “If you’re not afraid of being exposed and executed, then why are you tracking down replacement souls?”

  “Because I like Eternity how it is,” I sighed. “I don’t want to see it ruled by the rebels, and I don’t want to see war break out. Also, I like Winston.”

  “Tut,” he corrected me.

  “Whatever. I’m doing this for him. Not you.”

  Horus nodded. “I’m alright with that. I like that.”

  Birds chirped above us. We sat in silence awhile, enjoying the sun and watching the children at play.

  Horus knocked his knuckles against the picnic table. “Does this mean that I don’t have to pay you anymore?”

  I snickered. “Council not paying you enough?”

  “No, I’m just cheap like that.”

  I didn’t really like it when Horus tried to be funny or nice. It was confusing and annoying. I had to keep reminding myself that he was blackmailing me, not asking for a friendly favor. I would have liked to say that I would have still helped him out if he had approached me differently, but I’m not entirely sure I would have. There was a lot to lose, and my head was at the top of the list.

  Horus gave me a warm smile, but I refused to return it. I looked down at my hands instead. “I’m going to need your help in a big way when it comes time to tell Grim. Don’t throw me to the wolves, and we’ll call it even.”