Grim and Bear It

Rule #52: A reaper who has disobeyed more than one rule may be subject to imprisonment, pending a formal investigation. - The Reaper Code of Ethics, official handbook. Poppy

If I had hair, I'd be pulling it out right now. The cell I'd been detained in prevented me from shifting into my human form. I had been stripped of my cloak, tagged with a arcade that would alert anyone with a scanner of my name, crimes, and arrest record, and was now a bare skeleton standing in an empty room that was about the size of a coffin. I couldn't stretch out fully in any direction. Worse yet, they had taken my sword and violin.

I wrapped my arms around myself, leaning my head against the back wall. It would've been worth it if I had found answers, if I had discovered a way to warn Jake, if I knew exactly how much time he had left. Instead, I'd swung and missed too early, and now I was benched before the final inning. I was so upset, I was using sports references. Daddy would've been so proud-for the sports references, not the whole stealing Dad's ID and ensuing subterfuge.

A tap on the door startled me and I straightened. There was the sound of scraping, then the door unlocked on a loud buzz. It slid open and my sister stood on the other side.

"Move!" she whispered. "Now! We don't have much time."

I was so used to following Sylvia's orders that I didn't stop to think about the consequences. I just grabbed her outstretched hand and let her pull me around the corner. I saw the keypad lock pried open, a cut wire hanging out. "You hot-wired the door?" I whispered.

"Shush." She pulled off her purple cloak, leaving an identical one underneath. She handed me the top one.

I slipped into it, pulling the hood up. I looked like more of a visitor at first glance now that my skeleton wasn't hanging out. "Now what?"

She pointed at the door marked COUNSEL and took a step toward it.

I grabbed her arm and yanked her back. "Are you kidding me?!"

She rolled her eyes. "No. The Counsel is in session. We can sneak through the crowd."

I shook my head. "That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."

Her hands gripped my arms. "They're going to banish you." She talked over my gasp. "They're counting stealing Dad's cloak and his ID as two separate charges, plus damaging your manifest, and they're counting each swipe of the card. Plus the suspension on top of it."

"How many charges?" "Fourteen."

I swayed on my feet. Two meant suspension. Five meant relocation to maintaining the river duty, which was strenuous and tedious. But ten or more? That meant Isle of Exile. How could I be hit with fourteen charges?

"They know you went through the lists. At Sunday dinner," she said, as if reading my mind.

"How?" I didn't even bother denying it.

Her hands squeezed. "Because I reported it."

I shoved her away and took a step back. "You what?"

She tried to grab for me again, but I darted out of her grasp. "I was angry that you were being so stupid! I just wanted to teach you a lesson. I didn't realize"

"That what? You'd get me exiled?" Betrayal burned a hole through my chest. If she hadn't reported the lists, I wouldn't be in danger of banishment. I ignored the voice in my head that told me it was my own fault for breaking basically every single code I could. "You're my sister. You're supposed to be on my side."

She covered my mouth with her hand and pulled me tight against the wall. I was pissed at her, but I wasn't stupid. We were perfectly still as I strained to hear voices emanating from further down the hall. It would only take a guard three seconds to realize I was no longer in my assigned room.

Sylvia cautiously removed her hand from over my mouth and whispered. "I'm sorry, I love you, argue with me after I get us out of here." She tugged me behind her.

If I'd had a heart, it would have been beating uncontrollably. Instead, it was as if a spring had taken its place, spiraling tighter and tighter. I worried that my skeleton might burst into shards at any moment.

We stayed low to the ground, close to the cell doors but below the windows so the other inmates couldn't easily spot us. We were fourteen feet away from the door when a guard rounded the corner and spotted us, blowing a warning whistle. Well, shit.

Sylvia grabbed my hand, ran for the door, and tore off the key-code panel. She sliced the two wires in a matter of seconds. The door unlocked and we were through before the guard had caught up with us. I gripped the handle and held the door shut as she repeated the process on the other side with the panel. This time she tied two wires together, then made a lock slide into place.

"Should I ask why you know how to do that?" I asked.

"Max." She looked around us, our antics not yet noticed in the bustling hallway, indicating a session had just let out. "Move."

We walked into the crowd as the alarm sounded that a prisoner was missing. There were cloaks of every color here, but there were still only about ten purple ones. They were going to catch us quickly if we didn't move fast. Sylvia pulled us into an alcove that had a fake palm tree. She moved the pot away from the corner to reveal two tightly folded blue cloaks. I gaped at her.

She fit the blue one over her purple and I followed. I practically swam in mine, the sleeves double the length of my arms. If someone looked too closely, they'd know this was something borrowed. We didn't have time to worry about it. "Move," she mouthed.

Despite the urge to run as fast as I could, I focused on keeping a steady pace as guards filled the hallway. "Get to your assigned spaces immediately!" a guard shouted. The hallway was emptying, people veering off into offices and into the main Counsel room. "Do we have a plan?" I whispered, looping my arm through Sylvia's. "Working on it."

I surreptitiously glanced around and then leaned my head closer. "It appears we only have two options. Risk seeing Dad or run."

Another guard narrowed their eyes at us as we passed, then fell into step a few feet behind us. "Dad will lose his spot on the Counsel if we get caught," she breathed. I swallowed hard, a human reflex. I couldn't do that to Dad. He loved his job. I couldn't embarrass him. "Then I guess we're running. Straight through the exit door?" Sylvia nodded. "Three...two...one..."

We took off at a dead run. My blue cloak was hiked up to my ankles, but I still wasn't moving fast enough. The guard behind us shouted and heavy footfalls were hot on our heels. I yanked off the blue fabric and tossed it behind me, nearly tripping the guard.

It wasn't enough. We needed a miracle to get us out of here.

"Find Anya!" Sylvia ordered, before yanking off both of her cloaks. "Have you been waiting for me this whole time?" she taunted, waving her arms and then rushing at the growing group of guards.

I wanted to scream, to turn around and grab her, but she had created just enough of a distraction to give me the upper hand. I wouldn't waste it. I pushed through the exit doors and made a hard left, hurrying into the foot traffic on the main road.

I slowed my pace, matching the speed of the reapers around me. The bell rang on top of the detention center and heads turned to look at the noise. "What's that mean?" someone next to me asked.

"I'm not sure," I lied. It was a primitive alert, rarely used. There wasn't a whole lot of serious crime and rule breaking in the afterlife. I, like always, was the exception.

"Dude, they're saying someone escaped lockup!" A reaper said a few rows behind me. "Boats aren't sailing in or out."

"Does that mean we get a shift off?" someone else asked.

"Risking thousands of souls for one reaper is a stupid idea, ethically speaking," a woman added.

That I agreed with. Allowing demons or other assorted monsters free access to human souls because they were after me—who had just been trying to look up a name on a computer-was a rude awakening about afterlife priorities. Maybe Sylvia could talk some sense into them.

As we approached the docks, the group turned in unison. The crowd morphed into a sort of line as guards asked each reaper to lower their hood. Shit. I had a skeleton with a arcade and a human face that was easily recognizable. I turned around and pretended to wave at someone further back in the line confusing a few people-then started shuffling back. "I'll come your way!" I called cheerfully to my fake friend.

When I was out of the line, I walked along the river's edge, pretending I was simply out for a stroll. I scanned the water, trying to figure out how I was supposed to find Anya when there were no boats going out. I was running out of time. A rock the size of my fist hit my shin and I gasped, jumping back. It hadn't hurt, but it had startled me. Another rock followed the trajectory of the first, and I dodged out of the way before inching toward the bank and peering over the large boulders that guarded the river's edge.

Anya looked up and waved for me to jump down. My shoulders sagged in relief. I looked around, then navigated my way over the rocks, making the six-foot drop to the scrap of sandy riverbank below. "Ready for Plan B?" she asked. "This is already Plan B? What was Plan A?"

"Plan A was to calmly and casually sail you to the human portal, shove you through, and hide you there until we got shit straightened out here." That was a good plan. "So what's Plan B?"

"Hope we can frantically speed sail you to the human portal, shove you through, and hide you there until we get shit straightened out here."

I opened my mouth to argue, but I had no alternative ideas. "How do we do that?" I managed. "They've stopped the boats."

"They've only stopped the boats they can see."

I stared at her. "And you've discovered a cloak of invisibility?"

She shot me a look, not appreciating my sarcasm. "No, we're taking a canoe. We just have to walk it out a ways first." She gestured to the shore behind her at the small, two-person boat that some reapers used for fishing. "How are we going to get down the river without someone seeing?"

"Hence the walk out."

I shook my head. "I'm not following."

"Underwater."

"The more you explain, the less I understand."

She huffed and pulled off her cloak, balling it up and shoving it behind a rock. "Cloak off." I replicated her movements, then met her at the boat. She shoved it out into the water, wading in up to her knees.

She flipped the boat over, so the bottom was facing up. "Now we just walk underwater for a bit. Watch out for the soul suckers. They like to chew on skeleton bones."

I shook my head. "Uh, I didn't finish my physics class in high school, but can confirm this is impossible."

She put her hand on her hip. "Do we really have time to stand here and discuss how the physics of the River Styx on this side of the divide, combined with intention, is different from the human world? Or do you want to get out of here before they find you and banish both of us?"

I ran into the water, splashing louder than was wise. "Let's move."

We walked until the water was up to our chins, then took our positions underneath the boat, hanging on to the sides. As Anya predicted, the boat followed us down as we continued to walk along the riverbed. My skeleton feet sank into the sand, nearly up to my ankle, as if it were trying to keep me from floating up.

It was unnerving, but the sand released me with every step. This close to the surface, the diffused ambient light allowed us to check for any creatures ready to latch on and not release. As we journeyed deeper and darker, we were relying on hope and luck.

A ghost mermaid pod swam by. Mermaids had been hunted to extinction on Earth and tended to stay far away from shore as a result. I was surprised they were hanging around the river's edge, although they may have just been doing a drive- by for the local gossip. They didn't bother the reapers, so the reapers didn't bother them. They were only a danger to souls that went for a swim.

The mermaids, like any soul-hunters, did much better near the human world portals, especially near the loading docks. At the beginning of the journey, souls would try anything to be reunited with their bodies, including jumping out and attempting to swim back to the human world. Wasn't a great idea. Without a reaper, souls couldn't break through the barrier back into the human world anyway, leaving them vulnerable.

Anya's steps slowed and stopped as we approached a drop off. It was as if someone used a ruler and drew a line bisecting the river. Two more steps and all remaining light dissolved into inky darkness. She turned toward me and released one side of the boat. She made a little hopping motion and pointed upward.

I nodded, understanding. She counted down with her fingers. Three...two...one. We both jumped while simultaneously doing our best to flip the boat over.

It would've worked perfectly if something hadn't grabbed my ankles and pulled me back down.