Page 1 of Death Wish

Do it. You have to.

I repeated the words to myself as I slid off one of my leather gloves. A man lay at my feet, clutching his chest and gasping in the middle of the dimly lit parking lot. His watery blue eyes bulged with panic as they fixed on me, and for a moment, I wondered if he could actually see me standing over him, about to end his life.

Scolding myself, I pushed away the irrational fear. Of course he couldn’t see me standing here. Reapers weren’t visible to the living. We came from a different plane, the other side of the veil. But still, even with that knowledge buzzing around in my head, my hand shook as I reached out to touch him.

Why was this so hard for me? After almost a year working for the Styx Corporation, I still struggled with this part. I had tried all the tricks Simon taught me during my training. Told myself I was relieving this man of his pain. Told myself it was his time to die and it had to be done. Told myself I couldn’t get emotionally involved. I had been given an assignment, and I had to carry it out.

Yet in the back of my mind was a nagging voice telling me that this man crumpled on the pavement, his newly bought groceries scattered about, was more than the picture, name, age, and basic biography on my tablet’s screen. Surely he had a family who would miss him. People he loved and who loved him. Did he really deserve to die now, by a heart attack, in an empty grocery store parking lot, alone? It just didn’t seem right.

One touch. That was all it took. I just had to touch him with my bare hand, and his life would be over. Just like that.

Hesitating, I glanced around. The man’s Honda was one of the only cars left in the parking lot. Jumping in and out of the living world and the afterlife made it hard to keep track of the time, but from the darkness already blanketing the sky and the lack of patrons at Super Mart, my guess was that it was almost closing time. Maybe eight thirty. Pretty late to be picking up groceries, but that wasn’t any of my business.

Looking at my tablet screen again, I skimmed over the man’s information. Tristen James Williams. Age forty-one. Level two sorcerer. On a measuring scale of one to three, he had reached only the middle skill grade of his power.

I stopped there, knowing that if I read his bio, I might find something to squelch the rest of my nerve, like if he had children or a wife waiting for him at home.

How did Simon and the other reapers do this?

As I looked down at Tristen J. Williams, the middle-aged man—maybe a father and husband—meant to have many more years to his life, now writhing in pain, on the verge of death, my chest clenched with sympathy for him.

He had chosen a spot for his Honda under one of those parking lot lights, and the old thing flickered, making an odd sizzling sound every time it turned back on. Even in the sputtering light, the purplish blue of his face was obvious. He let out a terrible-sounding half cough, half gag, and my heart sank.

He was suffering.

I had to do this. I was helping him in a way, wasn’t I?

Yeah, that’s right. I was helping him. I had to keep telling myself that.

I closed my eyes, reached out again, and pressed my fingers against Tristen’s neck. The warmth of his skin against my own was comforting but brief. In the next second, a familiar coolness crept in, as did a silence I knew all too well. No more frantic gasps for air. No more breathing at all.

Cracking an eye open, I saw his spectral form standing before me, confusion flitting across his face. Even though he was a spirit, he didn’t look much different than his profile’s picture or the dead man on the ground. Besides the slight opaqueness to his skin, the only differences were that he was suddenly clean shaven and his graying hair was combed away from his blue eyes. A neater, healthier-looking version of his living self.

His gaze darted over me, seeing me for the first time. “Who are you?” he asked, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. Then he looked at his body lying by his feet. He didn’t jump in horror, like I expected. He didn’t even appear surprised. “What’s going on?”

I tensed. Even after doing this hundreds of times, I was still terrible at this part. Was there really a “right” way to tell someone they were dead?

I hesitated a little too long before settling for the least jarring way I could think of.

“Uh, hi there. Mr. Williams, right? Tristen?” Awful. Just awful. Maybe I needed to ask Simon for a quick refresher in my training. Six months of it hadn’t been enough apparently.

Swallowing hard, I held out my hand for him to shake. “My name is Jade Blackwell, and I’m here to help you cross over. Because, well, you’re dead.” When Tristen only stared at my offered hand, I retracted it and quickly pulled on my glove again. “You died of a heart attack. I’m sorry. Really, I am, but I was sent here to—”

“I’m dead.” It was a statement more than anything else. But again, there was no shock or grief in his eyes. Only a harshness that took me by surprise, as if he didn’t believe I was telling him the truth.

Forget the fact that he was standing by his unmoving, unbreathing body.

“You are,” I replied. “Dead, that is.”

“Dead.”

“As a doornail.” I mentally slapped myself for that one, but he said nothing. “I’m sure this all must be strange to you,” I went on carefully. I didn’t look like the typical grim reaper seen in the movies. There was no ominous smoke behind me. I didn’t wear a black hooded cloak. No scythe or animated skeleton. Nope. Just an average-looking woman, in her late twenties, dressed for comfort in jeans and a tank, and who thoroughly sucked at formalities.

Just me.

After tucking the tablet in my back pocket, I retrieved a piece of chalk from the front one. I pasted on my best customer service smile, hoping I didn’t scare him. “But as I said before, I’m here to help you cross over.”

I walked to the end of the Honda and drew the circular symbol in chalk on the blacktop that opened the spirit door between worlds. As a reaper, chalk was my best friend. Sure, I could use any kind of drawing implement I wanted to draw the door, but chalk was easy. It never ran out like ink. It never needed a sharpener, and best of all, it washed away with the rain and could be erased easily, so no risk of humans accidentally tumbling into the afterlife during their daily stroll.

---