Page 11 of Death Wish

My stomach sank with a heavy sense of hopelessness. The only thing I really knew about myself was my name, and now it was possible I didn’t even have that.

Kay pocketed the papers and offered me a reassuring smile. “I’ll expand our search to other countries. That may be all we need. Or, better yet, I’ll see if Laurence can do a location spell of some kind.”

Laurence was Kay’s steady boyfriend for two years now. He was a sorcerer but was listed as a weaker one, a level one. From what I’d observed, he could do a few spells, minor things only, but he was still learning.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I trusted him with performing any magic, especially a location spell, successfully.

“Don’t you need a personal object from the person to find their location? That won’t work,” I said. “I have nothing on this plane.”

“Maybe your presence there will be enough. I can even channel you if that helps.” Her brown eyes shined with sincerity. Offering to channel a spirit was big for her to offer. From what she’d explained, she’d only done it once when she was younger, and it had gone horribly wrong then. She hadn’t gone too far into detail, but because of the terrifying experience, she had been too scared to try it again.

If she was willing to channel again to help me, it meant a lot.

“I’ll ask him tonight,” she said. “There may be something more we can do.”

She was trying her best to help, but I needed to be realistic. Even if we could swing a location spell without a personal object, I doubted Laurence would be a strong enough sorcerer to complete it properly. I wasn’t going to tell Kay that, though. I didn’t want to be mean. I liked Laurence. He made her happy, and he seemed to genuinely care for her. They were even talking about possibly getting married soon.

“Do you know if you were a supernatural?” she asked. “What gifts you had? That may help, too.”

“I have no idea.” I assumed I was a supernatural of some kind, since I lived in the dimension for supernatural souls, but I had yet to see any powers hinting to what race I was. Sometimes I wondered if Azrael had put my apartment in the wrong afterlife and I was actually human. There was no way for me to know for sure, not unless I shifted into something with fur or said a successful spell at random. And none of that had happened in a year.

Supernatural origin fell under “information I wasn’t allowed to know about my life” with the mind wipe. Believe me. I’d asked.

“We’ll figure it out,” Kay insisted. “I’ll keep looking.”

Silence followed, and sadness crept in. I really didn’t think finding out who I was while alive would be this hard. One time I had even tried plugging in my name in the deceased search, like I had with Victor, only to come up empty. I couldn’t help but feel like I was wasting my time and Kay’s by making her do this for me. Maybe I would never know who I really was.

“So,” she started, her tone lightening, “you look like you had a rough night, too. What’s going on in the land of the dead?”

I blew hair out of my eyes. It’s not that I thought Kay would understand exactly what I was going through. I wouldn’t expect her to. She was not part of my world. But if anyone was going to take the time to listen to my concerns and try to empathize with me, it was her, and I appreciated that more than anything. Being surrounded by dead folks daily made Kay’s humanity refreshing. It was because of those things that I wanted to tell her everything. About my assignment and Tristen, about Azrael’s threat and Simon. Most of all, I wanted to ask her what I should do now.

But even if I tried telling her, more than likely, I would be censored. There was only so much information we were allowed to share with the living about the afterlife. Like most things, I had found that out the hard way.

“I’ve had better nights, yes,” I settled with instead.

She gave me a look that told me to go on.

I sighed and tugged at my leather gloves. “I got in trouble again at…work.”

Kay didn’t know what I was exactly, but she did know I was a spirit and could help others cross back over into the afterlife. The specifics were fuzzy because of the restrictions. Once, she’d asked if I was an angel, which had sent me into hysterics. She couldn’t be more wrong. There was nothing angelic about me.

Nope, no halo here.

“Because of my mistakes, I got a coworker in trouble.” Was that vague enough? Kay didn’t look confused, so I went on. “If I mess up one more time, he will be reloosed.”

I hesitated, hearing the strange distortion to the last word. I had been censored.

Kay’s brows knitted together in confusion.

“Really?” I threw my hands in the air and glanced around the room. “Reloosed? I can’t even say reloosed?”

The censor skewed the word every time I said it, and I cursed. Apparently, Released was revealing too much information.

I shook my head. “Never mind. It’s not that important.” Just freaking annoying.

Kay smiled. “I’m guessing that whatever that is, it isn’t good?”

I nodded.

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