Page 49 of The Reluctant Reaper
“Secret stash, Gray.”
“It’s not my fault you’re a shitty hostess! And for the record, my stance on this is the same as it was two years ago: I regret nothing. So are you thinking conspiracy or attempted murder or what?”
“It’s got to be the first, because the second doesn’t make sense. No one in their right mind would want to kill Death, because no one in their right mind would want the job, or to live in a world of eight billion people who can’t die.”
“Well, no.”
“What?”
Gray spread his hands and shrugged. “Youdon’t want to get rid of Death.Youdon’t want the job. But there are 7,999,999,999 other people on the planet who might not share your opinion. And who might want a world where their loved ones can’t die.”
“Most of whom have absolutely no power over Death. Wanting a world where loved ones can’t die is just a motive. It’s not power. I know I’m biased, but, again: no one in their right mind. Which narrows the suspects down to people whoaren’tin their right mind. And in Minot, that’s about six thousand suspects. Nine thousand if it’s a long winter.”
“Can we circle back? Are you saying that’s how it works? If there’s no Death, there’s no... death?”
Amara waved away the concept. “It’s moot. Death has been with humanity since before the caves. His avatar might change, but Death is always, always a force.”
“So with your dad off his feet, are you the avatar in question?”
Well?
Are you?
Amara heard a roaring in her head and doubted it was the underground spring.
“Okay, I’m assuming by that long silence that you are, in fact, Death’s avatar-in-waiting, since your dad’s the current avatar... is it because you’re an only child? Which is weird, by the way. Your folks have been together for centuries but only had one kid?”
“I had siblings,” she replied shortly. “They all died before I was born.”
When he was quiet for too long, she took his hand. “Now who’s responsible for a long silence?”
“You had sibs and never told me?”
Amara shrugged, and ignored the pang Gray’s wounded expression brought.
“Are you telling me that all of Death’s avatars-in-waiting have died except for you?”
“Yes.”
“And that didn’t seem suspicious to you?” Gray asked in full-on skeptic mode. “Any of you?”
“Not really. Being an avatar-in-waiting isn’t the same as enjoying the protections of being Death. One of my brothers died of an infection three hundred years before penicillin was invented. My sister got caught in a blizzard and froze to death. Like that.”
“Jeez. I’m sorry, that sucks. But it also makes sense, I think. Death’s avatar has to be tough. I guess the thinking is, if you can die of exposure, maybe you wouldn’t have made a good Death? This isn’t my area.”
“No, it is not.”
“Give me a break, I was a computer science major.” Gray drummed his fingers on his knee in a rapid tattoo because she’d long since destroyed his fidget spinners. “I’ll bet they had coming-of-age stuff, too, back then. Your folks and their... tribe, I guess?”
“Tribe?”
“And not cool ones, like bat mitzvahs. Terrible ones, like having to kill a huge wolf like Gerard Butler did in300. That’s probably why your folks liked keeping you around. They must have been worried when you moved out.”
“Yes, my other siblings stayed close. I never knew how they could stand it. One of my brothers died when he was only sixty. Henevermoved out.” Amara paused as the implications of Gray’s observation penetrated. “This will sound awful?—”
“Noooooo.”
“—but I never thought about it like that. I saw my folks as anchors and they saw themselves as life jackets. Ugh. Not my best analogy.”
