For the Birds

by Angela Roquet

  Josie’s suspicion didn’t wane. “Did you really just suggest that he take more classes at the academy?”

  Kevin snickered and reclined back in his barstool, kicking his bare feet up on the counter. “Next she’ll be telling us we need to synchronize our watches, like you do.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” She shoved his feet off the counter with a glare.

  Kevin laughed sheepishly and chugged down the rest of his coffee. “I’m off to the shower.” He gave Josie a quick peck on the cheek and hurried out of the kitchen.

  Josie watched him go, and then turned her gray, penetrating eyes on me. “Sample a few different territories, huh?”

  “Yeah, what’s the big deal?” I sat down on one of the dining room chairs and pulled my boots on.

  “I’ve known you for a few centuries now. So pardon me if I question your so-called authority.” She finished off her coffee and rinsed her mug.

  “See you on the ship,” I said, ignoring her unspoken questions as I slipped out the front door with the hounds.

  Since I was running pretty early, courtesy of the nightmares, I decided to walk to the harbor instead of using the travel booths. It was only three blocks, mostly up Market Street, where the market venders would be setting up for the weekend. Shopping is always a good pick-me-up.

  The streets of Limbo felt safer since Grim installed the travel booths, but it still annoyed a lot of the citizens who were avid worshippers of convenience. I probably would have been more annoyed too, if I hadn’t been one of the prime terrorist targets last spring. It was nice being able to come and go as I pleased, without having everyone breathing down my neck, reminding me to look both ways or to just play it safe and stay home. That had been Maalik’s catch phrase.

  I hadn’t seen much of Maalik over the summer. Grim kept the council busy, but Maalik seemed to really take the job to heart. It had been a big part of our undoing. He had managed to keep my secrets though, which I appreciated. Maalik knew about Khadija and Winston. He knew that I was made differently. He didn’t know that I had killed the goddess Wosyet or that I was doing an illegal side job for Horus. He had his suspicions, but like a bad girlfriend, I lied through my teeth to preserve those secrets. He had enough to hold over my head. I sometimes still wondered if the fact that I relieved his prophet’s wife from her centuries-long stint on the Throne of Eternity was the only reason he didn’t turn me over to the council as a breach of the peace treaty, demanding my head. He and Grim both gave me the feeling that they were afraid I might unveil the big secret of Eternity if they turned on me. If Grim ever decided that I was too big of a liability, I fully expected him to have me assassinated in my sleep.

  I brushed away all thoughts of secrets and betrayal as the market came into view. I passed a tent full of saints and a table of faerie cakes before I stopped at a booth selling Muslim hijabs. The silk scarves danced in the breeze, mingling with patchouli incense coming from a neighboring tent. It made me think of Khadija, and I wondered how she was faring in Firdaws Pardis, the Islamic paradise.

  Scarves had become a regular staple in my wardrobe after having my throat burned up by a fire demon. The scar was hardly noticeable anymore, but I still liked to wear a nice scarf every now and then. I picked out a pretty blue one and tied it around my neck before tossing the vendor a coin.

  The blue looked nice against my green blouse. Too bad I would have to put my black cowl over it all before harvesting any souls. Grim was a stickler about our traditional dress code. At least I would look good when I divvied up the harvests for the day. The hounds fell in close to me as we passed the guards at the entrance of the harbor. The two nephilim nodded at me. I recognized one of them as Abe, who had been assigned to me during the big terrorist scare. He recognized me too.

  “Morning, Captain Harvey,” he said, giving me the briefest of smiles.

  “Morning, Abe.”

  He seemed surprised that I remembered his name.

  The hounds took the lead once we were on the dock, playfully nudging each other closer to the edge, where the soul infused water slapped and sloshed, misting into the breeze over the harbor. Several reapers lingered near their ferries, sharing coffee or reading the Daily Reaper Report. A few looked up to frown at me as I passed by. I smiled at them anyway. I was used to being notoriously unpopular by now. It was a bit more than jealousy, I had to admit.

  I had not earned my position like the other specialty unit captains. I was too young. I didn’t have nearly enough experience, and I hadn’t taken nearly enough classes. I didn’t blame them for hating me. On top of my luxurious residence at Holly House and my devilishly delectable love interest, I was more often than not thought of as the spoiled brat of Limbo City. What everyone didn’t know was what it had cost me, and what it was still costing me, to keep my head on my shoulders. I sincerely doubted that a single one of them would have traded me places if they could have seen the whole picture.

  I took the ramp up to the deck of my ship to find Kate and Alex waiting. They hated me as much as any reaper, if not more, but they were being more subtle about it since I’d given them a better harvest list the past few days. Kate raised an eyebrow at my outfit, but she kept her mouth shut. Saul nudged Alex’s leg, and she set her coffee down on the ship railing to pet him with both hands. The traitor. Coreen was more reserved. She tilted her muzzle in the air and sat on her haunches next to me.

  Soon we were joined by Arden. I motioned for him to follow me up above the captain’s cabin to the quarterdeck where we could talk in private. If Arden disliked me as much as everyone else did, he was doing one hell of a job of hiding it. I wasn’t even sure he owned another expression besides the one of neutral indifference he’d adopted for all occasions. When I was sure we were out of earshot, I pulled the harvest docket out of my duffle bag.

  “I’m taking Kevin to a few different areas for harvests today to give him a little more variety. I think it will be good for his apprenticeship. One of the stops is in your territory, so if you would like first choice from the rest of the list, you’re welcome to it.” I handed the docket to him.

  Arden blinked at me and took the list. He scanned it briefly and handed it back. “The daycare fire in New Mexico.”

  “Really?” I frowned. “Seriously, you can take whatever harvest you want. You don’t have to settle for the bleakest lot on the list. The harvest in Paris has fewer souls, but they’re worth more coin.”

  Arden looked down at me, fixing his black eyes on mine. “I am good with children, and I do not do this job for the coin.”

  “Fair enough. It’s yours.” I marked his initials next to the harvest and flipped the page back on my clipboard to pencil it in on his docket before tearing the page free and handing it to him.

  Arden nodded his thanks and left to begin his harvests. It was the longest conversation we had ever had, and I still hadn’t gotten a new expression out of him. I suppose I should have just been thankful that he didn’t throw a full-blown tantrum like Kate would have.

  When I made it back down to the main deck, Josie and Kevin were lounging against the railing opposite of Alex and Kate. Coreen had nestled herself between their legs, and Saul made his way over to greet them too. I fairly divided the rest of the harvests and passed out everyone’s dockets. Josie was still watching me with narrowed eyes as she coined off to her first harvest.

  I don’t know why I was having such a hard time being honest with her. She already knew why I had joined the Posy Unit, for the most part. I had told her about Horus’s secret side job, although, I had left out the part about it being illegal and unsanctioned by the council. We hadn’t really talked about it since I confessed, and I guess part of me was really hoping she would magically forget the entire conversation. When I looked at people who knew my secrets, it was hard not to envision a guillotine in the distance behind them.

  The harvest where the throne candidate waited took place in an African village with a name I couldn’t pronounce. When
we arrived, the place reeked of chaos. Women and children rushed past us, screaming and covered in blood and dust. There were dozen people dying a slow death in a clearing in the center of the village, and another few dozen already waiting to be harvested. Several huts were burning, and gunshots called out from every direction.

  Kevin had harvested a couple gang related shootings before, but that was a little different from gathering souls in the heat of battle. He pulled his scythe in closer to his chest as he stepped out of the path of a small horde of children busy making a dash from a burning hut into one that was still intact. The leader of the group, a young teenage girl, caught my eye, and I knew she was who I had come for. I pointed Kevin off towards a growing pile of bodies and turned to follow the girl. She didn’t have much time left, according to her file.

  The new hut the children had disappeared into was one of few left untouched. It didn’t take long before a man with a rifle and a torch marched by to finish the job. He heard their screams and hurried to drag several empty poultry pens in front of the door, trapping everyone inside. He seemed rather pleased with himself, and I quietly prayed that there was an extra special place in one of the hells reserved for him.

  The hut was small and it burned quickly. Half a dozen charred little bodies with gaping mouths poked through the ashes as the fire died down. As seasoned a reaper as I was, it was still hard to witness. I didn’t know how Arden could do these kinds of harvests on an almost daily basis. He had a stronger stomach than I.

  I nudged my way through the ash and held my breath as I pulled the first soul free from its remains. A little boy, no more than five years old, came screaming out into the open. I wasn’t specially trained to harvest child souls, but it didn’t take an expert to figure this one out. I pushed my hood back and dropped to my knees, wrapping my arms around the boy.

  “You’re alright. It’s over.”

  He didn’t understand a word I said, so I rocked him until he caught his breath and stopped trembling. When he had calmed down, I held him back by the shoulders so he could see me. Then I placed a finger to my lips and pointed at the ground in a silent gesture to stay put.

  The other souls had enough time to settle, and they were a few years older, so it didn’t take as much coaxing to round them up. I saved the eldest girl for last. She shimmered a blue hue when her aura stepped out of her remains, but she quickly faded to the normal pallor of the others. She didn’t seem at all surprised by my presence. Instead, she nodded to me and went to the others, taking the small boy’s hand.

  The lot of them followed me quietly through the havoc, not taking notice of and not being noticed by the raging assault still plaguing the village. Kevin met us in the clearing with a swarm of souls. His jaw was set in a tight line and his eyes glazed over as he spotted us through the smoke.

  “All accounted for?” he asked.

  I took a quick head count. “All accounted for. Let’s move out.”

  The sound of gunfire was suddenly sucked out of the air. A tunnel opened in the clouds above and swirled around like a bathtub trying to drain us away. Our new souls clung to each other, watching as mine and Kevin’s robes frantically flapped around us in the descending storm.

  Kevin turned to me, his brows pinched together. “This wasn’t in the forecast,” he shouted.

  I shook my head slowly, still eyeing the sky funnel.

  “Leaving so soon?”

  I didn’t seen her come out of the sky, and maybe she hadn’t. Maybe it was all for show in order to make her appearance all the more alarming. She was one of the sirens, the kind that had stayed true to the Greek histories, with the dark blue-gray wings that Demeter had sprouted on their backs to search for Persephone when she first ran off with Hades. The feathers didn’t stop there. They spread over her like a cloak, up her neck and over her head, growing bluer where they dipped into a widow’s peak and where they tapered off over her shoulders. She was naked otherwise, with supple white flesh and small round breasts, punctuated by budding blue nipples. Her eyes were glowing, pupilless orbs that seemed to look at everything and nothing all at once.

  She cocked her head to one side and purred at us. “I don’t see anything particularly special about you.”

  It was impossible to tell who she was looking at, but I wanted it to be me. She couldn’t know about the soul. She couldn’t. No one could. I hadn’t told a soul, or otherwise. I had to fight the urge not to turn and look back at the girl behind me.

  The second scenario I had to dismiss was that she was affiliated with Eurynome’s minions and was here to finish the job of sending Bub a message, but it was too unlikely that the sea deity would consort with the winged beings.

  The purr of her words resonated and echoed, like a bowl had been tipped over, trapping us inside with the storm and the siren’s song. Kevin began rocking next to me. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he began to whimper, struggling to fight off her spell. The souls didn’t stand a chance. They fell away from each other, their whimpers soon shifting into a soft, humming background chorus, like musical zombies. All except for the girl. Her eyes were on me, hard and piercing, accusing and pleading. I gasped and turned back to the siren.

  She smiled at us with sharp, blue teeth. “Well, what have we here?”

  I didn’t think. I couldn’t think. My body snapped into survival mode, and I let it. I wrenched Kevin’s scythe from his lax grip, tipped the blade to the ground, and stomped on it. The end snapped and broke off, leaving a jagged tip behind. I heaved it back and threw it with an Amazon war call that razorred its way up my throat.

  The siren’s song broke as the makeshift spear found her heart. It cut through, just above one of those perfect breasts. Her gray skin split and blackened around the handle, leaking dark blue blood. She sobbed out a broken note, and fell to her knees, fluttering her speckled wings.

  “Move!” Kevin was the first to shake the spell. He rounded the souls up, linking them back together, hand by hand. With big blinking eyes they let him position them like dolls, then he turned to me, waiting for the signal.

  The siren gurgled, choking up thick, blue blood. She tried to stand, not ready to give up the fight. She pointed to the girl, sucking in a watery breath as she rose to her feet again.

  “We need to go, Lana. Now!” Kevin’s voice cracked, desperation taking over.

  But we couldn’t go. Not yet. Not while she was still breathing with my secrets trapped in her bloodied mouth.

  My Latin was shoddy, but I had practiced a few incantations enough to commit them to memory, as required by the demon defense training Bub had schooled me through. I held a hand out, directing my palm towards the siren.

  I closed my eyes and focused my senses. “Sanctus Incendia.”

  It was just a little phrase, meaning holy fire, but boy, did it pack a punch. The siren burst into flames. She dropped back to her knees before falling dead on her face, sending a cloud of dust up around her.

  The storm rippled away, leaving an empty blue sky. The gunfire had quieted too, creating a heavy silence that no one seemed to want to jinx. Kevin put a hand on my shoulder, just a quick, gentle touch. I turned to face him, lifting my arms up on either side to direct the souls to gather round so we could coin out of there.

  When we were safely back on the ship, and the souls had been tucked away in the hold, Kevin found me on the forecastle deck. He slipped up beside me and leaned against the railing, folding his arms to mirror me.

  “So,” he cleared his throat, “when you plan on teaching me that?”

  I gave him a small grin. “Soon, grasshopper. Soon.”

  I sent him off to a milder harvest that he could handle on his own, then I slipped down to the hold.

  The girl was nestled in the middle of a heap of dozing child souls. She saw me in the doorway and carefully extracted herself from the puppy pile before tiptoeing her way over to me.

  She looked to be maybe fifteen, with a short tangle of black braids that hung loose around her f
ull face. The rest of her was all lanky and thin, but her face was soft, still clinging to a youth that her eyes couldn’t match. Her plain green tee shirt and ragged jean shorts were decorated with stains and the gentle sort of wear and tear that accumulated on clothing that survived through several generations of hand-me-down wardrobes. She searched my face for answers I wasn’t sure I could give her, and even if I could, there was the language barrier.

  I reached into my robe pocket and found the case of tracker bracelets Horus had given me. She watched as I held up one of the bracelets, and then she silently held out her hand, tilting her wrist up to me. I snapped the bracelet on and watched it melt away, fading beneath the surface of her ashy ghost skin. She reached up and pressed two gentle fingers to my cheek. Just the faintest of smiles brushed her lips, then it was gone.

  I knew right then that I couldn’t put her in the sea, but I couldn’t take her to one of the afterlives either. There was also no way I was going to be able to get her into the city. My tongue felt like sandpaper against the roof of my mouth as a very bad plan formed in the back of my head. I found Winston’s coin in my pocket. I held my hand out to her, and she took it. I’d done dumber things, I told myself, as I flipped the coin in the air.

  Chapter 10

  “Behind every great fortune

  lies a great crime.”

  -Honore de Balzac

  Even Winston was surprised by our arrival. He was speechless, which doesn’t happen very often. At least he was able to communicate with the soul. Perks of the throne job, I guess. He said he’d be able to figure something out, so I left her there, not quite feeling like I had washed my hands of the situation.

  I finished up my last harvest for the day early, and I let Kevin and Josie take the rest of the souls across the sea to their afterlives. I needed to clear my head and figure out what I was going to tell Josie after she cornered me to play twenty questions. I was sure Kevin was filling her in on all the events of the day by now. The hounds had stayed with them to entertain the child souls in the hold, now that their fearless leader was missing. That question would most definitely be at the top of Josie’s pop quiz.