I came through the front door and headed into the kitchen. Buddha lay on the couch, his fur glossy and smooth under the ceiling lights. Dad stood by the stove, stirring a pot. The smell of garlic and onion, thyme and basil scented the moist air.
“Hey,” I said.
He turned. Three faint lines wrinkled his brow. He glanced from me to Craig.
“This is my boyfriend, Craig. He’s a ferrier.”
Dad’s frown deepened. “You shoe horses?”
“That’s a farrier,” he said and slid into a chair by the counter. “Change the ‘a’ to an ‘e’ and you’ve got me.”
“It’s a convenient title since he ferries the dead,” I clarified, my voice one pitch short of hysteria.
“Oh.” Dad’s brow smoothed out, and he turned back to the pot. “I always thought that was a reaper.”
“Those guys separate the soul from the body.” Craig rose and made his way over to the stove. “I take spirits across the bridge—over the river Styx.” He shrugged. “Or wherever they need to go.” He leaned over the pot. “Spaghetti?”
“Yeah, I thought cooking would soothe me but the sauce seems…”
“Thin?”
Dad nodded.
I went from contained hysteria to all-out freak. “Are you kidding me? He’s transports the freaking dead and you’re talking about sauce?”
Dad gave Craig an “I’m Sorry My Daughter’s Such a Drama Queen” look and said, “Maggie you transition the dead all the time. Why are you surprised that there are others like you?”
That stopped me. I sighed and slid onto a stool. Serge appeared beside me.
“It needs oregano,” said Craig as he sniffed the sauce.
Dad handed him the spoon.
Craig tasted the marinara. Steam rose from the pot and filled the kitchen with humid air. “And thyme. Maybe a dash of salt.”
“When you’re done,” I said, “perhaps you’d be good enough to explain what happened tonight with me and Serge and that thing.”
“What thing?” asked Dad.
“The thing that tried to eat us.”
The wooden spoon clattered to the stove and splatters of red sauce marred the stove. “Something tried to eat you?”
“I thought it would be easier to explain it with your dad here,” said Craig.
“Something tried to eat you?” Dad asked again, his voice faint. “Like an escaped lion?”
“More like Satan’s escaped pet monster,” I said.
He blinked and stared at the spaghetti sauce as though it held the answers he sought.
“Is it coming back?” asked Serge.
“Yes, but not for a while,” said Craig.
“Yes but not for—wait, is Serge talking?” Dad’s head bobbled from one direction to the other. “Let me get my cell.”
“Sorry.” Craig strode to Serge and grabbed his arm. Blue light emanated from my boyfriend’s palm and radiated out in a circle.
“What the—hey, Serge.” Dad froze in the middle of wiping his hands.
“You can see him?” I jerked my thumb in his direction.
Dad nodded.
“Way cool,” said Serge.
“Hear him, too.” Dad’s phone beeped.
“Is that me?”
Dad looked down. “No. Nancy.” He went down the stairs and unlocked the door. “She’s coming over.” He moved back to the table. “Talk fast before she gets here.” He nodded at Serge. “Uh—we’ll fix that before she gets here, right?”
Craig grinned.
Serge cleared his throat. A crimson flush rose from his neck to his hair. “About the way I behaved when I was alive—”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Dad, wiping his hands once more. “It’s been talked through.”
Serge swallowed and nodded.
“Okay. We can all see each other and hear each other.” I fixed Craig with a stare. “Start talking. What are you and what is going on?”
“Big points: When someone dies, I take the soul—”
“Where?” asked Serge, worried.
“Where it needs to go.”
“Like…heaven or hell.”
“Sometimes,” said Craig. “But sometimes it’s Valhalla or limbo. It depends on the soul, on what their eternal cycle is. Some people die and go to heaven. Some die and are reborn.”
Dad turned the heat down and stepped away from the pot. “This sounds like a conversation to have around a table. I’ll get the coffee.”
We sat and I said, “Okay. Ferriers. I thought death was death.”
“Maggie,” he gently chastised me. “Life isn’t even life. It doesn’t have one reality. How can you think death would have the same?”
“Of course life has one reality,” I returned, affronted.
His dark eyebrows rose. “You think the reality of your life is the same as the reality of a woman living in Africa?”
“Well, no but—”
“There is no ‘universal, one-fit’ anything. Life is nothing but preparation for death. And death—the end of existence or even the strumming harps in heaven—are just two options on what waits on the other side.” Craig put his hand to his chest. “I’m a ferrier. I come for the soul after a reaper separates it from the body.”
“Does everyone get a ferrier and a reaper when they die?” asked Serge.
Craig made a face. “Yes and no.”
“Well, that clears it up.” Dad set the coffee pot in the middle of the table and handed the mugs out. He put a dark blue mug with gold moons in front of Serge.
“Thanks, Mr. Johnson, but I can’t drink.”
Dad paused, laughed. “Sorry. Force of habit.”
“Yeah, you can,” said Craig.
Serge’s eyes widened. “I can?”
“For now—until I turn you back.”
Serge jumped up and grabbed for the coffee.
“I should warn you,” said Craig. “It won’t taste quite the same.”
Serge’s hand hovered over the pot. “Bad?”
Craig shrugged. “Different.”
I watched, part of me fascinated, most of me horrified that we were talking about coffee when a leathered-wing-thing had tried to eat my ghost for breakfast.
Serge poured his drink and took a swig. He held the liquid in his mouth, frowned, swallowed. The wrinkles disappeared from his face. “Not bad…different.”
“How?” asked Dad.
“Maybe we can talk about this later,” I said. “Right now, I need to know about that thing—and you, Craig. What about Dad’s question: does everyone get a reaper and a ferrier?”
He nodded. “Yes, but death—think of it like this: death sends out a signal, and ferriers and reapers hone in on it. But this only works if the person knows they’re dying, if they’re aware of it. For those who don’t or can’t acknowledge death, they hone in on people like you, Maggie. And you transition them. Then we take over.”
“To where?” I asked. “Where do the dead go?”
“The bridge.”
He said it like he was confused I didn’t know.
“Imagine the warm version of the North Pole or Antarctica. A place of white and blue, full of peace and solitude. That’s where they end up.” He mimed the words as he said, “There’s a long bridge that connects that spot to The Beyond. The souls you transition are met by their ferriers, who take them across.”
“Across to…where?” asked Serge. His fingers played with the handle of the mug.
Craig shrugged. “Wherever they’re meant to go. Like I said, some souls will cross over to their image of heaven and that’s it. Others will come back to earth and some…” He paused. “Some souls have made life decisions they will pay for in death.”
“Like me?” whispered Serge.
Craig frowned. He glanced from me to Serge and back. “You mean about—no, that’s not it.”
I was still trying to wrap my head around everything he’d said. “You can cross over,” I said. “From life to death.”
He nodded. “Part of the job.”
“How do your parents deal with this?” asked Dad. “I thought having Maggie was complicated, but…”
“They’re Guardians. That’s their job. They’re not my biological parents,” he added. “A ferrier has to be born into the world by an innocent—a woman who doesn’t have a clue about what really happens after death.”
“So…how did your parents get you?”
“I was abandoned.” He glanced around the room and grinned. “It has to happen like that—we’re purposely birthed by mothers who give us up. I was a private adoption—my biological mother was a sixteen-year-old girl who was sure she was doing the right thing.” A soft smile crept across his lips. “And she did. Guardians raise ferriers, but they can’t have their own children.” He gave me a meaningful look and said, “Technically, they’re co-workers. They’re not supposed to fall in love or use their adopted son’s car on Widow’s Peak. Especially when they’re giving him grief about wanting to date you.”
Oh, so that explained his reaction that night. “So.” My brain chugged like a too-slow steam engine, trying to keep up with the twist and turns of his story. “How long have you been a ferrier?”
“A few thousand years.”
Dad choked on his coffee.
“You’ve been alive for over a thousand years?”
He smiled. “No. We have to be born and die and reborn.”
“But you remember?”
The side of his mouth lifted. “Have to, if you’re to be a ferrier.”
“You’re what—three thousand years old?” asked Serge. “Or, at least, you have the memory of three thousand years of living.”
“With this world and this reality, I’m around five thousand years old. With everything else…” He closed his eyes and did the math. “Say, about ten-thousand years.”
Ten thousand years. This reality. This world. The terror of our brains exploding from information overload kept us quiet about asking what he meant, and just how many worlds and realities were out there.
“So…when you have to ferry someone—you just blip in and out of existence?”
“Basically—”
And I thought my life was complicated.
“—but sometimes, we have to be around our charge…to watch over them before the moment of passing.”
“That’s why you came to Dead Falls,” I said. “For Serge.”
Craig’s breath hissed through his teeth. His voice was heavy, laden as he said, “I didn’t come for Serge.”
The air around the table went suddenly cold. In the background, the sauce quietly bubbled.
Dad and I stared at each other. I tore my gaze from him and set it on Craig. “Who did you come for?”
“I came for Amber,” he said. “She was to die.” The intense light in his eyes dimmed to something softer, sadder. “She was to kill herself. Instead”—his gaze moved to Serge—“someone murdered you.”
“That’s why you were always around her, watching.”
Craig nodded. “We’re not allowed to change the course of events, but we can influence them…to some extent. I had seen the plan of her life”—his face tightened—“and the outcome of her decision. But when Serge died, those plans and consequences…things changed.”
“What happens, now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. We aren’t allowed to see the full future. I only know as much as I need to work my cases. That’s it.”
“But that thing, tonight—”
He took a deep breath. “Horrific.” He scrubbed his forehead with his hand.
“Why is it coming for Serge?”
“Because it blames him for its life.”
Serge frowned.
The front door opened. Before any of us could react, Nancy was up the stairs. “Sorry about the—” The grin dropped from her mouth as her eyes lit on Serge. She yanked out her gun and pointed it at him. He bolted back and threw his hands up to protect himself.
I jumped up.
So did Craig.
“What ’s going on?”
“Put down the gun!”
“What!”
“Put down the gun!”
Dad got to Nancy first and clamped his hand on the cold muzzle. “He’s already dead.” He paused and repeated, “He’s dead. You can’t do anything.”
She blinked and blinked again. “Holy crap.” She dropped her shoulders and the gun descended. Nancy collapsed into a chair. She lifted her gaze. “Someone please explain what is going on.”