Rented tux. Heh. Bard would have to write that one down. Too bad he didn’t feel compelled to carry a notebook in his pocket anymore. Perhaps he’d renew the habit.
The new guy still pranced behind him. He’d have guessed Oz was a poof if he hadn’t caught the fool leering at Cora. Not that Bard disliked poofs. He knew plenty of them. Employed entire casts of them in life, in fact. There was just something about this Oz character that poked the lizard part of his brain, telling Bard that he was... off. Being a poof would’ve explained that.
And Bard got stuck babysitting him. Why did he always end up with the new recruits? It wasn’t like others weren’t capable of training them. Cora knew just as much as he did and was more willing to put up with the questions and problems that inevitably came with fresh meat. They were like children—no, infants—wobbling and stumbling in their attempt to do something as simple as walk.
Why him?
Because of one mistake more than a century in the past. Bard shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it.
It was interesting (in a way that a train wreck is interesting) that Oz had come from The Department. There hadn’t been a reaper recruited from that zombied bunch since Bard had been recruited, and that was too long ago for him to think about. They—and “they” meaning the cosmic “they,” the “they” that fucks with every aspect of your very existence because “they” can—probably hoped that he and Oz might bond.
Oz stopped suddenly and stared into the window of a barber shop. He puffed out his cheeks, grinned a wide, toothy smile and inspected his mouth. Crossed his eyes. When he caught Bard looking, he shrugged as if to say, “Had to be done.”
Bond. Right. As if anyone could forge anything except a common, lingering hatred of that place with its pale walls and pale typists and cubicles that might as well have held bars for the amount of freedom they allowed.
In the beginning, Bard’s lottery had been the best thing that had ever happened to him. When he’d left The Department behind, a tornado of potential energy had ravaged inside him. The way Oz’s eyes brightened with each inch of life absorbed, Bard knew it was in him, too.
Maybe he was wrong. Maybe they didn’t want them to bond. Maybe they just wanted Bard to keep a close eye on him. After all, no one could spot a potential disaster like Bard.
* * *
Noon. The sun was high overhead, set against an impossibly blue sky. Dusty red brick buildings sat between shining iron buildings punctuated with the occasional pastel shoppe. Oz felt like he was seeing the world for the first time. A newborn freshly popped from mama’s womb. Everything was colorful and vivid and mercifully not beige, which he often thought was a color specifically designed to suck the life out of a person.
Oz and Bard stood on a street corner at the center of the restaurant district of downtown. The savory aromas of salted meats and spices and charcoal carried on the breezes blown by passing traffic.
Oz took a deep, mouth-watering breath. “I’d kill for a steak.”
Bard watched traffic like a thief casing his surroundings, with darting eyes and intense focus. “Interesting the things people say they’ll kill for.” He didn’t look at Oz.
“It’s an expression,” Oz said, uncomfortable.
“Mm.”
Oz had a thought and it worried him that it hadn’t occurred before.
“We don’t actually have to kill people, right?”
The sidewalks filled with nine-to-fivers finally on their lunch break. Some rushed into little bistros that still had patio seating open, others continued to walk until they were out of sight. Hundreds of lives; all finite.
“Do you know where the term ‘reaper’ comes from?” Bard continued to watch the traffic. Each time a vehicle rounded the corner, he leaned forward on his toes for a better look. “We’re gatherers. Harvesters. I always thought the scythe was a nice touch. Wouldn’t mind having one, myself.”
And then he was silent.
“So what are we doing here if we aren’t supposed to kill them?”
A middle-aged man in a black suit, perfectly pressed save for a snag on his cuff, shoved through a pair of joggers on the sidewalk, cursing into a cell phone while trying to rip the dangling thread.
The corner of Bard’s mouth twitched. “Waiting for a bus.”
The man stormed past Oz, grazing the tip of his nose with an elbow. He didn’t stop when he reached the curb. Oz saw the bus, but the bus driver hadn’t seen the man.
Oh, shit.
Oz reached out to grab the man’s collar, but Bard yanked him back.
“Let him go.”
Brakes squealed. Bones crunched. The man’s cell phone skipped across the asphalt like a stone over water.
Behind Oz, a woman screamed.
The crowd gathered immediately, like they’d expected it to happen. Their cries punctured the city’s normal vibrations.
Did you see that? Someone call an ambulance!
The bus driver, a round, graying black man, fanned his face with his hat and mouthed a prayer.
Jesus Christ, Oz thought. He could only watch, as though his—this—body had momentarily disconnected from the demands of his mind.
A semblance of the man crushed by the bus stood from the bloody mess of what used to be his body. His cuff mended, he patted his pockets, presumably for his missing phone.
“Pay attention, Princess. Only gonna show you once.” Bard stuffed an unlit cigarette into the corner of his mouth.
As he strolled into the crowd, a shaking woman was pulled into her husband’s embrace and a young biker puked over his shoulder, rolling just out of Bard’s path.
He said something to the man and offered him a cigarette. Oz couldn’t hear what was said over the crowd and distant shriek of sirens. The cigarette fell through the man’s hands and bounced on the asphalt. Bard laughed as he bent over to pick it up.
Oz shook his head. Who the hell was this Bard guy? Did he get off on being a jerk or something?
Bard gripped the man by his elbow and led him from the crowd. His grip remained tight until they were in front of Oz.
“Easy, eh, Princess?”
“What’s happening?” the man asked, unable to tear his eyes from the bloody footprints tracked behind him.
Bard scraped his shoe against the sidewalk. “Fuck. I just found these, too.” He turned to Oz. “This is the douchebag’s Ba.”
“Ba?”
“Ba.”
“The hell is a Ba?”
“The personality of a person. Their anxieties, loves, curiosities—everything that makes a person unique is what makes up their Ba. What you’re looking at here is the shade of this guy’s Ba. The true form of a Ba can’t be perceived by human eyes.”
“Sounds complicated.”
“If you’re an idiot.”
Oz rolled his eyes. “And we can’t see this ‘true form’ because...?”
Bard thwacked Oz on the temple.
“You listening? I said it can’t be perceived through human eyes. You’re dead, but as long as your Ba inhabits this body, you see things as humans do. Hence...”
Bard gestured open handed down the side of the shade.
“Okay, so, now what?”
“Now, we send this guy on his way.”
“Where am I going?” the shade asked.
“Asshole like you?” Bard said, “I’d imagine someplace extremely uncomfortable.”
Bard took the man’s hands in his, holding them by the tips of his fingers, like he’d get something on him. He pushed them together, palms up, to form a vessel, and then blew a stream of air inside the vessel. A large, gold coin formed in the air and fell into the man’s palms.
The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. His Ba faded and he made a panicked grab for Oz’s shirt, but he stepped back and the man’s finger tips passed through his body. Oz shuddered. Bard waved.
The shade was gone.
“That was... insane.”
“Aren’t you the eloquent one? Writer, wasn’t it?”
Oz’s gut churned. The police cordoned off the accident, and a team of plastic-suited men handled the dead man’s body parts. The sight of blood had always made him light-headed.
If shit like this happened often, this reaper gig would be rough. It’d suck.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Oz said.
“Don’t know.”
“But you told him—”
“His assholery wasn’t a secret, but it’s not my job to know. Or care, for that matter. I just give them their coins for the boat man, which is your job now, too.”
“And if we don’t?”
Bard’s eyes darkened. “Don’t fuck up and you’ll never have to find out.” He scraped his shoe against a fire hydrant. “One more to go, then we can get out of here.”
“The bus only hit the one guy.”
“And is that one guy the only person on the face of the planet?”
“No.”
Bard tilted his head and spoke more slowly, like he was speaking to a child or a brain-damaged adult. “So it would stand to reason that it is possible, nay, likely, that another person might have dropped dead at or around the same time as Guido over there, yes?”
“Ok, then. Where?”
“El autobus.”
“I took French in high school.”
“Fuck me, Princess, you’re useless.”
* * *
The bus was empty except for a man slumped over in the furthest seat. His spotted, bald head peaked over the seat in front of him. His Ba sat cross-legged in the aisle wearing a vacant stare.
“Heart attack just before the crash,” Bard said, “He slumped over, people lost their shit and distracted the driver, then splat goes Guido.”
Oz cringed. “Do you have to be so...”
“So what?”
“So...morbid?”
“I’m going to pretend you didn’t really say that. What are you waiting for? Get to it.”
Essentially, all he had to do was exhale. But he exhaled exactly four times as he walked toward the Ba and nothing came out of it except carbon dioxide. Being dead, it was easier to accept impossible things, like the ability to turn air into gold coins. Still, Oz couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that he’d be able to do it. He felt different, sure, but he hadn’t occupied an actual body in a long time. He attributed the flesh-crawling feeling to the actual presence of flesh.
Oz blew a test stream into his own hands.
“His hands, Princess.”
Asshole.
Oz knelt in front of the Ba and waited for it to look at him, though he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to. Goosebumps covered his arms. It wasn’t fear, though. It was energy, like a static charge. Using the tips of his fingers, Oz gently gripped the pads of the Ba’s hands just below his thumbs and turned them over.
The Ba didn’t react.
He brought the Ba’s hands closer to his face, and blew.
Nothing happened.
He looked back to Bard who shrugged.
“Try again.”
More nervous now than he was a minute ago, Oz blew again, harder and in a more concentrated stream through puckered lips.
“Looks like it’s not working,” Bard said.
No shit, Sherlock.
Panic bubbled in his stomach. Maybe it was a fluke. The papers stuck together during the lottery. Vlad had confused his name with someone else’s. Something. He wasn’t supposed to be a reaper. They’d send him back. He’d have to leave all of it behind, again.
“Maybe I should just—” Bard began.
“No,” Oz said, and as he breathed the denial, and it brushed the Ba’s palms, two warped gold coins the size of quarters fell into his hands.
Oz looked up at Bard and his triumphant smile withered under Bard’s narrowed gaze.
Good going, Oz mouthed and followed Bard out of the bus.