Clearing out the souls didn't take long, about a half hour if the nearby clock could be trusted. It felt like longer. I sat on the ground outside the building rubbing at my smoke burned eyes. Death groaned and sank down beside me. His hair was as soot covered as Luci's, turning the white hair black. Mine probably looked the same way.

"Need a drink? Technically speaking, you're above the drinking age here. Plus I could water it down if you want. Tiny bit of alcohol kept people alive back in the day."

"Do you have a wet cloth?"

"You're arms are soaked. Did you get caught in the sprinklers?"

"Can we not talk about it?" I mumbled, looking at the red dripping onto the pavement. I rubbed at my eyes again.

"Your eyes hurt, kid?" Before I had a chance to respond he placed a wet cloth into my hands. I pressed it to my eyes and sighed in relief. Death eventually took it from me; I whined, looking up at him. He sighed. "We can't sit around all day. We need to go take care of Kai before my sister tries anything."

"I know."

"Then come on."

I stared up at him. "Can I go home?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

The way he looked at me made me wish I hadn't asked. He wasn't mean and he wasn't angry, there was something in his tone that made me feel bad. I don't know what it was, but I didn't like it. Even so, I didn't like what we had to do next. I didn't like what we had done. Reaping souls while living mortals can't see us is one thing, but reaping them while they can is another.

"I don't think I'll be able to handle it today." The words hung in the air around us. They were heavy weights pressing on our shoulders.

"You're a reaper, kid. You're going to see a lot more than this. Be glad I haven't taken you to a battlefield yet. Come on, once we get done with this, we can go home."

"We won't go looking for the next one immediately?" Hope spread through my body. Nothing sounded better than a nice hot shower, but as feeling temperature was near impossible, I'd settle for a nice shower.

"The only way we're going to do anything immediately after is if we get the key from Kai. I promise."

Death helped me to my feet and started walking.  Now without the immediate concern of reaping multiple souls, we found ourselves taking the streets at a fair pace. Someone catcalled me, and Death turned his head to look at me, and then at them.

"Thanks," he yelled. "But you're not my type." He looked down at me. "I reaped his soul earlier. He gets hit by a bus in three hours."

"The whole time travel thing is still so weird. Don't you risk meeting yourself or screwing up the timeline or something?"

"Don't think about it too much. There's only ever one version of me."

"That makes no sense."

"Neither did the Crusades."

"The Crusades didn't involve time travel!"

Death's cloak disappeared. His suit reappeared, as spotless as it had been earlier. He ruffled his hair. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get all of the soot out of it. He waved a hand, and his hair turned almost white; he sighed. Death squared his shoulders before walking through the revolving doors. I followed after him. The interior looked the same, aside from all of the lab animals having been rounded up. Tony stood next to the reception desk like a statue. He scowled when he noticed us.

He started over to us. "I thought I told you guys that-"

Death held up a hand, silencing Tony. "Honestly, I don't care. Look at us. We're covered in soot, ash, and, in the kid's case, blood."

"I thought I said not to mention that," I said, casting him a sharp glare. The wet material of my undershirt clung to my arms, blood having soaked through the suit jacket. It was hard to ignore, but I was managing it, at least until he brought it up again.

"Yeah you did, but it adds drama." The corners of Death's mouth twitched, as he tried his hardest not to break out in a large grin. His face turned back to Tony. "Now come on Tony, can't you let us through? I mean, we came back with a picnic basket this time. Are you really going to turn us away?" Death held up the basket. There was nothing special about it, except maybe that in his grip it appeared menacing.

"Yes, I am." Tony's hand drifted to his walkie talkie. "Now, leave before I forcibly remove you from the premises."

A soft chuckle left Death's chest, evolving into full out laughter. He wiped his eyes, still laughing as he started talking again. "Oh, that's cute. You think you can." Despite the laughter, this wasn't a tone I was familiar with. Even against his sister and the immortals, he never sounded sinister, always tired, exhausted, and annoyed. As Death continued talking, he stepped closer to Tony. "Listen, buddy, I don't like doing things I don't get paid to do, but I think I can make an exception to get to Kai. After all, he's my dear, dear-" He had to stop and look at me. "-uh, kid what did I call him?"

"Nephew."

"Yeah, he's my dearest nephew. And it'd be such a shame if I didn't get to see him while I was in town."

"He said he doesn't have an uncle," Tony said, taking a step backward.

"Oh for the-" Death cut off, exasperated."I'm not actually his uncle. I'm here to kill him!"

"I can't let you do that."

"Wow. I totally thought the security guard would let me waltz in there and kill a guy, why do you think I told you I was his uncle?"

"His work is too important for me to let him be killed in cold blood."

Death shook his head. "If you knew his past, you wouldn't think so highly of him." He sat the basket on the ground. "He watched and did nothing as hundreds of his patients died. He would introduce diseases to children and record their symptoms before never looking at them again."

"I thought he was trying to find a cure?" I asked, stepping forward. I rested my hand on his arm, trying to draw his attention. Even through layers of cloth, I could feel how tense he was. He shook my hand off.

"Before my sister gave him his gift, kid. I'm pretty sure she did it to keep him from taking more innocent lives." Death rubbed at his arm, like he was trying to rid himself of the pressure of my hand. He kept his eyes locked on Tony's blue ones. "Tony, listen to me. Either you get out of the way and let me do my job, or your kids— Jacques and Charolette, right? —are going to grow up without one of their dads."

"How do you know their names?" Tony's horrified whisper shook me more than anything else today, even more than what left me covered in blood.

"I know a lot of things. I know your dad died two years ago, heart attack. Your step-father died when you were twenty, car accident that landed your mom in the hospital but she survived."

"Who- Who are you?" Tony pulled his taser free and aimed it at us.

"Everyone's enemy. Well, except hers. I think she's more likely to say-" Time seemed to slow as Tony pulled the trigger. I tensed up, expecting pain. It never came. Death pushed me behind him. He didn't flinch. "Hey! I'm not attacking your workers."

"Uh, we're kinda here to commit murder," I said.

"Hush." Death pulled the taser from Tony's hand, throwing it away. Everyone else in the room stood frozen. Not from Death's powers, but from shock or fear or a mixture of the two. "Come on, Tony. Do you really want to die protecting a guy you know nothing about? Do you want to protect him and put your family at risk? Wouldn't it be a shame if an entire family was laid to rest? If two tiny coffins were placed into the cold, dark earth?"

"You wouldn't." Tony's voice wavered. He stared at us with wide eyes.

"Try me," Death growled.

It evidently wasn't a hard decision for him to make. "Lab Fourteen B. Here." A card was held out by a shaking hand.

Death took it, looked at it, and turned it over, before tucking it into a pocket. "Thanks. I'll see you in about fifty years if all goes well. Which way?" Death looked at the myriad of doors. Tony pointed the way. "Thanks."

"Were you serious?" I asked.

"What?" Death glanced back at me. He didn't stop walking and I had to jog to keep up with him. My shoe squeaked against the floor.

"Were you serious? You know, about killing that guy and his whole family. And how'd you know all of that stuff anyway?"

"I've told you, kid. Killing people off of the list isn't something I'm keen to do. If Life and I were actually balanced like we're supposed to be, I could risk it," Death said. His footsteps echoed more than mine. "Though if he hadn't let us through, I would've killed him. Taking out an immortal more than outweighs any harm that could cause."

"So it was just fun to threaten his family?"

"People want to protect the things they care about: country, religion, job, family. It was a safe bet to take a shot at his kids. And I'm not omniscient like God, but I have a power which lets me know almost everything about someone except, ironically, when they'll die."

"I feel like that should be the one power you should have."

"Yeah, well, different choices lead to different outcomes. One choice might end up with a person sitting on a couch eating vanilla ice cream another might end up with them becoming president or another could end with them getting hit by a bus. Free will makes it almost impossible to determine when someone will die. Even if survival seems impossible, sometimes God decides to save them or Lucifer decides to. Not all miracles are from heaven."

I didn't respond to that at first. We walked further down the hall, passing door after door. Death turned a corner and I followed after him. A light flickered overhead.

Finally, I said, "I feel like the Catholic Church has an issue with that statement."

"They had a pope that brought prostitutes into the Vatican. Not exactly sure they can judge." Death stopped in front of a door. The sign on the wall showed this was the lab we were looking for. I couldn't see inside, there wasn't a window. "Here we go. Ready, kid?"

"For some reason, I don't think my answer will change anything."

"Kid." Death's voice was filled with warning. His hand disappeared into the pocket of his jacket and he pulled out the keycard. He held the card against the reader. The light didn't change. He flipped the blue and gold card around. When he tried scanning it again, the red light blinked green. He turned the handle and looked back at me.

"I'm ready," I said.

"Good." Death opened the door. He stepped into the pristine lab. A man with blonde hair stood at a worktable. "Hey Kai, long time no see-" He stumbled back as Kai threw something at his face.. "Oh come on! What is this?!"

"Holy water." Kai placed the vial on the table. His eyes were dark compared to the other immortals I'd met, a dusky purple. They didn't so much as burn as smolder. His face looked like a young man's, but he had wrinkles around his eyes, hinting at his true age.

"Okay, wow. So, did you go to the church and tell them some story about a dark scary entity tracking you and they gave you this to throw at me? I thought you'd know better than to use aligned stuff on me."

"I do, which is why you're not going to be able to cross the seals on the floor now." Kai's eyes lit up. "Consecrated materials don't mix well with unholy barriers. Add my patron's powers into the mix, and you get a concoction quite volatile to you in particular. The water sets it off while the flames mixed with Life's powers burn you."

"Thanks for telling me how this works. You see those lines on the ground?" Death gestured to the scrawled symbols. "Erase them, kid."

"On it." I used my foot to smudge the chalk lines on the floor. A brief burst of red light blinded me, but nothing else happened. I blinked, trying to speed up the recovery of my vision. It didn't help.

"So, you can kill my child, but it's perfectly fine for you to have one of your own?"

I shuffled backwards, suddenly feeling awkward. Death noticed and took another step forward, closing the distance between him and the table.

"Shut it, Kai. The kid's my apprentice. I need some way to keep the world from ending."

"Ironic isn't it?" Kai asked. "The guy who's entire domain is rooted in destruction doesn't want the world to be destroyed." He didn't move from his station, even as Death took a step towards him. He grabbed the vial as it tried to roll of the table, and he slipped it into his lab coat.

"I'm sorry, do I see you anxious to cure every disease know to mankind? The moment you do, you're out of a job. What would you do then?"

Kai shrugged. "I'd switch careers, I'm only here because I'm needed."

"Mortals got along better without you during the Plague. And why do you think I'm here? I'm needed."

"Cancer exists and it's a horrible thing that we'd be better off without. That's what you are, Death. Nothing more than a malignant tumor."

"Ouch. That actually hurt." Death's hand flew to where his heart would be. He laughed and shook his head. "Good insult though, you're getting better."

"Just like my ex-wife's aim." Kai grinned. Confusion washed over me. One minute they were at each other's throats, the next they're acting like they're best friends.

"So are we talking about Harper or did you have another wife?" I asked, tilting my head.

"Harper was my first wife-" Kai sighed and his smile fell. "-we split up after our kid was thrown out a window."

"I could've smothered it, would that be any better?" Death held his hands up.

"No! But I'm on wife number sixty-three, if I'm counting correctly. There's a reason I'm not a mathematician." Kai pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and dropped it on the floor. It morphed into one of the purple creatures. It leapt at Death; he sliced through it with my scythe. I was left holding another broom.

"And that is he's still used to his original number system." Death switched me weapons. He rested the broom against his shoulder. "Can we make this easy? That's, what, the third one you've used? I doubt my sister gave you many more."

"Really? You think?" He pulled about twenty more pieces of paper out before shoving them back into his pocket.

"Seriously?! How many did she give you?!"

"Enough for me to survive almost any situation involving you. There's one for if we have another train incident." Kai grimaced. He rubbed at his shoulder.

"In my defense," Death said. "If I had known it wouldn't kill you, I would've never made you fall in front if it. Getting hit by one doesn't even sound fun."

"Because it isn't." Kai sighed before shaking his head. "If we aren't going to do anything, can you two please leave me to my research? I'm supposed to have a report in by the end of the day and you two are not going to help my headache."

"Did you try ibuprofen?" I asked. I walked over to one of the cabinets and opened it. There wasn't any sort of drug I recognized. There were vials of all sorts of chemicals, but nothing I would take to deal with a headache.

"Kid," Death warned.

"What?" I didn't think I did anything wrong. It wasn't like I mixed a bunch of chemicals or drank Copper II Sulfate.

"Nevermind. Kai, give us the key."

"What key?"

I turned and leaned back against the cabinet, watching as everything unfolded. Kai kept working on his report while Death leaned on the table across from him.

"You know very well which key I mean. Now give it to me, and I might think about letting you live. Would you rather take the chance or not? At least I'm giving you a chance of surviving this."

"I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. I can give you my house keys, but somehow I doubt that's what you want. Or do you want my keys for all of my research? No, that's not it. Death, you're going to have to work with me on this."

"I don't work with anyone."

"The kid standing over there is contradicting your statement." Kai gestured to me. I crossed my arms and tried to make myself smaller. There was something unnerving about being pointed out like this.

"That's not what I mean. You know what key I want and why I want it. Give it to me."

"I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't had any contact with my patron for the last eight years. No reason to. This is the first time we've been face to face in decades, centuries even. And if I remember correctly-"

Just like with Tony earlier, Death cut him off. "I know you have to have a key. So give it to me." He put his hand out. One of my eyebrows quirked up. He wasn't wearing one of his gloves.

"I really don't know what you're talking about." A pencil pushed Death's hand away. Kai lifted his gaze from the papers. "Believe me, I'd tell you if I did. That's what friends do, isn't it?"

"Kai."

"You can't act like we aren't friends, we were before your sister decided to give me this curse. I was content to live my life, short as it would be. I didn't want this. Why in hell would she give me a key? She didn't even give me a dagger like Harper had. No, she gave me the talismans so I couldn't get rid of this myself." Kai seemed disgusted with the situation he found himself in. He stared at his hands, before clenching them into fists.

"Then why do you keep running?'

"I'm still a mortal. I still have that fear of what's going to happen to me when I die. You'd think knowing there's a heaven and a hell would make it less scary, but it doesn't." Kai looked at Death and met his eyes. "I don't know where I'll end up. I did horrible things and I've spent these last centuries trying to make up for it. Will it cancel out all of the horrors I caused, all the people I killed in the name of furthering my research? Do you even know what happens to us when you kill us? Are our souls still bound to Life or do we actually get to go to the afterlife?"

"I mean, Death, you are kinda terrifying," I said. "There's a reason we don't call you the Cheery Reaper."

"Yet you continue to act like you do." Despite the situation we were in, he smiled at me.

"It's kinda fun. Plus if you do decide to destroy me, at least you'll have a reason to want to."

The instant those words left my mouth, his smile fell. Death looked back to Kai.

"Listen, Kai, I'll do everything I can to break my sister's connection to you. I'll even take you to heaven myself for your judgement," Death said, offering out his open hand. Kai stared at it. "You just need to trust me." Kai nodded and reached for the offered hand. As he took it, Death moved himself to be in my view. "Kid, stay here."

"You're just going to leave me here?" My voice raised in pitch. I didn't want to deal with the aftermath of Kai's disappearance. I didn't want to be arrested and then have people question how a dead girl was apparently alive. I couldn't imagine what my dad would do if they told him.

"I'll be right back, okay? Jeez, kid. If I wanted rid of you there are easier ways for me to do it. Please try to stay out of trouble, or at the very least safe?" He tossed the broom aside and I tossed him the scythe. He disappeared, leaving a pile of dust behind.

I sighed and sat on the ground. I hoped it wouldn't take very long.

Chapter: 3,548

Book: 40,307

Uh, how'd you like it?

I swear, I either end up with a lot of dialogue or a lot of description.

See yah