Page 138 of Grim Tidings

“Yes,” I tell her. “Of course.”

It’s a pleasant little bit of delusion we’re both indulging in, but I can’t stand for Aelia to be another person I have to say goodbye to. She offers me a haughty nod, then spins on one light-up mermaid shoe and strides back down the hallway. I watch her until she turns the corner, then heave a sigh.

“Please,” a voice drifts through the door. “Continue loitering outside the threshold. I have nothing else pressing to attend to.”

I roll my eyes to the ceiling. Leave it to Gideon to be impatient about delivering eternal damnation.

His pale blond head is bowed over a stack of paperwork when I poke my head through the door, his sunglasses sliding down the slope of his straight nose. He nudges them back up with his knuckles, then resumes his furious scribbling.

“Bloody paperwork for a month straight,” he grumbles. “And still not an inch closer to deliverance.”

I glance around the office. Every flat surface is occupied by a precariously leaning stack of files. The floor, too. Stacks and stacks of seemingly endless paperwork.

“Is this why you were avoiding the department?”

Gideon signs his name across the bottom of his document with a flourish and then slaps it on top of the closest pile. He glances up at me with a sour expression.

“Has the paperwork always been this … extensive?” he asks.

“Since I’ve been here? Yes.” I glance at one of the papers closest to me. It’s a Notification of Personnel Action from … 1776. “I imagine it builds up when you’ve been avoiding it for several thousand years.”

“There’s no need to be smug.” He tosses his pen to the side with a clatter and then leans back in his chair, stretching his neck to the side. It’s an oddly human gesture for a being that is essentially the embodiment of death. “From this point forward, all paperwork is banished.”

I snort. “Maverick might take issue with that.”

“I’m sure he will.” He stares at his desk with such a naked look of anguish that I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from laughing. The fearsome Reaper, felled by intake forms.

“You asked to see me?”

“Ah, yes.” Gideon rifles through the nightmare that is his desktop, reaching for a drawer and pulling it open only to close it again. “Where is the— Ah. Good. Here we go.”

He stands from his chair and rounds the desk, leaning against the front of it. In his hands, he holds a small wooden box, no bigger than a snow globe. He extends it to me.

I stare at it. “What is it?”

He flicks the box open with his thumb. Inside, nestled prettily on a pillow of black silk, is a bright red berry.

A bright red berry from the yew tree in the assignment room.

My stomach drops.

“Your probation has been completed. Congratulations.” His smile is a mocking curve. “You’ve been reinstated as a Reaper.”

I take an instinctual step backward. I had prepared myself for every possibility … except this one.

“But—” My voice cracks. Magic licks up my spine. My hands are shaking, and I can’t quite catch the breath I don’t need. Gideon has somehow managed to find the only punishment that’s worse than the customer service desk. “But I broke all the rules. I disobeyed orders. I—”

“Showed compassion and understanding and a genuine love for the mortals.” He wiggles the box around, sending the delicate red berry rolling. “You delivered a soul—albeit the wrong soul—but a soul that was well overdue for what was owed to him. You managed all of this with the grace and aplomb of a drunk, sniveling beast, but you managed it all the same. And this is your reward.”

“My reward?”

This isn’t a reward. This is a joke. A mockery. The one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else is to be free of this job, and yet here I am. Ordered back into the field.

“Yes. You are being rewarded for your choices.” His smile eases into something more genuine. “It would seem I needed a reminder as to what it is we do here.”

I am hopelessly lost, torn between grief, panic, and fury. I don’t want to go back. I don’t. “What is it we do here?”

Gideon rubs his thumb below his bottom lip. “We grant mercy.” He drops his hand. “We show love.”