Page 51 of Grim

TheShowIsAbouttoBegin

I hold the door open for Kane as we enter my office—not out of sentiment, mind you, but because I believe in appearances.

Manners, decorum, the little rituals that keep the wheels of the cosmos turning smoothly.

Just because I am Death Incarnate doesn’t mean I can’t be civilized.

The man’s in shackles after all. Let the condemned keep what dignity they can carry.

Kane limps forward like a man walking into his own grave. Shoulders hunched, head down, he has become a ghost of a ghost. Piteous.

I snap my fingers, and the chair drags itself to the center of the room with a low groan.

It’s a beautiful Victorian-style chair, a real staple piece in my otherwise modern office.

It’s dark red, overstuffed, with a very showy carved back.

I like aesthetics, and this one screams my name.

The chair slides behind Kane and clips the backs of his knees, forcing him to sit.

The smoky grey bindings rethread from his wrists into the arms of the chair, twisting in place like patient vipers.

Another pair locks around his ankles—tighter this time.

I walk a slow circle around him, admiring my handiwork.

“‘Man is born free,’” I muse, hands clasped behind my back, “‘and everywhere he is in chains.’”

“Fuck you,” Kane states flatly.

I let the insult roll off me like a stray breeze. “That’s not very nice, Kane,” I reply, drawing out the words, giving them just enough theatricality to needle him. “I thought you’d appreciate the reference. That’s Jean-Jacques—”

“Rousseau. I know, Daryl. I’m French. And smart.”

“That’s a lot of attitude, coming from a man tied to a chair.” I grace him with a smooth smile.

“Well, I figured my intelligence was one of the reasons you hired me. That and my good looks.”

“Perhaps once upon a time, Kane. Now, look at you.” I don’t disguise the disappointment. “So eager to be more than what you are. A reaper playing the hero in someone else’s tragedy. Honestly, it’s embarrassing.”

I move behind him slowly, the heels of my shoes clicking against the floor like a clock counting down. “You were designed to guide souls, not fall in love with them. You were built to serve balance, not break it. And yet here you sit—shackled and defiant—because a mortal made you feel something.”

I lean close to his ear, lowering my voice. “She made you forget your place, my friend.”

He doesn’t respond right away, just stares forward.

I double back around to look at him. He isn’t looking at me, but through me.

It’s that hollow, unblinking stare that only grief sees through.

I’ve seen it on the faces of countless mortals.

The faces blend together over millennia, but the stare never changes.

“Send me back,” he says finally, his voice cool and slow, almost conversational.

“That almost sounds like a threat, reaper,” I say, brushing my lapel absentmindedly. “And I’d hardly say you’re in a position to be making demands.”

His jaw sets, a smoky fire settles behind his eyes. I see the familiar flicker in his expression—something perilously close to hope. That dangerous glint of belief that things might still be undone, rewritten. Mortals carry it like a disease. Apparently, reapers aren’t immune either.

“The problem with people,” I say, strolling toward the window overlooking the OtherWorld, “isn’t that they die.

It’s that they think they should not. That they can somehow circumvent the inevitable.

That their end is somehow negotiable.” I roll my head to gaze back at him as he glares at me.

“You know how I feel about negotiations, Kane. That look you’re flashing me right now is giving vibes. ”

“I’d like to give you the inside of my—”

“I don’t care for it,” I cut him off. “As I was saying, things would all be so much more pleasant for so many more if they simply embraced that which is unavoidable. Tonics, regimens, ‘practices.’” I air-quote, thinking of all those tiresome yoga poses and bendy meditators.

“I’ve watched empires rise and fall on nothing more than the desperate need to live a little longer.

But in the end, the clock always strikes. ”

I wait for Kane to argue, much preferring a conversation to mere monologuing, but he offers me no joy, so I continue on a sigh.

“Immortality. Longevity. All these pathetic pursuits to extend their days, to run from that which is sure to catch all in the end. Man is free, Kane. But it is their futile attempts to change the unchangeable, their sad insistence on hope ”—I mutter the word as if it’s gone sour—“that becomes the very shackles of which Rousseau spoke metaphorically and of which you now find yourself quite literally bound by.” I wave my hand lazily in his direction.

“Where is she?” he asks with forced calm.

“Back,” I say simply. “For a time. Until her proper TOD in which she will be escorted, willing or not, to ALP. She’d make a good fit here but …” I trail off and shrug my shoulders. “I think one of my brothers may have an opening. I know Famine needs a new assistant.”

“Don’t,” he grits out, his voice desperate. “D please, I don’t—why are you doing this?”

“I’m a fair boss Kane, I allow things to slip by without saying much.

I can turn a blind eye to workplace fraternization even if it’s grounds for serious punishment, Kane.

I gave you two plenty of latitude. But that little mortal coming to my party and embarrassing me in front of my subordinates? What did you think I would do?”

“So, you’re trapping me, exiling her, all because of your party?”

“Sounds kind of petty when you say it like that— ”

“Because it is!” Kane yells. “She is a living, breathing human and you’re treating her like…like…”

“Like she’s a recalled product? That’s because she is. Kane, the only thing special about her is her ability to stick her nose in where it doesn’t belong and taking my best reaper with her. Consider this your correction whack on the snout.”

His fingers twitch against the chair. “Give her time. Take whatever you want from me. Just let her live.”

Oddly enough, the sentence pierces deeper than expected. For a single unwanted moment, I feel a pull on a string that hasn’t been plucked in longer than I care to think about. I shove the memory aside.

“I think,” I say instead, “if you listen closely, you might hear the chiming of her family’s Hermle clock now. One hour less. Tick. Tock.”

He struggles, predictably. The bindings hold.

He slumps back, and the sound he makes is one I know well.

It isn’t the scream of a fighter or the silence of defeat; it’s that brittle, tired release of someone who’s realized he’s no longer in control of anything at all.

It’s the kind of exhale Cobain released near the end of that haunting rendition of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night.” The sound of release, of giving up.

No, not giving up. Giving in. Which is what we all must do in the end anyway.

“Time,” I begin again, annoyed by Kane’s romantic insistence that these mortal moments matter somehow— that she matters —“wasn’t made for beings like us.

It was made for the mortals. To keep their minds from unraveling.

To trick them into thinking they can measure something immeasurable.

To give order to their chaos.” I raise a brow, watching the storm churn behind Kane’s eyes.

“Did you even read your Reaper Regulations Guidebook ?”

He says nothing. Pity. His body is slack, then slowly, he stiffens.

Kane lifts his head and speaks with deliberate, pointed calm, like he’s moving his queen for the first time in a chess match.

“Rule number eighty-eight,” he intones, voice steady, “‘Wherever possible, meet each soul with mercy. Better to help a soul float across the threshold as on a cloud than to cleave it from its spot.’”

My jaw tics once. That word— that name—lands between us like a splintered relic from an ancient place, sacred and reminiscent of past pain.

“Well,” I say slowly, “look at this insolent little teacher’s pet.”

I can hear the shift in my voice before I feel it. I can feel the temperature of the room drop by several degrees as something tightens behind my sternum.

“Was that meant to impress me? Quoting outdated regulations, like a schoolboy hoping for extra credit? You must have studied under an earlier edition and never adjusted to the subsequent updates. Bad reaper.”

Kane stares straight ahead, unblinking. “You gonna punish me, D?”

I pause.

There’s something in the tone. The lazy casualness of someone who knows they’ve already struck a nerve.

I don’t care for it.

The force of my next words cracks the molding of his chair.

Unfortunate. I really liked that piece.

“You do not speak of Mercy here,” I snarl, the syllables tearing through the space like a blade through silk. “Not anymore.”

The window to the right of me explodes outward. A gale of glass and energy bursts across the room in a sudden shock wave.

“She— that —has been written out of the story. Banished from the narrative. Stricken from the record.”

My voice breaks on the last word.

A tremor of pain.

It barrels through me like a fist driven into the center of a hollow. I hate it.

“The Weaver triplets became twins,” I finish, voice brittle now. “And that is the end of that.”

I do my best to recover from the unrecoverable, but Kane’s demeanor has shifted, and I am aware I have said too much.

“Where is she now?” Kane asks with the same obnoxiously empathetic voice he has been using this entire conversation.

“She is gone,” I snap. “And that is all you need to know about that. ”

“Dead?”

“Mercy cannot die.”

“Lost then?”

“Gone,” I state after a pause that stretched longer than it should have. I can see the challenge behind his eyes before the acid words come out of his throat.

“You loved her.” He slaps the truth across my cheek like a gauntlet.

“Love is for the weak, Kane. As you have now become painfully aware. And I,” I lean in closer, my voice dropping to a thread of warning, “am anything but weak.”

He doesn’t flinch. “Love is the opposite of that,” he says with a pestering sadness in his tone. “Love is why, D. Whatever the question is, love is the answer.”

My patience frays.

“Not here. Not now. There is no Mercy in this story, Kane,” I say, each word deliberate and final. “Not anymore.”

The floor shakes under us at the finality of my tone. I turn our attention to the large abstract painting on the side wall of the office. At another thunderous snap, I fix my gaze on the image and bring up our viewing arena for Kane’s final torments.

“You’ll like this,” I say with a wicked grin. “You like stories, don’t you, Kane? Let’s watch a few.”

The first image flickers into focus—a strong young woman jogging in place, checking her heart rate. Her pulse spikes. Her body seizes, and just like that, she drops.

“She ran her PR marathon last week, Kane. That means personal record.”

“ Je sais ,” he replies dryly, his mouth tight.

I swipe my hand. The next scene plays out. A pediatric surgeon on their new boat, grinning, wind in his hair. Then gone. Aneurysm. No buildup. No suspense. Just one second laughing, the next lying cold.

“What are we watching?” Kane murmurs.

“Life.” I grin. “Spoiler alert though: these stories all end with a TFE.”

“ Qu’est que ce ?”

“A tragic fucking end, Kane. It’s like an HEA, but you know … not. ”

Kane’s silence bores me. I snap my fingers and change the story on the screen.

“Ohhh,” I squeal. I do love a good squeal. “Here’s a two-pack-a-day smoker, fueled by whiskey and regret. He’s just ridden out ninety-two spiteful years in a rocking chair on the front porch of a house he inherited from his parents. Gifted just enough comfort to squash any chance of ambition.”

I look at Kane, whose gaze does not leave the screen.

“Would’ve been a great poet actually,” I muse. “But comfort kills ambition, doesn’t it? Poor bastard never even tried. Oh, Fate.”

“She can be cruel,” Kane mumbles.

“Now you’re playing along! That’s my boy.”

I smile wickedly. Because I know what’s coming next.

I always do. Which can be tiresome, but it can also be exhilarating.

I snap my fingers a third time, and the image on the frame in front of us changes yet again.

An image of a large Victorian house comes slowly into focus.

The shape, character, and patina of the home are immediately recognizable to Kane—Rue’s house.

His reaction is immediate. His entire body tenses, eyes blown wide, muscles straining uselessly against the bindings.

“Recognize the place?”

“Fuck. You.”

I sigh, shaking my head. “You said that already, Kane. Very unoriginal. Now, shh! Enough babbling. The show is about to begin.”