Page 27 of Grim

“Perfect.” Time punctuates.

“Now then,” Fate continues as her voice pitches down an octave and she gets extremely close to my face, “do not fuck this up, Kane.”

“Or do,” Time bubbles. “It will be fun for us either way.”

Fate laughs so low that I can hardly hear it. “But if your second-chance mortal messes with my tapestry, it won’t be fun for you.”

“Oh, no, it definitely won’t,” Time confirms. “But that will still be fun for us. So, good luck, reaper.”

On a symphony of cackling laughs, the Sisters’ voices reverberate throughout the office, and then they vanish instantly, and the room falls deathly silent.

Big D appraises me, then smiles. “Any questions?”

My mind races and reels until it lands on the one question he still has not answered. The entire reason I came into this office in the first place.

“She can touch me, D. How can she touch me?”

His grin widens slowly. “Ah, yes,” he begins, leaning back in his large leather chair. “She is an anomaly now, Kane. A rare return trip. She crossed over for two minutes and forty-nine seconds, if my records are correct.”

“They always are,” I drone as he speaks over me. “And they always are. Damn it, Kane. I was going to say that. Stop interrupting me.”

“Okay. Go on. She was dead for almost three minutes. And?”

“And … when she returned to the living, she brought her OtherWorld perceptions back with her. She met the Spirit Realm ever so briefly, and, well, it seems she cannot be un-introduced.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means she sees and feels the world the way we do now.”

“So, she can touch me and see me? Even now? For the rest of her Earth days?”

My mind races back to that last moment on Earth with Rue. I hadn’t felt the touch of warm human flesh in centuries. I had buried the strength of the sensation,but it all came rushing back in an instant. A chill drips down my spine at the recent memory.

“She can see all of them. All those lost souls still loitering in the physical realm. Beings too tied to their insignificant earthly lives to begin their transition. All those cases, we—well, you and your fellow reapers anyway—failed to coax to the OtherWorld. She became a spirit, and her connection to our realm fused too tightly. So, now she is both. Vibrating between the realms. Teetering.”

None of what D describes sounds good, but surely, a being of his power can do something.

“Okay, so just undo it, yeah? Snap your fingers? Set her straight until her scheduled passing.”

He leans forward, resting his chin on his hands, a slow grin spreading across his face. “See, this is why I like you, Kane. You always bring the perfect balance of insubordination and stupidity to my day.”

“I do what I can. So, fix this and let’s move on. Come on, D. We have history.”

Big D chuckles, shaking his head. “I’m afraid I can’t do that. You brought her back, Kane. You introduced her to our realm. You gave her our frequency. She tuned in, and now she’s riding that wavelength. And that can be a bumpy ride if someone doesn’t ensure she’s strapped in.”

I run a hand over my face. My fingers tugging on my hair momentarily. “Okay. Whatever. She’ll be fine then, I guess. I’ve got her flagged. I’ll check in periodically throughout the nine days.”

D snorts and shakes his head. “Check in? No. I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Kane. You see, Rue was already in a heightened state. Her physical form is fragile right now. Living with ARVD, then struck suddenly by an acute attack of takotsubo.”

“Takotsubo,” I whisper, the medical clinician in me piqued at the mention of the rare disease. “So, she did die of a broken heart. How did you know that’s what—”

He cuts me off, “Kane, please. That’s what I do. I know things. I collect hobbies, and I know things. And I also know this: you gave her information that most mortals would not be able to handle.”

“I just didn’t want to see another life ended from a broken heart,” I mumble pathetically.

“The heart betrays them all, Kane. Live long enough, and the heart will break. Metaphorically, perhaps. Literally, quite surely. They all bend to Time in the end.”

I do not have a pithy comeback to that.