It had started out so well. 

Well. She couldn’t say it hadn’t been fun. Fun-ish. There was always room for more boys, more coffee, and more trashy fashion/gossip rags. But she couldn’t complain. 

And [i]someone[/i] was probably wondering whether a Reaper could die. Probably GodBird. He seemed the type to be into that shit. She could tell him it had just been a voice, coming in over a loudspeaker to rock the ages. ‘You’re dead? You’re fired.’ Donald Trump in a shitty toupee and long white robes. She could get GodBird or Henry to file a lawsuit against illegal termination based on a pre-existing condition, wherein said condition was rigor mortis. It’d be an HR nightmare, though nothing so gruesome as your supervisor up and telling you to go to hell. Literally. Poor SchizoLock. Maybe she could leave a note to grab on his way back. One of those “if you’re reading this, I’m already dead.”

Oh. Wait. 

No, Max needed her to be alive to make it back to Veti and GodBird and Henry and the others.

Well, shit. 

“Sorry, Veti,” Daisy mumbled aloud, rather surprised she could still speak. But more surprised at her choice of last words. 

She’d have gone with something more ironic.

140 characters or less. 

So someone could tweet her epitaph. 

—-

To her credit, things really [i]had[/i] started out well. Quiet, which was weird as fuck, but all for the best, so she didn’t complain. She’d gone ahead, and Artie behind, and Max in the middle of them, all mopey and shit. She could have told him he wasn’t [i]technically[/i] dead yet, but she didn’t think he’d get it. Besides, if everything went according to plan, he would be soon. 

That, and she was afraid to take her eyes off the horizon. 

Daisy liked being a Reaper. Clothes were cheap. She never wasted money on food. And, barring super hot jock idiots like Justin, she could get just about any guy she wanted. In theory, at least. 

The job gave her a lot of freedom. She could more or less set her own hours. There was no dress code, outside the classic “try not to look too dead” staple. Pay was…well. Pay was shit. But that’s why she’d taken on the second job with Bain and Hoyle. Which, okay, was a lot less wiggly in terms of contractual wiggle room. But it also meant a lot less dealing in Death, literally and otherwise. 

And yet somehow, she’d been roped into not only taking a few too many tours over the last couple days, but breaking the only two rules known to Reaper-dom:

Only one living soul allowed at the Gates at a time, and 
No killing. Ever.

And she’d paid. In exhaustion first, and then…the thought trailed off, ending in a shiver as she lifted a hand to the band of burn cold wrapped around her torso. She managed to keep from wincing as she touched it, only because she’d been ‘practicing’ at it since the night before, like a kid poking at his first loose tooth with his tongue, bitching when it hurt every fucking time. 

Except when this tooth fell out, she wouldn’t be getting a dollar from the tooth fairy.

Daisy hid what might have been called a nervous whimper in anyone else with a cough and made herself keep walking, knowing full well if she stopped, she and Max and Artie were fucked. Veti and Tiny Vamp and GodBird and all the others, too. 

Anyway, this part was easy. Between her and Artie, she had enough power left in the Scythe to shield Max from prying eyes. She could get him as far as the Gate without too much trouble. And she’d figure out the rest on the way back. She thought best on her feet, anyway. 

The journey there was quick, maybe twenty minutes, though barely an instant would have passed back on the other side. Daisy pulled up to the veil of gray fog that marked the Gate and stopped. She was about to break that second rule now. As far as she knew, there was no real method to it, though she’d never been beyond the Gate before. That bit was reserved for souls. Dead souls. Taking Max through…well. It wasn’t like this was the [i]only[/i] bridge she’d ever burned. Just the only one left between her and the rest of her childhood. 

Eh. Innocence was overrated. 

She turned to Max and made her face into something that maybe sort of looked like a smile she hoped. 

“So, you wanna turn back, this is your last chance. If you’re gonna be a total fucking man-child and chicken out…sing ‘God Save the Queen’ backwards. And land a triple salchow.” She waited. Nothing. Or neither of those things. 

Daisy smiled for real, feeling positively nauseas. “Good. C’mon.” And she stepped through the veil. 

On the other side, Veti would just be catching Max’s limp, cold corpse. 

—-

It was a bit like falling through mud. Like, a [i]lot[/i] of mud. Definitely falling. Upward or downward or sideways, she couldn’t tell, but her heart was in her throat, and she was moving. But it didn’t feel chaotic or out of control. If she was someone else, someone dumber, she might have enjoyed it. 

The thought made her laugh. Max was probably having a field day. 

She didn’t look at him, though. She was trying hard not to look at anything. This was Death proper, not the Gates, not the Reaper’s realm, and certainly not anywhere she was supposed to be. It made her wonder, not for the first time, why it was so easy for Reapers to kill when they weren’t supposed to. Maybe the Big Guy just had a sick fucking sense of humor. Maybe he liked to see Reapers end up where Daisy was headed. 

Asshole. 

Anyway. This side of things was as much of a mystery to Daisy as the next dead guy. She gathered they were in some sort of crossroads. What she did know of Death was that it had levels, like a big, grayish shopping mall, each with its own weird ass attributes and downfalls. An afterlife, heaven, hell, and everything in between, literally and otherwise, she couldn’t speak of. Even a Reaper couldn’t venture beyond the crossroads. That much she knew intrinsically. 

So, all that was left was to transplant an actual soul, which should work out like normal. Max was, after all, dead now. So. There was that. And she knew how to search for souls, too, even the baddies, though she wasn’t sure what kind of accuracy the crossroads would give her. Death proper was both larger and more fluid than the relatively tranquil waters of the Gate. 

Even so, it only took a moment of searching, the Scythe clutched in her hands, solid and study as it was ephemeral and fleeting. The pull was strong, quick, sudden, and she’d opened her eyes before the Gate to the Fourth Realm. 

Somewhere in there, Decima waited. 

Hopefully not as bitchy as Bitch in Red Dress had been. But probably still pretty bitchy, because let’s be real — Bain and Hoyle had, like, [i]no[/i] friends right now. 

“[i]Ping.[/i] Level four: women’s shoes, petite miss, hordes of the greater dead, and evil bitch souls intent on devouring all that is good on Earth.”

She drew the Scythe up through the pillar of ice that marked the Gate of the Fourth Realm, and it began billowing gouts of inky black fog not a moment later. It rolled over her feet and its touch chilled her to the bone. 

Fun. 

Daisy turned toward Max and shrugged unimpressively. 

“So, um. Here’s where I leave you. You’re gonna wanna just…step into that.” She pointed at the gaping black maw in the silver-blue pillar of ice. “I assume it’s warmer than it looks, but I really can’t say.” She cleared her throat and looked down at Artie, a flash of unmistakable affection flitting across her face so quickly as to be taken for an illusion. 

“Artie’ll be with you. He’s new here, too, but he’ll have a decent idea of what all is going on. He’s a good guard dog and a better messenger. So, when you finish with whatsherface, just…well, he’ll let me know. I’ll meet you here. Take pictures. Don’t break anything. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, and uh…good luck, I guess.” 

She waited for him to hop to, and almost missed her chance, reaching out to stop him in a manner completely out of character and not even the slightest bit apathetic. 

“Wait! Max — er…SchizoLock. Dude. Whatever.” She paused and ran a hand through her hair, and Daisy strongly suspected if dead things could blush, she’d be eight shades of red from head to toe. 

Small fucking mercies. 

“About…um…last night. That…stupid dare, or whatever. I don’t blame you. I don’t hate you. I don’t really [i]like[/i] you. But I don’t really like anyone. And…for the record, I thought that was pretty bad ass. Douchey. But bad ass.”

She dropped her eyes to study her bubblegum pick Chuck Taylor’s and shrugged again. 

“So, yeah. Give her hell. No pun intended.”

She waved the Scythe and let the portal close, Artie and Max on the far side, and she still walking the Crossroads of Death. 

It had started out so well. 

From there, things got worse.