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The first interruption was only surprising because it's the first. Magnus rounded the side of the house with Julia on his arm, not having taken his eyes off her for a year or so. One handy thing about being dead is not having to worry about eating or sleeping, though there can be a sweetness to going through the motions for their own sake. He hadn't stopped grinning for a year or so, either.
“What up, Mangelo?”
The shrill, exuberant shout made Julia start, but Magnus just smiled. “Hey, I told you about my friend Lup, right?”
“Barry's here, too! I think your dogs might be trying to eat him. He's still not great at the skeleton thing.” Lup shrugged, the endless red-black of her billowing reaper's robes shimmering like spilled ink in the lawn. “Been a weird year for necromancy, but finally got a day off, wanted to meet the Mrs. Burnsides.”
“I didn't actually change my name, but lemme go ahead and grab the lawn chairs.” Julia smiled evenly. She'd heard about Lup, and the visit was a nice change of pace, a chance to learn more about her husband.
*
The second was a few years later, and much more polite. Julia was the one to answer the door, and Magnus didn't immediately recognize the apple-cheeked halfling woman without. Not until she smiled. The voice was a giveaway, too—“I thought this was your place,” soft and sweet and dripping with honeysuckle—but he knew Noelle by her smile much better than really made sense, given he'd really only known her as a robot.
“Sorry, um,” Julia paused, friendly as nature had made her but perplexed.
“Oh, not you—not that I'm not pleased to meet you, but him and me used to hang out.” Noelle waved again.
“C'mon little robot,” Magnus called. “Did you, um, get permission to visit?”
“Technically, actually, I'm on duty.”
“So you're a reaper?” Julia saw Lup more often than Magnus did lately. They got along.
“Nah, strictly internal affairs. Think of me as the afterlife's beat cop. I just don't look good in black.” She accepted the chair Magnus pushed toward her. It was a good size for her. He made a lot of chairs. “I'm actually makin' rounds, lettin' folks know there's some nasty necromantic activity goin' on. I got the frequency to report anything unusual to the Reaper division, but 'til things've calmed down, it's a good idea to keep an eye out. So, uh, y'know, do that.”
“Absolutely.”
“Sure, punch necromancers, got it.” Magnus grinned. “So, you're like a ghost Robo-cop?”
“Ain't really a robot nothin' anymore, but, uh, sure. So, uh, how were Killian and Carey last you saw? I know it's been a while, and the reapers'll keep me posted if I ask, but...”
“Great. They're great.”
*
The third time, Magnus was napping out back and came home to a full house. They'd been here a few dozen years, and while he could never get tired of looking at Julia for hours on end, he could relax without her for a bit, lie in the grass and hang with the dogs, let her have a little space once in a while.
He couldn't pick out any of the voices, not through walls he and Julia had put together, and rushed in happily, expecting, well, probably Lup and Barry, maybe Kravitz.
Instead, the massive oak table was completely crammed. A fine-boned tiefling woman with blacksmith's burns still written in the scars on her hands, two burly dwarf brothers with coopers' compasses hanging proudly from their belts, a heavyset ork barely out of her teens who somehow still smelled of her family's not altogether pleasant tanning recipes. A dozen more. Every captain from the Ravensroost rebellion.
And Julia at the head of the table. Next to her father. “Hey, honey, thought we'd surprise you.”
“Guys!” Magnus spent too much time hugging people to ever get around to asking how Julia's arranged to break quite so many rules. But she did hang out with the least conventional reaper on the Raven Queen's payroll, so it probably didn't matter. That night, Magnus began work on an addition to the house.
*
Magnus had stopped counting interruptions when Lucretia turned up in his kitchen. Interestingly, she looked like she had back on the Starblaster. People dealt with their deaths in a lot of different ways, and there seemed to be some kind of rule that you were how you saw yourself.
“Man, took you a while,” he said airily as he sat opposite her.
“Look, you have to understand, it's really fun to be super fucking old. People don't stop you from doing anything. Toward the end I just started taking all the sugar packets every place I went. There's a full bushel of sugar packets under my bed.”
“Is there, uh, some kind of magical significance to sugar packets?” Julia, like her husband, had never bothered learning a damn thing about the arcane arts.
“Absolutely not, but I specifically left the box to Angus MacDonald with a cryptic note.” She put a hand up absently for Magnus's high five.
*
Lucretia was still in the guest room when Davenport turned up. It seemed pretty early to Magnus, though he'd stopped keeping track of years, but Dav didn't really want to talk about it. Didn't seem upset, muttered something about the spirit of exploration and stupid giant squid, but didn't want to talk about it. Julia suggested in private that maybe he hadn't been that eager to stay on a plane without Lucretia, but Magnus suspected it was just that he was bored being on one plane so long at all. It's possible they were both right.
Davenport didn't stay all that long, just enough time for Magnus to help him knock together a boat capable of navigating the wild, impossible seas of the astral plane. But he checked in a lot thereafter.
*
Kravitz dropped off Nyria, Polly, and Meygan himself, which seemed to be a complete surrender to the Burnsides' gleeful bending of the rules. Julia's childhood friends, unsurprisingly, had a pretty good knack for carpentry—they had hung around Steven's house a lot, after all. They all pitched in on the house's second addition. As did Lucretia, and occasionally Lup. Magnus and Barry tended to camp out on the porch during the really frenzied activity and let the ladies bond, contentedly outnumbered. Magnus was almost sure the island was a little bigger than it had been once the second and third guestrooms were added.
Avi turned up just in time to claim one of the new rooms.
*
No one was surprised to find Killian and Carey at the door together. Magnus was pretty sure it didn't time out right, but of course the one would have waited for the other. Noelle landed on the island about five minutes later. Actually landed—apparently astral beat cops got to fly. Nifty.
She also brought along spectral Apple Sauce. It didn't really taste like it had in life, being made of magic and memories, but they'd all gotten along on magic and memories sometime or other. Carey returned to her carving lessons, though she avoided ducks, and Killian took up painting on the walls of the house and the shed, portraits of all their friends, of smiling faces Magnus had only known as little children, or not at all. Little Mandy Fangbattle hadn't been long out of her egg last Magnus had thought about it, but apparently she was Mayor of New Phandolin these days.
*
“Hello, Sir!”
“Aw, c'mon, I just assumed you were gonna live forever.”
“Natural passage of life and death, sir. Besides, I see it as the next great adventure! And I've already been recruited to the Raven Queen's special investigations team.”
“Neat. Hey, Lucretia has a story for you. She's upstairs. Room with the balcony.”
*
Magnus and Julia came in from a long ramble on the shore to find Merle on the porch, barefoot and enjoying the sun. He appeared to be completely asleep, but opened one eye at the last moment. “Well, she's way too good for you. I can tell already.”
“Thanks, I like to think so, too,” Julia agreed. “You're who I think you are?”
“Yeah, yeah. Finally kicked the bucket. Being old bites, y'know?”
“Yeah, I kinda do.” Magnus opened the door for him, noticing Merle looked precisely like he always had during their adventures. Craggy, little hairy, not really old.
“Oh, yeah, right, guess you would.”
“Been a while down there, huh? Or, out there, Ahuno.”
“Who can tell?” Merle finally hauled himself up and inside. He moved more like an old man, however he looked. Magnus had noticed that happened to the newly dead sometimes. Habit.
“How're the kids?” Julia had heard many tales of the various Highchurches.
“Oh, fine, fine, doin' better than you'd expect, with me for a dad. I actually had this whole thing worked out, got Mavis to bury me facing the wrong direction—dwarf thing—so it'd be an improper burial. Figured I could haunt 'em for a while, help out with the transition, but Taako's fella, y'know, Kangaskhan, turned up right away and called shenanigans. Dropped me off here, though.”
“Too bad, cool plan.”
*
The endless sweetness of the summer afternoon hadn't been interrupted in a while. Friends came and went, but things had been peaceful for, oh, some amount of time, who could tell. Angus, Avi, and Killian had gotten a bonfire of sweet-smelling scrap wood going and Lucretia was taking notes beside it from all the Ravensroost rebels at once, both hands scurrying. Noelle was standing on Merle's shoulders in the water, wrestling with her head even with Carey's. Julia's old cohort were arguing about the joins on a white pine bench and Davenport refused to get off it, just to annoy them.
Julia and Magnus were up on the widow's walk above the roof. The house had acquired several balconies, two extra porches, and a small tower at some point or other, but this was their favorite spot. Their whole world was laid out for them to appreciate. And it was usually a good vantage point to watch for trouble, but in this case, the sudden swirl of darkness and cold that announced a reaper's arrival was right behind them.
They turned to find not just Kravitz but Taako, already perched precariously on the railing, hooking his heels in to keep himself from falling. There was a hint of silver around the temples and his freckles had faded some. “Hey, loser, do you remember what I did with my ring of frost? I realized I couldn't find it like four hundred years ago and nobody has been super helpful, and maybe I put it down and just didn't need it again for a while, y'know how that happens...”
To keep Julia from responding the way Taako generally, well, deserved, Magnus jumped in. “Did you look up your butt?”
“Babe, I told you, you don't actually get to—you're not even really wearing clothes at this point, it's more about how you perceive yourself, and...” Kravitz paused to rub his temples and wave to Julia.
“So you are actually dead.” Magnus hadn't been sure. Maybe dating death came with visiting privileges, and the time that had gone by in the interim proved nothing when you were taking about Taako. Even when everyone was alive he'd occasionally disappeared for six months or a year. But it did sound like.
“Yupsies. Seriously, though, that ring's been bugging me.”
“Sure, sure. So, can I introduce you to my wife?”
“Yeah, sure, how y'doin'.” Taako waved absently in her direction without looking. Just as Magnus was starting to get a little annoyed, he snickered. “I'm goofin' yah, chucklefuck. Hi, Julia, love the bad taste in men.” He held out an elegant hand and was lucky she took it instead of pushing him off the railing. It wouldn't really have hurt, so the temptation was definitely there. Magnus patted her arm gratefully. “Sooooo, guess who brought macaroons?”
“Taako, seriously, this isn't your body anymore—” Poor Kravitz was cut off mid-exasperation when Taako pulled a faded purple sack from somewhere in his half-cloak. “Oh, what the hell.”
“Bag of necessity. I hung onto it. Doesn't save the world anymore, but it does mess with a whole buncha magical rules. I kept gorp in it for like six years once, stayed fresh, so I figured, y'know, deathbed potluck.” He held the bag out to Julia, who took it, looking mystified, and Magnus quickly steered him down the stairs to escape Taako and Kravitz's spat.
“Your entire life's goal is getting me in trouble! Did it have to be your death's, too?”
“Hey, look at it this way. Remember how you were all sad? Now you're just cheesed off. My gift to you, Spooky.”
“Should we... do something about that?” Julia looked over her shoulder, but Magnus shook his head firmly and kept moving until they hit the kitchen and began to unload box after neatly wrapped box of elaborate, gourmet delights. “Huh, he's kind of an asshole, but I guess he can cook.”
“He doesn't really, um, you know, say things... or do things... that a nice person would? But trust me, this is Taako speak for I love you and I'm glad to be here.”
“So the word for that is...”
“Slow-smoked brisket in bourbon sauce, yeah.”
The door burst open to admit a sopping Merle and Noelle. The dwarf's eyes fell on the packages immediately. “Aw, geeze, he finally got here?”
“Yeah, looks like we're gonna have a party. Help me move some tables, 'kay?”
Julia continued sorting through the piles that had come out of the bag. “These aren't macaroons, they're macarons.”
“Don't bring it up, trust me,” Merle muttered.
With everyone in attendance, several of the project tables were out on the shore and the feast set out in the next twenty minutes. The food wasn't exactly better, but coming from the living world it had a different feel, and everyone fell on the feast with wild enthusiasm. Even Kravitz, who had Taako firmly planted on his lap now, eating off the same plate and being disgustingly cute. Taako had even managed to get hold of a few bottles of Apple Sauce, though Noelle was weirded out by how much the bottle had changed in the hundreds of years since she'd been alive for it. Halflings were pretty long-lived, but even so.
Merle was attempting to lead the group in a hymn to Pan (which was working as well as it ever did) when the sun dimmed a bit. There wasn't really weather in the astral plane, and silence spread pretty quickly through the party. Magnus looked up and realized there was no cloud above them, but an unfathomably huge flock of ravens, enough to gradually blot out the sun as they massed around the island and finally descended. Kravitz choked on a bite of flan and went a little ashy.
She was tall and dark and beautiful and terrible. Her eyes were raven's eyes and her hair was raven's feathers. The wings that rose from her shoulders cast shadows deep and dreadful and the smell of peat bogs in winter and dry dust billowed around her. In a voice carved from flint and thunder, she said, “Hey, I brought you my court bard to borrow. This party needs it.”
Johann hopped off the cloud of ravens, violin case in one hand and harp slung across his back. “Hey, guys.”
“Wondered when you'd show up,” Merle said cheerfully, toasting with a mostly empty glass of apple schnapps.
“Whoa, hey now, I got a gig. One thing you gotta understand about musicians. A gig's a gig.” He let himself be guided through the crowd and Barry and Lup also appeared out of the cloudy, giggling madly.
Magnus found himself gaping, then turned to the Raven Queen. “Gonna be honest, I... kinda figured you'd be mad.”
“Tell me, Magnus, I know you're not a particularly religious man, but do you happen to remember my full title?”
“Uh, Professor Raven Queen?”
“Cute. What I'm actually deity of.”
“Death, right? Death and deadness. Dead stuff.”
“Common mistake. Thanks.” The latter to Julia, who'd just handed her a cup of coffee and a macaron. “The natural passage of life and death. Can you think, Magnus, of any more natural path for your life to take into death than this?” She waved the hand with the faintly pink cookie in it, the grand and graceful gesture encompassing Davenport's tabletop waltz with Lucretia, Taako standing on his sister's shoulders while she did push-ups, Johann surrounded by the Ravensroost rebels as he launched into a jazzy number that really flowed with the mood.
He shrugged. “Nah, guess not.”
“Besides, you all did save the world.”
“I mean, yeah.” He paused, wondering if he should push his luck, but it seemed like a good idea to be honest with a goddess. “Some, well, a lot of these guys were dead a long time before that, or...”
“Would you—any of you—be the people you are, that you needed to be, without everyone here?”
“Huh.”
“I know I generally work through a proxy. I really am a busy lady. But you know my offer. As much time as you need. Just... don't let any more of your friends smuggle the food of the living in here. It's a whole thing. The arcane mess is going to take forever to sort out.”
“Well, uh, I can try, but, y'know, Taako.”
“I do know. Barry handed me a 'job application' this morning that was just a piece of parchment with the words Affidavit: Taako is great written on it. And then about four hundred signatures. He's very lucky Istus likes him so much.”
“So how long can Johann stick around?”
“Until I get bored, honestly. He looks like he's having a good time. You kids be good, now.” And in a flash of wings, she was gone.
Magnus stared for a moment at the gray patch of grass where she'd stood, over to Julia where she'd joined Lucretia and Davenport on top of the table, and finally over to Johann. No point to letting the party go on without him another minute. “Hey, hey, man, you gotta meet my dog!” Magnus cried, rushing in.