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Calliope Mori tore through the halls of the Underworld headquarters, cape billowing in her wake.
She arrived at an imposing double door. She would have slammed them open if she could, but they were heavy enough that she strained to push.
The shade at the receptionist's desk tentatively tried to stop her. "Miss Mori, may I see your authorization, ah…" She sent him a withering glare, and he faltered.
Outside, Calliope pulled up the collar of her cape to ward off the chill of the eternal night. She ignored the warning tape, descended the great stone stairs, and picked her way across the jagged landscape. Her eyes never left the lazy flow of the Lethe and the soft glow of the souls it carried. Wet unstable gravel rattled under her every step.
She headed for the end of the river, where it funneled down and down, past the lowest levels of the Underworld into oblivion. The final destination of every soul worthy of reincarnation, who would eventually reemerge anywhere across the cosmos as a new and unrecognizable existence.
In a few minutes, Death, her boss, would be aware of her transgression. One of his secretaries would stumble into his office to report that Calliope Mori had broken protocol. Death, grumpy when disturbed from his post-lunch Minesweeper break, would be obligated to make a spectacle out of her punishment. Multiple shifts in a disaster-stricken region. Multiple cases of souls refusing to move on, clinging onto reality and growing poisonous.
Death disliked people who broke his rules, but he detested even more people who flouted his rules. If she were to break the rules, she should at least be smart and subtle about it, he would say, nodding sagely.
She wasn't being subtle. None of that mattered anyway. As if the workplace was not already full of unkind whispers. That Death played favorites. That Calliope Mori was a two-faced teacher's pet, who did nothing to deserve her post, her status as one of the top-ranked Grim Reapers and Death's most trusted apprentices, or her enviable temporary ability to exist among the living.
She promised herself not to let petty murmurs get to her. If those shades could not move on from their pasts, or be disciplined enough to make Reaper, or be motivated enough to apply for creative projects in the mortal world and receive the blessings of the motherfucking Muses for a flesh-and-blood body, that was on them. No skin off her back.
Those petty murmurs did get to her just then. She welcomed a distraction, however irritating.
Anything was better than thoughts about why she got here, why she was about to muck around in the Lethe on a Friday night she was supposed to spend with her friends.
Amelia Watson was dead.
Amelia said she would return from her mysterious trip in a day or two, with a surprise. Calliope did not know how, or why, or even where in the living world it happened. No one had told her. Not yet any calls from a hospital or a morgue.
But she knew, as surely as she would know of a knife buried in her heart.
How was she supposed to break the news to the girls? A death was no strange thing to a Reaper, but the others…
Gura lost her family (her entire civilization) at a young age. It took literal years for her to open up to anyone. She knew Amelia first, and the two had remained the closest.
Kiara had lived too many lifetimes and been hurt too many times. If the pain became too much, the phoenix would recklessly queue up a few quick deaths and leave her unwanted memories behind to start afresh. She did not remember, and Calliope obviously could not bring that up under any circumstances.
Ina was bedridden and growing weaker by the day, slowly eroded by the dreaded old ones sealed within. She kept the mood light, even as the group scrambled for ways to keep her alive and free her of the unwanted tenants in her soul.
They all looked to Amelia, who coordinated the investigation with her wealth of esoteric occult knowledge.
…this loss would destroy them.
On the bank of the Lethe's final stretch, Calliope haphazardly kicked off her heels, discarded her veil and cape, and waded out into the river.
Thousands of listless souls drifted past her. Their memories bled into the water, lapping at her calves, her waist, her shoulders. Calliope found herself their unwilling witness.
Why are you hurting these people?
Oh god it hurts, it hurts so much, doctor…
We're losing her fast…
Mommy! Mommy!
Please God, please not him, please…
Calliope winced as countless final moments crashed into her mind, crowding out her sense of self, the slow rumble of the great river, and the tiny splashing noises of her progress.
She picked out the light of Amelia's soul, a lure bobbling just out of reach in the dark, a fading candle about to be snuffed out by the lightest breath. Just as easily as she could pick out that familiar mop of blonde hair in a crowded airport, she laughed to herself. Hysterical.
She was faintly aware that skinny dipping in a liminal space with a meat body was not the greatest idea she had ever had. Her blood ran cold, her limbs grew heavy, and her mind began to lose track of a few inconsequential things. What she was doing in the past week. That killer hook for a new song she had yet to commit to paper. Who she was trying to revive in the back of that moving ambulance, but maybe this memory wasn't hers. Whose mother she was calling out to, because it likely wasn't her own. How she made it back to shore, collapsing in a wet and miserable heap next to the soul of someone important.
Her girl, Amelia.
Calliope was a Reaper. Her job ended when a lost soul made it past the Underworld's border. Reviving a soul was not covered in the employee handbook, or anywhere really. She began performing CPR on Amelia, alternating between chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth breathing, following half-remembered lessons from a long gone summer. It was a ridiculous thing to try on a soul, but she refused to think about Amelia in such terms, to acknowledge the futility of it all.
"When people say, resurrection of the dead, they're blowing things out of proportion," Rushia said, with an imperious wave of her hand. Calliope was on her fourth drink and only half-listening to the senior Reaper's rant.
"By that point, a soul is nothing more than a snapshot of a person as they were at the time of death. They can react, they can talk, they can have some recent memories but they won't be retaining anything new, they won't ever become shades. If I give people five minutes with their dead family, I'm not being stingy, I'm sparing them from the understanding that they're talking to a recorded loop!"
Rushia was getting sufficiently upset for her rising voice to jolt Calliope out of her reverie.
"That's still amazing though," she smiled placatingly, "I think they'd prefer some closure than none at all. Not everyone gets a perfect bye-bye."
Rushia knocked back her drink, and buried her head in her arms.
"Like it mattered in the end," she mumbled, barely audible above the bar's background chatter and pulsing beats.
It was a nothing moment, a routine after-hours venting session among many, but somehow it stood out in Calliope's memories. She wondered, not for the first time, if she should have said something more substantial than a commiserating hand on her friend's arm. If Rushia's frustration with the limits of her necromancy belied her compassion for the grieving. If that was the beginning of the end. A few months later, Rushia quit her apprenticeship and disappeared for reincarnation with nary a word.
Something snaked its tendrils into Calliope's arms and legs and heart and lungs, choking off her windpipe, pressing into her sinuses, corrosive, burning. She recognized the feeling as she drowned in it.
Grief.
She had only ever seen grief at arm's length. From the shadows, away from the eyes of mortals, as they wept and held onto the unmoving bodies of their loved ones.
She wished she could talk to Rushia again. If only to ask whether her former mentor had experienced grief just as vividly in a mortal body.
"Hey Calli," came a familiar voice, and a familiar toothy grin. So familiar, in fact, that Calliope half-expected a followup question of what kind of takeout she would prefer, or what game she would like to lose next.
Amelia sat up and raised her arms overhead for a comically exaggerated stretch. She then took one of Calliope's hands into her own, like they were on the couch getting ready for movie night. In front of them, the Lethe stretched on for a few miles before feeding into a massive, bottomless whirlpool. A cavernous sight, befitting the end of the world.
Amelia ran her fingers over the calluses on Calliope's palm, born from years of wielding a scythe. Yet another way her time in the mortal world left its marks.
"What the fuck, Watson?" she said, finally. There was no bite in her words.
"Hey, I don't mind. You only get these if you're uh, hardcore! A reminder of your strength was always appreciated," Amelia said, with a little, just kidding, unless…? kinda laugh.
"What the fuck, Watson?"
Calliope was definitely sitting in the middle of fuck-off nowhere, being flirted with by a cheeky, recently departed girlfriend.
She was definitely losing it.
Amelia laughed again, loud and free. They both knew she was stalling.
"Ina should be fine now," Amelia said, deliberate, casual. "When she wakes up tomorrow, she won't have magic, void tentacles, or weird voices in her brain anymore. I don't think there's anything I could have done about the head flaps though. But those are cute so it's okay!"
Of course. This was what Amelia had been up to all this time. Just a quick trip to her childhood home, she said. Checking up on Auntie Watson, picking up some potentially interesting old journals, she said. Calliope bought it hook, line, and sinker. "Take your time", "we'll take care of Ina", "we'll still be here when you get back", "love you dude", sending her off with a kiss and everything. Like the biggest dumbass in the world over and under.
"How did you manage that? Where exactly are you up there right now? Because I have to…"
Find your lifeless body. The words lodged sideways in her throat.
"Do you remember the church where Ina almost died?" Amelia said, tilting her head and shaking her ear lobe in an apparent bid to drain the water inside. Her damp hair and clothes seemed to float and undulate gently, as if she had never left the water.
"St. Bonaventure, right? Shame we couldn't really get a good look before it got demolished."
"It was still around, if you knew where to look. Making contact with the decrepit ones meant blowing a hole in reality somewhere, after all," Amelia straightened up. "I kept notes on my phone, right up until the end. Those are auto backed up to my cloud drive, and all of you should be able to read them." There was a slight tremor in her voice. "I don't think you'll find me. I don't think, ah… that there would be anything left behind."
"You could have told us," Calliope ground out. "We would have been right there with you."
Amelia gave her a squeeze of the hand, where they had not let go of each other. "I took a risk, didn't fully work out," she stifled a yawn.
Amelia had always had a very relaxed definition of acceptable risk, even more so when it came to her own wellbeing. But there was no point in arguing. Calliope didn't want to spend her remaining time with Amelia in acrimony.
Not that there was much time left. Amelia struggled to stay awake. Her hold on Calliope's hand loosened.
"Amelia," Calliope wrapped an arm around her back, steadying her.
"Ah, right," Amelia blinked, seemingly unaware that she hadn't been talking aloud. She continued, "in the bottom drawer of my file cabinet, there should be a big envelope with like, a dachshund sticker on it, please give it to Auntie Watson. She knows what I do more or less, and I wrote her a few lines, so that covers the rest…"
Calliope took a deep, shaky breath, and nodded, feeling her rib cage collapsing in on itself.
"I haven't written anything for you and the girls. I always counted on coming back," Amelia hummed, mulling her next words.
"There's a storage compartment under my bed, if it's locked you can just break in, it's stuff I've been saving for your birthdays this year.
"I got an Atlantean book, translated by a mage friend. She thought she was deciphering lost magic and it turned out to be a recipe book—mostly seafood, super delicious from what I've heard, and ingredients are surprisingly not too hard to find—that I meant to like, actually make something from it, but obviously I ran out of time, so you can just give Gura the book.
"The Berryz Kobo record is for Kiara, it's signed by her favorite member. I was surprised how far begging got me," she smiled like the cat that got the cream. "I scheduled flowers to be delivered to her as well, but you don't need to do anything there.
"Then Ina, you know her little octopus doodles? I commissioned a plush for that. Kinda like making up for her lost tentacles…"
Her voice tapered off as Calliope waited.
They were well and truly out of time.
Calliope tightened her hold on Amelia's shoulder, hooked her other hand under her knees, and carried her towards the river. Her mind was running a mile a minute, trying to process everything Amelia had said. Trying and failing to guess how and when Amelia managed all the things she did, and then downplayed them all. Trying and miserably failing to remember every detail, every weird face and tiny gesture.
She was chest deep in the water once more. Amelia grew lighter in her arms.
"And then, you," came a whisper.
She stopped dead in her tracks, heart rate spiking.
Amelia reached up and brushed away the rogue strands of pink hair from her wet gaze. The other hand rested on the Reaper's shoulder with a gentle pull.
Calliope leaned forward, fully closing the distance between them at long last, relishing how solid Amelia was in her embrace. She felt a slow smile against her lips, a hand tangled in the hair at the base of her neck, as her girl pressed back, a mirror of her own desperation.
They parted, half submerged. The flow of souls broke softly against Calliope's back and resumed around them. Strange memories of loss crept into the edges of her mind.
"...you'll have to see for yourself," Amelia grinned, her blue eyes half-lidded.
"Thank you for finding me."
Calliope had to let go.
Fifteen minutes, Calliope decided she would allow herself.
In fifteen minutes, she would gather her things and begin the long walk back to headquarters, where she would face the music. High-ranking Reapers would be waiting, on Death's order, to take away her scythe and veil, suspending her from duty.
Because of her mortal body, she could not be detained in the Underworld. Instead, she would have to stay among the living, among her loved ones. Effectively and unofficially, she would be granted bereavement leave. Death would never admit to it, and she would never ask.
The real punishment would follow when she finally steeled her nerves enough to break the news to the girls, stumbling over her words however well-rehearsed. She would watch grief consume them, as it had consumed her.
But that would be later.
For fifteen minutes—barely even a rounding error in the annals of the Underworld—on the lonely shore of the Lethe, there would be no witness, dead or alive, to the rare and chilling sight of a wailing Grim Reaper.