“Albert, I need you to come with…” Death had appeared in the center of my room and stopped cold as his eyes locked onto me with his daughters head resting on my shoulder and her hands around mine. We’d just been sitting there doing nothing for hours, we weren’t even talking. Nothing had happened but I could see that was where his mind was going.
“Where to?” I asked calmly standing up with Hope still at my side.
“What is this? Agatha…” His voice had a hint of anger behind it. “What are you doing?”
“I was bored, Albert and I have just been talking.” Hope had the same hint of anger in her voice. It’s the anger everyone has when a family member confronts them, tentative, usually suppressed and grown over a long period of time, but still guilty because it doesn’t feel right to feel anger towards someone you can’t help but love unconditionally. “And don’t call me that name.” She was escalating.
“Very well...” Death hissed out a breath. Hope had put a stop to the topic, but I could see he regretted letting it go. “I have important business to discuss with Albert, please go back to your room.”
“Actually, I think I’ll stick around. I’m tired of staying in my room and doing nothing. It’s been decades since I actually did anything... I want to actually do things.” I’d never seen this determined look on her face before, she almost looked like a completely different person.
Death was speechless, and I could understand exactly why. Everything he had done since the day he died was for her. He came back as a contractor to save her and try to give her a normal life, he made her a contractor to bring her back after she was murdered. He brought in twice as many souls so she wouldn’t have to get directly involved in the world she’d been brought back into. He had done everything to keep her alive and more or less innocent to the horrible world he was involved in, solely for her wellbeing. It was a cruel circle.
“It’s not safe.” I turned to Hope, filling the silence that hung between them. “I don’t think this is something you should get involved in. Don’t get me wrong, you should do things and have a life, but this is an easy way to lose your life… again.” Death was eying me suspiciously. I knew he didn’t trust me, but up until now I’d been powerless. Now that he realized that I had some influence over the most important thing in his life, I wasn’t just a pawn anymore. I was a player in the game.
Hope nodded slowly, recognizing that there was more to the argument now that just what she wanted out of life. If Death had been willing to drop his agitation about Hope being around me for work, it was very important work.
“What did you need me for?” I asked as I turned back to Death. “It sounded urgent.”
“It is.” Death was now focused entirely on me. “Owen McGregor just sent a package to one of my dead drop locations.” He pulled a small box from his coat pocket.
“What is it?” The box was small enough to fit in his palm. It reminded me of the boxes my mother had used to bring back cupcakes from work. From the look on Death’s face, it was probably something much more dangerous than a cupcake.
“See for yourself.” I held out my hand and Death very carefully placed the box in it.
It was much lighter than I expected. The tape that had held it closed had already been cut, so it wasn’t hard to unfold the top flap and look inside. The inside of the box was lined with newspaper and lying innocently on the newspaper was a shard of glass that I recognized all too well. It was hard to see because of the shape of the glass, but there was definitely a flicker of blue floating in the black abyss reflected in the glass.
“Why would he send this to you? Doesn’t he know what it is?”
“This was not intended for me, as the tag on the box will indicate.”
I spun the box around to look at the tag that had been adhered to the side. The handwriting was messy, and not in the oddly elegant way that Death’s was. I could make out my name and below it the address to my apartment and my apartment number. This was for me. I couldn’t comprehend why. Just seeing my name and address scared me. If it was a threat, it was working.
“What befuddles me is why that location is of any importance to anyone involved in this matter. Perhaps he may have some misunderstandings about you, but that is irrelevant. What matters now is that he has singled you out. It seems he blames you for the fate of his brother.”
“You were the one that killed him, not me. I only opened the door for you.”
“Yes, but you are easier to abuse and potential kill. He has always been a coward, which is why he hid behind the bar rather than make the contracts like his brother did. He did survive however, so I will credit him with that. I would not be surprised if he sent someone after you rather than take care of things himself.”
“Aren’t all contractors like that? I mean that’s why you have collectors right?”
“Not all of us do. The relationship between contractors and collectors is forged from… unfortunate circumstances, I for instance do not employ a collector. Neither do any of the members of the McGregor family. Owen, however, is the black sheep of their family. He is safer, quieter, and exceptionally more twisted.”
It was hard to believe there was an entire family of contractors out there. I could understand Death and Hope, but the way Death talked about the McGregor's made it sound like there were dozens of them, all collecting souls. That's just about when it hit me. I’d been so immersed in the world of contracts and souls and magic mirrors, I’d actually forgotten what I’d been before. A boy, one that lived at that address on that box, with a mother. Death didn’t know about her, surprisingly enough it looked like he’d been so eager to get the mirror he’d glazed over the background of the big picture. Owen wasn’t mistaken about anything, he was showing that he had leverage, and my mother was the fulcrum.
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“I’ve been lying to you this entire time.” Of course there was only one way for me to get out and make sure her soul wasn’t destroyed or burned away or whatever it was that contractors did. “And it’s very important that I tell you that right now so that we have a chance to remove the leverage that Owen now has.”
“Leverage? What leverage?” Death’s voice was dangerous. He knew I’d kept secrets and told lies, but I don’t think he ever expected me to share them with him.
“Like I said. I lied, about something sort of very important. Before you contracted me, I lived with my mother. She’s still there at that address.”
“That’s ridiculous, we were at your apartment, you mother wasn’t there. You said you grew up an orphan.” Hope cut in after a long silence. “Amy even told us you lived alone before we did anything.”
“She lied for me. Amy foresaw this same exact thing happening with you pulling the strings so she hid my family. My mother works absurd hours to keep us alive, or to keep herself alive now. Amy sent her away for a week while the contract was underway, so you wouldn’t have seen her anyways.”
“Unfortunately for you, your mother is not my concern.” Death hissed. “Our business is the mirror. Owen can do whatever he wants with your mother. As long you aren’t stupid enough to walk into the trap that is being set for you the mirror is safe and we can continue our business.”
I glared at him silently for a moment. I couldn’t leave the den without a contractor, they were the only ones that could jump between the spirit world and the living world. Upon thinking that, my problem grew an easy solution. I could see Hope move out of the corner of my eye and I caught sight of her just as she shot Death a glare of her own. He didn’t have time to react before she grabbed hold of my hand and we were at the foot my old apartment building.
“Thank you, Hope.” I sighed, turning to her. It may have been the first time I had felt actual genuine gratitude towards her. “This means a lot.”
“He’s an idiot if he doesn’t get what it means to lose someone close to you. He saved my life multiple times. If you have the chance to do the same for someone close to you, you deserve to be able to take that chance.”
“It’s probably dangerous, are you sure you’re okay with this? Shouldn’t you get Amy?” We were about to walk into a trap after all and Amy was the most durable person I had ever met.
“I’ll be fine. Besides, if I went back to get her, dad would just trap me there.” She made a quick sweep of the street and nudged me closer to the front door. “It looks clear out here, let’s go in.” Her judgment left me uneasy, it was much too quiet, but I didn’t really have other options.
I went up to the door, grabbed the doorknob and tried to pull it open. It was locked of course, most doors are. It's just so easy to forget that when you don’t encounter them for an extended period of time.
“I don’t have my key anymore. Could you…” Hope grabbed the doorknob and wrenched it off, letting the door swing open freely. “Or you could do that.” I had theorized that contractors had extreme strength, but the random display caught me off guard.
We raced up the stairs to my apartment. Hope seemed just as anxious as me, at least she was running like it. I don’t imagine that contractors run much, they can just teleport places, seeing her put in physical effort made it feel like she cared that much more. Not to mention that I’d never really seen her care about anything until now.
I stopped at the top of the stairs to my floor and held out my arm to stop Hope from running on ahead. There was a chill in the air that I didn’t remember. It confused me because for the last what felt like months I hadn’t been able to detect temperature. I couldn’t hear anything from any of the other apartments on the floor, I hadn’t heard anything on the way up either. To top it all off, there was broken glass scattered across the floor. It was definitely a trap. A very poorly concealed trap.
“Whoever Owen sent, wasn’t very discreet.” I whispered. “This is the most obvious trap I’ve ever…” I was interrupted by a crashing noise from behind the door to my old apartment followed by a loud thud like something had hit the ground hard. All the audio ques of domestic dispute or home invasion.
I sprinted the last ten feet to the door in about two steps, skipping right over the broken glass with Hope right behind me. Again, I didn’t have my key, but now I knew I didn’t need one. Hope was way ahead of me. I didn’t even need to communicate it to her, she just ripped open the door. I stopped at the threshold of the main area in the apartment and froze. It took me a while to take in the scene. While it was certainly the apartment I’d spent a significant portion of my life in, it looked different now. Someone had made some poor redecorating choices. The small television that used to sit on a small pedestal in the dining slash living room had been moved to the floor and smashed to bits, the sofa had been flipped upside down and pushed to the side, and the dining room table had been split in half… somehow.
The air was near freezing, but now I recognized why. There was a familiar mist falling across the floor and swirling around my feet, only it wasn’t the black mist I was used to. This was white, almost bluish, and it felt ten times stronger. The second I found the source of the mist I was further dumbstruck, it was my mother. The woman who raised me was standing above the body of a girl my age lying on the floor in the middle of the split dining room table with soul draining mist cascading off her. The same kind of mist I’d only seen contractors use.
“Mom?” It was all I could manage in my confusion. The scene baffled even me, a writer who indulged in fantasy, had met Death, and thought he’d seen crazy things. This was crazy. The kind of crazy that made you lose your grip on reality, even if you’d never paid much attention to it anyway.
“Eleanor?” Hope whispered behind me. I’d almost forgotten she was there.
“Albert?” My mother looked shocked, almost terrified. In a quick gust of air the mist was sucked back in around her feat and the cold feeling was gone. This was obviously something she’d never intended me to see. If I was actually seeing it. “Hope?” That was about when I stopped understanding anything.
“Hope?” I mumbled turning to Hope and then to my mother. “Elleno…” The girl on the floor was moving but no one else seemed to notice. I wouldn’t have noticed if my mind hadn’t been racing to find something else to focus on than the absurdly impossible scene in front of me.
It was a slow and subtle movement, but it seemed like it happened in an instant. The girl pulled a gun out from under her and aimed it at Hope. I turned to look Hope in the eye, just barely getting her attention as I stepped in front of her. The room filled with the sound of the gunshot and then it was silent. Although I couldn’t exactly tell if it really was silent or if I just couldn’t hear anymore, because I could see Hope’s mouth moving but there wasn’t any sound coming out. I blinked and I was looking up all of the sudden. Hope was looking down at me and saying something I couldn’t hear. Death entered my vision over her shoulder saying something else I couldn’t hear. It was hard to tell what was going on, but if Death was there I guess that meant I was dead.
It was about time.