“Here, sit down.”

Amy had directed Albert to a round stone table just off one of the paths that ran around the perimeter of the park. It almost looked like a flattened marble birdbath, and it definitely looked like it had been a chosen perch for some local avian wildlife. There was a checkerboard in the middle of the table, but Albert couldn’t see much else of significance or why they were sitting across from each other there instead of on one of the more comfortable looking park benches.

“Have you played chess before?” Amy was rifling through her backpack with her back turned to Albert, but sounded a little excited. At least, as excited as Albert had ever heard her.

“I think. Maybe?”

Albert rolled his eyes as Amy produced a worn out wooden box roughly the length of her forearm and not much wider. As she opened it and laid it flat on the table, she revealed a set of what looked like very well carved chess pieces. As Amy slowly set them out on the table, she gave Albert a cautious and assessing look.

“I think this will help you focus a little. You need to pay very close attention during chess, even when you are not making a move. To win, you need to spread your awareness out over the entire board. But it is also fun, and you definitely don’t need to win to have fun. I learned that a long time ago.”

“If you think it will help, I’ll give it a shot.”

“Okay. Brief overview then.” Amy gestured to the pieces as they sat on the board. “I am playing the black side, you have the white side.”

Albert took note of the color of the pieces. It was a little harder to tell what the distinctions between the natural wood tones were, but her pieces were clearly a darker wood than his.

“These are pawns.” Amy gestured to the front row of both of their pieces. “They move forward one square at a time, and they can only capture other pieces that are directly diagonal to them and forward.”

Amy moved around an arrangement of pawns in the middle of the board to demonstrate.

“These are the major and minor pieces.” Amy indicated to the back row of each side of the board as she reset from her demonstration. “They move differently, but they’re pretty much as valuable as any other piece on the board… except the king.”

Amy quickly ran through the rest of the pieces. Rook, knight, bishop, queen, king. She showed Albert how they moved and how they captured other pieces. Albert did his best to pay attention, but he wasn’t exactly invested yet. Chess had always seemed like more of a snobs sort of game, and he wasn’t interested in taking a game so seriously that he was willing to actually study it.

“The white side always goes first.” Amy gestured to Albert as she announced it.

“So I can move any of these pawns… or a knight?”

“Yes, knights can move past pawns.”

Albert moved a knight forward. Amy moved a pawn two space forward.

“I thought pawns could only move one space at a time?”

“Oh, right. The first move a pawn makes can either be one square or you can do what I call a charge and move it forward two spaces. It can actually capture another piece if moves over it in the process. It’s called en-passant when that happens. It’s just french for ‘in passing,’ but you probably won’t have to worry about that. That’s sort of a higher level thing that usually only happens in competitive gameplay.”

“Okay.” Albert grumbled. He took note of the very clear french pronunciation of the chess term as well. She sounded like she knew what she was saying and the pronunciation sounded elegant.

Amy definitely knew a lot about chess. Albert was a little more invested seeing how eager Amy was to play. It was probably about as close as he would get to actually learning anything about her.

Albert moved a pawn at random. Amy moved another pawn, this time only space. Albert was slowly becoming more and more invested in the game, and as they went turn for turn, Albert occasionally asking a question. Every now and then Amy would get a slightly confused or concerned expression, which Albert took to mean he was probably playing badly or wasn’t making sense. It was almost like something was bothering her.

When Albert moved a rook next to Amy’s king and announced check, he wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do after that, but was completely startled when Amy stood up and took a step back over the small curved stone bench that she’d been sitting on.

“What?”

“That’s checkmate, Albert.”

“Oh, uh, cool, what move are you about to do for that?”

“No, I mean you just won.”

“What?” Albert was more confused now, but then took another careful look around the board. “Can’t your king take the rook?”

“The king can’t put itself into check. You have a bishop watching the rook. I can’t do anything about that.”

“Oh, I forgot about him. And you can't move... to a diagonal because of the knight there...”

“Reset. I need to see something.”

Albert started to reset his pieces as Amy sat back down and did the same. They started again, but as Albert was about to make his second move Amy stopped him.

“I want you to really focus and think about all your moves this time. Don’t do anything until you’ve considered all the possible options for the piece you want to move.”

“Okay…” Albert was a little confused by the instruction, but carried on.

The rest of the game moved much more slowly, as Albert took a few minutes each turn while Amy took about half as long. It wasn’t more than a couple turns in when Amy announced checkmate though.

“What about this bishop?” Albert indicated his one remaining bishop and the line it had to take out the knight that was checking his king.

“My bishop is lined up on your king too. If you move yours, mine gets check, and you can’t put your own king in check.”

“Oh. I guess I lose then.”

“Okay. Reset.”

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?”

“Eh, it’s not important. I was wrong.” Amy waved off the question and started to reset her side of the board. “What were your questions? You said you wrote some down when we were in the car.”

Albert wasn’t sure how to take her dismissal, but the chance to get some questions answered seemed more important. He pulled the notebook out of his backpack and opened it to the page he’d written the questions down on.

“Okay. First question has three parts. To start off with, what’s spiritual property?” Albert moved a pawn on the board absently to start the next game. Amy was clearly more interested in chess. But if she was willing to talk while playing, that was fine too.

“Oh, where’d you hear that one? I don’t think that’s listed on any of the contracts Death gave you to work with.”

“It’s not. It’s the reason why Death had me killed in the first place. He wants mine.”

“Well, that’s a lot to unpack…” Amy paused midway through making a move. “Uhm… I think it would be most easy to call spiritual property… baggage. Like when you check luggage on a long flight. It belongs to you, but you can’t really use it mid-flight. I guess being alive is the flight in that metaphor.”

“So it’s like, real property? Like land?”

“I guess it could be land. Never run into that before.” Amy made a quick move before carrying on with her answer. “It’s mostly objects. Usually things that get made using souls, but sometimes it’s just personal things like family heirlooms passed on by contractors and arbitrators.”

“So, I guess that brings me to the second part of that question… what spiritual property do I have?”

Albert made another move. He was paying more attention to the conversation than the game, but he was still mildly aware of what was happening on the board.

“No clue.” Amy let out a short laugh as she continued to pay more attention to the game. “But a lot of people have at least a passing connection to spiritual property these days. Contracting has been going on for a long time and it isn’t uncommon for someone to have spiritual property they are completely unaware of. It can move through generations of a family and go unnoticed.”

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“I don’t suppose you can answer the third part of the question then.”

“I mean I can try.”

“Okay, what does Death want with my spiritual property?”

“No clue.” Amy laughed again. “Sorry. Specifically yours? No clue. In general, people like Death, contractors, they like having shiny things that make them look good. So he probably just wants whatever it is to show off or help him amass power.”

“I’m going to jump to question four then.” Albert sighed, still not comforted by the answers he’d gotten. “Are there other people like Death? Contractors?”

“Oh, yeah. Plenty. Not as many these days. But probably still too many.” Amy smirked. “Too many.”

“How many is that?”

“I don’t know… two, maybe three dozen? My point is that one is probably too many, but I have no say in that.”

“Okay, back to question two then. What happens to a spirit when it dissipates?”

“Albert, you have really dumb questions.” Amy said with a sigh. “I guess they aren’t dumb, because you don’t know much about this whole side of reality. But from my perspective, that’s a really dumb question.”

“Why is it dumb?”

“Think of that question in a different way. When a spirit dissipates, it pops. Ceases to exist. It’s double dead. It is no longer part of this plane of existence. I’ve pretty much explained it that way already. So what happens when something leaves the realm of what you can observe?”

“I don’t know. What happens?”

“You just answered the question. You don’t know. It’s Schrodinger’s cat. It’s outside of the observable world, so you can’t say one way or the other. Maybe it moves on to an afterlife, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that’s just the end of that person’s entire existence. If I were going to find out, I’d have to look in the box. But I can’t look in the box without dying.”

“Right…” Albert sort of followed Amy’s explanation. The cat part didn’t make much sense to him, but it made sense that you couldn’t know without dying and dissipating yourself.

“Question three, then. What does Death do with the souls he collects?”

“That’s… I guess that’s a better question.” Amy turned her attention away from the chessboard to think about it. “It’s… not something I know a lot about. Contractors keep specific information about what they are and how their abilities and lives work pretty secret. But they do run on souls, like batteries I guess. But they have… most of them have a lot of souls to keep them going. Some don’t even collect them anymore. So maybe they only need so many? Maybe they just keep them in storage. I assume, however it is they absorb them into their being, it isn’t pleasant.”

“That’s… I think that kind of helps. It sheds a new light on the choices I’ve already made at least. I chose between finding out what happens after you die, becoming a battery, and this.”

“I don’t blame you for choosing this, by the way. It’s not a common option, but it’s familiar.” Amy let out a resentful sigh. “I probably would have made the same choice. In your position, I mean.”

“Last question.” Albert hoped his last question would elicit a clearer answer. “Why do I change when I arbitrate a soul?”

“That’s probably rolled into the things that contractors keep secret. So, specifically, I don’t know the answer.” Amy was focused on the chess game again, but her eyes occasionally darted back up to Albert. “But I would guess that normal people all have a spark of what makes a contractor a contractor. And when you function as an arbitrator for one, it agitates that dormant spark. You could be experiencing things that contractors feel regularly, it could be feeling the side-effects of experiencing something that humans aren’t supposed to. I don’t necessarily think it’s a good or bad thing, except when those side-effects interfere with doing the work your supposed to be doing. Or your normal life, in your case.”

Amy paused to look closely at the chess board before continuing. Albert could tell she had more to say, but the game was bothering her more.

She stood to look at it from a different angle and then knelt to put the pieces at eye level.

“It’s like taking a medication, in a way. Everything a medication does, good or bad, is a side-effect of taking that medication. The thing you want to happen, the goal of taking it, is usually just the most reliable and desirable side-effect. But when you accidentally take a mystery pill, it’s all chaos. You expect nothing, you get something, it doesn’t necessarily help you, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt you either. Some effects are neutral. But, as far as I can tell, all the effects are a result of the interaction between the soul and the body.”

“Can you explain that, then? The way the soul interacts with the body?”

“A little bit. I’m not a contractor, if you haven’t picked up on that. But I know a bit about that end of things.” Amy sat back down and continued with the chess game. “The soul is like the life and essence of a person. The body is the medium by which it interacts with the world. You kill the body, and the soul lingers as a spirit that can’t typically interact with the world. Without a body, it's specific body, the soul and spirit of a person begins to fade away into nothing like a candle left to burn. You take the soul out of the body, but don’t fully disconnect their communication, nothing happens. You sever that connection completely, the body dies.”

“So, my soul’s connections to my body could be being severed slightly?”

“That’s a possibility. But even if you completely sever the connection, there are ways to keep the soul and body going. Contracting can do that. Contracting is mostly the manipulation of the interactions between the body and the soul, but it’s all done through consensual agreements and weird magic stuff that I don’t get to know about.”

“I feel a little better about that now, actually.”

“Also, coincidentally, that’s checkmate” Amy sighed again, disappointed.

At first Albert thought it was because he wasn’t investing in the game like she was, but then he realized she was pointing at her own king.

“Oh. I won again?”

“Oh, I won again? Oooh, look at me playing all stupid.” Amy copied him in a strangely accurate but still mocking tone. “Yeah. You won. By accident. Again. You get how annoying and absolutely improbable that is, right?”

“That does sound unlikely. But I don’t really… I don’t really know enough about chess to understand how unlikely.”

“I hate you.”

“Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize. Ugh.” Amy was visibly frustrated now. “It’s bad enough that you beat me twice without trying, don’t be polite about it.”

“He beat you twice?”

Albert did a startled double take. A girl had suddenly appeared behind Amy and was looking over her shoulder. It had happened in the blink of an eye and come out of nowhere. Albert almost fell backwards off his seat. When he finally composed himself, he realized she matched Amy’s description of Hope. A little shorter than Amy, dark brown curly hair, dressed in designer clothes.

“That’s not normal.” Hope hummed. “Amy, explain how that happened.”

Amy winced at the demand and shifted uncomfortably in her seat before explaining.

“He is extremely and unnaturally lucky. He got me the first time with an almost turn for turn copy of Morphy versus Brunswick and Isouard. The second time was just… chaos in motion.” Amy continued to look extremely uncomfortable while she answered, almost like she was being forced to do it against her will.

“Interesting.” Hope hummed again before taking a seat next to Amy, pushing her to the side easily in the process.

Albert didn’t like the way Hope was behaving, with her casual demands and general posture of superiority. But he had to admit that she had a very pleasant, almost musical, voice. It was just as discordant to witness as Amy using her fake girly voice and attentive posture. Amy's fake persona almost mimicked Hope's voice and mannerisms; and after her accurate enough mimic of him, Josh didn't feel that was a coincidence.

“You must be Hope,” Albert held out his hand cautiously to shake hers, but Hope didn’t accept it.

“Ooh, Amy’s been talking about me. All good things I hope.” Hope turned to Amy. “Tell me, Amy, were you talking poorly about me behind my back?”

“Yes.” Amy hissed. Her jaw was clenched, but the answer came out quietly.

“That’s rude. And now Mr. Carol is going to have a bad first impression of me. Amy, go punch a tree or something. I want to talk with Mr. Carol alone.”

Amy twitched subtly as she stood, walked over to the nearest tree, and began punching it. It didn’t sound too bad, but Albert couldn’t be sure.

“Harder, Amy. Punch the tree as hard as you can.” Hope called out to Amy.

Albert could hear the impacts get louder and slightly wetter.

“You’re her boss, then.”

“Something like that.” Hope smiled. “I get to tell her what to do. Among other things.” The smile became more twisted as it spread out wider over her face.

“What did you want to talk about?”

“Well, I was wondering where you two ran off to. I sat through two classes and didn’t see you two at all. If I wanted to go through some trash modern school again… I wouldn’t do it. I’m just curious why Amy is masquerading as a teenager and why your little case file is getting so much attention.”

“I don’t know about my case file. But I’m just collecting souls. Death’s orders.” Albert held his hands up in mock defense. “Two souls, or I die. Amy’s just helping me with arbitration resources.”

“Is that what they call it now? Arbitration resources?”

Albert groaned in frustration. He did not understand why this was becoming a pattern.

“Why does everyone jump immediately to the conclusion that we’re engaging in some sort of secret torrid affair?”

“You’re a teenage boy, Albert.” Hope eyed Albert quizzically.

“And she’s not a teenage girl.” Albert frowned.

“Touche.” Hope gave a nod of assent. “But she’s still a woman. And sometimes older women…”

“I can still hear you!” Amy shouted from where she stood, still punching the same tree.

“My point is, I want to be sure you aren’t getting comfortable.”

“My body is only half alive. I feel every inch of my being being pulled apart by a force I can’t even describe. I don’t sleep. I don’t eat. For a whole day I barely felt any physical sensation across my entire body. When I don’t pay attention to the world around me, I lose hours of time staring into the void until I get snapped back to my senses. I have an incredibly unpleasant job that I need to do, and all of the side-effects of it are making it nearly impossible to live my life.” Albert glared at Hope as he ran down the list of things he had experienced. “I wouldn’t call anything about what is happening to me, or anyone helping me, comfortable. So unless you have anything to say that will actually help me, you can leave. You’re making it a lot harder for me to do the task that Death has given me, and my contract has nothing in it about anyone working for him being allowed to hinder me.”

“Bit sensitive, aren’t we.” Hope frowned deeply at the antagonism being sent her way. “But fair. I didn’t come here to get in your way. But if you’re experiencing any unnecessary problems, let me know. The conditions here aren’t bad for soul collecting, but working with half measures can be difficult. That’s part of the process.”

“I’ll have Amy keep you in the loop.” Albert gave Hope a fake smile and gestured to Amy.

“You can stop punching the tree now.” Hope called out. Amy stopped immediately. “I’ll be going. If you still intend on attending your school, I may stick around. If not, I won’t be hard to find.”

Without warning or effect Hope was gone. Albert had thought he saw some movement in her hands before she vanished, but he couldn’t be sure. She had left just as suddenly and startlingly as she had appeared.

Amy made her way over to Albert and put a hand on his shoulder. From the angle, Albert noticed that there wasn’t any sort of injury on her hands. Which was confusing, but also comforting that she hadn’t actually been hurt because of him. Albert looked over to the tree and noticed that there was actually considerable damage to the bark where she had been punching.

“That was well done. I probably should have warned you ahead of time though, that that’s the boss’ daughter. So it’s probably not a good idea to get on her bad side.” Amy grimaced at the failure to communicate that very important detail. “It probably slipped my mind because she will literally always hate me no matter what I do.”

“I can see that.”

Albert was now dreading his next encounter with Death. Telling off Death’s daughter was not a good way to get on his good side, Albert was sure. Albert hoped they weren’t so close that Death would hear about the incident before he could complete his contract. That was probably his best case scenario.

“Down for another game?”

“Even against my unnatural luck?”

“Sure. Why not.” Amy sighed. “It will keep me sharp.”