And chapter 3, at last! This one got a little moody, but plotwise I suppose it was inevitable (and given the news, I wasn't feeling much up to laughing tonight). Part 4, the conclusion, will, hopefully, be following this soon.
Susan could feel something following her.
She'd only made it a block away when the sense crept up on her, of a vague, scuttling sort of shape, and at first she was vaguely unsettled, until she heard the clicking footsteps and the faint sound of a swishing cloak. She gritted her teeth and turned around.
"All right, he put you up to this, didn't he?"
SQUEAK....
"Yes, I know he means well, he always does try, but he never actually gets it. He thinks this is going to make me feel better?" She flourished the hourglass at the Death of Rats, fuming quietly. "He thinks this counts as a distraction? And you're along to keep me company?"
SQUEAK.
"I don't need scarcasm right now, thank you," Susan muttered. The rat, as much as it could, made a face at her.
She glared at the hourglass, which was nearly drained, and then back into the street. For a few minutes nothing important was visible. Then she squinted. A distant shape had begun to lumber into view in the distance, gradually picking up speed.
Susan edged somewhat sideways, moving out of anyone's view, and stood in the alcove of a nearby building to watch.
"This is it, isn't it?" she murmured.
The rat, for once, said nothing, just crouched beside her and waited.
The oncoming carriage was pulled by two horses at a reasonably fast clip -- not too fast for city traffic, but quick enough that bystanders would need to get out of the way and stay there. Susan watched it approach, watched its lanterns swinging....
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats said quietly.
Another figure had emerged from a side street, pushing a cart. He was tall, thin, harried-looking; he was working late, and not paying quite enough attention....
Instinct crowded out knowledge of the inevitable, and made Susan shout, "Look out!"
She was still out of perceptible range, though, and so he didn't look up, not until the horses had reared and the clattering collision sent the cart flying, and he stumbled....
At the moment she heard a crack against the stones, the last grains of sand dropped through the hourglass.
Susan shut her eyes for a moment, then hefted the scythe. "All right," she muttered grimly. "Let's get this over with."
The Death of Rats ran after her as she stalked toward the fallen man -- and it was truly a stalk, the shape of her movements slowly changing as she approached. She went straight past the driver of the carriage, who had quickly clambered out and was fussing about in panic. The occupants, Susan saw with disgust, looked as though they merely wanted to get away from the scene of the accident.
Does no one care? she thought viciously, and looked down at the shade of the young man, who was slowly getting up, holding a head to his forehead in an echo of pain that would, soon enough, become insignificant.
THOM CHANDLER? she said, feeling a tiny shiver at the sound of the Voice issuing from her throat. She hadn't even thought about doing it; it had just happened....
"What?" he mumbled, peering up at her. "What's going on? I just saw a--"
He turned around. The horses were prancing back and forth in nervousness, and the driver was still fluttering about, clearly unsure of what to do. Thom took in the tableau of the shocked bystanders, the merchandise scattered away from his cart, and, finally, his own shape lying still on the ground -- and for a few seconds, there was merely shocked silence.
Then he leapt up, shouting.
"No! This cannot be happening -- tell me this isn't happening--"
He reached desperately toward Susan, as if to grip her shoulders, but he lurched right past -- or through -- and let out a faint moan, his hands grasping at nothing.
"I'm sorry," Susan said, her voice descending back into its normal range as she awkwardly tried to find something to say. That look on his face was making this difficult. "But yes."
"You --" He stared at her, suddenly seeing the silver curve of her blade. "You've got the -- you're...."
DEATH? "Yes."
The panic in his eyes flashed over to anger. "Then... you can do something about this, right? Put me back? You -- you must -- do it now!"
Susan gripped the scythe tighter in her hands. "That's not what I do."
He backed up a couple steps. Susan watched emotions flash through his hazel eyes, ending in a horrified muddle. "Oh, no. Then -- it'll just be over, and they'll be --"
They? she wondered briefly, and then lost the thought --
-- because Thom had turned around and bolted.
Susan was so surprised that she stood there dumbly for a good three or four seconds, gaping, before turning to the Death of Rats and demanding, "What now?"
He looked irritated, and jabbed a bony paw in the direction Thom's shade had fled. Susan, never having had to deal with a runaway spirit before, still stared after him in shock for another handful of seconds before gripping her skirts with one hand and setting off down the street.
A small voice in the back of her head muttered, This is really not what I had in mind for the night....
Ghosts, Susan was discovering, could move fast.
She didn't even use the word "ghost" that often; she'd rarely seen spirits persist long enough for them to pick up the term. The few times she'd had to do this, she merely had to show up, wave the scythe, and that was it....
Well, it was never that "merely", but that was the idea. And none of them lingered. Certainly none of them ran.
Susan dashed between the few pedestrians still out at this hour, carefully keeping the scythe as far away from them as possible, and trying to track the faint trail she could sense between Thom's body and his runaway spectral self. She knew she could probably just whip the scythe down through it and have done with this, but that wasn't how things were done. So she ran, stopping every few yards for the rat to catch up, then finally hefted him onto her shoulder and continued.
SQUEAK -- SQUEAK! the rat suddenly insisted, gesturing down an alley with his own tiny scythe. She turned down the narrow passageway, seeing nothing, then glanced up. A faint gray shimmer sat on the sill of a third-story window.
Susan heaved a sigh. She knew she could do all sorts of abnormal things -- walk through walls, stop time, use that voice -- but she couldn't float, or at least she didn't think so, and this was no time to experiment. "Where's the stairwell?" she asked aloud.
The rat glanced around, then pointed at a half-hidden doorway. Susan walked in and started to clamber upstairs. Habit made her jiggle the doorhandle when she got there; it was locked, and for a moment she stared at it like any ordinary person against an obstacle. For just a moment, she was. Then she took a breath and was something else.
She hated doing this, sometimes; she knew she could just walk into any room she chose to, but she had no idea where she was or who lived here, and it felt like an invasion. When she ducked through the walls of the room, she instinctively tried to make herself as inconspicuous as possible.
The Death of Rats made an exasperated sound as he hopped down to the floor. "Yes, I know no one can see me..." she replied, sighing. He made no further comment as she looked around.
The boarding house loft was small but comfortable; someone had gone through some trouble to make it homey. Candles burned on the mantlepiece, and two small beds, each of them occupied by indistinct shapes, sat near the fireplace. A third, unused, sat slightly farther away.
Susan glanced over it all, then at the faint shape in the window. He was taking in slow gulps of breath, an old and now-unnecessary habit. "Hurts..." he said to no one in particular.
"Go running off from yourself like that, and yes, it probably will," Susan said sharply. Thom raised his head. "You're supposed to let go, you know."
She'd worried that he might try to run again, but this time he swung his legs inside the window ledge and faced her, trembling with anger. "Let go? Some nob comes along and runs me down, and it's over? Just like that?"
"I don't decide how," Susan said softly. "I just do."
Light gleamed off her scythe as she stepped closer. Thom backed up as far as he could against the windowframe, shutting his eyes.
Susan paused before him, watching the faint outline of his form tremble, and she lowered the scythe. "What is it?" she finally said, her voice low.
He looked back across the room. Susan turned and heard a faint snoring noise from the beds, saw a girl's hand as she turned over in her sleep.
"My sisters," he said. "I take care of them. I take in whatever money I can and... and we get by, barely."
Susan swallowed. "Is there anyone else?"
Thom shook his head. "It's just...."
Words failed him; he sketched out a circle in the air, encompassing him and the two sleeping girls across the room.
THERE'S NO JUSTICE, said an odd but apt memory in the back of Susan's mind. THERE'S JUST US.
She tried to dislodge the echo from between her ears, but it still lingered as she said uncomfortably, "There's nothing else you can do. Your time was up--"
"My time?" Thom cried out. "What time? I'm nineteen! I've got my whole life waiting--"
NO, YOU DON'T. THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.
He shrank back from her and the hypnotic blue light in her eyes, which blazed and then faded as he whispered, "What are you, really?"
Susan weighed her options. "I really am Death," she said. "Sometimes. When I have to be."
The Death of Rats, who had been inspecting the corners of the room for any potential business, stopped and looked up at her. She glanced at the tiny skeleton. For the first time, she wondered if he ever had to go through this -- wondered if Death himself ever felt a flash of guilt at the critical moment -- or if that was just her, the human part, the sense of responsibility that never let anything lie....
She looked behind her again.
Two small children, tucked in their beds, unaware that someone was leaving....
"They'll just have to stand on their own," she said, almost to herself.
"There's nothing for them to stand on!" Thom shouted. "Don't you get it?"
"But you can't stay!" Her eyes blazed again, but this time without the blue; it was simply human frustration, anger at the world. "There's nothing I can do!"
"What are you when you aren't Death, then?" Thom's voice was bitter. "Don't you understand how it is for the rest of us who have to live in the world?"
Her grandfather didn't. She knew that. Susan had watched Death try to see how the other half lived, and he'd always, in some small but critical way, get it wrong. That was why, she realized, he'd sent her here. He expected her to do something.
Susan looked at the children, and asked, "What are their names?"
"Kate and Sarah," Thom said softly. "They're twelve and nine. Ten next Thursday."
Susan bent down to brush a loose lock of hair off Sarah's cheek. The beginnings of a thought pricked at her. It was a small, simple thing, but possibly....
"I can't promise anything," she said firmly. "But --"
Thom sighed a little. "Which means you'll talk to someone, maybe, and then..."
Susan turned her gaze fully on him. She had the ability to truly focus like this, and being under such immediate, attentive scrutiny usually stunned her conversation partners into silence. Thom was no exception. "I will do something. Is there anywhere they can stay in the meantime?"
He stuttered for a moment. "With Miss Cooper downstairs, I think, for a couple days... Kate likes her cat...."
That little detail sealed it for Susan, somehow. She looked down at Kate and Sarah and then gently gestured for Thom to step away. He drifted back toward the window, looking more insubstantial than he had just moments before.
Susan sighed a little, looking at the blade still in her hands.
"You didn't really answer my question," he said distantly. "What are you, when you're not Death?"
"A teacher," she said.
Thom looked at her, laughing once, astonished. "So how'd you get stuck with this?"
The voice, again, just happened, as Susan met his gaze and said, FAMILY.
He gave her a sad, understanding smile. Then he turned to face her fully and stood still.
Susan didn't make him wait. She took a breath, raised the scythe, and arced it down through a space of sudden emptiness.
For a moment, she didn't move. The Death of Rats walked back up beside her, saying nothing, but giving her a rather significant look. "I know, I know," she muttered eventually. "So I took an interest, too."
SQUEAK....
"Yes, but they're different. Gawain and Twyla will have someone, but these two...."
She stopped. The Death of Rats, she suspected, would have been blinking innocuously if he could.
Susan decided not to say anything else. She just released the scythe, which vanished as mysteriously as it had come, and straightened her suddenly plain dress, while her hair wound itself back up into a sensible style. Before long, she could see a faint reflection of herself in the window, looking for all the world like a governess again, or a teacher, or someone the children and the neighbors could trust, who'd just had to come to the door with bad news.
Susan went downstairs to find Miss Cooper first, and then went back up to get Kate and Sarah, and stayed until she was sure they'd be all right for the night before leaving.
She made note of the address on the way out.
---- to be concluded....
