-/-/-/-/- Now, approx. 8:30 AM

"Jexter. Who is behind all this?" Mason asked, glaring now.

Jexter grimaced. "Ethan," he answered quietly. "My son."

Mason's jaw dropped. He remembered Ethan Rayne. He remembered the slightly overweight six-year-old Squib with a penchant for getting into as much trouble as his little body could muster. Even at such a young age, he'd been a rebellious little tyke, and it would seem he never outgrew his disposition toward wrongdoing.

Jexter fidgeted and refused to meet Mason's gaze. Shame flushed his cheeks a deep red. He regarded the heap of crups. "Ethan must have begun the ritual already," he hypothesized. "Crups normally don't attack wizards, dead or alive. The ritual must be affecting animals, causing them to act bizarrely. We'll probably see the affects of the ritual in the human population soon."

"Jex." Mason lay a hand on his arm, halting the words as they spilled from his mouth. "How could your son be responsible for this?"

Jexter sighed and rubbed his eyes. He suddenly looked a lot older and more tired than he had a few minutes ago. "The same way he's always been responsible for this," he replied. "He's a Chaos Worshipper."

"Ethan?" Mason questioned. The disbelief was plainly evident in his voice. "How could Ethan be a Chaos Worshipper?"

"I've wondered that ever since I found out when he was nineteen."

"Nineteen? But that was…"

"1979. Nearly twenty-five years ago."

Mason's mouth was collecting flies. He snapped it shut and swallowed. He needed a moment to process this information. The surprises just keep coming, don't they? he thought, positively stunned. "I'm going to go get my post-it," he told Jexter matter-of-factly. He waved at the crups. "You get rid of those. I'll be back in a minute."

Without another word, Mason turned and walked out of the alley. He stopped for a moment to collect himself before pulling the door of the restaurant open and sauntering inside.

Everyone was still there. Only a few minutes had passed since he'd performed the Obliviation Charm. When he pulled up a chair and sat down, none of them looked at him like he'd grown a second head; none of them demanded explanations, either. Mason let out a relieved sigh. The charm had worked.

The bite marks had already healed thanks to his reaper metabolism, leaving caked dirt and a ruined jacket sleeve he'd forgotten to repair magically before entering Der Waffle Haus. Daisy tsked, annoyed, when he plopped his arm on the table in front of her. Other than that, though, Mason's appearance received no comment.

"You're late," Rube said without even looking at the British reaper, a sure sign that he was annoyed.

"Sorry," Mason said, scrambling for some sort of excuse. "Got caught up."

"By what? Have trouble tying your shoelaces again?" Roxy retorted with a disdainful look at him. Beside her, Daisy smirked. George, who sat across from them, smiled into her drink.

Normally, Mason took the insults in stride, but that morning he had too much on his mind to sit and put up with them. His lips pressed into a thin line as he tried to contain frustration that wasn't directed toward them. "Can I have my post-it?" Mason asked Rube as calmly as possible.

"Why?" Rube asked him. "Got somewhere to be?"

Mason bit his lip, using every bit of willpower he had to keep from bursting.

When he didn't reply, Rube only raised his eyebrows before pulling open his post-it book. He pulled off the post-its and slapped them down in front of each reaper present.

"What the-?" George began, staring down in incredulity at all five of the post-its Rube had placed in front of her. Everyone, even Rube, had as many post-its set in front of them.

Daisy checked hers. "All of these are for different locations-" she began. She glanced at Roxy's post-its. "Oh, look, we both have appointments in that park…"

"What's going to happen?" George asked, directing her question at Rube, who shrugged. Mason smiled ruefully. She should have asked him. He had little doubt that it wasn't his cousin's chaos ritual. All of these people would die in the chaos that was to come.

He glanced over his stack. The earliest one was slated to happen in the next forty minutes. "Bullocks," he said as he stood up, pocketing all of them hastily.

When he ran back into the alley, the crups were nowhere to be seen. "I banished them," Jexter explained.

"Good. Come on. I have an appointment to catch."

He grabbed Jexter's arm and hauled him after him. Jexter stared at him. "When you say appointment…"

"I mean someone's going to die, yeah," Mason said.

Jexter dug his heels into the sidewalk, causing Mason to stumble slightly before he stopped and let go of his cousin's arm. "Woah! I don't think I want to be around when you, uh, kill someone."

Mason gave him a confused look. "What are you talking about? I don't kill anyone. I'm just there to take the person's soul."

Jexter's mouth opened, closed, and opened again. "You mean…reapers don't cause the actual deaths?"

"No," Mason replied, feeling insulted. He glanced at his watch. "Now come on. I want to talk to you, but we have to be walking or I'm going to be late."

He turned and headed down the sidewalk. Jexter hurried to catch up to him. Once he was at Mason's side, he asked hesitantly, "So, what happens to a soul if a reaper's not there to collect it?"

They paused at a curb and waited for the traffic to pass, Mason fidgeting impatiently. "The soul stays in the person's body."

Jexter's brow furrowed as he tried to work out this piece of information. "Do they see what happens to their bodies after they die, then?"

Mason nodded. "Yeah. It's usually more humane to not let that happen."

They crossed the street and continued on along the sidewalk. Mason took a deep breath. "I want to know how Ethan could have become a Chaos Worshipper."

Jexter sighed. Mason glanced at him and saw him look sadly down at his feet. "I'm not sure how it happened. Like I said, I only found out about it after he turned nineteen." He smiled. "I felt for sure that it was a just a phase, a little bit of teenage rebellion. When I found out what he'd been doing, I blew up at him. It didn't go well after that. He stormed out of the house. Cheslie and I didn't see him again for months. Early the next year, though, he showed up, just out of the blue. He was a mess. He was bleeding from multiple cuts, he hadn't shaved in a week, and he hadn't bathed or changed clothes in nearly as long. He apologized for everything and wanted his old life back. We, of course, agreed."

His features turned steely. He glared ahead at nothing. "It was a ruse. All of it. He didn't want anything to do with us except my herbs."

Mason studied at him. "What d'you mean?"

"Ethan was back with us for a week. One night, Cheslie and I came back from a date to find him crouched in the living room. He was leaning over a young woman he'd tied and gagged and placed in the middle of a pentagram. He'd just been about to sacrifice her to some demon chaos lord when we'd walked in."

Silence fell for several long moments. Mason felt even more shocked than ever. "Fuck…Merlin, fuck!" He shook his head. "Shit, Jex. This whole situation is fucked up."

"Yeah. I know."

They were silent for the rest of the trip. When they finally arrived at an apartment building, Mason let out a sigh and glanced at his watch. Two minutes to go. There was no way he'd get into the building and find the right apartment before the death occurred. He'd have to wait until the dead guy or gal was wheeled out of the apartment on a gurney.

"So…now what?" Jexter asked, looking about nervously and then above as if expecting to be accosted by a Peeves-like apparition.

His cousin smirked. "Now, we wait." He explained the reasons behind this decision. Jexter's face twisted into a grimace when he realized Mason would actually have to touch the body of the dead person.

"Couldn't you stop it, since you know it's going to happen?" he asked, frustrated by the fact that he himself wasn't doing anything to stop it.

"Not a good idea." Mason explained the reasons behind that as well. "And you can't stop it, either. When a person is scheduled to die, he has to die or his soul'll rot. Trust me when I say it is not a pretty sight."

Fifteen minutes later, an ambulance pulled up in front of the building. Five minutes afterward, a cop car arrived. Twenty minutes after that, the ambulance attendants rolled a body out on a gurney. A sick look on his face, Jexter stayed on the periphery as his cousin ventured forward. Mason managed to brush his fingers over the body of R. Nathaniels before one of the cops told him to scram. He hurried back over to where Jexter waited.

"It was a dog attack," he informed his living cousin. "Looks like Ethan's spell is effecting all the dogs in town." He discarded R. Nathaniels's post-it in a trash bin and took out the next in line.

Jexter stared at the new post-it. "How many souls do you reap in a day?"

"Usually, it's just one a day," Mason replied casually. He checked the time against the ETD given on the post-it, missing completely the green tinge of Jexter's cheeks. "But Ethan's ritual is upping the stakes."

"Are…all of the souls you have to reap today victims of dog attacks?"

"Don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are."

Jexter's look turned reflective as something occurred to him. "If we could piece together where the attacks are taking place, there may be a point of convergence somewhere in the middle of the affected area…"

Mason titled his head as he considered Jexter's theory, as much as he understood it. "It could work."

"Can I see your post-its?" Jexter asked hesitantly, looking like he regretting the request. "I want to look at the addresses."

Shrugging, Mason showed them to him. Jexter memorized them before handing them back. "Right, then. I'm going to check a few places, see if anyone's lost any crups and see if their address is anywhere near those."

"Right, then I'll meet you at the hotel after I'm done," Mason said.

Jexter hurried off, eager to put as much distance between him and the business of grim reaping. Mason smiled at his cousin's behavior, then turned back around and searched the gathering crowd for the soul of R. Nathaniels. Spotting a man with nasty dog bites that had torn up his throat and half of his upper body, Mason whistled and waved for the R. Nathaniels to join him.