Wow. Really late updating. Busy with yet another school play. Excuses excuses. Lol. Ok, here it is. Now, if I don't get at least three reviews, I'm not updating. Seriously. It's a somewhat longer chapter. Hope you all like it.

Disclaimer: Not mine.. Do own a graveling or two though. Haha.

Read, enjoy and don't forget to review.

"So where'd you get the necklace?" George knew that she wouldn't be getting to the bottom of Scarlet's little secret any time soon, so she had decided to poke around a little bit and try and figure the teenager out. Too bad Scarlet's attention was out the window instead of on George. The brunette barely batted an eye when the question was asked. "Scarlet?" George said, raising the volume of her voice. The teenager's gaze shot up in reaction to her name.

"What?" She looked over at George, an eyebrow raised in question. George repeated her inquiry, gesturing at the necklace to emphasize her query.

Scarlet looked down at the necklace that her fingers still held. The Chinese symbol was molded out of a cheap metal, just above the value of a necklace one would get out of a gumball machine for twenty-five cents. It hung off of a black strand of some type of even cheaper rope. She dropped the necklace and the lump of metal made a small thump against her chest.

"My mom got it for me." She made no move to elaborate her answer.

"That's it? No story to it?" George pushed further. "I mean I've never seen that symbol before, it's different."

"Yeah, there's a story to it, don't know if I feel like sharing right at the moment though." George's patience was growing thinner and thinner when she talked to Scarlet. She knew the girl was hiding something, but she just couldn't get anything out of the teenager.

"Alright, how about this?" George was growing desperate. She wanted to know at least one thing about the newcomer, especially if she was going to have to live with her. "I'll tell you a story if you tell me yours. How's that?"

George took her eyes off of the road for a few seconds to see Scarlet's reaction to the proposal. Behind the brunette's eyes, George could see the wheels turning in her head.

"Fine. But you tell yours first."

George scanned the car for anything she could tell the girl. 'It would have to be something personal,' George figured. 'Or else she won't buy it.' Then George's gaze fell upon the ring on her right hand. The ring was a little bit bigger than her finger's circumference, and slid around constantly.

"Like my ring?" George had found the perfect story and Scarlet nodded in answer. "Want to know how I got it?" Another nod from Scarlet. "A dead woman gave it to me." Scarlet's eyebrow raised the tiniest bit. "She was a Reaper."

"Ah."

"She was a friend of mine. One of the first people I met when after I died, and you know that story already, apparently. Anyway, after awhile we got really close. It had been a couple weeks after I had died, and I started feeling like I fit in more and more with the group. You need to really understand what kind of person she was before I tell you anymore. She had basically become my big sister, looking out for me, and giving me styling tips that I didn't even need or cared about. She was fun and completely spontaneous. She had died by jumping off of a cliff." George glanced at Scarlet to see if the girl was still paying attention, and then continued. "This was her ring. She had dug her own body up and had taken it right off of her own finger. She protected me when Rube would get on my case, and helped me realize how much I didn't live when I had an actual pulse. She had this habit of taking people's pictures and categorizing them into separate bags and shoe boxes. She was always happy and loved her job. She pushed me in the right direction to start living in my after-life. That was a couple days before she left.

We were at a bar, sitting there just drinking, waiting for my Reap to amble on by. And boy did he amble on by. He was this Irish guy, celebrating his birthday with his family and friends. He got on the bar and danced an Irish jig while she found out who he was and charmed him before he died and while I Reaped his soul. He was killed a couple seconds later by a Graveling riding a swordfish. Don't ask. The guy had died and we were walking him towards his lights in dank alley behind the bar. His family was left to grieve for him on his birthday. The lights came down as usual, and the formed into these cliffs. He had explained that he was always scared to jump off of those cliffs as a boy, because he didn't know where he would land. She convinced him it was a good place, with a sparkle in her eye. He walked up to that cliff and was about to jump when she turned to me with a mischievous smile on her face. She pulled out her camera, had me take a picture of her and then put her ring in my hand. She told me she loved me and then ran out to the man who we had just reaped. She stood behind him as he jumped and sped up to wherever people who have just died go to. She waved a final goodbye and followed suit. With a rumble of the earth that only reapers felt, she was gone." George wiped a small tear from her eye, trying to hide it from Scarlet. She then looked over at the young girl. "Your turn." Scarlet looked at George, took a deep breath and then gave George another look that probably would have killed her again.

"Fine. We did make a deal. My mom got the necklace for me." She looked at George, expecting to possibly get away with just that.

"No dice. I heard that part already." Scarlet cursed quietly under her breath and continued.

"We were at this flea market, the first one of the season. There were vendors who were selling new and old stuff. Most of it was bogus and crappy things. We loved going to those things though, for that exact reason. Just to see what we could find. We must have walked around for hours looking for the perfect booth. There's always one for everyone at those things. A booth that has the exact thing you're looking for. We found it after a couple hours. It was a jewelry booth. Some homemade stuff, some stuff you could tell the lady had bought and was making profit off of it. We stopped and looked, and I found a box filled with these necklaces. Random Chinese symbols that we didn't know, the lady didn't know either. She said she got the box from her cousin or something. There must have been like twenty necklaces in the box, all having different symbols on them. I shuffled through them, finding one that I really liked, and for no real reason, now that I think about it. I just told my mom I wanted this one and she didn't even ask why. We paid the woman vendor and went home. I kept meaning to look up the symbol on the internet, but I kept getting distracted. The night after I died, I had the nagging feeling to go and look it up, and on the first search I found what it meant." Scarlet trailed off, and George could tell she didn't want to continue, but George being George, she pushed further.

"So what did the symbol mean?"

Scarlet picked the necklace back up and ran her fingers over the molded metal, as if that was the thing holding her secrets in, holding her life together. She took another deep breath and spoke.

"Death."

TBC.