Push? What did she mean push?

  My answer came when Gildebrak lifted our intertwined hands as high as she could reach and shouted something. Suddenly that energy went from a constant, thriving flow to an all-out deluge and the entirety of the chain circle barrier was filled with blinding light.

  It vanished just as suddenly as it began, but the three of us weren’t in the same dingy alley at somewhere around three AM in the morning. No, somehow we were someplace grayer, grimier, the very air of it slimy against my skin.

  It was as if we were inside some sort of snow globe, but instead of a winter wonderland, we were in a melting candle factory that only used gray wax. Everything was either dripping, creeping, or oozing in one direction or another.

  “Bridges, look!”

  I was so gobsmacked by our strange surroundings that it took a bit of a shake from Gildebrak to realize that she was pointing with our still-connected hands. I got the feeling I couldn’t let go even if I wanted to, with that blinding energy binding our palms together. But as I followed our pointed fingers, I saw the lost soul we’d been trying to reason with.

  Except she wasn’t a phantasm anymore. Or at least she didn’t look like one. Instead, she was almost her normal human self.

  Almost.

  It was like someone had stolen all the color from her, turning every bit of her an ashen, lifeless gray. Except for the blood that was covering her. I was all too familiar with what that looked like from watching her being pulled from her car, except instead of the bright, almost too vibrant red, it was a thick, oily black. Viscous and entirely unnatural, it stood out against the drab gray of everything else.

  “Hello,” Gildebrak said as we took a couple of cautious steps forward. The young woman was sitting at a creek, something that might have been picturesque if there was any foliage, clouds, or signs of life. All there was in that strange place was the same rotting gray and the thick, thick drops of darkness falling from the tip of her nose and her fingers, making ring after ring within the gray waters like the insides of world’s most macabre tree. “It’s nice to see you.”

  “Who are you?” the woman asked, not even looking up. Although her back was to us, a terrible sort of foreboding filled me, like I was somewhere I very much wasn’t supposed to be, seeing things I most certainly wasn’t meant to see.

  “My name’s Gildebrak, and this is Bridg—”

  “No. Not you. Who are you?” She staring into the water. “Who… am… I?”

  At this she glanced over her shoulder and that feeling within my own gut was confirmed by what I saw.

  Much like her phantasm form, her eyes were more abyss than actual physical features, she didn’t actually have nose, not a normal one anyway, and her mouth rapidly flickered from being an endless void, to a spiral of teeth, to a human mouth, and then a selection of other apex predators. It was terrifying, and yet I understood it for what it was.

  She couldn’t remember who she was. She’d lost the last ties to herself and all she had was the pain of being a phantasm to cling too. We—I—needed to help her get her face back. But how?

  “You don’t remember your name?” Gildebrak asked, crouching down like she was talking to a little kid. It stunned me a bit, how natural the smaller woman was with the spirit and how different she was from the Mean Girls. Maybe I was over generalizing the three Reaper’s previous actions, but I hadn’t seen an ounce of the same compassion or even acknowledgement from them.

  The woman slowly shook her gray head, and while smoke still wafted around her as an after-image, it wasn’t nearly as cloying or choking as before. “No.”

  Gildebrak clicked her tongue lightly and looked to me. “That makes it more difficult, but not impossible. We’ve got to find a different way to help her remember. Usually I—”

  Normally I would never interrupt someone in the middle of something so important, but I knew what to do. And even though that was entirely impossible, it was the truth. So, I stepped a bit past Gildebrak and sat down right in the slimy, icky mire with the woman.

  “Tell me about someone you love.”

  “Someone I love?”

  “Yeah. Tell me about them.”

  “What are you doing, Bridges?” Gildebrak whispered, not an angry hiss, but definitely a bit concerned.

  “Just trust me. Please?” I asked even though I hadn’t really done anything to earn such trust.

  But thankfully, the Reaper didn’t push and let me sit, although she still gripped my hand.

  “…about someone… I love,” the phantasm said.

  I smiled softly and reached over with my free hand, setting it on the woman’s arm. It felt awful, like touching something wet but dry, sticky but dry, oily but… did I mention that whole dry part? She felt completely desiccated in an incredibly unnerving way. “Exactly that.”

  “I…” the woman’s voice still sounded more like a wail and a whisper than an actual speaking voice, but the more she spoke, the clearer it became. Kind of like a door being freed from its rust after years of disuse. “Hands. Such soft hands. Her voice? Lullabies. Soft. So very soft. Jasmine… vanilla…” I swore those voids she had for eyes flickered into an actual human set before winking out. “I remember her smile. She was… my mother?”

  “You remember your mother,” I affirmed. “Good. Tell me more about her. I want to know.”

  “Her smile. I remember… her smile. It was so big, it made me feel like… like…”

  “You could do anything?” I supplied.

  “Yes. Anything.” It could have just been my mind, but I swore I felt warmth spreading between my fingers. “She loved to… to garden. In the summer she’d set up sprinklers so my friends and I could all play. She… she held me when my first boyfriend broke my heart. She cried when I was Rizzo in our school’s production of Greece…”

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  While I was iffy on the whole temperature thing, I knew that I wasn’t imagining the change in her voice. The shift kept increasing, her words sounding less like the wailing of the dead and more like a regular young woman.

  “She was so funny. And silly. She never stopped believing in me, ever. She always told me that I would reach the stars.” Abruptly the girl lurched forward. I almost reached for her, scared she would fall into the gray water, but Gildebrak’s grip on my hand kept me in place. “God, she’s all alone now! I don’t want her to be alone!”

  I watched, my own throat squeezing tightly as the young woman’s voids shifted back to human eyes and big, fat tears began to well up from them. They were colorless, as one would expect tears to be, but as they dripped over her gray lashes, something incredible happened.

  Color!

  Like a line of cold cream removing thick stage makeup, it erased the gray from her skin and left a track of flesh. It was just a line, a single line, but I watched, enraptured, as that drop made it all the way to the top of her upper lip then hovered.

  “I miss my mommy!”

  At that, the singular drop fell, and where it hit the water rippled in rings. For a moment, there was nothing, just more of that lifeless, endless gray. But like a star being birthed in the depths of space, color began to swirl. Just a tiny drip’s width at first. Then bigger. Then bigger. Rippling out in kaleidoscopic circles that began to saturate everything.

  “Who is your mommy?” I asked, trying to keep my voice as soothing as possible. “Remember who she is!”

  “My… she… my…” More tears, more drops of color. The gray around us began to hiss and sizzle as more tears hit it, like it was actively trying to fight the color. “My mother’s name was Andrea Fieldson and I loved her!”

  The whole environment began to shake around us, cracks appearing in the walls. The pond water was almost completely blue now, with plants beginning to unfurl at the edges and fish swimming within its shallows.

  “Yes! Your mother was Andrea, and she had the biggest smile, and heart. You used to hug her and smell her jasmine and vanilla shampoo, and you’d think that was the safest place in the world!” I leaned in as far as Gildebrak would let me, never letting go of the phantasm’s arm. “She practiced your lines with you for every audition, and danced with you in the living room whenever you got a role, didn’t she? Every time you doubted yourself, she would be there to remind you of everything you could do. And when you took that final curtain call at the end of a show, she would always clap the loudest. You lived for those moments, because nothing was better than making her proud.”

  “Yes, yes! God, I love her!” the woman was practically screaming, rocking back and forth in her growing puddle of gray.

  “And who did she love? Who did Andrea Fieldson love more than anything or anyone else in the whole world!?”

  The lost spirit drew in a wracking gasp, unnatural and yet entirely identifiable in its sorrow. “Me! She loved me!”

  “And who are you, daughter of Andrea Fieldson? Who does your mother love!”

  “My name is Jessica Fieldson, and I died loved! My mother loves me!”

  Once more I was blinded as the entire world vanished in a blaze of white. There was truly nothing, just a blinding nothingness, before it all sucked back into itself like someone had hit the rewind button.

  Whoa… I thought to myself, blinking rapidly at yet another assault on my eyes.

  “You have no idea how impressive what you just did is.”

  “Huh?” I asked, half startled by the voice speaking up, but I was quickly distracted by the sight in front of me.

  Because gone was the endless gray, the ooze. Gone was the completely lifeless lack of color. We were in a vibrant park, the scene laid out like we were in a Kincaide painting, complete with ducks and their little yellow ducklings swimming around.

  “I… I’m me.”

  My eyes went to what had been a phantasm only moments ago to see none other than a regular, lovely looking young woman. No blood. No tears. Just a slightly shocked looking twenty-something woman.

  “Hello, Jessica,” I said, standing and offering her my hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “I… I’ve been gone a long time, I haven’t I?”

  “Well… it’s all a matter of perspective,” Gildebrak said, finally letting go of my hand. And just like that, the scene around us began to fade. Like lightning bugs drifting off in the night, it spread out in waves of color until we were back in the alley.

  “What now?” the girl asked, looking around with actual, human eyes. Well, almost human. She shimmered ever so slightly in my perception, as if she’d been sprayed with too much glitter or overcharged and carrying a current. “I tortured that man for so long… Just because I didn’t want to be alone.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Gildebrak said, grinning. “We’ll keep an eye on him and make sure he gets any help he needs. As for your next step, well, like you said, you’ve been roaming around an awfully long time. Don’tcha think it’s time to rest your feet? Maybe tell more people about your incredible mother?”

  A slow, relieved smile grew across the young woman’s features. “Yes… I’d like that. To rest now.” There was the slightest flicker of uncertainty. “But where?”

  “That’s up to you, sweet pea.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course. We can show you the door, but you choose where it goes.”

  “…oh.”

  “In fact, I think I see it right behind you.” Gildebrak pointed again and I got the distinct impression that Jessica wasn’t the only stage kid.

  But possible dram or not, my jaw still dropped when the outline of a door appeared in silver light before solidifying into a thick, wooden door.

  “That’s for me?”

  “You bet’cha! And here, let me walk you there.”

  The young woman actually seemed to blush a bit, and it was strange, but entirely welcome, to see a smile on her soft, human features. “You don’t have to.”

  “Oh please, it would be an honor.” Gildebrak gave a little bow like a Prince Charming from a picture book. “Believe it or not, I literally live for these kind of moments.”

  Jessica let out a soft laugh then offered her hand, and Gildebrak took it. “Let’s get ya to your new place, shall we?”

  She nodded, and the two walked the few feet to the door, Gildebrak not breaking contact until they were close enough for the small Reaper to open it with a flourish. “Your carriage awaits.”

  “Th—thank you,” Jessica murmured before glancing over her shoulder at me. “Both of you.”

  “It’s no problem, really,” I said, grinning. “Happy to be here.”

  And the crazy thing was, that was the truth. I was happy to be exactly where I was. I’d been able to help someone I never would have known if I hadn’t run into a dying Reaper in an alley.

  Jessica gave a little wave then stepped through the door, disappearing right through the thick, brick wall of the alley like it was never even there at all.

  Then she was gone.

  I stumbled back, a massive cocktail of feelings welling up in me. Relief, pride, sorrow, grief, amazement. It was a lot, all pretty virulent and connected to other powerful emotions and memories in turn.

  “You okay there?” Gildebrak asked, grinning as she zipped over to me.

  “Yeah. Just thinking.”

  “Good. Well, get yourself together when ya can, because we gotta head back.”

  “Head back?” I asked, straightening slowly. I abruptly felt like I had run a marathon, every limb in my body aching. “Head back where?”

  She sent me a look like I was the weird one for being confused. “To the Dead Offices, dingus. Gotta give a report.”

  Right, of course. How could I have not just automatically known that?

  “Okay then. Lead the way, I suppose.”

  “Of course! Wouldn’t expect ya to know the directions yet.” She offered her hand, and I took it again, but I couldn’t help but mentally take note of how touchy-feely all this Reaper stuff was. I was pretty sure I hadn’t had so much skin to skin contact since I used to play tag on free day at gym in high school. “Oh, before we head off, how’d you know all that stuff about her mom?”

  I shrugged. “Lucky guess.”

  Gildebrak let out a scoff and I swore I heard a bit of a Scottish accent in it. “That weren’t no guess. You were speaking with certainty that only comes from truth.”

  It seemed like the Reaper wasn’t going to let it go, and I knew from experience that it would only get worse the longer I tried to duck the question. “I know what it’s like to lose a mother whose love and support was your entire world and to never stop being mad about it.”