Skeleton Keys (on hold)

Chapter Six

A/N: This Chapter was updated on 1/17/14

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“Mary!”

I woke with Dad shaking my shoulder. Sitting up, I ran a hand through my hair and tried to figure out what had happened.

“Come on, get up. Don’t want to be late on your first day, do you?” Dad said then left, pulling my door shut behind him.

I looked at the clock. It was seven in the morning, and I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. I rubbed at my eyes. My Key lay beside me on the bed. I reached for it, but as my fingers brushed the cool metal, the voice from my dream whispered through my mind again.

Mary.

I shivered, jerking my hand back. Staring at it, I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard. I’m still asleep. I’m just still asleep, I thought, rubbing my face again. Yeah, that was it.

Forcing myself to get up, I dressed and got ready for the day. Before I left for the shop, I hesitated when I reached for the key. But in the end, nothing happened.

Dad drove us to the store, stopping to drive through the Coffee Hut for coffee and donuts on the way. It was to “celebrate our first day,” he’d said. I carried the three coffees as Dad juggled the donuts and the keys, and followed him into the back. He set the donuts on Grampa’s desk, and started shuffling through some of the file folders.

“So,” I said, setting coffees down next to the donuts. “What’s first?”

To be honest, I didn’t have a clue as to what I should expect. I still felt like I was dreaming, or caught up in some type of fairy tale.

Dad looked around, patting his pockets. “I guess I should give you the other keys,” he said. He turned around searching for a moment, before pulling open the desk drawer. He handed me two keys he found in the drawer. “Here, the metal one’s to the front door of the store, so you can get in and out on your own now.”

I turned the keys over in my hands. Of the two of them, only one was metal. Brass maybe, I thought. The other was bright white. Like it had been carved from new fallen snow, but the texture was all wrong. It was rough, coarse. From the look of it, I thought it would be plastic, but it was too heavy.

“What’s this other one for?” I asked.

“Me,” Apollo said behind me, making me jump out of my skin.

I turned around, to see him standing in the hall. Whatever I was about to say to him flew right out of my mind as I fought to hold back a laugh and keep a straight face. His hair was bedrangled, and a complete mess.

Dad chuckled, “You really should learn to look in a mirror in the mornings, Apollo. It’s not just us guys anymore.”

Apollo glanced up and raised a hand to smooth his hair. When it still refuse to lay flat, a faint redness tinted his cheeks even as he kept his face emotionless. He mumbled something and disappeared with a small puff of orange smoke.

My mouth dropped open. I pointed to where Apollo had stood, and turned back to look at Dad. “Did he...”

“Yeah, he does that. You’ll get use to it after a while,” he said. He picked up a coffee, and took a sip. “Perfect. Okay, so just a few things to go over before I leave-”

“Wait, leave? What do you mean leave?” Panic rose in me, and I tightened my grip on the new keys to keep my hands from shaking.

“I’ve got a job to do too, Mary,” Dad said. “And unfortunately, it requires me to be away from here most of the time. That’s why we’re extremely lucky to have Apollo with us. He’s going to walk you through everything you need to know for the day to day affairs of the shop. If he wasn’t here, this would be a really difficult transition for both of us.”

I nodded reluctantly, and tried to contain my anger. This was so much to take in, and now Dad was about to leave me here with someone I barely knew, who just happened to be a demon, to sink or swim. How awesome was that?

“If you need anything or have any questions, ask Apollo. He knows his stuff; almost better than I do.”   Dad gathered a handful of files off the desk. “Like I said, he’ll train you in everything that you need to know. 

Apollo reappeared in the same manner he’d left; appearing out of thin air with a little orange smoke floating around. He’d fixed his hair, combing it out so that it didn’t stick up at unnatural angles anymore.

Opening the box of donuts, Dad chose one and moved back. “Well, since Apollo’s back, I best get going. I’ll be back later this evening. You guys have fun, okay?”

I tried not to give Dad the death glare as he walked out, leaving Apollo and I alone in the office. I forced myself to calm down, counting to ten as I picked up one of the remaining coffees. I wasn’t going to take my anger out on Apollo, he didn’t deserve that.  

Silence seemed to stretch between us. What had he said earlier? About the key?

“You said this was yours?” I asked, holding up the key in question.

“Kind of,” he said, glancing at me as he picked up a donut, and took a bite. “It’s made from one of my bones.” 

I looked down that the key in horror. One of his bones? 

“It’s what connects us together,” Apollo continued, ignoring my obvious expression. “Using it, you can summon me. No matter how far apart we are, or even if we are on different planes. Your father has one as well.”

“Wait, what planes?” I asked, thinking he meant airplanes.

“There are seven different planes of existence.” He walked past me, stepping out into the hall. I grabbed a coffee and followed him.

“You don’t need to worry about them all now. The two you need to know about now are this one we’re on now, Terra, and the Afterlife. The Afterlife is where every soul goes when their body dies. When a soul is to be reborn, it’s called from the Afterlife plane and brought to where the child is to be born. That’s the job of the Cherubs. Try not to get mixed up with them. They seem to think we’re beneath them or something like that.”

He opened a door on the other side of the hall, ushering me into the bare, hardwood floor room. “As a Charon, you can freely travel between Terra and the Afterlife, but if needed, you can be granted permission to travel to the other planes as well.”

“Oh,” was all I could think of to say. I had no idea how I would keep all this straight.

Apollo smiled at me. “Don’t worry, there are only three tests you’ll have to pass to become a full Charon, and the first one isn’t for a few years yet.”

The shock tightened my chest, and I forced myself to breathe again. “Of course there’d be tests.” I said, sarcasm lacing my voice. I looked up at Apollo. “Are they hard?” 

“I haven’t taken them myself, of course, but I’ve seen your grandfather, and your father, take them. I know what you need to learn. I can’t promise it won’t be difficult, but I can promise you that you’ll be ready.”

Dad and I were so going to have a ‘talk’ tonight. 

“What’s first then?” I asked. 

Apollo set his coffee down near the side of the door, and walked out to the middle of the room, beckoning me to do the same.

“First thing a new Charon must learn is to control their Scythe. So for today, we’ll focus on that.”