Death's Rulebook

Chapter 16: Emergency number

I felt like Mason and I were lined up on the execution block.

"Look, Kevin," My partner in crime began, but the Almighty raised his spindly hand to silence him. There was nothing worse than coming back to the Mortuary after having been MIA for a few days, to find Kevin already waiting for you in his office, pasty lips pressed firmly into a scowl.

Sprawled in his giant black computer chair, bony elbows resting on each side of him, he could easily give Vito Corleone a run for his money.

"Mason, would you mind telling me what a telephone is?" he said, his tone light and musical.

-Oh boy.

"Seriously? Come on, I don't have the strength to..."

"Well, I suggest you find some and humor me," Kevin's smile was sickly sweet.

Mason draped his head, releasing a long, labored sigh. "A telephone is an electronic device."

Kevin nodded his head, his fingers entwined just beneath his chin. His obscenely large eyes seemed to glisten with artificial light—his gaze mirrored that of the snarling wolf head mounted on the wall just above him. "Excellent! And what do we use these electronic devices for?"

"To make phone calls and stay in contact with each other."

"Yes, exactly. Phones are nifty little things used to help you reach people who would otherwise be much harder to contact. That's what you guys used to tell me, isn't it? 'Get a phone Kevin, things will be much easier!' 'Switch to phones Kevin, and you'll never have to spend days looking for us with a messenger bird!'" He paused, stretching out his arms. Next to him, on his perch, Steve McQueen cawed and ruffled his feathers, "And yet here I am, using the damn bird again. All because someone couldn't be bothered to answer their damn phone."

"I was busy!" Mason hissed, crossing his arms on his chest. "I can't be at your beck and call 24/7."

"You can't be at my... when you have a deadline you have to meet, you best believe you have to be at my beck and call!" I inwardly cringed when Kevin raised his voice. "I've told you a million times, your job comes before everything else..."

"Yes, exactly, which is why I was late!" Mason retorted, the rage turning his amber eyes into a furious ocher. "I was helping V out with her guy when I got a reap. Some woman down at Water Street. Car accident. The whole thing was nasty, and the clean-up was even worse. That's why neither of us had answered, not because we were ignoring you. Though god knows it's tempting."

I balled my fists as Mason squared his shoulders and lifted his nose high, his offended victim mask fitting flawlessly. If there was one thing I admired about him, it was his uncanny ability to lie through his teeth. Especially to Kevin. It was a skill I sadly lacked—which is why we'd agreed on our way over that I'd stay as quiet as possible. Not that it was particularly hard. A pissed off Kevin was not something anyone would ever want to deal with.

The Almighty narrowed his beady eyes at him, just as Steve McQueen landed on the mahogany desk. The bird cawed furiously, ramming its beak into a thick paper binder. I tapped my fingers against my thigh.

-God, that thing is so creepy.

Entirely too sentient for a bird. Some distant part of me wondered whether it could actually communicate with Kevin somehow.

-If it can, we're so screwed.

"And it never crossed your mind to let me know? One message would have been enough to sort everything out."

Mason snorted, Steve McQueen's pecking growing obnoxiously louder. "Like I said, we were busy. Our job comes first, remember?"

"Oh don't get cute now," Kevin hissed, Steve McQueen's caw deafening. "The Annual Death report is a part of your job as well, and you were supposed to find a way to fit it in your schedule."