The rest of the afternoon progressed in much the same manner as the earlier part. I fumed for the first few minutes, so angry at Rod I could hardly concentrate, but eventually the importance of my mission coupled with the interesting nature of the lecture overcame my fury and I paid attention. It was a good thing I did, because we covered a lot of important ground.
We learned that most souls find their own way to Hell when their bodies die. A large portion of our job would be to chase down those souls that either couldn’t or wouldn’t make their way to Hell on their own. This included people who didn’t want to leave their situation, either because they loved it or hated it too much to put it behind them, as well as people who were too stupid to even realize they were dead. If a soul was in really deep denial, it might put up quite a struggle.
Occasionally somebody like my ex-boss Conrad, who’d made a Deal with the Devil and then didn’t want to go when his time was up, would make a run for it. That’s when Reapers took on the role of bounty hunter. We’d have to hunt down the soul, nail it with our scythes and drag it back to Hell. You might earn a Karma Kredit bonus point for snagging a runner. But it wasn’t often a newbie Reaper was given those kinds of assignments; circumstances had to be exceptional. Sergeant Schotz, in his role as head of the Reaper Corps, preferred a Reaper with some really meaningful field experience under his or her belt.
Professor Schotz droned on. Dante occasionally interrupted to clarify something or point out that one of my classmates had a question.
It wasn’t long before my mind wandered back to my own personal experience. Dante had been sent that day in the men’s room to collect Conrad’s soul and transport it back to Hell. Since I now knew they only sent Reapers when they expected a runner, how had they known that Conrad would try to back out of his Deal? Did they conduct a prophet-and-loss analysis before assigning missions so the Reapers knew exactly what to expect? How had they not seen my wrongful reapage? Were the seers ever wrong? Should you not believe everything you’re foretold?
And thanks to me—or at least Conrad’s manipulation and me falling for it—Dante had been busted back to teacher’s aide. The demotion, temporary or not, must really rankle, especially if it came with a cut in the ol’ points paycheck. And now he was supporting me, as well. He refused all my offers to spend any of my twenty-eight little points. I hoped he hadn’t been fined on top of it. I felt guilty about my part in his demotion. Even if it hadn’t been my time to die, I’d still been the one to leap in front of the scythe, defending that skegging bastard, Conrad. And then I got mad all over and had to rein my temper back in again.
Sometimes dull, sometimes fascinating and almost always obscure, at least the course material wasn’t hard. It was a lot of memory work and common sense, just like any course. Although I could see a lot more practical applications for what I was learning in Reaper Academy than in some of the courses I’d been forced to take in high school. Like physics, for instance. Who needed to study that? You either live somewhere where your feet stick to the ground consistently or you don’t.
I spent the next couple of weeks scrambling to catch up, getting to know my classmates better, liking Kali more and liking the quarterback and his geeky sycophant less.
The teacher’s pet at the front of the room turned out to be okay, if a little intense. His name was M’Kimbi and he’d had an extremely hard life in an African nation with a very short life expectancy. Don’t ask me which nation. I was a little hazy on my geography and it seemed rude to say, “So, M’Kimbi. I’ve never heard of your country, but I’m sure it’s very nice.”
After the difficult time he’d had during his most recent go-around on the Coil, M’Kimbi wasn’t too eager to return so he wasn’t taking any chances that he might get a similar incarnation next time. Interestingly, it was his people’s religion that was, of all the religions on Earth, the closest to what actually happens when you die. M’Kimbi took great pride in that fact, exhibited mostly by turning around from his front-row seat and smiling a huge, pearly smile at the rest of us every time he got a particularly difficult answer right. Especially if someone else had gotten it wrong first. It was only mildly annoying. And besides, he kept the best notes, which he was willing to share, so we forgave him. It was hard to fault someone for being enthusiastic, but we tried.
I was kind of enthusiastic myself. I enjoyed the Reaper Academy a lot more than I’d ever liked school previously. Whereas in high school I’d skipped classes and ducked study hall, now I read the notes, studied the handouts and even picked up a few of the additional resources they always list but never refer to. Aunt Carey had sacrificed so much for me; the least I could do was graduate from Reaper school, gain access to the Coil and save her from Conrad.
So I studied hard. Love and lifesaving are great motivators.
The texts were surprisingly interesting, delineating, among other things, the differences between hauntings, poltergeists and demonic possession. The main course material had been ghost-written, and the ghost had been kind enough to visit our class and autograph our texts.
The more I studied, the more questions I had. Back on the Coil, I’d just turned to Google and Wikipedia for all my answers. Hell’s techies were still trying to get the UnderWorld Wide Web up and running. I heard there was too much downtime and they were trying to find a work-around. I hoped we’d get a reasonably priced ISP soon so I could look up things like where M’Kimbi’s country was. Maybe find a copy of that poem Dante had written. Surely after seven centuries it would be in the public domain. I would have ordered a copy, but there wasn’t an amazon.hel yet.
I also wondered why Dante had said not to touch someone else’s scythe that first day when I’d grabbed his on the road to Hell. Nothing had happened then, right?
Although Dante and I lived together, now that I was in school, we didn’t do much together socially. Who had time? I was busy studying while Dante took his teacher’s aide job as seriously as he’d taken reaping and he had way too much integrity to play favorites in class. Most beings in Hell played favorites the way I’d played hockey— that is to say, early and often. But not Dante, damn it!
But we did share the best things in afterlife: the bathroom, the TV remote and a bed. Since we usually ended up arguing over the first two, the third gave us a nice way to make up. And Dante was really good at making up.
Sometimes I picked stupid little fights just so we could make up. Although he usually saw through me, that didn’t mean he would say no. Sometimes he did say, “Kirsty, you should be studying.” Then I sulked. Oh, I studied at the same time but I can multitask.
When it was time to put the books away for another day and crawl into his huge
One time we, uh, laid to rest again the next morning. Except there was no rest involved. Just lazy sex as good as it can be without kissing—mourning breath.
No matter how off time was we were going to be late. We fast-forwarded our morning routine, skipped breakfast and practically flew into class, faces red, Dante’s robe on inside out. The cowgirls giggled knowingly, the jock rolled his eyes, while Kali high-fifteened me on my way by. I ducked my head, but I couldn’t wipe the stupid got-some grin off my face. My smile only widened when I looked at Dante and saw the same idiot-in-love grin mirrored on his face.
Another student joined the class after I did, which took some of the hater heat off me. There was a lot of secrecy around him but Kali had a great sense of rumor and was able to find out that he was a fallen angel who had joined the Witless Protection Program. His cherubic face, the halo-shaped tan line across his forehead and the occasional bit of white fluff stuck to his clothing all confirmed the rumor to the careful observer. Once his right horn fell off, revealing that it was only stuck on with Velcro, we accepted the rumor as fact. Talk about your dead giveaway. His name was Ira and we liked him immediately, even if he was a bit straight-laced. He played a mean harp.
Professor Schotz was indeed your stereotypical kindly professor, handing out guidance and encouragement in equal parts, right up until finals. I anticipated being given a written exam and when I say “anticipated,” I mean “dreaded.” At least Sergeant Schotz kept himself under wraps. I can’t say I missed him. I was more than a little leery about the fieldwork portion under the sergeant’s command.
We were given three days off to study for exams all day and I usually went out with friends in the evenings.
