A handy side benefit of being an Agent is that no one other than the departed can see you when your wings are out. Well, almost no one. Many, many mentally ill people had caught sight of me over the years, as well as any number of folks using psychotropic drugs.
And children. Not all of them, although my mother told me that it used to be that she couldn’t pass by a single child without being noticed. If she had to fly by a school playground during recess, she’d cause a riot.
But not anymore. I think children today are desensitized to the possibility of magic and wonder. Most kids I see have their noses buried in a handheld video game or are whining for their parents to buy something for them. Those kids are already too emotionally detached to notice a woman with black wings flying by.
But there are a few still—the ones who read on the playground instead of playing kickball with the other kids, the ones who stare dreamily out the classroom windows during science class, the ones who pretend their closet is a spaceship and their bedroom is the rocky surface of Mars—those kids see me. Really
It took me about ten minutes to get to the Main Office. My wings are a hell of a lot faster than the Brown Line. I landed on the roof of the building. It was one of Mayor Daley’s “green roofs,” so it was covered in late- season vegetation that was slowly dying off as winter crept in. There was a fire escape door at the back corner of the roof, just above the alley. I pulled out my key, opened the door and clattered down the stairs until I reached the ninth floor.
I pushed into the hallway, a standard office-building, white-walled, gray-carpeted affair. It bustled with Agents and office staff. Most people talked rapidly into cell phones or carried sheaves of paper under their arms. Like I said, death is pretty much a bureaucracy, with all of the attendant paper and bullshit that goes with it. My cubicle was on the fourth floor, so I waited at the bank of elevators with a crowd of other people and crammed in when the doors opened to go down.
When I reached the fourth floor, I stepped out of the elevator and then waited until a small crowd of people emerged so I could blend in. It was childish, but I was trying to sneak past J.B.’s office without him seeing me. He always knows when something is off, and if he saw me, he would ask about the ghost.
J. B. Bennett was the area supervisor for Chicago. Each major city and every rural area has a supervisor, and then there are regional supervisors who oversee several areas. Above the regional supervisors are three managers, and then the president of the Main Office, who answers to the North American Branch Office in Ottawa.
This building controlled the whole Midwest region, so J.B. was one of many smaller fish that longed for bigger things. He was convinced that he was destined for the president’s corner office. He was also convinced that if he micromanaged his Agents to death, then he would get where he wanted to be a lot faster.
Every time a soul did not choose the Door, he took it as a personal insult. He treated soul-collecting like a sales job. An Agent had to maintain a minimum percentage of “successes,” souls who chose the Door, or else she was forced to write up a biweekly report explaining why she hadn’t met her percentage minimum until she brought things up to scratch.
J.B. was also well-known for calling such Agents into his office for no apparent reason and wasting a lot of time haranguing them about their success rate. And he enjoyed assigning extra little tasks designed to irritate the crap out of them. J.B. couldn’t fire an Agent who didn’t meet his standards—being an Agent was a lifetime appointment—but he could certainly make your life miserable unless you gave him what he wanted.
If ever there were two people who epitomized the saying about oil and water, it was me and J.B. He wanted total submission, a line of orderly soldiers who did exactly as he asked. I wanted nothing more than to be free of him and this miserable job, but I was bound by fate and by magic to stay.
When an Agent dies, the next person in that Agent’s bloodline is activated to duty. There is no choice, and there is no escape. The magic in the blood that gives Agents their powers also binds them to the job, and the only alternative is death.
I’d never known an Agent who’d attempted to leave the service, but there were stories—legends, really—of those who had tried. They were hunted down by Retrievers, and when the Retrievers found the errant Agent, no choice was given to them. They were struck down where they were found. They did not enter the Door, nor did they become ghosts. Their names disappeared from the rolls in the Hall of Records. It was as if they had never been.
I had never seen a Retriever. Rumor had it that they were planted among ordinary Agents, living double lives, or that they haunted the upper floors of the Ottawa office, seen only by the highest levels of management. Other Agents didn’t believe in them at all, and thought Retrievers were just imaginary bogeymen, stories told to keep Agents from leaving the service en masse.
I was something of an agnostic on the Retriever question. I didn’t necessarily believe, but I wasn’t willing to take the chance. I wanted to see my mother again someday, and getting vaporized by a Retriever did not seem the best way to do that.
I managed to get past J.B.’s office and into the main room. I had a cubicle tucked in a corner and I scurried past my fellow Agents, most of whom were laboring with their heads bent over forms that had to be filled out in triplicate by hand. Agents possessed some of the most powerful magic in the world, but our data-entry system still hadn’t entered the twenty-first century.
I had just settled in comfortably and started to fill out the form for Mrs. Luccardi when the phone on my desk rang. I could see the extension number and I rolled my eyes.
“How does he know?” I asked as soon as I picked up the phone.
“And a very good morning to you, too.” J.B.’s secretary, Lizzie, always seemed unruffled. “He wants to see you in his office.”
It was just turning out to be that kind of a day. I sighed. “Of course he does.”
2
I DIDN’T HATE J.B. HE IRRITATED ME LIKE NO OTHER human being on earth could, however, so I considered it my duty to repay the favor.
J.B.’s office was a tiny two-room space crammed with file cabinets that overflowed with paper. Manila folders were stacked on every available surface, and any leftover space was filled with black three-ring binders. J.B.’s secretary, Lizzie, typed patiently away at some audio transcription as I entered the office. Her eyes were fixed on her computer screen and I could hear the clack of the foot pedal going up and down as she rewound the tape and then pressed down again to let it play. She finished typing her sentence and then looked up at me, pulling her headphones over her frizzy blond hair.
“He’ll be out in a minute, Maddy. He’s having a quick meeting with Atwood.”
“How long has Atwood been in there?”
She glanced at the clock that hung on the wall above my hand. “Maybe five minutes.”
I looked at the door that was a few feet behind Lizzie’s desk, then up at the clock, watching the second hand. “And three ... two ... one ...”
Right on schedule, I heard J.B. shouting at Atwood. The door muffled his exact words but I didn’t need to hear the conversation to get the gist of it. Atwood must have fallen below percentage.
Lizzie looked as if she wanted to say something to defend J.B., but decided discretion was the better part of valor and picked up her headphones instead, nodding at me as she went back to work. A couple of minutes later Atwood came out looking white-faced. He passed me without a word and swept into the hallway. J.B. was right behind him.
The worst thing about J.B. wasn’t that he had the world’s crappiest personality. No, the real tragedy was that that personality had been shoehorned inside the face and body of a god. Well over six feet with the leanly muscled body of a long-distance runner, he had silky black hair cut ruthlessly short and green eyes that glinted like cut glass. If he’d had even a sliver of sweetness in him, he’d have had women sticking to him like flypaper. As it was, I didn’t think he’d been on a date as long as I’d known him.
But then again, neither had I, so I wouldn’t be throwing that in J.B.’s face anytime soon.
He stopped as he caught sight of me and smiled with shark’s teeth. “Black. Perfect. I need to speak with you
