I ran my hands over my face and hair. This was too much. I got off the couch to get my blood flowing. I could see the rest of the room. It was at least forty-five feet long, with a kitchen area on the far side and a dining place in the middle. A door on the right side led to what I assumed were bedrooms. A door on the left led to the staircase down. The building had a balcony that ran the whole perimeter of the building on the inside. It was about four feet wide. The first floor didn’t have any windows; there were a few on the second floor above the balcony. The first floor was open space, and it looked like a house with a mechanic’s workshop on one side and an impressive gym on the other. The greenish-yellow mustang was parked inside as well.
“Where are we?” I asked Bartholomew. I wasn’t ready to talk to the cat.
“At Nash Business Park,” he said, as if it were a normal thing.
“They let you build a house at the business park?” I obviously had not heard him right.
“She’s a little slow. Maybe we got a damaged intern.” Constantine actually looked concerned.
“From the outside, this looks like all the other warehouses here. Maybe a little bigger. We’re forty-five by a hundred and ten feet, reinforced ballistic steel and concrete. Not to mention we’re a registered business. We’re Reapers Incorporated,” Bartholomew said. I was totally lost.
“I’m in shock. I probably hit my head somewhere, and I’m hallucinating.” My head was spinning. This was crazy.
“Oh, please don’t faint.” Bartholomew ran over to me and sat me back down. “Breathe in and out. Slowly.” He was waving his hands trying to air me out. Any other time, I would have laughed.
“Bartholomew, get her the handbook.” Constantine said from the couch.
Bartholomew hurried back to his desk and pulled a thin folder from his drawer. He gave Constantine an odd look. The cat nodded at him. With that blessing, he came over and handed me the folder. The thing looked like a brochure you get at a travel agency, but it read Intern’s Manual.
“Are you serious?” I was holding a five-by-eight manual on how to be Death’s intern.
Constantine jumped down from the back of the couch and stared at me. It was impossible, but it really felt as if he were staring down at me.
“You have three days to decide, and you have already wasted five hours. So let’s get to the rules. Rule number one: you cannot tell anyone you work for Death. Rule two: you cannot kill anyone unless it’s in self-defense. Rule three: you cannot contact Death to get you out of trouble unless you are actually dying. At that point, it wouldn’t matter because she would be around the corner. Rule four: This is your primary job. If you decide to have other employment—which I don’t know why you would—those hours cannot conflict with ours. Rule five, any romantic relationship cannot interfere with your job. You’ll find all the rules on page two of the manual.” Constantine was not even taking a breath. Of course, he was a talking cat, so probably normal rules did not apply to him.
“Wait a minute. I haven’t agreed to anything. I don’t even know what Death’s intern does. Why does Death need an intern to begin with?” I needed the insanity to end so I could go home.
“Finally, a reasonable question. We are in the soul business.” Constantine had said soul very dramatically. If he had fingers, he would have made quotation marks with them. “Death delivers souls from this lifetime to their final destination.”
“Where exactly would that be?” I had to ask. Honestly, that explanation made no sense.
“It depends on the person and how they lived their life. In your case, you would go to purgatory.” Constantine delivered that news with no emotion.
“What? Why?” OK, I was outraged. How did he know that?
“You’re Catholic, right?” Constantine asked, and I nodded yes. “OK, you killed a man.”
“It was an accident.” Did everyone know about that?
“Exactly. If you had actually wanted to murder him, you would be going to hell. Since it was an accident and you’re an OK person, purgatory it is.” Constantine obviously had had practice in delivering horrible news. He wasn’t even blinking.
“But don’t I have a chance to repent or do something?” I was feeling pretty sick now.
“Listen, child, there are no lawyers in the afterlife. This is your dogma, not mine. We’re in the business of helping souls move. What have you done to repent for your sins? When was the last time you went to confession? Those are the questions you should be asking yourself. So, back to business.”
I was speechless. Constantine was right. In the last six months, all I had done was run away. I had never gone to confession, and I had been to Mass maybe a handful of times. I didn’t have the excuse of not having any churches nearby. For being in the middle of the Baptist Bible Belt, Texarkana had two Catholic churches, one in each state. The churches were less than ten minutes from each other. Catholic churches were very rare in the South. Based on Constantine’s speech, I was feeling like a horrible human being.
“Constantine to Isis; come in, Isis.” Constantine had actually slapped me out of my pity party. He had the softest paws on the planet. “Are you listening to me?”
“Sorry; just contemplating my afterlife.” My afterlife was looking pretty depressing.
“That’s great, but you’re not dead yet, so do that on your own time. The intern’s job is easy. You monitor abnormal activities that might interfere with Death doing her thing.” With that, Constantine leaned back and started licking his paw. I looked between Constantine and Bartholomew, totally lost.
“One more time, and in
