The Bay of Souls was the place where spirits went to rest after their life ended. I had dozens of questions I wanted to ask everyone I brought to the Bay, but I always refrained. Daath had explained that the Bay looks different to everyone. It molded itself into a reality that the soul would inhabit for eternity. Syrion said he believed some shared eternity with others, and that he had taken souls to the Bay that greeted old friends when they arrived, but he was only guessing. There was so much uncertainty around the inner workings of the Bay, but that was how it was meant to be. It wasn’t a place for the living, so we didn’t need to know how it functioned.
Personally, I saw a forest. I couldn’t remember the names of the types of trees, but they seemed thinner than normal tree trunks, and they looked like they’d all been set aflame once upon a time. It looked like a coat of ash covered everything. There were no leaves, and there never were, like it was always winter here. From the shore, the water looked black. Daath promised me it wasn’t, but I wasn’t itching to find out for myself whether that was true. If I did turn to face the water, I could see the Moonstone Castle across the lake.
I looked over at Elaine. She dropped my hand and brought both of hers to her face, tears in her eyes.
“This is it?” she cried softly.
“Yes,” I smiled. “It’s different for everyone.”
“Is this Heaven?”
“Not exactly. But it is your home now, forever.”
“Oh… Myrcedes,” she whispered, throwing her arms around my neck and burying her face in my hair. She was practically sobbing. I tried to envision the relief she must have been feeling, and I began to tear up myself. I rubbed her back and pulled away.
“Go, Elaine. You deserve it,” I smiled.
She nodded and turned, walking toward the forest before me. I watched her break into a sprint and disappear amongst the trees. Relief washed over me. I wasn’t sure if this was what I needed to do to save the Earth, but I wanted to do it, anyway. I realized suddenly that these souls mattered just as much to me as the ones that were still alive. It was a strange urge to save people who were already dead, but I was ready to follow it.
I spent the next few days trying to fill both of my objectives on Earth. I was searching for the fae magic, but I made a point to seek out the spirits I’d always seen in order to help them. It was hard to find the Bay of Souls without that string connecting to it, but I got better at it each time. The hardest was a man in the park. He had been there for over twelve years, so his connection to the Bay was completely gone. He couldn’t see it at first when we got there, but his sight adjusted quickly. They all cried. The Earth seemed to be the only realm where people were blind to the magical universe around them, so if someone died and wandered Earth, they didn’t think there was anything else.
On my next day off, I was wandering again. I’d heard on the news that Portland had a surge in crime the past week, so I drove two-and-a-half hours to the city that morning and parked in the parking lot of a nearby library. As soon as I got out of my car, it was apparent to me that fae magic polluted the air. It was sunny, and the thermometer said it was above 80 degrees, but I felt a chill I’d only felt around that magic.
I locked my car and began walking down the street. Lindsay had helped me find different glamours to use for different purposes and taught me how to cast them. There was one that most reapers used to carry their scythes with them; it disguised the large and frightening weapon as a pen to the normal eye, so I was able to bring mine with me without worrying about the reaction.
I tried to search for the source of the magic, but I wasn’t sensitive enough toward it to be able to narrow in on something like that. I heard an emergency siren go off down the street and saw a fire truck closely followed by an ambulance race down the street a block away. I didn’t know anything about Portland, and that seemed like a good enough place to start.
I jumped three blocks away just as the vehicles passed me, quite thankful I’d trained as much with world jumping as I had. These short distances in unfamiliar places came easily to me now. I jumped down a few more blocks and watched them approach and turn a corner. As they did, I jumped again, following them in this odd way until I saw their destination: a corner store with shattered glass. I jumped to the store before they arrived and quickly saw what someone had called them about. On the ground in front of the door laid a young man who looked about my age. He was bleeding and had wounds on his shoulder and abdomen. An older man sat with him on the phone with 911, telling them he could finally hear the sirens in the distance.
I considered asking what had happened, but that seemed like it would not be received well. Instead, I dug into the boy’s head, his memories. I didn’t need to search for what had happened, as it was fresh in his mind.
In the store, the alarm went off. The boy hadn’t done anything, but the alarm had gone off, regardless. The cashier began to argue with him, asking what he’d tried to steal. He got close, and suddenly the cashier had begun shouting about being hit, even though the boy hadn’t
