7 Demonic Retail

Lily

Lily strode down the sweeping, circular stairs, excitement and nerves swirling in her stomach with every step. The red-gold light had turned out to be veins of magma peeking through the black stone, growing thicker and more numerous the farther down she went, until the tunnel was woven with an arched lattice of warm light. With each step, the dull roar of voices grew louder.

She squared her shoulders.

What was the worst that could happen, really? If either of the demons she’d met weren’t there, she’d leave a message or something. If they told her to get lost, back up the stairs she’d go. It wasn’t like she could get stuck down there.

Could she?

Just as that lovely little thought made its appearance, the stairs leveled out into a short but cavernous hallway with the elevator on one side, and then—

“Holy shit ,” Lily breathed, turning in a circle to take it all in.

It barely registered as something “underground.” Like the main Hall, the ceiling of the cavern was so high that the details of it were obscured, yet it glowed with soft red-gold light. Cragged stone walls delineated the space, with gleaming veins of magma set in the stone offering more light. To her right, a fence more than fifty feet high sprouted out of the rock wall and cut directly across the space, the metal twisted in a style reminiscent of the arch in the Hall. Lily stepped closer, curious. If it was metal, it was unlike any metal she’d ever seen, as it was closer in appearance to half-cooled lava somehow keeping shape.

On the other side of the fence lay a barren, featureless stretch of stone, save for the behemoth entryway looming like the gaping maw of an animal, complete with a jagged line of fang-like stalactites. She couldn’t see into its black depths, but the sounds of feet scuffing on stairs echoed out of it in an endless cacophony. She watched as souls emerged into the light and followed the flow of people towards the fence. That was the entrance to Hell for the souls sent here, then.

Lily followed the line of the fence to the source of all the activity. There, towering as tall as the fence, yet far more ornate, stood the gate that had inspired millennia of stories and religious fear. Both halves were swung open, allowing souls to enter and go to one of two dozen freestanding little desks lined up in alternating rows that began at the edges of the gate, and formed a funnel into a lobby-like space. The desks were manned by demons who seemed to look at their files and talk briefly with them, a bit like the security check at an airport.

After the desks, souls were directed to a pair of tunnels carved into the wall. They were guided—or, perhaps more accurately, corralled—by a chest-high ridge of black rock curving in an arc from the fence, almost all the way to the tunnels. Two parallel lines of several dozen demons stood guard along either side of the route, and they, along with the half wall, were clearly meant to keep the souls from deviating from the path. Many of the demons had spears propped on their shoulders, or sheathed weapons within easy reach. Most souls walked quietly, but a few…

Lily bit her lip to keep from laughing.

Customer service looked the same dead and alive apparently.

A few raised voices carried from the area with the desks, and someone slammed their hand down. A man stormed out of line, purple-faced with rage, and screamed at a female demon who towered over him, asking if she had any idea who he was. Many of demons guarding the souls within the gate, not a single one of them under six and half feet tall, bore expressions ranging from annoyed to verging on open violence.

It looked like retail during the holidays. Demon retail.

For a moment, Lily wondered if she should come back another time, but other than the screamer, nothing seemed particularly out of control. She headed toward the end of the stone half wall, moving towards the tunnels before pivoting to round the wall and walk toward the gate, boots thudding on floors that looked suspiciously like cooling magma under glass. A few of the demons guarding the gap noticed her approach, shooting her curious but not unfriendly looks and nudging each other. She was nearly in line with the desks when a faintly familiar red-skinned demon left his position by the gate and jogged her way, face lifting into a grin so wide she could see his fangs.

“You made it through!”

Lily grinned back and sketched a bow. “As if there was any doubt.”

So, so much doubt.

“None at all,” he assured her, bracing the end of his spear on the ground and leaning on it. “Well, welcome to Hell, uh…” His face fell slightly.

“Lily.”

“Crocell,” he said, pressing a clawed hand to his chest, then gesturing around them. “Well, what do you think?”

A dim flicker of memory, walking through the gleaming gate, past towering horned figures, into the tunnels and down to a level, soft understanding voices and kind words.

I’ve been here before. Once. A long, long time ago.

The memory was so hazy it raised more questions than answers, but the overall sensation it left behind wasn’t unpleasant. It had been her…second life? Yes, that felt right. When she’d been falsely accused of being a witch. She’d been convinced that she’d deserved it, hadn’t she? That there was a good reason why her neighbors had burned her. She’d been all jagged, ragged edges then. She’d been sent to Hell so they could help . And they had.

She blinked away the soul-deep memory.

“Much nicer than I was led to believe. Also smaller,” Lily said, the dim echo of gratitude soothing the edges of her lingering anxiety.

“Ah, common misconception. The mortal writer, Dante, got almost everything wrong about Hell, but he got the idea of levels right. The meaning of each level? Not so much. This is the smallest level, the lobby, if you will. Those tunnels”—he pointed to the tunnels the souls went into—“lead to the actual levels for the souls. The one closest to the fence leads to the first and second levels, the other is for levels three through nine. The elevators to the levels, and to the demon levels below, are through that tunnel there, the big one.” He pointed to a tunnel on the wall farthest from the gate. “And the other tunnel goes to the breakroom, bathrooms, and some other communal areas.”

“This is amazing,” she told him sincerely. Her curiosity flared at the idea of “demon levels,” but the endless line of souls was a tempering reality. “Well, I didn’t mean to drag you away from your job—”

“Please,” another demon cut in as they walked past, tail dragging on the floor in defeat, “ please drag us away from our jobs. Something is in the air today. They’re awful.”

“Do you guys have a moon here? Full moon madness is real, just ask anyone who worked in emergency medicine.”

The demon rubbed at their eyes. “Maybe in the mortal world it’s a full moon? I don’t know, mortal time is weird.”

“Take a break,” a woman’s voice—Moura’s—cut in. She clapped her hand on the defeated demon’s shoulder. “We’ve got it covered for now. Mortal! You made it! Time for wine, eh?”

“Please.” Lily grinned. “Though it looks like you all have your hands full.”

“We have a bit longer on shift, but you are welcome to come back in a bit. You can wander if you like. As a visiting soul you can pretty much go anywhere, within reason obviously.”

Lily watched the crowd of souls, a funny feeling in her chest.

A woman had the audacity to poke her finger into the chest of a demon nearly twice her size. The demon flung her hand back at her with a snarled response, pointing toward the tunnel. Another soul, sensing the distraction, hurried back toward the gate, only to be put back in line by a female demon with the kind of muscular physique that powerlifters would envy. Did they think going back to Judgment would help them? Or were they trying to sneak somewhere better?

Demon customer service apparently had at least one perk over mortal customer service: The workers could fight back.

Oh, and wasn’t that the dream.

“You guys get to talk back to the souls?” she asked.

“Of course,” Moura said, confusion coloring her tone. “I doubt any of us would be sane if we couldn’t. Sometimes it’s amusing, but sometimes…we just get tired.”

Lily hummed in sympathy, but her mind whirled, genuine excitement skittering through her body. She loved her Paradise, loved the peaceful refuge of it, but she’d spent too long working and fighting the battles of life to feel complete just resting.

“Could I help?”

Both demons went utterly still, and the ones standing guard near them turned to stare at her.

Crocell peered down at her, concern written all over his face. “Why in all the realms would you want to do that ?”

Lily chuckled, playing with the hem of her sleeve. “I worked customer service, with people, my whole life. How much do you know about mortal customer service?”

The demons exchanged a befuddled glance before Crocell answered.

“I know people work in stores and restaurants and stuff, like some souls do here, but in the mortal world, they have prices and money.”

“That’s true,” Lily said. “In the mortal world, people who work in those jobs deal with entitled people all the time, but we generally weren’t allowed to be rude or talk back, and we definitely weren’t allowed to get physical, even when they were awful to us, because we were supposed to keep the customer happy. I’m sure whoever decided to abbreviate the phrase ‘the customer is always right in matters of taste’ is down here somewhere.”

The fucker. Maybe if she asked nicely, she’d be allowed to kick him in the dick on behalf of service industry workers everywhere.

“You”—Moura looked horrified—“you couldn’t say anything? You couldn’t fight back?”

“We were supposed to avoid it as much as possible. Sometimes you could get away with setting a boundary, but the managers probably wouldn’t, or couldn’t, back you up on it. I used to get candy bars thrown at me because people were mad about the prices, and I would just have to ring them up like normal.”

“What the fuck,” Crocell murmured, gripping his spear a little tighter. “That’s barbaric!”

“That’s customer service, and I have two decades of rage from that that I would be more than happy to put to use somehow.” She looked over the line of souls. “I mean, getting to talk back? Could be fun.”

Please let me do something, I’m so…bored. Just let me run my mouth a little or flip someone off. Please?

“Shit, do you want a knife or something?” Moura asked, reaching for one of the blades sheathed at her hips.

The flare of temptation took her by surprise. She’d never really been violent, except for the times when she’d come to the defense of a friend in a bar. Or the notable occasion when she’d slapped a guy who had grabbed her ass at a concert. She’d hit him so hard he’d dropped like a lead balloon.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about violence before.

Hit her creepy coworker with her car. Whack every hand that had been slammed on her desk or counter. Punch every shitty, smarmy hypocrite. Cut the dick off her assaulter and make him wear his own balls as earrings. Find the guy who had left her friend a shattered shell of herself, bruised and crying on a bathroom floor, see how much he liked begging for his life.

“Maybe later,” she said finally, shrugging out of her leather jacket and unzipping her hoodie. “So where would I be most useful? I could distract the really shitty ones for you.”

“That would make sorting easier,” Moura mused, watching the souls thoughtfully.

Lily did too. Some people looked angry or dangerous, one or two downright evil, but most just tired and lost and confused.

“What’s their thing? The…quiet ones?”

“So, Levels Three through Nine are punishment levels, increasing in intensity as they go down, but souls can work their way up. Though, usually the ones beyond Level Five never do. The souls you’re talking about are Level Ones and Twos,” Moura explained. “Healing levels. Therapy levels really. Souls who weren’t good, but were truly sorry, or who had no opportunity to be better, the ones who just need a bit of support so they can grow and change. Most of the time, a soul just needs a chance, needs help. It’s not always comfortable, but the point of all of it is to grow.”

“I know how uncomfortable that can be,” Lily said, silent chest aching a little more.

A flurry of activity drew all of their attention to the line, where a male soul had attacked a female one and seemed to be attempting to use her as a hostage. A demon stepped forward, yanking him away and shaking him like a maraca before shoving him towards another demon, who dragged him towards the tunnel on the left. The demons clearly had the capacity to be brutal and uncompromising. But…Lily slid her gaze to a truly massive demon with olive-green skin and a broken horn, hunched nearly double as he spoke quietly to the weeping female soul. He offered her an arm that was nearly as thick as her waist, helping her up and walking slowly with her towards the tunnel on the right. His scarred face should have been terrifying, but there was an obvious gentleness there, genuine compassion for what the soul had been through.

Lily’s nose stung, a warning sign of imminent tears. She dug her nails into her palm.

Kind. The demons were kind, in their own way. Even after seeing the worst of humanity, they cared .

Something seemed to click into place inside, a knot in the fabric of her soul unraveling as her lifelong fear of Hell withered in the light of reality. Sure, it could be a brutal place, but it wasn’t needlessly so. They wanted to help.

So did she.

Swallowing around the lump of emotion, she forced a note of hopefully carefree cheer into her voice. “Do you guys have a pen and a big piece of paper or cardboard or something? And a chair? I have an idea.”

“Do you mean a foldable one? Like they use in mortal cage fighting?” Crocell asked.

Lily laughed. “I mean, sure, if that’s all you have, but I plan on sitting in it.”

“And the paper and pen?” Moura’s face slowly eased into a grin.

“I’m going to make a sign. ‘Customer Service’ or ‘Complaints’ or something. It’ll draw them in.”

“Why?” Crocell frowned, looking between her and Moura. “You can’t do anything to change where they’re going.”

“No, and I don’t expect to,” Lily said, trying to decide how to explain. “There’s a certain kind of person who is going to have everything explained to them by the Front Desk, go through the Judgment of their choosing, come out on this side of it—where I’m guessing things get explained to them again—and then still complain about it. I’m willing to bet that they’re the ones giving you guys the most grief, and they’re going to think that, because I’m a soul, I’ll be easier to intimidate or coerce.”

Moura snorted.

Lily appreciated the vote of confidence as she continued. “If I can either get them to understand, or not be little bitches about it, then problem solved. If I can’t, well, at least they’re not clogging up the main line, and things might go more smoothly.”

“But”—Crocell scratched at the base of one of his horns—“they’ll think they’re getting their way. They’ll be…They’ll treat you like…”

“Have you ever expected something and then suddenly had it yanked away from you? Or realized that it was never actually going to happen, and you’d been lying to yourself the whole time? It’s a shitty feeling.”

Insurance. Healthcare. A long life. A family. Children with bright eyes and a contagious laugh. To watch my brothers and friends grow old.

Lily coughed to loosen her too-tight throat. “And for people who are clearly deeply entitled, it will sting that much more. Plus, I’ll get to fight back this time. I still want to be kind, but I don’t want to have to be nice anymore.”

Crocell looked skyward, eyes darting left and right as he worked through her explanation, sweet concern all over his face.

Wait. Shit. Was she even allowed to help?

“Sorry, I know I’m asking this out of the blue. Do you need to run this by someone? Please let me know if I’m overstepping here. I’d just like to help you guys out.”

Moura grinned so broadly that Lily could see fangs, and waved over another demon. “In no way are you overstepping. We get to decide how and when to accept help up here. No need to involve the fancy management. Crocell, we’ve got that folding table in the storage closet, and didn’t Vepar dump his old gaming chair in the breakroom? It might be a little big, but it’ll be comfortable.”

A slender, midnight-blue demon reached them, and Moura rested her hand on his shoulder. “Zagan here will whip up a sign for you quick-like. Nothing fancy, Zag. We just need souls to take it seriously. ‘Customer Service’ should work, right?”

“Sounds good to me,” Lily said, watching Crocell hurry off. “Oh, wait! How about ‘Help Desk,’ but spelled with two L ’s? Hell p Desk?”

“Punny, I like it.” Moura laughed, gesturing towards a spot on the inside curve of the half wall that was in easy eyeline of the souls as they walked away from the desks, but well before the line of guards began in the gap. “Let’s get you set up over there, that’s a nice midpoint.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Lily was grinning so hard her face hurt. The chair they’d found was, predictably, a bit large, but they’d put it down to a lower height. The breakroom she’d helped them retrieved it from was comfortable and eclectic, with a large kitchen and plenty of chairs and tables. A whiteboard with dozens of notes and notices took up the far wall. It had a cozy feel to it.

Zagan had made a sign big enough to reach from the tabletop to the ground, with “Hellp Desk” spelled out in clean, elegant letters.

“Zagan, you have the most gorgeous penmanship I’ve ever seen,” Lily told him, tracing the H with a fingertip.

The demon ducked his head, cheeks staining a deeper shade of blue. “Thank you. Um…here.” He held out the black metal baseball bat he’d brought over with the sign. “Just in case. It’s from Agares.” He pointed towards one of the admission desks at the gate. “She’s dating a soul from the Summerland, and said that a lot of mortal women used bats as protection, so you might be familiar with it.”

The bat was solid and well-balanced in her hand, the weight of it reassuring, but not as much as the intention of the gift itself. “That’s so sweet, thank you! Please tell her thank you for me as well.”

Zagan blushed even deeper and nodded. Lily smiled. It wasn’t fair for a seven-foot-tall demon with fangs and horns to be so precious, but Zagan was a pure-hearted cutie.

“HEY! Finally, someone to listen to me,” a man snarled, marching towards her table, face mottled in frustration.

“Showtime.” Lily smiled at Zagan, tapping a finger on the smooth handle of the bat. She settled into the chair, anticipation coiling in her stomach.

“Good luck,” Zagan murmured, tail lashing as he scurried away before the soul reached the table.

The soul threw his arms out to the side. “What the fuck is this?”

“Hell,” Lily said calmly, fingers curling around the bat for reassurance.

“Yeah, got that part, but this is bullshit! I’m not even Christian. I’m agnostic.”

“You also either willfully forgot everything they told you, or you didn’t pay attention. Let me guess…Universal Judgment?” Lily asked, watching him carefully. She knew posturing when she saw it, and the man was too twitchy and furious for there to be an actual mistake. She’d bet her Paradise on it.

“Of course,” he bit out.

She chose her words carefully. “Okay, and when you got to the other side of that, were you then presented with a list of options for where you could go to work on yourself?”

The man scoffed and leaned over her table. “You mean be punished ?”

“Why would you say that?” Lily asked innocently.

“Because I was asked which punishment realm I wanted to spend my time in.”

Got him.

“So you admit that you chose to be here?”

The man’s mouth opened, then snapped shut, jaw muscles clenching. “Fine, I chose Hell because I didn’t think it would actually be like this,” he gritted out.

“Real?”

“Yeah. Fuck. Listen, it sounds bad, but all I did was—”

Lily held up a hand. “Ahh, hold on. If you’re about to try and explain why whatever you did to be down here ‘wasn’t actually that bad,’ then all that tells me is that you know exactly why you’re down here. It also says that you either don’t understand or willfully ignore that actions have consequences.”

“I don’t want to be in Hell!”

“I didn’t want to die. But we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

The man slammed a fist on the table, making it jump, before storming away without another word.

Zagan appeared at her side, copper eyes wide. “Are you alright?”

“That”—Lily took a long, steadying breath—“felt so good.”

Before Zagan could say anything else, a wire file basket appeared on the table. Lily yanked her hand back as if it was a spider. She hadn’t expected unseen assistance outside of her Paradise.

“Oh, that’s good.” Zagan gave her a cautious grin. “It looks like you’re hired, so to speak.”

“What?”

“We get to choose our personnel, but not everyone is immediately granted the ability to see soul files without the soul’s permission. It’s an honor and a responsibility, and it looks like you earned both.”

“Is this a Hell thing or a Universe thing?” Lily asked cautiously, looking up at him.

“Both?” Zagan shrugged.

“Ex cuse me!” A female voice tore their attention back to the line, where a woman stomped towards them. Zagan scurried away before she got too close.

The soul came to a puffing halt in front of Lily’s makeshift desk, and oh, it was just too perfect.

Her bleached and highlighted hair had been cut into a long bob, and a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on top of her head. Blue eyes that would have been pretty if they hadn’t been lit with contempt glared down at her. Lily was almost impressed. If there had been a pamphlet for Karen Identification, the soul would have been Exhibit A. The Prime Karen. The audacity to which all others could only aspire.

Excellent.

A mud-brown file popped into existence on her little desk, the dull lettering spelling out the woman’s wonderfully ironic name.

“Wow, a true Karen,” Lily mused, reaching for the file curiously. “This ought to be good.”

“Do not ,” Karen spat, shoving her finger in Lily’s direction, “pull that shit with me. You people seem to think you are so clever, but guess what, you’re not.”

“Mmhmm.” Lily flipped open the file. The first page seemed to be basic information about the woman’s life, and Lily ran her finger down each line.

Children: two daughters, one son.

I wonder how she treated…oh.

No sooner did she start to wonder than the page shimmered before her eyes and the information flashed through her brain. She lifted her finger away from the page in shock, and the information and images faded into the background of her thoughts, like the afterimage of a flash at night. She touched the page again and—there.

She loved her children, or at least thought she did. She liked to use them to further her own wants and desires, as canvases on which to project her own insecurities and failures. Her youngest daughter had always been, in Karen’s opinion, pudgier than she should have been, and she never missed an opportunity to remind her daughter of that fact. She claimed that she only wanted the best for her, that she said things out of love, but it was a lie. Her youngest daughter looked the most like her, and she’d resented her for her youth, for her differences. Her youngest daughter had married a good man but had cried on her wedding day when her mother, swirling champagne in the dressing room right before the ceremony, had said, “It’s just that that dress makes you look fatter. You really should have gone for something with sleeves. When I got married, I was a size two. But I suppose at least you know he’s marrying you for the right reasons.”

Her daughter had looked so beautiful on her wedding day, eyes bright with hope and promise, skin glowing with health, her gown a delicate sweep of chiffon and lace. Poor sweet baby.

Karen was full of shit.

And vindictiveness. And homophobia. And not a small amount of racism and bigotry. The information and context scrolled through Lily’s mind at lightning speed until she lifted her hand from the page.

Karen huffed, leaning across the table. “Are you even listening to me? Hello?” She snapped her fingers in Lily’s face.

Lily’s hand whipped up so fast that it surprised her, but she kept her expression neutral as she tightly gripped Karen’s wrist. Karen’s eyes went wide.

“Snap your fingers in my face again,” Lily said conversationally, as if discussing the weather, “and I will snap them off and feed them to you one, by, one.”

“How dare— ”

“Stop talking.” Lily poured every ounce, every shred of contempt into her voice.

Karen’s mouth snapped shut, still furious but clearly rattled.

How many times had Lily been at the beginning of this script and played it out with different variables? How many times had she apologized and catered to someone who had screamed at her, sworn at her, thrown things, grabbed her arm, made her afraid, all because that was what the service standard had required of her?

The deference and apologies that had been branded into her mind to use with angry customers sat on the tip of her tongue. But she wasn’t sorry that this woman was upset. She wasn’t sorry that the woman hadn’t “enjoyed her experience.”

Karen was treating her badly.

And Lily refused to apologize for someone else’s bad behavior. No more. Never again.

Lily cocked her head, watching the woman’s eyes, searching for any hint of understanding, of regret. “What possible reason could you have for speaking to me that way?”

Karen’s eyes bulged and her mouth flew open with an indignant gasp.

“I suggest,” Lily said mildly, tightening her grip on the woman’s wrist, “that you consider making what you say next very polite.”

“Or else what?”

Lily smiled. “Don’t fuck around if you’re not willing to find out.” She released the woman’s hand and sat back, waiting.

She touched a finger to the pages of the file again, hoping that this interaction was the result of extreme duress.

Karen’s adult life had been a trail of hundreds of abused service industry workers. She enjoyed it. Enjoyed flexing the perceived power she felt she lacked in her own life. When she’d found out that her husband had cheated on her—again—she’d gone shopping at the mall and made four young employees in different stores cry, and had gotten one fired. A teenager, working to help support her family, who all lived in poverty. She didn’t know, couldn’t have known, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have cared. She held poor people, especially poor people of color, in such low regard that they barely registered as human to her. The satisfaction she’d gotten from her trip had lasted only until she’d gotten to her car. Then the humiliation of her husband’s infidelity had threatened to drown her in her own tears.

Lily blinked the information away, glancing down at the page.

LEVEL 5, printed at the top of every page.

“You can’t treat me this way! No one should be treated this way!” Karen sputtered, twisting her fingers together.

Lily looked up. “You didn’t seem to have a problem treating people a lot worse than I’m treating you right now.”

“What people are y—”

“If you want to waste your eternity listening to me list each and every one of them, so be it. But for every name, I will use this bat.” Lily laid it across the desk. “Or you can shut up, get back in line without a fuss, and go down to Level Five, where I presume they will be more merciful than I will be if you don’t pull your shit together. You have no power here. You forfeited that right with the decisions that you made. Actions have consequences. These are yours.”

Karen took a step back, color draining from her face as she stared at Lily.

Lily held that gaze, and for the first time in her existence, wasn’t afraid.

Karen swallowed hard and gave a tiny nod, shoulders drooping. Suddenly, she looked…like just a person, and not a persona. A person who had been too small-minded and cowardly to brave discomfort for the sake of change and was now wondering if maybe she should have.

Moura had said Level Fives stood a chance, right? The least chance, but a chance nonetheless.

Lily touched the page again, then leaned across the table, trying to temper her tone. “Listen, Level Five doesn’t have to be forever. If you want another shot at life, it’s going to be a long road, but it’s not an unending one. Your kids had hope for you, even after everything. Maybe think about that on your way down.”

Karen twitched, genuine pain flaring in her pretty eyes. She pressed her lips together and turned without a word, walking quietly back toward the line. A few of the demons watched her as she passed, glancing back to Lily with shocked faces. One of them flashed her a thumbs-up.

Lily sucked in a deep breath and puffed out her cheeks, wiping her sweaty, shaky hands on her leggings. She was glad she’d pulled back at the end, but it had felt so damn good to match the energy and stand up for herself.

Lily placed Karen’s file in the wire tray, and it glinted with a faint sparkle of light before fading away.

Another file, blue and faintly creased, appeared in the center of her desk.

Lily looked up. A short line of souls had formed, the man at the head of it scowled down at her expectantly. The demons, apparently confused and delighted, watched avidly. The giant demon with one horn even gave her a two-fingered salute, his craggy face lit with a quiet smile.

Her hands steadied. She reached for the new file, brushing her fingers across the pages. He pitched a spectacular hissy fit for only being sent to Level Two for some intensive therapy and caved quickly.

The souls came in quick succession after that, blurring together in varying degrees of awfulness and ridiculousness and opportunities for witty or sardonic comebacks. Thankfully, not all of them were hideously awful, and most of them took one look at the bat resting across her lap and didn’t try to make things physical. A few slammed their hands on the desk in an act of intimidation, only to get their hand whacked with the bat.

Their lives were fascinating and frustrating and heartbreaking and cruel. The more souls she dealt with, the more thankful she was that the memories of their lives faded from her own mind. She kept her impressions of them, but the full weight of what she’d seen lifted as soon as the soul files disappeared.

Finally, a sickly orange file appeared on her desk, the cover oddly oily to the touch. The man to whom it belonged smiled calmly down at her.

Something about his presence set off every primal alarm bell she had and had her gripping the handle of the bat. The eerie mystery of the soul evaporated as the man’s life flashed through her mind.

Perhaps the bat would be fully put to use for this one.