One
“Did you hang out with them?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did they know what you are?”
“Yes.”
“Did you guys ever talk about anything important?”
“Once we had an illuminating discussion on why your mother wouldn’t eat oranges.”
I furrowed my brow, confused, and stared hard at Oliver Samuelson. I was relatively new on the job, so I’d yet to become comfortable with my co-worker’s moods. We’d been working together for only two and a half weeks and we’d already undergone a tense situation that resulted in another of our co-workers dying at my magical hands — she had it coming, don’t worry — so I’d taken to endlessly questioning him the past ten days thanks to the information he let slip during that encounter.
He wasn’t taking it well.
“My mother didn’t eat oranges?” I racked my memory for any hint that I knew that. I remembered very little about my mother. Mostly images gathered from the terrifying night something came through the death gate and killed her and my father, but seemingly sparing me for no particular reason. I was back at the death gate now in an official capacity. I was the Belle Isle gatekeeper. And Oliver, apparently a vampire, was a fixture in this location as far back as when my father served as gatekeeper ... and he was tightlipped when it came to sharing information about my parents. I found it irritating.
“You have to tell me something,” I prodded, frustration bubbling up. “You can’t drop a bomb — like you knew my parents before they died — and not say a single thing ever again. That’s not fair.”
Oliver, attractive in a classic Hollywood Cary Grant sort of way, let loose an exaggerated sigh. “Has anyone ever told you how annoying you are?”
“Yes.” I saw no reason to lie. I, Isabella “Izzy” Sage, had been called annoying more times than I could count. Frankly, I was over it. “Before you get all high and mighty, you’re annoying, too. In fact, I think you’re more annoying than I am.”
Oliver arched an eyebrow, amused. “Then I must really be annoying.”
“You have no idea. You’re also kind of mean.” I didn’t enjoy tossing around the word “mean” willy-nilly. It was very teen movie, and I liked to think I was above that. Still, I couldn’t shake the suspicion that Oliver was purposely keeping information from me ... and I hated it.
“I’m mean?” Oliver checked an intake sheet and shook his head. “The Grimlocks are missing a delivery from last night.”
He acted as if he was concerned about work — we serve as the ferrying system for souls after death, the last stop in this world before they move over to the next — but I knew better. He was bringing up the Grimlocks, a local reaper family I’d met upon moving back to the Detroit area, because he wanted to distract me with thoughts of dark hair, purple eyes and lean muscles. Well, I had news for him: I wasn’t going to be easily distracted. “You have to tell me at least one thing.”
He slowly slid his eyes to me and I could read the conflict in them. “Izzy ... .”
“You have to.” I was firm. “I barely remember them. I want to know something important. Like ... did you know me when I was a kid?”
He slowly nodded. “You were around the gate all the time,” he acknowledged. “They set up a spot for you right over there.” He pointed toward an empty corner. “You always had the same blanket. It was purple and had some sort of cartoon character on it. You would sit there and draw for hours.”
Well, that was something. I didn’t know what to make of the tidbit, but it was something. “I still draw. I mean ... I haven’t since I got here. We’ve been kind of busy. But I still draw.”
“You had quite the imagination, as I recall.” Oliver watched me with contemplative eyes. “You know, dwelling on the past won’t help anyone. You should look forward, not back.”
I appreciated the sentiment – not really but I liked to pretend I did – but I wasn’t about to let him opt for an easy escape when he was finally opening up about the past. “Did you ever talk to me?”
“Of course I talked to you. I worked here for years with your parents. They weren’t always gatekeepers. For a time, they ran the boathouse and served as assistants at the gate. Were you aware of that?”
I wasn’t aware of much when it came to my parents’ tenure on Belle Isle, a small island in the Detroit River between Michigan’s automotive capital and Windsor. The island was essentially a 982-acre park that featured a yacht club, aquarium, casino, boathouse, nature center and conservatory. It’s connected to Detroit by a bridge. It’s not too large or special ... and yet I found it magical. Of course, that could have something to do with the death gate located beneath the aquarium, an opening between worlds that occasionally whispered to me. I rarely admitted that to anyone.
“I didn’t know they were assistants,” I admitted after a beat. “I don’t remember them very well.” And that right there was a big rip in the fabric of my very makeup. My parents died while protecting me — that’s what the few memory shards I can recall tell me — and yet I barely remember them. They died when I was seven, and I was raised by my grandfather in New Orleans after that. I joined the reaper academy fresh out of high school and set my sights on returning here as soon as possible. Why? Even I wasn’t sure. I felt I needed to be here. As an overachiever, that meant becoming one of the youngest gatekeepers ever ... and taking an assignment absolutely nobody wanted.
“I’m sorry you don’t remember them.” Oliver appeared sincere. “They were good people and they loved you a great deal. They wouldn’t want you fixating on their deaths this way. That’s not who they were.”
“You can say that because you knew them. I don’t remember them.”
“Which doesn’t seem fair.”
“It’s definitely not fair,” I agreed. “I’m not asking you to spill their secrets or anything.” Not yet, I silently added. “I just want to know ... something.”
He pursed his lips. “Fine. Your sixth birthday party was held in the aquarium. There weren’t a lot of kids around, but all the workers came and brought you presents. I gave you a stuffed dog that you carried around until ... it happened. Your parents thought it was funny because you immediately fell in love with the dog and tried to walk it on a leash. Your father actually bought a leash for the stuffed dog because you insisted that dogs weren’t allowed on the island if they weren’t restrained and you didn’t want him taken away.”
“Max,” I murmured, surprised. “You gave me Max.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You remember the dog?”
“I still have him. He’s in my room right now. He’s one of the few things I still have from my childhood. Everything else was ... destroyed.” That included the house I’d shared with my parents. It was no longer in existence and no one had bothered to rebuild, which is why I lived in an apartment on the second floor of the boathouse instead of in a regular house. Of course, that was a relief. I didn’t want to return to the abode where my parents died.