With the command, “Handle the matter of commission in your office, Hope,” Death dismissed his daughter and Albert out of the room.

Albert didn’t hesitate to accept the invitation to leave. He was in such a hurry that he completely forgot about the papers on the desk and almost about the ones he had in hand. As it was, he didn’t pay attention to the property summary of The Heart of The True Self that he’d picked up to get out of the way of the disclosure writing as it had spread across the desk. Fortunately, Hope was more careful with her exit. Just after Albert exited Death’s office, Hope emerged with several papers in one hand and the broken mirror in the other.

“We should leave him be, something’s really—” Hope was interrupted by a loud crunching noise like solid wood being splintered. “—hit a nerve.”

The sound of destruction from within Death’s office and the conflicted expression on Hope’s face told Albert everything he needed to know. If he ever so much as breathed the name Eleanor Marchant in the presence of Death, he was as good as dust in the wind. That wasn’t the only worry either; Hope also seemed affected by the abrupt introduction of Eleanor into the mix. Albert just wasn’t sure exactly how she was being affected.

“Ignore that.” Hope commanded quietly as she directed Albert’s attention back to her own office. “And don’t mention what you heard or saw just now to anyone.”

“Of course.” Albert answered, his voice barely above a whisper.

With the tension in the air, Albert suddenly felt like his throat was beginning to swell slightly. It was harder to breathe comfortably, and what few breaths he could manage to choke through were shallow and erratic. A gentle brush against his leg, however, began to calm him again.

The short walk between offices was punctuated with Hope’s direction for Albert to sit. It all seemed incredibly familiar. Albert had just been here, after all, but now things were very different. He wasn’t the one at his wits end anymore; he was just a bystander to the chaos now.

“Before we were sidetracked, you were told that you were going to be paid a commission.” Hope started, her face forced into a new mask of composure as she rounded her desk to sit across from Albert. “But, as you may have guessed, we aren’t interested in paying you with traditional mortal currency. We trade in souls, and we pay in souls. So your commission is in souls. For your contribution to me, you will be paid five percent. My father outlined a flat rate of seventy-five for your role in the job you completed for the company.”

“Won’t that—” Albert started out with a stammer but gradually realized that his question had merit as he completed the math in his head. “—wouldn’t that just cripple me again? That’s like... almost a hundred souls. Why would I want to be paid like that?”

“Since you’re mortal, it’s going to be held in a trust. You retain ownership but aren’t considered the direct holder of the souls. They’ll be, essentially, the same thing as money in the bank.”

“So... I would own souls.”

“When you say it like that you make it sound like slavery, Albert.” Hope groaned. “These aren’t living souls. They’re not people. They’re energy. Units of power, mutable, transferable… finite. And they aren’t taken by force.”

“Your dad tried to take mine by force. He killed me for it.”

“Wrong on both counts, Albert.” Hope sank in her chair, both annoyed and distressed that things continued to not go her way. “My father attempted to take your soul by strategy, and that strategy involved having someone else kill you. Bad things happen when contractors kill mortals.”

“Bad things? Is it against the rules or something? Because I feel like being party to a murder is still considered murder.”

“There are no rules, just things that can and can’t be done. But when a contractor takes a life by their own hand, bad things happen.”

“Like karma?”

“Sure. Karma.” Hope said with a sigh. “There’s no evidence, but there is a pattern. A pattern and no way to verify the causality. Correlation isn’t causation and all that.”

“So…” Albert was lost.

He’d lost track of what he was supposed to be doing. Hope seemed remarkably open, which was probably the result of stress and the complications that seemed to continuously rise from everything Albert was involved with. And all the information that Albert was gathering from her only served to forge the pathway for more distractions from what it was that she wanted to accomplish.

“Just sign the stupid contracts and get paid.”

Hope tossed the pages she’d managed to collect on her way out of her father’s office towards Albert. Combined with the several pages he’d already had in his hands, it was everything he needed. And he signed them without complaint. There was very little language in these commission contracts; they were more like invoices.

“Great,” Hope groaned, “now can we do something other than talk about work? I’ve been on high alert for what feels like ten hours.”

Albert glanced at the clock hanging on the wall over Hope’s shoulder to double check how long it had actually been, and she wasn’t too far off. It had been close to eight hours since he’d wandered into the office and she’d saved his life. Still, it was a short time compared to how long Albert had been gone and how much of his memory he was still missing. Somehow, however, Albert didn’t feel tired. He wasn’t buzzing around like he’d just downed a tall cup of coffee, but he felt like he was still in the middle of his day. Maybe it was because he’d been unconscious for a prolonged period of time and had only woken up close to eight hours ago. At least, that was Albert’s first thought; the rational explanation.

The more likely reason was probably far less rational. And thinking back, though his memories were still just a little fuzzy, Albert remembered a similar feeling after he’d completed his initial contracts to restore his life. It seemed likely that, though the energy would have killed him from being so excessive, that the residual energy of the souls he had carried had been acting like a constant refresher.

“Have you learned anything else about Pincushion?” Hope asked. Albert could tell she was still trying to find something to do that wasn’t work-related. She almost sounded desperate.

“Not really?” Albert looked down to the floor beside the chair he’d taken and found the cat spirit exactly where he expected. “She’s faithful, she does things if I ask her, and she probably used my quill to get me here... because I might have asked her? I’m still not entirely sure how that worked out.”

“That’s interesting.” Hope hummed as she sat back up in her chair, her interest growing. “Can you have her jump up on my desk?”

“Uh… sure.”

Albert gave the cat spirit a conflicted look as he debated the riskiness of having it perform too many menial tasks. There was a chance it would get tired of performing like a trained monkey and leave, and that would have been the loss of a serious asset.

“Could you… would you jump up here?” Albert tapped the desk as he asked the cat. “Please?”

Without hesitation, as soon as Albert’s hand tapped the desk, Pincushion leapt to the exact spot and sat there. Her attention was solely on Albert. She had acknowledged Hope before, but now the contractor was completely ignored. It was as though by giving her a request, Albert had set her to a different level of obedience for a short time.

Hope let out a short huff of a breath as she took in the spirit again. “Huh. Neat. And she does anything?”

“I haven’t had a lot of time to test… and frankly, I don’t want to risk upsetting her.”

“Smart. Animal spirits and wraiths don’t tend to be so mild-mannered and obedient. Best not push her buttons if that’s what she actually is.”

“A wraith?”

“Right, you’re still so inexperienced. Sometimes I forget because you manage to do the darnedest things like they’re homework.” Hope seemed like she was intent on laughing the question off, but then her expression grew more serious. “But it’s probably something you should keep in mind. There are different kinds of dead things. There are spirits, or half-deads as we call them sometimes, which are the normal manifestations of formerly living things. The more—presence is the best word I can think of—presence they had in life, the longer they linger after death. Most people, most creatures, don’t linger very long at all.”

“And a wraith is…?”

“A wraith is what happens when a lingering presence absorbs a soul or parts of a soul. Wraiths stick around a lot longer than normal spirits, maybe even indefinitely… but they’re usually violent and extremely dangerous.”

The mention of danger brought Albert’s eyes from Hope to Pincushion. The cat's expression was vacant, but it was also a cold vacancy. And for once, for just a moment, it truly looked more like an apparition than a cat.

“But spirits can’t harm the living. Right?” Albert asked, looking for confirmation in Hope’s expression. When he received none, he asked again. “Right?”

For a moment, Hope’s eyes were locked on Pincushion as well. The contractor had a dazed and distant look as she scanned the spirit for any sign that it would lash out. But nothing happened.

After a moment, Hope finally answered. “Yes. Lingering spirits don’t exactly have substance. They’re energy clinging to an intelligence that is quickly losing place in reality. But wraiths are different. They can interact, in a limited fashion, with the world. If they really want to, they can even harm mortals. But they feed on souls. Once a spirit becomes a wraith, they become obsessive; usually about lingering in the world longer. So they rend and devour lingering spirits and consume their souls to do that. That little trait makes them uniquely capable of threatening contractors and collectors.”

“Really?” Hope’s words had come so candidly that Albert didn’t distrust them, but the candor also caused a shock on its own.

“Do I sound like I’m lying?”

“No. It’s just… I think if Pincushion were a wraith, then I’d know by now. She’s just a cat. I mean, she’s a spirit. But of a cat.”

“If she was just a spirit, she’d probably be gone by now. A lot of animals tend to have a lot of presence and linger longer than humans, but even then. She’s been following you for a while now. Whatever she is, she’s not normal.”

Hope’s statement elicited a meow from the cat spirit. The sound made Hope flinch, but Pincushion didn’t budge an inch.

“Well, that makes two mysteries latched to me.” Albert said with a sigh as he reclined in his chair. “I get a broken mirror and a broken cat. Both, apparently, incredibly valuable and dangerous. Both beyond the reach of my understanding.”

Hope’s expression screwed up at the mention of the mirror. “What do you mean by mystery? You have the full sheet on the mirror; there’s nothing else to know. It’s a broken piece of art.”

Her response made Albert chuckle. And, for a moment, he forgot he was talking to an incredibly dangerous and powerful contractor. For a moment, Hope was just a person. But then it sank back in.

“Don’t tell me you actually believe that. There’s no way your dad would care so much if there wasn’t more to it.”

“Well, it’s sentimental too.” Hope’s expression returned to a similar display as when they’d both left her father’s office. “It reminds him…”

“Of Eleanor?”

“Don’t ever let him catch you saying her name, or you’re probably as good as dead.” Hope cautioned in a hiss. “I’m not particularly fond of the memories of her either, so just forget about it.”

Silence ruled the room after that. Albert stared into Pincushion’s blank spectral eyes as Hope huffed and sighed and spun around slowly in her chair. There was nothing left to do. Albert had ruined his chances of learning more, and Hope didn’t seem interested in conversation. Albert would have left, except there was a lingering fear in his mind that Death still wanted to keep him around for something. He hadn’t been dismissed, and that felt like something that would either happen or he’d be expected to stay in the building until he died.

Fortunately, a knock at the door signaled a reprieve from the awkward silence. Unfortunately, the knock was soon followed by the voice of Death as he peaked into his daughter’s office.

“I think I have decided upon a course of action. Would you mind lending me your space, darling? My office is in something of a state.”

Death’s words were far more calm than before. Forcibly calm. It was almost comical. But Hope didn’t pay it any mind. She merely waved him into the room and abdicated her seat for him.

“Thank you, dear. You should head home; the hour is late. I have much to discuss with young Albert about his next assignment.”

“Assignment?” Albert was shocked that he was being expected to return to work so quickly, or even at all. But Death definitely had something up his sleeve, and there was no use fighting him when Albert couldn't tell what it was.

“Yes, you will be helping me collect a debt. Come sunrise, the McClellan brothers will be a memory; and their old business will be our new revenue stream.”