Year Two

Miss Vale looked at the paperwork on her desk. Some of it had to be sent over to

Operations, some down to Engineering, and one message had to be sent to a soul

working Community Service down in the light section of the Underworld.

She looked at the note to the dead soul downstairs. She couldn’t decide if she should

deliver it, or hand it off to a messenger.

“Hey, Beautiful,” said a voice in the air. “How’s things going for you?”

“Hello, Geoff,” Miss Vale said. “Dead again, I see.”

“A small case of poisoning,” said Geoff. “Anybody else would be in your hands right

now. I would like to be in your wonderful, dextrous, shapely, strong hands myself,

but I don’t know how long I have before I have to go home.”

“We can make do before you go back Topside,” Miss Vale said.

“I would love that, Vicky,” said Geoff. “It makes this constant shuttling bearable.”

“Let me get into something a little slinkier,” said Miss Vale. She reached up and

unpinned her hair. The burning tendrils reached upward without the pin.

“Every day, you get more beautiful,” said Geoff.

“Flattery will get you something,” said Miss Vale. She smiled at the living soul.

“Miss Vale!,” shouted her boss in the office next room over. “Have you seen the

drawings for the lift for the tower? Engineering is giving me a ton of guano over it.”

“Better go take care of your boss,” said Geoff. “I don’t think he approves of us.”

“I’ll take care of him all right,” said Miss Vale. She pinned her hair back in place

before picking up what could be the relevant papers from her desk. “Try not to go

anywhere.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” said Geoff. He smiled as she sashayed away. That

walk made his insides do things that he liked, but would find embarrassing in mixed

company.

He sat behind her desk and thought about what was going on Topside. Someone up

there thought they could poison him and get away with it. Too bad they didn’t know

he would spit out anything lesser than the mix inside now.

How had he been poisoned? Once he knew that, he could scrub any other suspect.

He found a piece of chalk on Miss Vale’s desk. He picked it up and stared at it. How

much time did he have before he shook off the poison? Usually he snapped back

almost instantly from something like that.

It must be eating his insides as fast as his body fixed it. That limited things to spells

and certain things he had come across in his wanderings. He took the chalk on the

wall and wrote down a list of everything he was aware of that could be that persistent.

He marked the likelier elements in play. The assumption was that the poisoner didn’t

have access to things from Rialt on the other side of the world when they had few

contacts with the main countries, and landlocked Baldwin in particular.

Still, there were ways to get things if you had the pull, and he didn’t know anything

about any of the suspected murderers.

He wrote down the list of people who could have poisoned him. That was a bigger

help. He could only think of six, or seven, people who had the opportunity to get

close to his food at dinner and slip something in it.

Some of them were certainly dead if they ate the poison in their food too.

That would cut down on his list of suspects.

He wrote down what he did know about the suspects beside their names. The

information was only three, or four, words apiece.

He stared at the wall and shook his head. It was possible he had met each of the seven

people at dinner under different circumstances. He would have been recognizable to

them, but time would have altered their appearance into an effective disguise if they

changed anything distinctive about their behavior while he was around.

That was the problem with being an immortal wandering adventurer. Sometimes you

missed killing an enemy who wanted revenge for something you had forgotten about

after so many years on the road.

For you, it was a thing done to get dinner. To them, it was the most important thing

that happened to them.

He wrote down what he had eaten next to his suspect list. He thought back to sitting

at dinner. Everyone had eaten the same things. He was sure of that. He pictured the

dinner, step by step, then he remembered that he had a double dose of soup. He had

taken the hostess’s soup because she said she didn’t want any.

He made a question mark next to the soup. Was that the murder weapon? He looked

at the suspect list. If the hostess had been the intended victim, that meant his suspect

list had shrank by three. He put question marks by the three main people he thought

could poison her food.

He wondered if anyone had found his body yet. He supposed it smelt if it was pushing

the poison out any way it could.

What would they do once they found him? He supposed they would bury him, or burn

him. If the murderer found him first, concealment of his body would be important. A

murder would look bad, and anyone could be the killer. And when the real target was

killed, that would double efforts to find the killer.

How much time did he have left before he woke up wherever he was going to wake

up and start putting some of this to good use?

Too bad he couldn’t ask Vicky to check to see which one of his suspects had

accidental murder on his record.

He thought that would press on their long range romance in ways that would be

detrimental to what they had now.

It was one of the few real anchors he had and he wasn’t ready to give that up despite

the lack of convenience on both sides meeting for any real length of time.

He had asked her once how she felt about their arrangement. She had told him that

he was her only real prospect unless she wanted to push Manny down some steps and

take over. Then everyone would want to be her romantic and professional friend.

It had been one of the few times that he had been in the Underworld for any length

of time. He had been buried and had to dig himself out. He would dig a few inches,

then die, then snap back to life. At one point, the snapping had made him a visitor that

flickered as he went on his date with the beautiful assistant of the guy in charge of

dead people.

She had been the most beautiful thing around for miles as far as he was concerned.

He wondered if there was another person who could have done the deed as he stared

at the wall. It had to be one of these three people. How did he prove it?

Could he prove it?

That was a question he didn’t have an answer to at the moment.

How much longer did he have for his visit? He smiled. When he was alive, he had all

the time in the world. When he was dead, he only had a few minutes, maybe hours,

before he was recalled.

The burial had given him a month in the Underworld with the rapid flickering that

entailed while he was trying to dig himself out of his grave Topside.

Vicky came back into the room. She took a moment to compose her features while

pushing her annoyance at her boss away.

Her love was here so they could at least snuggle, maybe do a bit more, before he had

to leave. She pulled off her emerald lens glasses and undid her hair. She decided they

were going to try to do a bit more before Geoff returned Topside.

“You look beautiful,” said Geoff. He put the chalk down on her desk. “Every day I

come here, you look better and better.”

“I work at it,” she said. Emerald fires burned in her eyes. “Come here and kiss me

before the worry wart wants something else.”

They met in front of the desk. Geoff wrapped his arms around her, locked her lips in

a kiss. Then he vanished.

“Damn it, Geoff,” Miss Vale said. She laughed a little. So much for their romantic

interlude.

She rubbed her face with both hands. The fires in her eyes returned to their usual

glow as she put on her glasses. She straightened her suit, pushing the skirt down. She

pinned her hair back in place last.

Why couldn’t Manny have waited for a few minutes? He was worse than her mother.

Now she would have to wait for Geoff to get killed again so they could have some

time together.

She looked at the scribbling on the wall. Geoff must have done that while he was

waiting for her to come back. She decided to leave it up in case he needed it his next

visit.

She glanced at the names and decided that making note of them would be all right.

They weren’t dead yet, so she couldn’t see what they had done. When they came

through Judgement, she would get a list of sins they would have to pay off before

getting Recycled.

Assault on an immortal boyfriend would be on that list.

She wondered why she was taking this so personally. She decided that she didn’t have

a problem with the ordinary attacker attacking Geoff where he could defend himself,

but poisoning the wrong person was out of bounds.

Maybe his way of looking at things was rubbing off on her.

Geoff had been killed so many times in fair fights and brawls, he thought of it as the

cost of living. He had only been murdered through other means a few times. This was

one of those times.

She knew he wouldn’t let things go until he knew what had happened. What if the

murderer knew some way around his immortality? What if murdering people had

become a hobby?

What if someone should be there to encourage people to fix their problems before

they did their time?

That would make her job a little easier.

Miss Vale looked at her desk and shook her head. Notices were scattered everywhere.

She started putting everything back in order.

She decided she needed a couch for the next time Geoff dropped in.

She filled out the requisition and dropped it in her mail tray. Hopefully she could get

one without too much haggling.

Some of the Quartermasters could be as bad as Engineering about the reasons you

wanted certain things. She almost had to go down there with a mace just to get a

bottle of ink one time.

A couch would be great for what she wanted to do in her opinion.

“I’m back,” said Geoff as he appeared in the office. “Probably only for a second.”

“Did you figure it out?,” said Miss Vale.

“Yes,” said Geoff. He sat down on the edge of the desk. “It was family politics all

along.”

“You figured it out in half an hour, and got killed again?,” said Miss Vale.

“This time was an accident,” said Geoff with a shrug. “I misjudged the speed and the

height. Who hasn’t done that at one time, or the other?”

“Who hasn’t?,” Miss Vale said. She hadn’t for one.

“I just wanted to come by and say I was sorry that we couldn’t have a wild time,” said

Geoff. “And I love you.”

Miss Vale opened her mouth to say I love you too, but he was already gone back to

Topside.

A couple of notices fluttered into her IN tray. She pulled them out and looked at the

names and the sins listed on them. She looked up at the scribbling on the wall. She

decided she wanted to meet these two in person.

She grabbed her mace from its hook on the wall and left the office. Her new souls

should be coming through Orientation and be attached to overseers to take them to

their duties.

That was going to be her, and their new duties would be feeding the wildlife the

Underworld contained.