Aria felt absolutely dreadful.
She was slumped in a chair in the hospital's infusion ward, a needle taped to the back of her left hand, watching cold medicine drip into her veins at an agonisingly slow pace. The fluorescent lights overhead were too bright. The plastic chair was too hard. Everything smelled faintly of antiseptic and misery.
The old man in the seat by the window had been hunching his shoulders for the past ten minutes, muttering under his breath.
"Bloody draught coming through that window... freezing, absolutely freezing..."
Aria glanced at her own seat — tucked safely away from the window by the aisle — then at the old man's white hair, his frail shoulders, the slight tremor in his hands.
Oh, for heaven's sake.
She picked up her IV stand and shuffled over. "Here, let's swap. Take my seat."
The old man thanked her profusely as he made his slow, unsteady way across. Aria settled into the window seat, felt the cool draught immediately, and decided it wasn't worth thinking about. A pleasant drowsiness was already creeping in at the edges of her mind — the good kind, the kind that came with proper medication finally starting to work.
She closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, she was being marched forward by two figures gripping her arms on either side.
One was dressed in white robes, the other in black. Both wore absurdly tall hats. Beneath their feet stretched a grey road that seemed to go on forever, and the air around them was thick with pale, drifting mist.
Aria blinked. Then blinked again.
"Oi — wait." She tried to dig her heels in. "Who are you? What is this? Is this a kidnapping?"
The one in white robes turned his head. His face was rather handsome, in a bloodless, terrifying sort of way. "Stop fussing. We're in a hurry."
"High quota today," the one in black added, not breaking stride. "Fall behind and our performance bonuses get docked."
"What quota?" Aria twisted against their grip. "Who are you people?"
"You've never heard of the Reapers?" White Robes clicked his tongue with the air of someone profoundly disappointed in the youth of today. "A girl your age and you don't even know the basics."
"Your lifespan has ended," Black Robes said flatly. "We've come to collect you."
The words hit Aria like a bucket of ice water.
She had been sitting in the infusion ward. Getting a drip for a cold. The doctor had told her she'd be right as rain once the medicine was in her system. She was twenty-two years old, in perfectly good health according to her last check-up, and she had a graduation trip to plan.
"That's impossible! I just have a cold!"
They ignored her completely, dragging her forward with unhurried, relentless efficiency.
Ahead, a vast and grim hall materialised through the mist, its entrance flanked by sentries with gaunt faces and hollow eyes. Aria's legs turned to jelly, but no amount of pulling or writhing did her any good.
Inside the hall, seated in the position of highest authority, was a stern man in dark robes — Lord Mors, by the look of him — who was hunched over a tablet, frowning at the screen.
"My Lord, the soul has been delivered," White Robes announced, with a respectful bow.
Lord Mors didn't look up. "Process her."
"Excuse me!" Aria's voice echoed off the stone walls. "There has clearly been some sort of mistake! I'm twenty-two! My last physical was completely normal!"
Lord Mors looked up from his tablet with the weary expression of a man who had heard every possible complaint and been moved by none of them. He swiped the screen once. "Name?"
"Aria."
"Age?"
"Twenty-two."
"Cause of death?"
"I had a cold! How should I know how I died? I shouldn't have died!"
Lord Mors's frown deepened. His finger stopped moving on the screen. He looked up at the Reapers with an expression that made them both go very still. "Seat number?"
White Robes produced a slip of paper from his robes with slightly trembling hands. "Infusion ward, row three, seat five."
Lord Mors checked the tablet. The colour — what little there was — seemed to drain from his already-pallid face.
"Row three, seat five was a seventy-eight-year-old man. Cardiac arrest."
The hall went completely silent.
The Reapers looked at each other.
They looked at Aria.
They looked at each other again, and very slowly released her arms.
Aria stumbled forward and caught herself on her knees, the full weight of the situation finally landing on her. "So," she said, very quietly, "you took the wrong soul."
"We collect by seat number." Black Robes scratched the back of his neck. "How were we to know you'd gone and swapped places with him?"
"This," White Robes whispered to his colleague, "is a significant professional error."
Lord Mors pressed two fingers to his temple. "Send her back. Quickly."
Aria got to her feet.
"Wait."
Lord Mors looked at her.
"You abducted me by mistake," Aria said, squaring her shoulders. "I died for absolutely no reason. And you're just going to send me back and call it even?"
"...What else would you like?"
"Compensation!" She planted her hands on her hips. "Emotional damages! Lost wages! You gave me the fright of my life — literally! In the mortal world, you'd be facing a lawsuit!"
The Reapers quietly sidled a few steps away from their employer.
Lord Mors stared at her for a long, long moment.
"Fine," he said at last, with the resigned air of a man who had learnt that some battles simply weren't worth fighting. "Fine. I'll give you compensation. Buy a lottery ticket when you get back. Now go."
He jerked his chin at the Reapers. "Return her to her body."
They grabbed Aria and moved at nearly twice their previous speed.
Aria, being swept back through the mist, was already mentally calculating lottery winnings. She wondered if the Underworld had insider knowledge of jackpot numbers. She wondered if she could ask for a specific amount. She was so absorbed in these pleasant thoughts that she barely noticed when the mist cleared.
They were standing in a cemetery.
Aria looked at the headstone in front of her.
Her own photograph looked back at her.
Aria. 2004 – 2026.
Two people were crouched before the grave. One was her uni roommate, Sophie. The other was the class president. They had laid fresh flowers and lit candles along the base of the stone, and Sophie was crying so hard her whole body shook.
"Aria... how could you just leave like this..."
"We were supposed to go on a graduation trip together." The class president set another bouquet carefully against the headstone. "Rest easy, wherever you are."
Aria stood behind them and did not move for a very long time.
Then she turned to look at the Reapers.
"What," she said, with perfect calm, "does this mean."
White Robes smiled in a way that suggested he was very aware of how bad this looked. "Ah. It appears we were... slightly delayed in returning."
"Your body was cremated yesterday," Black Robes added.
Aria stared at the small urn of ashes resting at the base of the headstone. She looked at Sophie, who was still sobbing. She looked at the class president, who was adjusting one of the candles with quiet, careful grief.
Something in her snapped.
She lunged forward and grabbed for Sophie's shoulders — her hands passed straight through.
"Why were you so FAST?!" she shouted at her friends, who could not hear her. "Couldn't you have waited a couple of days! Would a bit of patience have killed you!"
Sophie sneezed. She rubbed her nose and looked around uncertainly. "Did it just get colder...?"
"Aria?" The class president tilted his head at the empty air. "Is that you? Have you come back?"
Aria sank to the ground.
The Reapers shuffled over. "There's... no going back now. Nothing left but ashes, I'm afraid."
"So I'm really dead." Aria stared up at them. "I'm actually, genuinely dead. Because you made a mistake."
"We are... very sorry about that."
She sat there for another moment. Then she stood up, smoothed down her clothes with quiet dignity, and said, "Take me back to Lord Mors."
Lord Mors's expression when the three of them walked back into the hall was one of genuine, unguarded shock. He looked at Aria. He looked at the Reapers. He looked back at Aria.
After hearing the full account, he was silent for a long moment.
"The fault lies with this realm," he said finally, in a voice that carried the grave weight of someone about to do something he would probably regret. "You will be reincarnated with your memories intact, and you may make reasonable requests."
Aria's eyes lit up. "Truly?"
Lord Mors waved a hand. An electronic screen and keyboard materialised in front of his desk.
Aria stopped dead. "The Underworld has... computers?"
"The Underworld is allowed to modernise," Lord Mors said, with great dignity. "Make your requests. Quickly."
Aria rubbed her hands together and took a breath.
"I want to be beautiful. Properly gorgeous — the sort that makes people do double-takes. And I want to be able to eat absolutely anything without putting on weight." She was already gaining momentum. "I want a perfect memory and to be able to pick up new things incredibly fast. Oh, and I want to be naturally charming — I want people to like me, pets included, all the fluffy ones especially—"
Lord Mors was typing. His expression was growing darker by the second.
"—and I'd like my future partners to all be very handsome, obviously, and from good families, financially stable, emotionally mature—"
"—and my parents in the new life should be loving, please, none of those complicated family drama situations, I've read enough of those—"
Lord Mors's typing speed was increasing.
"—and if I could have some sort of special ability, that would be ideal. Magic, or superpowers, or something along those lines—"
"ENOUGH."
Lord Mors's palm came down on the desk with a crack that echoed through the entire hall.
Aria flinched.
He was on his feet, expression thunderous. "I offered you compensation. Not a wish list! Magic! Superpowers! Why not ask me to hand you the stars while you're at it!"
Aria, very quietly: "Well, I mean, I did make it up to the heavens..."
"OUT!" Lord Mors swept his hand in a grand, furious gesture.
A tremendous force seized Aria from nowhere. She had exactly half a second to realise what was happening before she was sucked — feet-first and yelping — into a spiralling tunnel of light.
"I WASN'T FINISHED YET—"
Her voice spiralled away into the distance.
In the hall, the Reapers stared at the swirling vortex where Aria had been, and then exchanged a very significant look.
White Robes: "...My Lord. That tunnel leads to the parallel fiction realms."
Black Robes: "Specifically the... Harry Potter section."
Lord Mors, who had sat back down and was straightening his robes with great composure, paused.
Then he lifted his chin.
"I never specified which world she'd be reborn into," he said, with absolute dignity. "She wanted magic and superpowers. She's getting magic and superpowers. I have fulfilled my end of the arrangement."
The Reapers looked at each other.
They said nothing.
Somewhere inside the tunnel, Aria was tumbling end over end through a kaleidoscope of light and colour, her thoughts spinning just as fast.
I pushed it too far. I got greedy. I annoyed him and now I'm being flung off to who-knows-where—
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Wherever I end up, I am going to make it work.
I always do.
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