24: Mr. Blackwick’s Discoveries

John turned the key in the door to 666 ½ Bleeck­er Street and smiled. It was good to see that Brig­it and Sea­mus were keep­ing with the pol­icy of lock­ing up when they went out. He had hoped that all had gone smooth­ly for them dur­ing his ab­sence these past cou­ple of days. He had ev­ery ounce of faith that Brig­it’s si­lence meant that she was man­ag­ing the North Amer­ican of­fice eas­ily. When he had stopped in­to the Bleeck­er Street Café, Giuseppe had in­di­cat­ed that he had not seen ei­ther of the Reapers since John’s leav­ing. That was good as well, John thought as he closed the main door be­hind him. Their ab­sence from the café meant that they were keep­ing them­selves prop­er­ly busy.

His trip had been a suc­cess. On­ly one soul had de­clined his of­fer to be a Reaper, but John had an­tic­ipat­ed more. So, one re­fusal was not so bad in his book. The oth­ers had un­der­stood the con­cept of their new oc­cu­pa­tions quick­ly and John had felt con­fi­dant in leav­ing them long enough for a quick check in with Brig­it and Sea­mus. Once that was done, he in­tend­ed to re­turn to Rome to com­plete the re-​es­tab­lish­ment of what he hoped to be one of many Eu­ro­pean of­fices.

It had felt good to be back on Eu­ro­pean soil, all be it in a coun­try where his grasp of the lan­guage was as rusty as a hun­dred year old cof­fin’s nails.. John had man­aged, how­ev­er, and the first hur­tle had been over­come.

John stopped sud­den­ly in his ad­vance­ment to­ward his of­fice. He had passed by Sea­mus Flan­nery’s of­fice, aware that the door was open. From the cor­ner of his eye, how­ev­er, he had glimpsed the flam­ing red hair of the Irish­man on the so­fa. Sud­den­ly alarmed that the oth­er man might be sleep­ing dur­ing busi­ness hours, John took a step back­ward and peered in­to the of­fice. The sight he found alarmed him all the more.

“Je­sus, Mary and Joseph!” John mut­tered as he rushed to Sea­mus’ side. “What the hell has hap­pened here?” he asked to no one in par­tic­ular. He pressed his palm against Sea­mus’ fore­head. The heat that met his fin­ger­tips caused him to quick­ly jerk his hand away from the scorch­ing skin.

“She left me,” Sea­mus groaned mis­er­ably.

“How long have you been like this?” John in­quired as he lift­ed the blan­ket cov­er­ing the sick Reaper.

The wounds he dis­cov­ered peek­ing out from the tears in Sea­mus’ leather jack­et and un­der­ly­ing t-​shirt in­censed him all the more. The meat in the gash be­tween the two ribs had be­gan a slow mend, but John could see that it had been a deep wound to be­gin with – pos­si­bly all the way to the man’s lung. Sea­mus had re­turned to his silent suf­fer­ing. John gen­tly re­turned the cov­er and stood. Brig­it had some long and se­ri­ous ex­plain­ing to do.

John turned to ex­it the of­fice and stopped short again. The sight of the young wom­an sit­ting at the writ­ing desk in the of­fice across the hall star­tled him. The fact that her bright blue eyes were train on him made it all the more un­nerv­ing.

“Who might you be?” he asked when he had re­gained a slight piece of his nor­mal­ly pro­fes­sion­al com­po­sure. He was an­gry, to be sure; but it wasn’t this stranger’s fault. Not yet, any­way…

“Be­lin­da Yaris, sir,” the young wom­an of­fered meek­ly.

“How did you get in here, Miss Yaris?” John asked stern­ly as he be­gan to take slow and mea­sured steps to­ward the of­fice where she sat. If she was an ac­ci­den­tal in­hab­itant, John was ful­ly pre­pared to oust her one way or the oth­er. He saw her swal­low hard. She could sense the ire he was try­ing so hard to re­main in con­trol of. Good, John thought, maybe I’ll get some an­swers.

“Brig­it brought me here. She hired me two days ago,” Be­lin­da of­fered cau­tious­ly. The an­swer was a dou­ble-​edged sword through John’s com­pre­hen­sion.

“Did she? And where is Brig­it now?” John in­quired steadi­ly, nev­er let­ting the girl’s gaze stray from his own icy glare.

“She stepped out, sir,” Be­lin­da an­swered. Some­thing in the pale man’s eyes warned her to re­main with the facts and on­ly the facts as she could of­fer them.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know, sir. She on­ly said that she was step­ping out and lock­ing the door. She did ask me to check on Mr. Flan­nery in a bit, but I’ve been so caught up in my work that I’ve for­got­ten…” Be­lin­da’s words trailed off in­to noth­ing­ness with a slight wave of John’s hand to si­lence her.

“Would you hap­pen to know what has be­fall­en Mr. Flan­nery?”

“I don’t, sir, I’m sor­ry,” Be­lin­da apol­ogized. Frus­trat­ed, John broke his gaze with the young wom­an and looked at the floor in the deep­en­ing strug­gle to con­trol his tem­per.

“What are you work­ing on?” he fi­nal­ly man­aged to ask.

“Records, sir. Brig­it has been reap­ing for two days straight. She in­struct­ed me to record the com­plet­ed as­sign­ments.”

John stepped clos­er to the desk to ob­serve the young wom­an’s hand­iwork. He not­ed the cor­rect en­tries of names and cross­ing dates in as fine a pen­man­ship as he had ev­er seen and he nod­ded ap­prov­ing­ly. Most Reapers scrib­bled their records, whether in haste or lazi­ness, John had nev­er been com­plete­ly sure. Brig­it, it seemed, had found a prop­er scribe to keep the firm’s records. That was one plus in her fa­vor at the mo­ment.

“Very well, Miss Yaris. Car­ry on,” John sighed be­fore turn­ing away.

“Yes, sir,” Be­lin­da gulped.

As he ex­it­ed the small of­fice Brig­it had sta­tioned her in, John was sure he heard a deep sigh of re­lief es­cape the odd look­ing young wom­an. Af­ter tak­ing a fi­nal glimpse at the strick­en Reaper in the hall across from the one he had just come from, John Black­wick let loose the con­trol over his rage and stormed the re­main­ing length of the main hall to his own of­fice. The slam­ming of the door be­hind him echoed back down the hall.

As the sound res­onat­ed un­til it was silent again, Be­lin­da Yaris con­clud­ed that she had just en­coun­tered the Grim Reaper him­self: Mr. Black­wick.