Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

Wallace thought of his mother in the kitchen, candy canes in the oven.
“What happened to Cameron?”
“He left,” Hugo said. “And nothing I could do or say would stop him.”
His voice grew hard. “The Reaper told me to let him go. That he’d learn his
lesson and come running back the moment he saw his skin starting to flake.
And because I didn’t know what else to do, I listened to the Reaper.”
Wallace felt his own tremor, vibrating through his skin. “He didn’t come
back.”
Hugo was stricken. Wallace could see it plainly on his face. It made him
look impossibly young. “No. He didn’t. I’d been warned, before, what could
happen if someone like you left. What those people could become. But I
didn’t think it could happen so quickly. I wanted to give him space, to allow
him to make the decision to come back on his own. The Reaper told me I was
wasting my time. The only reason I went in the first place was the tie
between us just … snapped. The Reaper was right, in his own way. By the
time I found him, it was already too late.” He hesitated. Then, “We call them
Husks.”
Wallace frowned. “Husks? What does that mean?”
Hugo bowed his head. “It’s … apt. For what he is. An empty shell of who
he used to be. His humanity is gone. Everything that made him who he is,
every memory, every feeling, it’s just … gone. And there’s nothing I can do to
bring him back. That was my first earthquake as a ferryman. I’d failed
someone.”
Wallace reached for him—to offer comfort?—but stopped when he
remembered he couldn’t touch Hugo. He curled his fingers as he dropped his
hand. “But you didn’t stop.”
“No,” Hugo said. “How could I? I told myself that I’d made a mistake,
and even though it was a terrible one, I couldn’t allow it to happen to anyone
else. The Manager came. He told me that it was part of the job, and there was
nothing I could do to help Cameron. He made his choice. The Manager said it
was unfortunate, and that I needed to do everything in my power to make sure
it didn’t happen again. And I believed him. It wasn’t until a couple of months
later when the Reaper brought a little girl that I realized just how little I
knew.”
A little girl.