Under_The_Whispering_Door_by_TJ_Klune

“A guardian of the doors,” Hugo said quietly. “A little god. One of the
oldest beings in existence. Take your pick. Any will do. He says he’s order
in chaos. He’s also a hard-ass who doesn’t like it when things upset his
order. He came to the tea shop. The Reaper tried to excuse what he’d done.
‘Tell him, Hugo. Tell him that what I did was right, that it was necessary.’”
“Did you?” Wallace asked.
“No,” Hugo said, voice as cold as Wallace had ever heard it. “I didn’t.
Because even though a Reaper is supposed to help a ferryman, it’s not up to
them to force a person into something they’re not ready for. There is order,
yes; the Manager thrives on it, but he also knows these things take time. One
moment, the Reaper was standing next to me, begging to be heard, and all I
could think about was how he sounded just like Lea. And then he was gone.
Just … blinked out of existence. The Manager didn’t even lift a finger. I was
shocked. Horrified. And the guilt I felt then, Wallace. It was overwhelming.
I’d done this. It was my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Wallace said, suddenly furious, though at what, he couldn’t be
sure. “You did everything you could. You didn’t screw up, Hugo. He did.”
“Did he get what he deserved?”
Wallace blanched. “I…”
“The Manager said he did. He said that it was for the best. That death is a
process, and anything that undermines that process is only a detriment.”
“Nancy doesn’t know, does she?”
“No,” Hugo whispered. “She doesn’t. She was oblivious to it all. She
stayed in a hotel for weeks, coming here every day, though she spoke less and
less. I think part of her knew that it wasn’t like it’d been before. Whatever
she’d felt regarding Lea was gone because Lea was gone. There was a
finality to it that she wasn’t prepared for. She’d convinced herself that her
daughter’s death was a fluke. That somehow she was still here. She was
right, in a way, until she wasn’t. And that light in her eyes, that same light I’d
seen in Lea’s, began to sputter and die.”
“She’s still here,” Wallace said, though he didn’t know what that meant.
The woman he’d seen appeared to be no different than he: a ghost.
“She is,” Hugo said. “She left for a few months, and I thought that was the
end of it, that she’d somehow begin to heal. The Manager brought Mei, and I
told myself it was for the best. I was busy learning about my new Reaper,
trying to make sure she wasn’t like her predecessor. It took me a long time to