The Business Of Death, Death Works Trilogy by Trent Jamieson Page A

sadly. “Just call Tim, will you? Promise me that. Let him know that Blake and I love him and that we always will.”
    I think about what Morrigan told me. Maybe calling Tim isn’t such a good idea. But I can’t keep this from him. “He knows that already, Aunty G. He knows how much you love him.”
    She gives me a look—the family look—a mixture of stern disapproval and dismay that only someone who truly loves you is capable of, and that engenders a kind of cold, chemical, panicky reaction in my stomach.
    “I’ll call him. Once I sort this out.” That last bit has become something of a refrain. But I don’t think I’m ever going to sort this out. Then she pomps through me, and is gone.
    The lights change but I hover on the corner. All of this is really starting to sink in. I’m in serious trouble, half the Pomps I know are dead, and most of those are family. Now my entire living family consists of poor Tim and an aunt in the UK.
    “Are you all right?” I ask Mom, and she’s looking at me with the eyes of a dead person. There’s love there, but it’s a love separated from life. I’m regretting that I haven’t been around to see them outside of work in a while, and now I’ve promised to not see what is left.
    She blinks, looks at Dad, then back at me. “It didn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “Absolutely,” Dad says. “Whoever did it was a professional. Quick and painless.”
    Of course it hurt, but they’re trying to spare me that. I try and respect their pretense and play along, but I can’t. Quick death is always painful, always dislocating.
    “Mom, I need to—”
    “You don’t
need
to know at all. You
want
to.” Her voice hardens.“Steven, you know the deal, we all do. I’m not happy with this, but it’s happened.”
    “But why? Why has it happened?”
    “If either of us had any idea, we’d be telling you,” Dad says. “But we don’t. You’re going to have to find out, and even that may not save you. I had no inkling of this in the office, and I thought I knew everything.”
    I think about the phones, the rise in Stirrers. Something had been coming. Maybe I’d even felt it before I first saw Lissa. It’s easy to see that with hindsight. But that isn’t going to help now. I will get to the bottom of this. If this is death most definite then I’m determined to understand it. I just—I just wish I felt a little more capable.
    Mom and Dad smile at me. Part of me is missing them already, and another part of me is so damn mad that I could kill someone. But there’s no one, or thing, I can direct my anger at. Not yet.
    “We’ll come with you for as long as we can,” Dad says. “But…”
    “I understand,” I say, though I wish I didn’t.
    There’s more dead coming through. Pomps and regular punters, drawn to me because the number of living Pomps is shrinking. I’m giddy with it and feeling sick at the same time. I’ve never had this many people to deal with.
    Pomping hurts. Each pomp is like a spider web pulling through my flesh. The silk is fine, but every strand is crowded with tiny hooks that snag and drag until they’re through. It’s more of a discomfort than a hurt, but with enough of them things begin to ache. I’m raw with the souls I’ve pomped.
    I’ve heard stories about the world wars, about the Pomps there, how it nearly killed them. So many dead rushing through. I lost a lot of great-uncles, most to the meat grinder of the front, but some to the job itself. I don’t want that to be me.
    The lights change. Time to get moving.
    I’m moving down Roma Street, up and over the overpass, headingtoward the Transit Centre, the underbelly of which is Roma Street Station.
    “You know I love you,” I say to my parents. I’d said it nearly a dozen times in the walk between Ann Street and the overpass. I knew I didn’t have much time; they couldn’t stay with me forever.
    “Course we do,” they say in unison, and like that, in the blinking of