Chapter 3: When Death Buys You a Drink

Chapter 3: When Death Buys You a Drink

The scratching at the door was the sound of a rat trapped inside a wall, a frantic, dry scrabbling that scraped directly on my nerves. The cold had stolen the air from my lungs, turning each breath into a painful, crystalline puff of white. My office, my sad little sanctuary of mediocrity, had become a tomb.

“Do something!” I hissed at Finn, my voice a strangled whisper. My eyes darted around for a weapon. The ‘Salesperson of the Month’ award from three years ago? It had a pointy bit. Maybe I could give the shadow a nasty splinter.

Finn wasn’t looking at me. His flamboyant bravado had evaporated, leaving behind a raw, primal fear that was far more terrifying. His emerald eyes were fixed on the door, wide and dark. “There is nothing to do,” he said, his voice tight. “When it touches you, your warmth, your life… it just goes out.”

The brass doorknob, now caked in a thick layer of feathery frost, began to turn. It moved with a slow, grinding inevitability, the metal groaning in protest. There was a sharp click as the lock, frozen solid, gave way.

My comedian’s brain was screaming punchlines into the void. So a ghost, a fairy, and a failed comedian are trapped in an office… It was a desperate, useless defence against the terror that was turning my insides to ice.

The door swung inwards without a sound, opening onto a hallway that was now a swirling vortex of absolute blackness. And from that blackness, the Bodach Glas flowed in. It wasn't a man, not really. It was a column of animated shadow, a tear in the fabric of the room that sucked in light and heat. I couldn't see a face, but I could feel its focus, a malevolent concentration that was aimed squarely at me.

It glided across the cheap linoleum, leaving a trail of black frost in its wake. Finn backed away, pressing himself against the far wall, a flash of neon pink in a dying world. I was rooted to the spot, my pointy award forgotten in my hand. My life wasn't flashing before my eyes. There was only the cold, the scratching sound that was now inside my head, and the approaching void.

The shadow raised a long, spindly arm. The air in front of me shimmered with cold. This was it. The punchline. Death by… whatever the hell this thing was.

And then, everything stopped.

A new kind of stillness descended, one so profound it made the Bodach Glas’s silence seem noisy. It wasn't the cold of a predator, but the absolute zero of a dead star. A presence of immense weight and finality had just entered the room.

Standing between me and the shadow creature was the woman from the Royal Mile.

She hadn't opened the door. She hadn't made a sound. She was simply… there. In her tailored black coat and with her storm-dark eyes, she was a bastion of perfect, unassailable order in the midst of chaos. The frost that had crept up the walls seemed to recoil from her, melting away in her presence.

She looked at the Bodach Glas not with fear, but with a look of profound, weary annoyance. It was the expression of a librarian dealing with a particularly noisy patron.

The shadow creature actually hesitated. It recoiled, its form wavering as if in the face of a gale-force wind.

The woman raised one pale, slender hand. She didn't speak a word. She simply crooked her index finger, a gesture of beckoning, of command. Of dismissal.

The Bodach Glas dissolved. There was no scream, no flash of light. It just unraveled, its shadowy form fraying at the edges before collapsing into nothingness. One moment, a terrifying entity from a nightmare was reaching for my soul; the next, there was only a patch of damp floor where the frost had been.

The oppressive cold vanished instantly. The lights overhead flickered once, hummed, and then buzzed back to life, casting a harsh, fluorescent glare over the scene. The frost on the windowpane sagged and began to run down the glass in watery streaks.

Silence.

Finn was pressed against the wall, staring at the woman with a mixture of terror and reverence. I was still clutching my stupid award, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest.

The woman turned her head slowly, and her storm-dark eyes settled on me. The analytical gaze was back, weighing and measuring me.

“You,” she said. Her voice was low and clear, without accent, like the tolling of a distant bell. “You are causing a considerable amount of paperwork.”

I blinked. My mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“Who… what are you?” I finally managed to croak.

A faint, dry amusement touched her lips. “I have many names. You are a storyteller. You should know some of them.” She took a step closer, her movements graceful and economical. The faint scent of rain and old stone that always clung to me was overpowered by an aroma of cold earth and winter air. “But the one I currently prefer is Morana.”

The name meant nothing to me. I just stared blankly.

She sighed, a sound like the rustling of dry leaves. “Fine. Let me put it in terms a comedian might understand.” She met my gaze, and in the depths of her thundercloud eyes, I saw not malice, but an ancient, cosmic exhaustion. “Someone is telling my jokes before I get to the punchline. They’re poaching souls. That creature was a stray dog, sent to retrieve a soul that is not yet due for collection.” She paused. “Yours.”

It clicked. A cold, dreadful certainty that went beyond anything the Bodach Glas had made me feel. This wasn’t a saviour. This was management.

“You’re… you’re Death,” I whispered.

“I am the entity you call Death,” she corrected, with the patient air of someone explaining a complex rule to a simple child. “And I do not appreciate amateurs interfering in my work. It creates disorder.”

Finn finally found his voice, peeling himself from the wall. He gave a short, jerky bow. “Lady Morana,” he said, his voice stripped of its usual bravado. “An honour.”

Morana barely glanced at him. “Finnian of the Green Bough. You are a long way from the Court you were exiled from. And you are keeping messy company.” Her attention snapped back to me. “This thing, this Bodach Glas, was just a tool. A scythe in another’s hand. I want the one who sent it. And you, Daniel MacLean, are the bait.”

The floor felt unsteady beneath my feet. Bait. I was just bait. My desire to survive the last five minutes was immediately replaced with a new, more complicated desire: to not be cosmic bait.

“No. No way,” I said, shaking my head. I took a step back. “Thank you for the… de-haunting, or whatever that was. But I’m out. I’m quitting my job, I’m moving to Glasgow, I’m taking up accounting. This is not my problem.”

Morana’s expression didn't change, but the pressure in the room intensified. “When a creature like that marks you, it leaves a trace. A scent. More will come. You cannot run from this. You have been placed on the board, whether you like it or not.”

She offered me a choice that was no choice at all. A deal with the devil, only she wasn't the devil. She was the final, non-negotiable consequence.

“I have restored order for now,” she stated, her voice leaving no room for argument. “But the one who sent that creature will try again. Help me find them. Act as my eyes and ears in the world you so clumsily inhabit. Lead me to the one who is breaking the rules.”

“And what’s in it for me?” I asked, the question tasting like ash in my mouth. It was a comedian’s instinct: always look for the angle, the transaction.

“You survive,” she said simply. “For now. Your name is on my list, Daniel MacLean, as all mortal names are. Help me, and I will be in no hurry to turn to your page.”

There it was. The offer. Cooperate, or the next spectral dog that came for me would be the last thing I ever saw. My life was no longer my own; it was a bargaining chip in a cosmic dispute I couldn't begin to comprehend.

Trapped. Defenseless. The words echoed in my mind. Ten minutes ago, they applied to a shadow in my office. Now, they applied to my entire existence.

I looked from Morana’s implacable, ancient face to Finn’s pale, nervous one. I was stuck between a trickster and the end of all things.

“Fine,” I heard myself say, the word tasting like surrender. “Okay. I’ll help you.”

A flicker of something—not satisfaction, but perhaps the quiet approval of an equation balancing correctly—passed through Morana’s eyes.

“Good,” she said. “Then our business has begun.”