[Geist] - Cicero

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

Raymond Valdere.

Phil pitched him as a Scrooge; mean and crooked, but only mean and crooked. He wanted to scare him into showing a little Christmas charity, and you know what; I wasn't against that idea. Okay, it was a frivolous first concept, but I wasn't granted these powers in the service of a divine agenda; what I do with them is my choice.

So it goes.

As it turned out, Phil... lacked certain key details, vis a vis the set up. How he'd got that way, what his past was. With a month, we could have put on a show; it would have been quite the performance. As it was, we had to stick with shadow play. It's not Shakespeare, but it's its own kind of art.

Alma was a star, but she was playing to the wrong crowd at the end. We found our ghost and she led us to the files, the black book; all the dirty little secrets. That was Alma's patience, and a little plasm from most of the crew on the job, but she never had a chance trying to convince the dead girl that Ray's humiliation would be better than death.

That's Alma; literally generous to a fault.

I say that of course, but in fact she went in hard and low once she'd agreed to act. I didn't get to see behind the scenes on that one, but the final performance was something to behold. Whatever she did scared him enough to cancel the debts at once and there was a police investigation in days.

That was when he decided to cut and run.

I could have let him go, but the ghost would never have accepted that. Hell; neither would I.

Raymond Valdere had killed; he was comfortable enough with it that his first call wasn't to the police, or to a priest, or even to friends or family. His first call was to a mercenary Sin Eater who conceals crimes for profit. That's how he chooses to use his powers. I don't like it and I don't like that he's causing trouble for Alma, but I don't claim moral superiority as a Sin Eater; maybe as a man. I may well act against him one day soon.

So it goes.

Ray's day came sooner. I knew he was likely to do a flit when the investigation started and I knew he'd probably drive himself out of there at rather too high a speed. Catching his steering as he came past and redirecting him into something more solid than he was was simplicity itself.

Once I knew he was dead, I went back into the house to finish up. The news cracked her out of her loop as sure as any plasm.

"He's dead? He's finally paid for what he's done?"

She wept at that; wept in pure joy as she dissolved into the cosmos.

Sometimes being a Reaper is hard to explain. That moment was not one of those times.

Comments

[hadidet.livejournal.com]

<3