~~Young~~

Chapter Nineteen

   Sera continued to wonder who Gage was on the phone with in the other room as she munched on the sandwich Death had handed her a few minutes ago. The Subway being a vast improvement in the calorie department from the fried food Sera had usually seen her with. He had been in there a while, it had probably been close to fifteen minutes since they dressed after Jerry called Gage away. Funny, she had never heard a phone ring. 

   Dressed being a very loose term as a bathrobe hardly constituted as clothes. But it was all she had, borrowed from Gage’s closet. Her clothes were done in after yesterday, too much blood and grime stained them to make them presentable again. Death would have offered Sera her clothes if she could but as she explained, they weren’t really there. It was more of a projection, just a picture she cast around her body to make mortals more comfortable when she came to collect them. She used to do the black robe and sickle thing back in the day as she put it, then the white robes thing with the halo after that. But as mortals stopped having a singular perception of her she got sick of trying to show up the right way so she took her fashion choices in her own hands. She said she tried to stick with what the modern world considered appropriate for a professional woman to wear, because really, who wants their escort to the afterworld in ripped jeans and a t-shirt.

   But Sera was going to need clothes eventually, even if Gage said he had no problem with her in her “natural” state. So Death said she’d head out with Jerry a little later to pick up something for her. Since she herself could only be seen by those bound shortly for death, getting a salesgirl to help her might have proven a little tough to do alone and she didn’t trust Jerry to figure it out himself.

   Sera didn’t mention anything when she said it, knowing that Death hadn’t even realized what she said about the salesgirl, but she had inadvertently told Sera what had Gage so upset last night. Sera was bound for death, and soon.

   She didn’t really know how to feel about that. She had already died once after all, and if it hadn’t been for Gage and Death’s efforts she would have still been dead. So could she really be upset if she was going to die again? And if she did, then couldn’t they just bring her back one more time? Or was that it, that since she had already faced death- the action, not the woman- that was why she could still see Death. Because really, if it was so against the rules to bring someone back from the dead then Sera was sure there wasn’t a huge group of people they could poll. There probably wasn’t anyone out there who had died and come back the way Sera had, so then how could they possibly know it wasn’t just a side effect of that.

   It was what she was going with, because if she thought of the alternative then there was no way she would be able to give Gage the space she was now. If she knew at any moment she was going to die again, maybe permanently this time, then she wouldn’t be wasting what time she had left with Death and a turkey club for company.

   Considering that Jerry had used the word “employer” Sera was guessing it was one of two, a, er, people. Either her Uncle or the God Gage had said he worked for. Did Gods have phones though? Really she wasn’t putting anything outside the realm of possibilities anymore. But still the thought of some all-powerful being holding a handset up to their ear to communicate seemed ridiculous. Couldn’t they just speak and their intended mortal would hear the- oh right, Gage wasn’t mortal. The question really was, was she anymore? Mortal equaled mortality. And if she had already faced her own mortality and came back then could she really consider herself mortal…maybe anti-mortal like anti-matter?

   She had tried asking Death but she just avoided the answer, which was about the time she shoved the turkey on wheat in Sera’s mouth. They had eaten in silence since even if Death hadn’t taken her pretty pink eyes off of Sera. Admittedly she was pretty damn hungry so it was alright. And since Jerry was in the bedroom with Gage she figured she might as well fill the time-and her stomach- with food. For all she knew it very well could be her last mea-