“Plenty,” I said, trying to sound inviting. “If sitting on the floor isn’t your thing, you can pull up a chair. It works almost as well.”
After hesitating, he sat down next to me, and I scooted over to make room. He shifted around, looking awkward, but finally he settled.
“Do you and your mother do this every year?” said Henry. “Gather your pillows and watch the lights?”
“Usually.” I took a sip of my cocoa. “She’s been in the hospital for Christmas for the past three years, but we always made do. Did you find anything while searching the manor?”
“No,” he said. “But the staff had their festivities, as promised.”
I nodded, and Henry was silent and tense beside me. But at least he was there. I stared at the tree until the lights burned into my eyes, and when I looked away, I could still see the pattern of colors. “What’s it like to be dead?”
I flushed when I realized what I’d blurted out, and the way he didn’t answer right away only made it worse. “I would not know,” he finally said. “I do not know what it is like to be alive, either.”
I pressed my lips together. Right. Kept forgetting that.
“But if you would like,” he said, “I could tell you about death.”
I glanced up at him. “What’s the difference?”
“Death is the process of dying. Being dead is what happens after death has occurred.”
“Oh.” I’d purposely ignored thoughts of my mother actually dying—whether it’d be painful, if there was a bright light, or if she’d even be aware of it. But Henry wouldn’t be speculating. “Please?”
He tentatively stretched out his arm, and to my surprise, he settled it around my shoulders. He was still stiff, but it was the most contact we’d had in weeks. “It is not as bad as mortals tend to think. It is much the same as going to sleep, or so I have been told. Even when a wound causes pain, it is very brief.”
“What—” I swallowed. “What happens after the going to sleep part? Is there a—a bright light?”
Henry at least had the grace not to laugh. “No, there is no white light. There are gates, however,” he added, giving me a meaningful look. Whatever he was trying to get me to understand didn’t sink in, however, and he gave up and told me. “The gates at the front of the property.”
I blinked. “Oh.” And then thought about it. “Oh. You mean this—”
“Sometimes, when they may be useful,” he said. “The vast majority of the time, they are sent into the beyond.”
“What’s the beyond?”
“The Underworld, where souls stay for eternity.”
“Is there a heaven then?”
His fingers slowly wrapped around my bare arm, and I automatically leaned against him. Maybe my mother had been right—maybe he’d been so distant because he was afraid I wouldn’t make it past Christmas. Or maybe he was just trying to comfort me. Either way, the contact was warm, and I craved it.
“Initially there were many different beliefs, so the realm was undefined,” he said, his voice taking on a clinical tone. “Then came more substantial religions, and with it formed Tartarus and the Elysian Fields, among others. From then on, as religions grew…” He paused, as if choosing his words very carefully. “The afterlife is whatever a soul wishes or believes it to be.”
The endless possibilities swam through my mind, making me dizzy. “Doesn’t that get complicated?”
“It does.” This time he smiled back. “Which is why I cannot rule alone. James has been helping me temporarily.”
My mood immediately turned sour. “If you can’t rule alone, then how is he supposed to if you fade?”
Henry shifted, and for a moment I was afraid he was going to pull away. I set my hand on his, and he stilled. “I do not know. If it comes to that, it will no longer be my concern. Given how he has acted about you, I would speculate he intends to ask you, but once the council rules, it will be final. If you do not pass for me, you will not pass for him.”
The possibility of James liking me enough to put up with me for eternity just like Henry was offering had never occurred to me, and I took a breath, trying to keep myself from fidgeting. Henry wasn’t necessarily right—James and I were just friends, if even that anymore. He knew that. They both did. “What would I do? I mean, if I pass—how does this work?”
“It is a job, as most else is,” said Henry, and I could see the lights from the tree reflected in his eyes. “Much of it is making rulings in disputes, or when a soul is undecided, we help them come to a greater understanding. We do not interfere unless the soul believes it will be judged.”
“And what happens to them?” I said, trying to remember what my mother was. Methodist? Lutheran? Presbyterian? Would it matter?
“It depends solely on their belief structure,” said Henry. “If they believe they will be walking around in a human form, then that is what occurs. If they believe they will be nothing more than a ball of warmth and light, then so be it.”
“What if what they believe and what they want are two different things?”
“That is also where we come in.”
I was silent. The prospect of spending the rest of forever ruling over the dead seemed impossible, like a faraway thing I would never reach, and I wasn’t so sure I wanted to. I wasn’t doing this for the job or even for immortality. After seeing Henry, I couldn’t imagine how lonely forever could be, and I wasn’t looking forward to experiencing it.