The Soul Collector

Ch. Twelve

"Though silence is not necessarily an admission, it is not a denial, either."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

                                                                              ***

Galloway always had mixed feelings about New York. She'd grown up there, as the weight of the Depression crushed down on the city. She remembered bodies falling from the sky hours after the stock market crashed. She remembered the other, hungry children watching her with big hollow eyes. The men who would steal before they'd beg, forced to stand in bread lines or let their families wither.

She had made her Deal around that time in a fit of despair and desperation, like so many before her had and so very many after her would.

Then she remembered the war. She remembered what seemed like a city suddenly comprised entirely of women and children, all the men off to Germany, Japan, Italy. She remembered factories in full swing and bond drives. Newsboys hawking the latest headlines, screaming about Bataan and MacArthur, Patton and the Battered Bastards of Bastogne.

She remembered the chokehold of hatred and death on the world suddenly lifted in a sweeping and glorious victory. Soldiers and sailors pouring back into the streets, ticker-tape parades and momentous speeches glorifying the lives they were all suddenly living.

After that, the fifties rolled around, peaceful and prosperous. Slow, with kids playing in the streets until dark and neighbors greeting each other by name.

By then, her clock had run out and she was given an option. A rare option. One that was only open to certain people because they possessed a certain quality.

They had never told her what, exactly, made one viable to become a Collector, but she was sure it couldn't be anything good. That thought had clawed at her mind for decades, making her wonder what was wrong with her; what made her wrong enough to be eligible for the position.

She'd been forced to come back home periodically throughout the decades, collecting. New York grew and changed in a way she never would and Galloway always felt an overwhelming sense of nostalgia whenever she came back.

She drove into the city, chest tightening when she realized she recognized almost nothing. The past was probably there, still mixed in, but New York had been stripped and cleaned—an old man somehow showing a fresh new face to someone who had known him for years.

Sometimes Galloway hated New York more than she hated Hell.

"What are you thinking?" Sirius asked, snapping her from her musings.

Careful not to look at him—like she had been for the past three days—she said, "Nothing's like I remember."

"When was the last time you were here?" he asked, very obviously looking at her.

Galloway shrugged, trying to find a place to stay for the night after the collection was done. They were cutting this one close because she had been suspicious of an unusual sound coming from the engine and had stopped to have her car looked at in Pittsburgh.

There had been a spot of carbon buildup, which she had taken care of immediately, and now they had just four hours to find the Debtor and collect.

"You're never going to find anything cheap enough in the city proper," Sirius said, sounding resigned. "Let's find the Debt, then we can go find something that won't upset your ridiculous sensibilities."

She grimaced, knowing he was probably right. But that didn't necessarily mean she wanted to leave the car parked anywhere, either. Streets were way too narrow in the twenty-first century, and she just knew she'd come back to find a nice scratch marring the paint and no way to find the culprit.