Chapter 2 - A Very Unusual Job Indeed

“Let me tell you,” Rick said, following Leigh around her flat as she went around looking for her underwear which Rick had so unceremoniously ripped off about five minutes after she had crawled into bed. “You’re going to be working in a very different environment.”

“Look,” Leigh said as she hopped around, pulling on her underwear and her jeans. “I appreciate the pep talk, but it’s just a job. I’ll handle it.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he called after her.

She slammed the door shut. Then she opened it and stuck her head in. “By the way, make the bed before you leave.” She slammed it shut again and jabbed the button for the elevator twenty three times before it arrived.

She hurried down the alleys—they were shortcuts—and into the glass building that was at the end of a street.

She burst in and everyone stared at her. She looked down at her watch. She was two minutes early. Good.

She went up to the receptionist. “Hi…I’m Leighana Parker. I’m supposed to be—”

The receptionist held up a hand for her to stop talking and picked up the phone with the other. “Ma’am,” she said into the phone. “Miss Parker is here. Yes, the new one. Of course.” She put down the phone.

“Take the elevator up to the highest floor. Then turn left and go through the glass door.” Without even looking at Leigh, she turned back to her computer.

“Uh, right. Thanks.”

Leigh followed the receptionist’s orders and found herself in a big office that consisted of a big desk and a chair. Someone walked in just a bout a second after she did.

“Miss Parker?” the woman asked.

“Hi.”

“You’re the one Rick Doran recommended, aren’t you?”

“Uh, yes.”

“I’m sure you know what you’re going to be doing?”

“Actually, no. Rick hadn’t—”

“Do you know the nature of your work? The people you’re working with and for?”

“Uh…no, not really.”

The woman slammed her hand down on her desk. “Trust Rick to do something like that.”

Leigh agreed heartily inside. “Uh…it’s nice to meet you…”

“Just call me Ma’am.”

“Right. Nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“You will be working with Miss Clare for Miss Silk. Go down to the seventeenth floor. Miss Clare will fill you in on the details.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

The woman turned abruptly away from her, sat down at her desk and started doing some paper work.

Okay then. Glad to see that these people dwelled on courtesy and etiquette.

Leigh took the elevator down to the seventeenth floor. When she pushed open the door and peered inside, she saw a teenaged girl clad in a black cloak painting her toenails deep purple.

“Uh…hi,” she said.

The girl looked up. “Are you Leighana?”

“Yeah, but just Leigh is fine.”

“I’m Soryl. Soryl Clare. We’re working for Lorelei.”

Well those names weren’t weird. At all.

“Oh. Uh, I don’t know what I’m doing here at all, and the boss said that you would fill me in…”

“What do you mean you don’t know what you’re doing here?”

“Um, am I a secretary, or some kind of internship, or what?”

“Technically, you’re a mix between those two. Do you know what we are?”

Leigh held in a snort. “Uh, human?”

Soryl stared at her for a while. “No,” she said finally. “Wow, you really don’t know what you’re doing here, do you?”

Leigh raised her eyebrows, not really understanding, but she smiled anyway. “No, I guess not. So uh…what are you?”

“Well, Lorelei’s a sylph.”

“What’s a sylph?”

Soryl sat up in her chair. “You don’t know what a sylph is.”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Uh, extremely, since you’re working for one.”

“What…what the hell’s a sylph?” Leigh was getting impatient now.

“A sylph is, according to google.com, a soulless elemental being that is believed to inhabit air.”

Leigh blinked a few times. “What? I thought it meant something like a graceful woman.”

Soryl stood up. She was almost as tall as Leigh, which was impressive as Leigh was very tall. She stood just in front of Leigh and brought her face close.

“You live in a world that consists of paranormal beings, and from this day on, you’re working for one,” she said in an I’m speaking to an idiot tone. “Does that make it any clearer for you?”

Leigh took a step back. “Ha-ha, very funny,” she said, shaking her head.

Soryl sighed. “Lorelei!” she called. “We’ve got a nonbeliever.”

“Not another one,” a tinkling voice sounded from the next room.

“Take a look for yourself. She’s human, too, I think.”

What the hell? Leigh was about to turn and run out of the office and maybe the building screaming for help when she saw a body of swirling air—wind?—float out of the room.

Her eyes widened. “What the hell is that?”

“That,” Soryl said drily, “is Lorelei.”

“What?” Leigh closed her eyes, shook her head and opened them again. The gust of wind was swirling around more slowly now, forming the shape of a graceful slender women’s body. There was no accurate or adequate way to describe it. It was like a woman, except she was made entirely out of air, and because of that she should be invisible, but you could see her anyway.

“Hello,” the body of air greeted her in its twinkling voice. “Leighana, is it?”

“Uh…Leigh,” Leigh stammered. “Leigh is fine. You’re…Miss Silk?”

“Yes, but call me Lorelei.” The body of air seemed to solidify and a graceful, beautiful young woman about a few years older than Leigh materialised. She reached out and shook Leigh’s hand firmly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Uh, likewise. You’re…human now.”

Lorelei shrugged elegantly. “All sylphs can take on the form of a human if they are powerful enough.”

“So…what can I do for a sylph? Not that I don’t want to work for you or anything, but aren’t you magical and powerful and can do anything and everything? Or something like that, anyway.”

Lorelei laughed, and it reminded of Leigh of tinkling bells. “I’m a sylph, Leigh, not God.”

Leigh frowned. “You believe in God?”

“Why not? If sylphs, fairies, vampires, dragons, werewolves and other paranormal beings can exist, then why can’t God?”

Leigh shrugged. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Do you want me to give Leigh a tour around The Passover?” Soryl asked.

Leigh frowned again. “The Passover? Isn’t that a Jewish holiday?”

Lorelei smiled. “Yes, but it’s also the name of the company you are working for.”

“But…why would someone want to name their company after a holiday?”

“Leigh, do you know the story behind the Passover? Why do they call it the Passover?”

“It’s when God freed the Israelites from the Egyptians isn’t it? God told the Israelite families to sacrifice the firstborn lamb of their flocks and to paint the blood across the sides and the top of their doorposts. And in the middle of the night the Angel of Death went through Egypt killing every firstborn child in the house except for the ones that lived in the houses with blood on them. That’s why it’s called the Passover, right? Because the Angel of Death passes over the Israelites’ houses?”

“You’re absolutely right. For someone who doesn’t believe in God, you know quite a lot.”

Leigh grinned sheepishly. “My ex-boyfriend had an extremely religious friend. He’s the one who got me this job, actually. My ex-boyfriend, that is.”

Lorelei was intrigued now. “Oh? Is it anyone I know?”

“Um, Rick? Rick Doran?”

Lorelei and Soryl exchanged a look before nodding.

“No wonder he’s your ex-boyfriend then,” Soryl said, combing her long black hair with her fingers.

“What do you mean by that?”

Soryl smirked. “I take it you’re the one who broke up with him?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Leigh bit her lip. “He was cheating on me.”

“Exactly.” Soryl’s smirk was triumphant.

Leigh frowned. “How would you know? You’re a kid yourself.”

Soryl scowled. “I’m seventeen.”

Leigh shrugged. “I should’ve known. Rick would screw anything as long as it was older than sixteen.”

Lorelei laid a gentle hand on Soryl’s shoulder. “Why don’t you get back to your work? I’ll give Leigh here a tour.”

Soryl nodded and went back to painting her toenails.

“Soryl, when I said work, I meant work.”

“Sorry, Lorelei.” Soryl took her feet down from the desk and started working on whatever she was supposed to be working on.

“So uh, Soryl isn’t a sylph, is she?” Leigh asked as they were in the elevator.

Lorelei laughed her tinkling-bells laugh. “No. Soryl is a grim reaper.”

Leigh choked even though she wasn’t eating anything. “A grip reaper?”

“Well, a grim reaperess, I suppose. It’s quite rare, really. Reapers are usually male.”

“I thought there was only one grip reaper and that he—well, it was a skeleton.”

Lorelei shook her head. “Do you know how many people die everyday, Leigh? There cannot possibly be only one grim reaper. He—or in this case, she—would die from the work overload.”

“Well if Soryl has her work to do, then why is she still working for you?”

“The Passover is wary to use her, because she is new, young and because she is female. It is hard for her. She suffers because she longs to help the people move to the Underworld.”

“The Underworld? That sounds…scary. Doesn’t Hades rule it or something?”

“Yes.”

“So…everybody has a different job?”

“Technically, no. We start and do things different but we all end up at the same goal, in a way. Our goal is to transport people’s souls to either the Underworld or Heaven after they die. Souls who are not collected stay on this earth as ghosts and wanderers.”

“This is so screwed up,” Leigh complained. “The Underworld is a Greek myth, and Heaven is where Christians go after death. Does that mean all non-Christians go to hell? I mean, the Underworld?”

“No. All good people go to Heaven. Everybody is free to believe what they want to believe in. Religion does not affect a person and whether he or she is good or not.”

This was majorly screwing up Leigh’s brain. This was not the world she had grown up in and lived in. This world was foreign to her. This was not how she knew the world.

“I know it is a lot to take in,” Lorelei told her gently.

“So…what’s your job as a sylph?”

Lorelei’s face clouded over a little. “It’s quite complicated, and some people render us useless, but we are elementals of air, and we take care of a specific human until they die.”

“How?”

“We control the air around them, the air they breathe, what they see, how they see it. We can control the weather, the clouds in the sky.”

Leigh tried to understand, but there was just too much to take in. “So…how can Soryl and I help you? What do we help you do?”

Lorelei shrugged. “Paperwork. We constantly have to be with a human, and there’s a lot of paperwork that has to be done. You will understand tomorrow when you start work properly. As I am a more experienced sylph, I can take care of two humans at a time.”

“So...are everybody here…immortals?”

“Almost everybody.”

“Oh, good. So I’m not the only human.”

Lorelei looked at her then. “Who said you were human?”

Leigh blinked. “Well…I don’t fly, I’m not made of air, and I don’t go around wearing black cloaks and carrying scythes, so…”

Lorelei sniffed a couple of times and frowned. “You don’t smell like human.”

Leigh’s eyes widened. She wasn’t human? “I’m…I’m not human?”

“Well, humans smell the same. At least, to us immortals. You’re…not quite human.”

“So…I don’t smell as bad?”

Lorelei laughed. “You can say that. Let’s go. I will start the tour.”

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