It's a Wonderful Death - Sarah J. Schmitt Page 0,23

would’ve changed.”

“Maybe,” he admits. “But for the first seventeen years you put yourself before others. You were more interested in being popular than being a good person.”

“People can be both,” I argue.

He shrugs. Wow. There is nothing like having Saint Peter insinuate that you suck as a human being.

“I could change,” I mutter. “If I had more time, I could change.”

“Yeah, or,” Al adds, standing over us, “you could live out the rest of your allocated life, ring in a new millennium, and still arrive here with a first-class ticket to my line. It’s not my call, but I’m not sure it’s worth the risk.”

“Al,” Peter says sharply.

“What?” she snaps back. “It’s my opinion. Even now, after everything she’s seen, it’s still all about her. People can change, but they have to want to. I don’t think she has the desire.”

Without warning, a bell rings. Peter makes a quick hand gesture and the boards dissolve into the floor, taking the corn bags with them. Cerberus is on his feet shaking his massive heads. The drool spreads several feet in every direction. Al gives a sharp whistle and in an instant Cerberus is at her side and ready for business.

“I could be better,” I say to Peter, my eyes pleading for him to believe me.

“Hey, you’re talking to the guy who denied his best friend not once but three times. I believe you can change. But Al’s right. What you’re asking for has never been done. The odds aren’t in your favor, kid.”

I watch the main doors swing open as souls begin to pour into the room. As the last one makes her way into the crowd, Hazel and Yeats swoop over them, dropping gracefully on either side of me.

Yeats looks at Peter and shakes his head. “The Tribunal has been summoned.”

Before I can respond, Yeats and Hazel each take me by an arm and we shoot into the air on the way to my moment of truth.

“Good luck,” I hear Al call over the rush of wind. “You’re going to need it.”

And deep down, I know she’s right.

Chapter 10

Just about the time I get comfortable with flying, we’re landing softly in front of a stone building with tall pillars supporting a steep roof. Since my arrival in the Afterlife, I’ve been in rooms of varying degrees of sumptuousness, but this is the first time I’ve seen an actual building.

“Wow,” I say quietly. “It looks like the Supreme Court, only bigger.”

“About this hearing,” Hazel says, ignoring me, “if I were you, I wouldn’t talk unless asked a question.”

I stop her. “Don’t worry. Peter and Al did a pretty good job of making it clear how big a deal this is.”

“That wasn’t their job,” she mutters before asking, “What exactly did they say?”

Not wanting to rehash the breakdown of my apparently worthless life, I shrug off her question. “Just that it’s going to be a hard sell.”

Yeats clears his throat. “The Tribunal is made up of three angels. Azbaugh is one of the higher-ranking Angels of Judgment and he’ll be running the show. Marmaroth is one of the Fates. He has the power to alter the course of time. The third member of the panel is Shepard, an Angel of Repentance. The three of them will have the ultimate authority over your past and future.”

“It sure sounds like a trial to me,” I remark.

“It is,” Hazel answers quickly.

Great. Just great. I accidentally get collected by a Grim Reaper and end up the criminal. Could this get anymore unfair?

“Don’t I get a lawyer?” I ask, half joking.

“Actually,” Hazel answers, “you do. The angel Salathiel will speak on your behalf.”

“Salathiel has a soft spot for hopeless causes,” Yeats adds. “He’ll put up a fight.”

It’s official. Everyone thinks my situation is hopeless.

“Who’s going to argue that I be left to rot here until the end of my life?” I ask.

“Zachriel, an Angel of Memories,” Yeats answers.

“Angel of Memories?”

This time it’s Hazel who answers. “He has the ability to search through every memory that has ever been had. When he speaks, everyone, and I mean everyone, listens.”

“He also has the gift of sight,” Yeats adds.

“Huh?”

“It means he can see some aspects of the future. But he’s not as accurate as the Akashic Records,” Hazel adds impatiently.

Is that supposed to reassure me? Because it doesn’t. Not even a little. My shoulders sag. “Azrael also said something about Death Himself?”

Again my two Guardians exchange a cryptic glance.

“Stop it,” I demand. “Stop doing that thing where you look at