Watching Grelle was like watching one of the great master painters at work on a canvas. It had never before occurred to Sebastian that he had not actually seen her on collection, doing her job as it was meant to be done. All prior circumstances of their meeting each other were either on the extreme or when Grelle was not working, whether that was to avoid work itself or not, and he had always wondered how, when she seemed to bungle everything up, she had managed to keep her job. But he wondered no more. She worked swiftly, silently, severing souls with the blade of her Scythe as he looked on from a distance, curious what it was she saw in those Records, curious what she would need to see to declare a soul too good to die, curious if she had ever done so. He marveled at the cold, cruel beauty that was this death goddess.

She removed her Scythe from the chest of a man who had been lying in the street when she'd found him—homeless, sick, and dying—and made a few notes on the file she held in her other hand, emotionless. When the last of the man's record disappeared, Sebastian came forward.

"Do you enjoy this?" he asked.

"It isn't my place to like or dislike what I do," she replied and closed the file to look up at him. "I'm a grim reaper, so I collect souls. It is the purpose of my existence."

"And what was the purpose of this man's existence?"

She looked at him for a moment in silence before the slightest of wry smiles appeared at the corner of her mouth.

"To be food for demons, perhaps," she replied and put the file away in her coat.

Oh, he hadn't the slightest idea what to make of her. She was a mess of conflicted emotions. He'd seen it in her eyes. She knew what she wanted, but did not feel she deserved it, and perhaps that wasn't far from the truth, but Sebastian knew what he wanted as well and he had no moral compass that would stop him taking any means to obtain it.

"I'm finished now," she said, starting off down the street without him. "I need to return the files and my Death Scythe to Dispatch."

"And then?"

She paused, looked back at him over her shoulder. "And then we'll see."

They were together every day from then on out.