“Where’d you find her?”
“We do age,” Nash said, but the last word was clipped short, like he’d almost said my name, then left it out at the last minute. And that’s when I understood: he didn’t want Tod to know who I was.
I was fine with that. The very idea of Death knowing my name made my skin crawl. Even if this particular Death was only one of many, and almost too pretty to look at.
“We just age very slowly,” Nash continued.
By then I was blushing furiously; I’d just painted myself as a complete fool. What kind of idiot doesn’t know the lifespan of her own species?
Nash hooked his foot around my ankle beneath the table, rubbing my leg in sympathy and comfort. I shot him a grateful smile and made myself meet Tod’s eyes boldly. The best way to even the playing field was to knock him down a peg. “Why are you stuck here?” I asked, hoping I’d correctly assessed that as his sore spot.
“Because he’s a rookie.” Nash smirked. “And there isn’t much opportunity for advancement in a line of work where the employees never die.”
“You’re a rookie?” I looked at Tod again, and again his jaw bulged with irritation. “How old are you?” I’d assumed, based on that “ageless” comment, that he was much older than he looked.
“He’s seventeen,” Nash said, his smirk still firmly in place.
“I was seventeen when I started this job,” the reaper snapped. “But that was two years ago.”
“You’ve been doing this for two years and you’re still a rookie?”
Tod looked insulted, and I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or apologize. “Yeah, well, my recruiter wasn’t very concerned with truth in advertising. And your boyfriend here is right about the turnover rate—it’s nonexistent. The senior reapers in this district are edging up on two hundred years old. If we hadn’t lost one last year, I’d still be sitting in the TV room at Colonial Manor, waiting for old men to keel over into their oatmeal.”
“Wait, how do you lose a reaper?” I couldn’t help but ask. “Freak sickle accident?” But no one else looked amused by my joke.
“The less you know about reaper business, the better,” Nash whispered, and Tod nodded arrogantly.
Oh. I held both hands up in defense and leaned back in my chair. “Sorry. So…old men keeling into their oatmeal…?”
Tod shrugged. “Yeah. But at least here I get the occasional gunshot victim or unexpected relapse. Life’s all about the surprises, right?”
“I guess.” But surprises had kind of lost their novelty for me with the discovery that I wasn’t human. Except for that whole fatal premonition thing. I’d love to be caught off guard by death again, like normal people.
Well, not by my own death, of course.
“Speaking of surprises…” Twisting the lid off my Coke, I glanced at Nash for a signal, and he nodded, telling me to continue. Evidently I wasn’t imagining Tod’s willingness to talk to me, rather than to him. “We need your help avoiding a really nasty one.”
Tod made a show of glancing at his wrist, conspicuously absent of a watch. “You two have already wasted my whole break. I have an aneurism on the fourth floor in ten minutes, and I can’t be late. I hate the ones that linger.”
“This won’t take long.” I pinned him with my gaze, refusing to break contact once I saw him hesitate. “Please.”
The reaper sighed, running one hand through his mop of short curls. “You have five minutes.”
I breathed softly in relief. Until the reality of the situation sank in.
Had I just begged for an audience with Death?
11
“THIS IS ABOUT the exchange rate?” the reaper asked, drawing me out of my own head, where shock over the events of the past couple of hours was finally catching up with me.
When I didn’t answer, Nash nodded.
The reaper shrugged and slouched back into his chair. “You know as much as I do about that. A life for a life.”
Nash glanced at me with both brows raised, to ask if I was okay. I nodded, drawing my thoughts back into focus, and he leaned forward with his arms crossed on the table. “But that’s the penalty for saving someone on your list, right? Someone who’s supposed to die.”
“You’re not ‘saving’ anyone.” Tod scowled—we’d obviously found his hot button. “You’re stealing souls, which only delays the inevitable. And throws my whole shift off schedule. And hurls my boss into all new realms of pissed-off. And you don’t even want to know about the paperwork involved in even a simple, equal exchange.”
“I’m not—” Nash started, but Tod cut him off.
“But beyond all that, it’s illegal. Thus the penalty.”
I screwed the lid back onto my bottle and pushed it toward the middle of the table. “But does the penalty still apply if we save someone who wasn’t supposed to die?”
Tod’s forehead wrinkled in confusion, then his expression went suddenly blank, leaving a cold comprehension shining in his eyes. “Shit like that doesn’t happen here—”
“Come off it, Tod.” Nash eyed the reaper intently, old pain etched into the lines of his frown. “You owe me the truth.”
But Tod went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “—and even if it did, you’d never know it, because no reaper could afford to admit he accidently took the wrong soul.”
“We’re not talking about an accident.” I glanced up when the cafeteria doors flew open and a woman entered with three kids in tow, reminding me for the first time since Tod had joined us that we were discussing very odd things in a very public place.
“What about the list? Wouldn’t that prove it if someone wasn’t supposed to die?” Nash whispered now in concession to our new company.
Tod scrubbed his face with both hands, clearly frustrated and losing patience with our questions. “Probably, but you’d never get your hands on the list. And even if you could, it’d be too late. The penalty would already have been applied.”
“Are you seriously saying a reaper would take an innocent life in exchange for a soul he shouldn’t have claimed in the first place?” Indignation burned hot in my veins. If any process in the world was free from corruption, it should have been death. After all, wasn’t death the great equalizer?
Or was that taxes?
“No, you’re right.” Tod gave me a halfhearted nod. “In theory, the penalty shouldn’t apply in a case like that. But theory and reality don’t always coexist where death is concerned. So even if you could get your hands on the right list, and even if you were right about the reaper’s…mistake, chances are that an innocent soul would already have been taken. Or one of your own.”
I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t put us in the “innocent” category.
“So we’re screwed either way.” Exasperated, I tossed my hands into the air and leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes.
“What’s this about, anyway?” Tod asked, and I opened my eyes to find him watching me in…was that interest? “Who are you trying to save?”
“We don’t know. Probably no one.” Nash poked at the last bite of cake with his fork, smearing chocolate frosting across the paper plate. “Several girls have died in our area recently, and Ka—” He stopped, omitting my name from the sentence at the last second. “She—” he nodded in my direction “—thinks their deaths are suspicious.”
“‘She’ does, huh?” A grin tugged at the corner of the young reaper’s mouth, and I could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “What’s suspicious about them?”
“They were all teenagers. They were all very pretty. They all died the same way. They were all in good health. They each died a day apart.” I ticked the facts off on my fingers as I spoke, and when I’d used up one hand, I showed it to him. “Take your pick. But either way, that’s too many coincidences. There’s no way all three of them were supposed to die, and I don’t care whose list they were on.”
The gleam of interest in Tod’s eyes told me I’d recaptured his attention. ?
??You think they were killed?”
I tapped one foot on the sticky floor, trying to sort out my thoughts. “I don’t know. Maybe, but if so, I have no idea how. All but the first one died in front of witnesses, who saw nothing suspicious. Other than a beautiful girl keeling over with no warning.”
“There are ways to make that happen, of course.” Tod half stood and walked his chair closer to the table, then sank back into it. “But even if they were killed, that doesn’t change anything. Murder victims are on the master list every day. I’ve only had one in two years, but the senior reapers get them on a weekly basis.”
I felt my eyes go wide, and a heavy, tight feeling gripped my chest. “You mean people are supposed to be killed?” For a moment, true horror eclipsed the determination and fear already warring inside me. How could murder be a part of the natural order?
Tod shook his head. “People are supposed to die, and the specifics vary widely. Including murder.”
I turned on Nash, blinking back the angry tears burning my eyes. “So what’s the point of all this? If I can’t change it, why do I have to know about it?”
Nash took my hand. “She’s having trouble letting them go,” he said, and Tod nodded as if he understood.
“What do you know about it?” I snapped, beyond caring that none of this was the reaper’s fault. Or that I probably should have been scared of him. “You take lives for a living.” As ironic as that sounded…“Death is an everyday occurrence for you.”
Nash huffed, and a satisfied look hovered on the edge of his expression. “Yeah, and you’d never know from listening to him now that he had so much trouble with it at first.”
“Watch it, Hudson,” Tod growled, bright blue eyes going icy.
A new look flitted across Nash’s features—some combination of amusement and mischief. “Tell her about the little girl.”
“Do you have some kind of disorder? Some synapse misfiring up there—” he gestured vaguely toward Nash’s head “—that makes you incapable of keeping your mouth shut? Or are you just a garden-variety fool?”
“What girl?” I ignored both the reaper’s outburst and the bean sidhe’ s satisfied half smile.
“It’ll help her understand,” Nash said when it became clear that Tod wasn’t going to respond.
“Understand what?” I demanded, glancing from one to the other. And finally Tod sighed, still glaring at Nash.
“He’s just trying to make me look like an idiot,” the reaper snapped. “But I have stories that make him look even worse, so keep that in mind, soul snatcher, next time you go shooting off your mouth.”
Nash shrugged, obviously unbothered by the threat, and Tod twisted in his chair to face me fully. “At first, I wasn’t too fond of my job. The whole thing seemed pointless and sad, and just plain wrong at times. Once I actually refused an assignment and nearly got myself terminated. I’m guessing that’s what he wants you to hear.”
Nash nodded on the edge of my vision, but I kept my focus on the reaper. “Why would you refuse an assignment?”
Tod exhaled in frustration. Or maybe embarrassment. “I was working at the nursing home, and this little girl came with her parents to visit her grandmother. She choked on a peppermint her grandma’s roommate gave her, and she was supposed to die. She was on the list—all official. But when the time came, I couldn’t do it. She was only three. So when a nurse showed up and gave her the Heimlich, I let her live.”
“What happened?” My heart ached for the little girl, and for Tod, whose job conflicted with every ounce of compassion in my body. And in his, evidently.
“My boss got pissed when I came back without her soul. He took her grandmother’s instead, and when a shift opened up at the hospital, he passed me over and gave it to someone else.” Anger darkened his eyes. “I was stuck at the nursing home for nearly three more years before he finally moved me over here. And there’s no telling how long it’ll be before I move up again.”
“But don’t you think it was worth it?” I couldn’t help asking. “The grandmother had already lived her life, but the little girl was just starting. You saved her life!”
The reaper shook his head slowly, blond curls glimmering in the light overhead. “It wasn’t an even exchange. From the moment she was supposed to die, that little girl was living on borrowed time. Her grandmother’s time. When you make an exchange, what you’re really doing is trading one person’s death date for another’s. That little girl died six months later, on the day her grandmother was originally scheduled to go.”
That time I couldn’t stop the tears. “How can you stand it?” I wiped at my eyes angrily with the napkin Nash handed me, glad I wasn’t wearing much mascara.
Tod glanced at Nash, then his expression softened when he turned back to me. “It’s easier now that I’m used to it. But at the time, I had to learn to trust the list. The master list is like the script from a play—it shows every word spoken by every actor, and the show keeps going so long as no one deviates from it.”
“But that does happen, right?” I wadded the napkin into a tight ball. “Even if the list is infallible, the people aren’t. A reaper could deviate from the list, like you did with the little girl, right?”
Nash shifted in his seat, drawing our attention before Tod could answer. “You think those girls died in place of people who were actually on the list? That they were exchanges?”
I shook my head. “Three in three days? It’s still too much of a coincidence. But if Tod can deviate by not taking a soul, couldn’t another reaper deviate by taking an extra one? Or three?”
“No.” Tod shook his head firmly. “No way. The boss would notice if someone turned in three extra souls.”
I arched one brow at him. “What makes you think he turned them in?”
The reaper’s scowl deepened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s impossible.”
“There’s a way to find out.” Nash eyed me somberly before turning his penetrating gaze on Tod. “You’re right—we can’t get our hands on the list. But you can.”
“No.” Tod shoved his chair back and stood. Across the cafeteria, the mother and children looked up, one little boy smeared from ear to ear with chocolate ice cream.
“Sit down!” Nash hissed, glaring up at him.
Tod shook his head and started to turn away from us, so I grabbed his hand. He froze the minute my flesh touched his and turned back to me gradually, as if every movement hurt. “Please.” I begged him with my eyes. “Just hear him out.”
The reaper slowly pulled his fingers from my grasp, until my hand hung in the air, empty and abandoned. He looked both angry and terrified when he sank back into his seat, now more than a foot from the table.
“We don’t need to see the whole thing,” Nash began. “Just the part from this weekend. Saturday, Sunday, and today.”
“I can’t do it.” He shook his head again, blond curls bouncing. “You don’t understand what you’re asking for.”
“So tell us.” I folded my hands on the table, making it clear that I had time for a long story. Even if I didn’t.
Tod exhaled heavily and aimed his answer at me, pointedly ignoring Nash. “You’re not talking about just one list. ‘Master list’ is a misnomer. It’s actually lots of lists. There’s a new master for every day, and my boss splits that up into zone, then shift. I only see the part for this hospital, from noon to midnight. There’s another reaper who works here the other half of the day, and I never see anything on his lists, much less the lists for other zones. It’s not like I can just walk up to a coworker and ask to see his old lists. Especially if he’s actually reaping ‘independently.’”
“He’s right. That’s too complicated.” Nash sighed, closing his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked at me resolutely. “We need the master list.”
Tod groaned and opened his mouth to argue, but I beat him to it. “No, we don’t. We don’t even need to see it.”
“What?” Nash frowned, and I
raised one finger, asking him silently to wait as I turned back to the reaper.
“I understand that you don’t work off the master list, but you’ve seen it, right? You said there are murder victims on it every week…?”
“Yeah, I see it every now and then.” Tod shrugged. “It’s all digital now, and my boss keeps it running on his computer all the time, in case he has to adjust anything. I glance at it when I go in his office.”
“Okay, that’s good.” I couldn’t resist a small smile. “We don’t need to see it. We just need you to look at it and tell us whether or not these three names were there.”
Tod leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, cradling his head in his hands. He rubbed his forehead, then took a deep, resigned breath and finally looked up at me. “Where did they die?”
“The first one was in the West End, at Taboo. Heidi…?” Nash glanced at me with his brows arched.
“Anderson,” I supplied. “The second was Alyson Baker, at the Cinemark in Arlington, and the third was at East Lake High School, just this afternoon.”
“Wait, those are all in different zones.” Tod frowned, and the well-defined muscles of his arms tensed as he leaned against the table. “If you really think none of them were supposed to die, you’re talking about three different reapers involved in this little conspiracy. Which is starting to sound pretty complicated, by the way.”
“Hmm…” I didn’t know enough about reapers to know how far-fetched a theory we were talking about, but I did know that the more people who were in on a secret, the harder it was to keep quiet. Tod was right. So…maybe we were only looking for one reaper, after all. “Is there anything keeping one of you guys from operating in someone else’s zone?”
“Other than integrity and fear of being caught? No.”
Grim reaper integrity…?
“So if a reaper has neither integrity nor fear, there’s nothing to stop him from taking out half the state of Texas next time he gets road rage in rush hour traffic?” I heard my pitch rising, and made myself lower my voice as I screwed the lid off my Coke. “Don’t you guys have to turn in your…um…death ray, or whatever, when you’re off the clock?”