Grim Crush (Grimly Ever After) (9 page)

Shilah grinned, his first smile since I revealed my secret. “You do seem like the type to be a troublemaker.”

I rolled my eyes, smiling too. “Whatever. Anyway, you didn’t answer my question.”

“Am I scared of you? As long as you don’t try to take my soul, no.”

I beamed in relief. “Trust me, I don’t want you to be one of my assignments.”

He pursed his lips. “Hm…now I understand why you acted like I wasn’t talking to you when we first met. All this time I thought
you
were the weird one. If I’m one of the only two humans in the world who can see you, that makes
me
weird.”

I laughed. “I think me being a reaper makes me slightly weirder than you.”

“But you don’t exist to most humans. So you can’t be classified as weird.”

“Some reapers would say I’m weird.”

Shilah chuckled. “I wonder why.”

“It’s because of what I like to do in my free time, when I’m not with you, of course. I’ll have to show you sometime.” I sighed happily. “It’s such a relief that you know what I am. Every time I leave now, you’ll know what I’m going to do.”

Shilah tilted his head to one side. “If we’re going to stay friends, I need you to do one thing for me.”

My heart soared; he still thought of me as his friend. “What?”

“I want to see what you do. Take me with you when you reap your next soul.”

Chapter 10

I gave him a horrified look. “You want to see someone die?!”

“I want to see their soul move on,” Shilah said. He thought, then added, “
Will
I be able to see their soul?”

“Granna said you and her have Grim Sight, which means you can see reapers and dead spirits. But I don’t think you want to see death. It can be pretty gruesome sometimes.” I didn’t like this idea at all.

“You wouldn’t believe the gross stuff I’ve seen at Granna’s house. Or you can just take me to a death that’s not so gruesome.”

I thought. “I guess you can come to my next reaping assignment. It’s happening in about seventeen minutes.”

“How do you find out about deaths?”

I pointed to my head. “I have like a built-in death sensor. The Angel of Death sends things to me, like who’s going to die, where, and when they’re going to die. My info isn’t always specific, so I have to report to my assignments early. I’m also part psychic.”

Shilah moved closer to me. “So it’s like I have a friend with superpowers. That’s kind of cool.”

I laughed. “I’ve never thought about it like that. But I’m glad I’m cool in your eyes.”

“Do you have any other powers? Oh, you mentioned something about teleporting?”

“Yeah. And I can show you that right now. I’ve never tried this, but…take my hand.” I held out my left one.

He stared at it. “Will this be scary?”

“Maybe a little. You can close your eyes if you want.”

Shilah slowly reached forward and slipped his hand into mine. I wrapped my fingers around it, pulling him up with me as I got to my feet.

Then I concentrated. A second later, Shilah and I stood in a ditch off the shoulder of a busy street, with cars swishing by in front of us.

I immediately looked to my left to see if he was okay, and I smiled. “You can open your eyes now, Shilah.”

He did, gradually. His eyes seemed to almost pop from their sockets. “Whoa! We–where are we?”

“Near the city of Tucson. It will happen here.”

“How?”

“Car accident. I have to pick up four souls.”

A few feet off to my right, Ziri appeared. She looked startled to see Shilah with me.

“Hey, cutie,” Ziri said. “What are you doing here?”

“He knows our secret,” I told her, letting go of Shilah’s hand.

“And you decided to make him into a reaper while you’re at it?”

“I just want to see what it’s like,” Shilah replied.

“Oh. Cool, you get to watch me work.” She batted her eyelashes.

“Ziri,” I said sweetly, “how about you let me handle these souls on my own?”

She pouted, but then a sly grin spread over her face. “Sure, Xia. But it’s going to cost you…”

I glanced up at the sky in annoyance. “Another five souls, then.”

“No. Seven
separate
assignments this time.”

I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”

Ziri smiled in triumph, winked at Shilah, and disappeared.

Shilah stared at me. “What were you two talking about?”

“She’s fascinated by my scythe,” I answered. “She doesn’t get hers until she turns fifteen, so I let her use mine. I probably shouldn’t though. She’s very rude to dead spirits, and I’m scared she’s going to hurt some of them unnecessarily.”

“Do you use your scythe a lot?”

“Only on the difficult souls. Probably a couple times a day.”

“So you had to be trained before you could get it?”

“Yes.” For the next few minutes, I explained how reapers take classes from five years old to fourteen, learning everything from how you should treat the dead to hundreds of languages. I told him about when I first went out reaping with my trainer, and how excited I was when I received my own scythe for solo assignments.

We sat on a grassy hill leading into the ditch while we talked, with our backs to the road, where no one could see us. When it was time for the deaths to occur, I said, “Okay, stay down, Shilah. And you might want to cover your ears. The accident is going to happen in four, three, two, one…”

A loud screech of tires sounded behind us, followed by a deafening crunch of metal. Shilah turned to look back at the road, and at that instant, a crushed car came spinning over our heads.

Shilah gasped and watched the car roll to a stop in the ditch in front of us. His mouth was dropped open as far as it could go.

I grimaced. “Just as bad as I’d predicted.” I turned to Shilah. “I told you it was going to be loud. Are you okay?”

Shilah nodded slowly. “Do-do you always get so close to these accidents?”

“Sometimes I even sit in the car beside the intended victims.” I stood. Shilah did too, though his legs were wobbly.

I walked toward the overturned car, my shoes trampling over glass shards from its broken windshield. Smoke rose up from the vehicle. It was smashed in so bad that I knew the firefighters would need to cut it open to get the bodies out.

Shilah started walking toward me, but I held out my hand.

“Don’t,” I said. “You shouldn’t see this; it’s very bad. Besides, people might see you. They’ll wonder why you’re here.”

From the car, three spirits crawled out of the wreckage. Two of them were teenage girls, the last a teenage boy about Shilah’s age. All of them looked Latino.

“Hi,” I greeted. “If you all would just wait a moment, I’d like to wait for your other friend so I only have to introduce myself once.” I turned to see Shilah gaping at the dead spirits. “Do you want to say anything to them?”

“N-no. I’m just…observing,” Shilah stammered. I could tell he was trying not to be too freaked out that he was staring at transparent ghost people, but he wasn’t doing a good job of it.

Finally, the soul of the guy who had taken the longest to perish stepped out of the car too. I went into my customary greeting then, and opened a portal for the four spirits. Before they departed, the last thing I heard was one of the girl spirits fussing at one of the boys in Spanish, chiding him for not paying attention to the road.

I grinned, shaking my head. Then I faced Shilah again. “See. That’s what I deal with on a daily basis. This was one of the easy ones.”

Shilah nodded, staring at the mangled car. His eyes were filled with sadness.

Then, I heard sirens approaching. I strode forward and grabbed Shilah’s hand. “Come on, we should go before anyone sees you here.” I glanced at the road, where traffic was backed up due to the other two smashed cars that had been involved in the accident. Those passengers had been lucky to survive, though they needed medical attention. I was glad, because two of them were toddlers.

In the next instant, Shilah and I were back near the brook, standing beside the blanket and picnic basket.

I realized then that Shilah’s hand was shaking. He pulled away from me, collapsing onto his knees on the blanket.

I grimaced. Maybe I should’ve taken him to an elderly person who had died in their sleep instead. That might’ve been less traumatic.

I sat on the blanket too, watching him. “Shilah? See, I knew this was a bad idea.”

“No, I’m fine,” he mumbled, gazing blankly into the air. “But I don’t think I’m ever doing
that
again.” He focused on me. “How do you do it? How can you handle seeing death all the time?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been seeing death since I was ten, when my class would go on field trips to see the older reapers do their job.”

“But you didn’t start reaping until you were fourteen.”

“Yeah, with a trainer. Like what Ziri’s doing with me.”

“Oh.” Shilah inhaled and exhaled. “You being a reaper is sinking in now. Thanks for taking me.”

“You’re welcome. It’s tragic, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t make you sad?”

“I always feel sympathy for the souls, sometimes more than I should. I cried a few times when I first started reaping, but now I realize death can be a happy thing too. I like to think I’m helping these souls cross over to a better place. Without me, they’d be stranded on earth. They’d be miserable, trying to talk to their loved ones when they can’t.”

Shilah remained silent, obviously thinking about something. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “Did you…take my little sister’s soul?”

“I wasn’t old enough to be a reaper when you said she died.” I frowned. I didn’t like the way he’d phrased the question. “And reapers don’t
take
souls, we guide them.” I paused, realizing what he must be thinking. “Your sister didn’t die because of a reaper. Her soul would’ve left her body no matter what, regardless if a reaper had been there or not.”

Shilah nodded. “I figured. Still, I feel better knowing you weren’t the one who took–
guided
–my sister’s soul.” Sighing, he relaxed. “So, do you like your job?”

I thought, but not for long. “This might surprise you, but yeah, I do. I like meeting and helping a lot of different people. Even though they’re dead.”

Shilah stretched out his legs, staring up at the sky. After a minute, he said, “I knew it all along.”

“Knew what?”

“That you weren’t Italian.”

We laughed.

“But you have to admit my Italian is perfect,” I boasted.

He nodded. “It’s cool that you know so many languages. You could’ve told me you were from anywhere.”

I fidgeted. “I’m sorry for lying, but I don’t think you would’ve accepted the truth when you first met me…that I’m not even from this or any
other
planet.”

“All of your strange answers when we first met make sense now.” He took a deep breath. “I’m friends with a grim reaper. This is going to take some getting used to.”

“Are you sure what I do doesn’t bother you?”

“No. In a way, I was prepared for this. Granna’s always talking about reapers. My family already mentions death a lot. Now I have a reason to be obsessed with it too.”

I grinned and joked, “You’re obsessed with me?”

Shilah stared into my eyes. “Probably more than I should be.”

My heart lurched. “Same here.” I knew then that I’d officially broken Rule Two of Reaping.

Shilah laid back onto the blanket. “So, tell me more about being a reaper.”

I lay beside him and told of several experiences I’d had since I started reaping. We talked for hours, with me having to leave five different times to go reap souls with Ziri. Now that Shilah knew what I did for a living, I could leave for about fifteen minutes and come back to continue our conversation.

Eventually, the sun began to go down, and Shilah sat up.

“My mom will be expecting me for dinner,” he said. “And I’m starving. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

I helped him fold up the blanket and pack it into the picnic basket.

“See you tomorrow?” I said when he was ready to go.

Shilah thought. “You don’t have to eat or sleep. What do you usually do at night?”

“Um, people die at night. You think the world stops while you’re sleeping?”

Shilah looked embarrassed. “Oh. Right. Well, since you don’t have a curfew, can you teleport into my room tonight? After what I saw today, I think I’m going to have a hard time getting to sleep. It might be easier with you there.”

I beamed. “Sure. What time?”

“My parents go to bed sometime after eleven. Wait till all the lights are off in the house, and I’ll signal you in from my window.”

“All right. See you tonight.”

“See you.” Shilah hugged me. When he pulled away this time, he also gave me a kiss on the cheek. My skin tingled in the spot where his lips touched me.

I blushed as Shilah walked away. When he was gone, I couldn’t stop smiling.

He still liked me, and he knew I wasn’t human! He actually didn’t think of me as a monster or creature or something. He accepted me for what I was.

I felt like I was floating. My feelings for Shilah were growing.

And it scared the daylights out of me.