Reap & Reveal (The Reaper Series Book 3) (9 page)

“Thanks, Dr. Phil. You’re a real sage,” Kylen said.

“Whatever. We need Nate downtown. Now that you’re unencumbered, Zak can juice you up before we go. Besides, you need to get out of here for a while. And with this latest development, well…you’ll be all the more valuable out in the field.”

Nate was conflicted. He knew Maeve needed time. After a brief physical exam, he was confident she wasn’t in any immediate physical danger. It was her psyche he feared for now. What he hated most was that Deacon was right—he wasn’t needed in the trailer, but the desire to stay put was overwhelming. He had the binding spell in place. She couldn’t leave the trailer and that should be more than enough to keep her from running if she were so inclined. He should probably tell Olivia about it, although he doubted Maeve was in any condition yet to test her newest boundaries.

Of course, she’d surprised him before.

Debating the pros and cons, a plan began to form in his mind.

“I want to go to Purgatory. I need to talk with Rashnu.”

“I’d say Rashnu will be expecting you,” Deacon said.

“Will you take me?”

“You don’t need me. You’re welcome just like the rest of us. Especially now. But it can wait until we’ve cleared a few more demons. ”

Nate nodded. He knew he could travel there himself. He was just trying to follow protocol. Rashnu probably had the answers he needed. The problem would be getting them out of the asshole.

“Go get your weapons, Nate. Let’s roll some demons,” Kylen said.

***

Maeve wanted sleep more than anything else in the world. To close her eyes and be alone, truly alone, would be a miracle. But these people? At this rate, she didn’t think she’d ever be alone again. She could sense their sincerity, but the intense way the one called Nate kept looking at her was unnerving. The woman, Olivia, was human, but all the others she’d seen were reapers. Still, she couldn’t figure out for the life of her why they were all living here together. This was not the reaper training compound. At least, not the one where she’d grown up.

She remembered everything right up to the night she’d first set foot in Meridian as a temporary replacement reaper. Then there was the night in St. Mary’s Hospital when Camael had blackmailed her into accepting his possession. Two interesting problems remained. For one, all of her memories before the possession were in a completely random order. The sequence evaded her, like her deck had been shuffled. Names, faces, events, reapings…all blurred into a
This Is Your Life
episode set on jumble.

Secondly, everything during and after the possession was like a dream, not quite remembered, but buried somewhere in the back of the brain. The harder she tried to pull those memories to the surface, the farther they slipped from her mental grasp. It was infuriating. Worse, it was painful. Her head ached from the effort. Whatever had happened to her during those few lost months under Camael’s spell was important to remember. Imperative even. She just couldn’t reach it.

Olivia had put names to the faces of the two men hovering nearby—Nate and Deacon—but she couldn’t call up any memories to go with them. Olivia assured her there
were
memories of them, which was unsettling, and the girl did look vaguely familiar with her stark white hair. Still, nothing gelled in Maeve’s consciousness, no matter how hard she reached for her past.

She needed time and maybe more familiar surroundings to try and put things into place. Panic built inside her, spreading through her chest like the burn of hard liquor. Time was running out. She didn’t know what it meant, but she knew that much.

After a while, the two reapers left and Olivia went to prepare some food for her, promising a quick return. The short reprieve was a relief. Maeve stretched out her limbs, testing them for strength and durability. She was thinner. That much she knew.

Right now, her most pressing desire, other than recovering her memories, was to be clean. Besides sleep, a shower was about to become her next big adventure. Sliding her legs out from under the covers, she lowered them to the floor and rotated herself upright. After several seconds of inner debate as to whether or not hurling was on the agenda, her swimmy head and stomach settled and she reached for the wall to steady herself.

Vertical. It was a thing now.

At least her motor skills hadn’t taken a complete vacation. She’d reaped enough brain-injured victims through the years to know it didn’t take much to upset the mental applecart. Maeve was pretty sure all her pieces were present and accounted for. She just needed to rework the puzzle.

She eased around the edge of the wall to the bathroom door. Bathroom was a generous word to describe the tiny enclosure. It was definitely a one-person proposition. As thin as she was, she wondered if her body would even fit inside the minuscule shower enclosure. By God, she was going to try.

She shimmied out of the nightgown, trying not to think too hard about
who
had dressed her in it. Pulling the door shut behind her, she pulled the shower curtain shut and turned on the water, letting the hot steam fill the room.

Standing naked outside the shower door, she fingered the thin rope bracelet around her wrist and puzzled at it.

Where the hell had that come from?

One thing she was sure of: she didn’t wear jewelry, and if she did, it wouldn’t be hippy, hemp friendship bands. Briefly she picked at one of the knots. When it didn’t give, she abandoned the effort. She’d cut it off later.

Avoiding the very small mirror over the equally miniature vanity was easy enough since it had already fogged over. She was glad she couldn’t see her reflection. At this point, she had no desire to obsess on the
before
…all she was interested in was the
after
.

She stepped inside the shower. The hot water flowing over her elicited unexpected tears as relief coursed through her, releasing some of the stress that filled her like venom. But it was impossible to let go of the impending doom lurking just below the surface of her conscious mind. The tears at least rounded off the edges.

What was it! Something so important.

She grabbed the bar of soap and went to work, rubbing and scrubbing until her skin was raw and red from the effort. Would she ever be clean again? She pushed her shaking hands flat against the acrylic shower enclosure, letting the water course over her back, steadying herself as she pinned images to the bulletin board of her mind long enough for a cursory examination before they flitted away again.

No, none of them were the right ones.

And some of them—she was positive—weren’t hers at all.

Death. So much death.

She was a reaper, after all, and death was her business and calling. That much she knew. She was a collector of souls and her job was to ferry the souls to their final destination, but not hasten their detachment prematurely. The images that flashed before her now were scenes in which she’d done exactly that.

Murder.

Frustrated, she leaned her head back into the stream, willing the water to wash away the assault of images, and worked Nate’s woodsy scented shampoo and conditioner into her hair. She worked through the long and tangled strands, pulling handful after handful of snarls free from her head in the process. At this rate, she’d be bald when she got out.

Satisfied, Maeve shut off the water, immediately missing its soothing warmth. Wringing the water from her hair with her hands, she stepped from the shower only to realize she hadn’t thought ahead to retrieve a towel. With a sigh, she searched through the one small bathroom cabinet, but found nothing except deodorant, mouthwash and bottles of hair product, which amused her. Wasn’t this Nate’s trailer? Did he have a roommate? If not, he was the highest hair maintenance male she’d ever encountered.

Or so she thought. Her mental file cabinet was disheveled after all.

Revived, Maeve turned the knob and pushed the door open, stepping out of the small bathroom.

Nate stood, mouth agape, in front of her.

Chapter Twelve

Nate’s eyes blinked in time with his heartbeat. Rapidly. Paralyzed while his brain tried to process the sight of the wet and glistening body before him, he did the one thing any red-blooded male would do. He looked.

Holy shit.

Her green eyes flared and he broke out of his stupor, finally putting two and two together.

“Towel?” he asked.

An icy glare was his answer, which almost excited him more than seeing her in all her naked glory. That glare meant she was on her way back.

To him.

Good God, obviously an overload of naked female had short-circuited his brain. She wasn’t his. She was his partner. Nothing more.

A fact he wasn’t even sure she knew.

With effort, he averted his eyes as she made a slow puddle on his floor, water dripping from the ends of her hair and her elbows. Shuffling through the cabinet outside the door, he handed her a towel, willing himself to walk away from her.

“Thank you.”

Her voice startled him and he spun around to catch her tuck the corner of the wrapped towel between her breasts. Breasts he’d seen bare mere seconds ago. His brain was going all kinds of junior high.

Nate cleared his throat. “You’re welcome.”

They locked gazes for several seconds before she raised her eyebrows at him quizzically.

“Sorry.” Flustered, he looked behind her at the pile of discarded clothes. “I just need to get my weapons. We’re heading into Meridian.”

He searched her face for recognition, trying to tease out answers to unasked questions.

“You need to stay here.
In the trailer.
I’ll have Olivia bring some clean clothes for you. She has a feast coming your way, too.” He smiled at her, hoping it came off more sincere than the goofball grin he feared was spreading across his maw. “We’ll talk when I get back.”

Retrieving his short sword and blades, he snuck an awkward glance at her as she remained rooted in place, watching him.

“You’re safe here.” The sigils on his arms flared as he walked out the door, reassuring him that she couldn’t wander too far.

***

Ruth was dying to get out to that trailer. Olivia had filled her in on Maeve’s current state and while she was relieved Maeve was back home, it was clear she wouldn’t be out in the field again any time soon.

Temperance, the guardian angel sent to watch over Ruth’s unborn child, scowled at her from across the room. Some days, Ruth could swear the angel could read her mind! She’d been confined to bed rest for all but the first six weeks of her pregnancy, and it was wearing on her in ways no one else in the compound could understand. The worst part was she still had four and a half months to go.

Ironically, Ruth had spent most of her life in self-imposed isolation, living in fear of her gift: the ability to see auras. When she met her first reaper, Deacon, her life had tumbled right past the land of Weird and settled firmly into the land of What The Hell. She’d enjoyed gainful employment in her newly discovered profession as a reaper for all of few months before everything went screwy. Choosing to exile herself was one thing. Being exiled was something altogether different. If Maeve was feeling even an ounce of that frustration, Ruth had sympathy.

She was only allowed occasional visits to the commons area. After she nearly lost the baby early on in the pregnancy, the entire Authority had conspired to keep her in her place. While she knew it was for her own good—and the baby’s—it was growing more and more intolerable.

If not for the fast satellite internet installation Nate had orchestrated on her behalf, she would have been stark-raving mad by now. Deacon was so busy with all of his new duties that it seemed like she only saw him for a few minutes each day. Olivia, bless her heart, spent hours entertaining her and catering to her every whim. Temperance, on the other hand, was about as entertaining as a Roman statue.

She only came to life when Ruth wiggled toward the edge of the bed. It seemed like all Ruth needed to do was even think about moving to set her angel into action. Temperance’s short, red hair stood at attention in all directions around her head. Ruth would have called it a pixie cut except she was pretty sure the angel had hacked it off with scissors or a blade herself. “Cut” was a little too lavish a description. “Shredded” was more apt.

The arches of the angel’s neatly folded wings peeked above her shoulders. Deacon had told her that when completely relaxed, an angel’s wings could be fully retracted, visible only as a feathered shadow beneath her skin, like a tattoo but smooth to the touch.

Temperance was never relaxed.

The bad news was that her wings had stood at attention from day one. The good news was that Ruth had yet to see them fully extended, a sign of either force or dominance. Since Nate had reinforced the compound with magic, their boundaries hadn’t even been tested and God knew Ruth hadn’t stepped foot outside the commons area, let alone the grounds.

She clicked her mouse button extra loudly for the sole purpose of annoying Temperance as she searched yet another genealogy website on her laptop. Since she was a prisoner, she had decided to use her time doing what she’d been trained for. With a PhD in Information Technology, she was a research maven, but the one piece of information she wanted the most still eluded her.