The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (17 page)

I sighed. “I should have worked. If I was going to make everyone else work, I should have been there.”

“It was just me and Isabella, and she’s coming over for dinner tonight. I think feeding her will make up for paying her holiday time to work today.” She laughed. “It’s totally fine. Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, Ang. You can have an extra slice of pie, calorie-free.”

“What about me? I helped you with the vegetables,” Cat mock-whined.

“Calorie-free pie for everyone,” I shouted, spreading my arms wide.

Angelica made a face. “Please go take a shower before you do anything like that again.”

I hurried back to the bathroom to the sound of Cat and Angelica laughing. When I got out of the shower, I could hear Caleb’s voice. I wrapped a towel around myself and scurried to my room, where I dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and a tiny T-shirt that I didn’t mind getting turkey grease and flour on. As I was brushing my hair, there was a knock at my door. “Come in,” I called.

Cat pushed the door open and stood in the doorway. “I had to get away from Caleb. I cannot stand that guy.”

“Come on in,” I said, vaguely annoyed that she thought it was okay to talk that way about one of my friends. She sat down on my bed and watched me put on make-up.

“Ouch, what happened to you?” She hissed.

I looked at her reflection in the mirror. “What?”

“Your hip. I can only see about a millimeter of it, but it looks black. Did you fall while you were jogging?”

I put down my make-up brush and lifted my shirt. A dark, almost black, bruise ran from the top of my hip to the bottom of my rib cage. It was as wide as my fist, but I figured it couldn’t be very bad since I hadn’t felt any pain from it. I touched it gingerly and a searing pain burst from the small spot of contact and rushed through my entire body. I doubled over and only kept from falling by grabbing onto the top of my dresser. I couldn’t catch my breath until the pain subsided, like a wave cresting and falling. Carefully, I stood back up. Cat was at my elbow, and she helped me sit down.

“Are you okay? What happened?”

I did a mental assessment of my body and felt pain all down the left side of my torso. The pain flared and then decreased to a bare numbness in a steady pulse that matched my heartbeat. “I don’t know.” I couldn’t tell her I’d been thrown out of a window in a dream. People didn’t get bruises from dreams. The bruise must have come from something else, but there was nothing else that had happened to me. “I slipped on a patch of ice and fell on the way back. I didn’t even realize I was hurt, but touching that bruise…That hurt like nothing I’ve felt

before.” Falling on ice seemed like a reasonable way to hurt myself, but Cat kept looking at me, silently, like she was waiting for something. When I didn’t say anything for several moments, she nodded.

“Maybe you should, like, go to a doctor.”

“No, I’ll be fine. It’s nothing.” I could just imagine that conversation with a doctor.

“Well, at least put ice on it.”

“No, it’s fine, Cat, really. Just don’t…” I tried to think of a way to put the next part that didn’t sound completely weird. “Please don’t tell Angelica or anyone about this. I want everyone to have fun tonight.” I didn’t want Angelica to think that I was having more trouble with Reid or Landon. “She tends to be a bit of a worrier.”

Cat smiled and nodded. “I’ve noticed. I won’t mention it to her.”

I changed into a slightly larger T-shirt and finished putting on my make-up while Cat chattered on about her exhausting but fruitless job search. We walked out to the kitchen together to find Caleb and Angelica standing in front of the open refrigerator.

“Is there something wrong with the food?” I asked, my voice a bit higher and more panicked than I would’ve liked it to be.

Angelica smiled at me. “Caleb and I were just taking stock of the alcohol, and we decided there isn’t enough.”

Caleb looked at me and smiled, and I literally couldn’t breathe for about ten seconds. I quickly returned my attention to Angelica’s safer face. “I’m not drinking, so I figured there’d be enough.”

Angelica shook her head, her blond curls bouncing around her face like a halo. “Um, there’s enough for maybe two underage girls to get tipsy, but that’s it.”

Caleb laughed, and I sneered at both of them. “I’ve got a couple of bottles of liquor in the pantry. Did you count that?”

“Still not enough.” Angelica shrugged. “And you are drinking.”

“But my plan is—”

“First of all, you never stick to the plan, and second, it’s a dumb plan.” Angelica smiled to take the sting out of her words. “I mean, have you really thought it through, Kels?”

“Sure, if I abstain for three more months—”

“
Three
months,” Angelica said, reminding me I hadn’t officially stopped drinking yet.

I ignored her. “Then when I drink on my twenty-first birthday, it will be like my first time all over again. It will be magical.” I leaned against a counter in the kitchen. Caleb was laughing so hard I’m pretty sure he’d stopped breathing.

“Do you remember your first time?” Angelica asked, not cracking a smile.

I quickly thought back. Seventeen, sneaking booze at my cousin Lillian’s wedding, puking all over my pretty dress, and getting reamed out by my mom in front of everyone. “Oh.”

“What will you be having tonight? Spider? Or the hard stuff?”

“Both,” I said.

“Right, so we don’t have enough booze. Cat and I are going out to buy some more.”

Cat left with Angelica, looking not the least bit disappointed to be escaping from Caleb. Once they were gone, I smiled at Caleb, expecting something, a kiss, a touch, or a look, to note that our relationship had changed. He just smiled back at me and said, “Tell me what we need to do.”

“We just need to make a couple of vegetable casseroles and the stuffing. I’ll put the turkey in the oven in an hour. The cranberry sauce is from a can. Isabella is bringing potatoes, and Bruce is bringing dessert.”

His smile drooped a bit, but the expression was so fast, I was sure I had imagined it. “Bruce is going to be here?”

“Uh-huh.” I went to the refrigerator and started pulling out green beans and butter. I didn’t think I needed to explain Bruce’s attendance. Caleb was acting like our kiss had never happened, which sort of bothered me, and explaining could make it seem like I thought we now had the sort of relationship where I needed to explain, and if he obviously didn’t feel that way, I would be totally embarrassed. I put the beans on the counter and leaned against it for a moment. I needed more sleep for this thought process.

“How was your date?”

Oh, right. I had told Caleb that I had a date with Bruce. No reason to disavow him of that belief. “It was fine. He’s a nice guy.”

“Good for him,” Caleb said, and that was all he said for the next half hour, other than what was necessary for him to help me make casseroles. Then Cat and Angelica were back with the booze, and I decided a drink would help me finish cooking. As I took my first swallow, Alice’s warning to stay sober flitted through my mind, but I brushed it away. A beer or two wouldn’t hurt me as long as I didn’t get drunk.

It wasn’t long before the turkey was in the oven, the casseroles ready to join it in a couple of hours, the table set, and all I had to do was wait. Caleb, Cat, Angelica, and I moved into the living room with our drinks. Caleb sat as far away from me as possible, his drink water. Totally silly, but I couldn’t help thinking that he was acting distant because he didn’t want anyone else to know we had kissed, and he didn’t make a move when we were in the apartment alone, because Cat or Angelica could have walked in at any moment.

Deep down, I knew I was overreacting, but his behavior reminded me of a couple of jerks from my past. Guys back home who had liked me but hadn’t wanted to be known as involved with the freak who talked to ghosts. I can’t say I ever really blamed them. Obviously, they were cowards, but at least they were honest. Caleb didn’t know I could see ghosts. Unless…

A lead weight dropped in my gut as I remembered that he had been out here talking to Angelica alone, and she could have told him my secret. That would certainly explain his sudden distance. Giving Angelica the benefit of the doubt, there was either something freakish about me that I was unaware of, or he was interested in making a serious play for Cat and was keeping his options open. Or nothing was wrong, and I was blowing everything out of proportion, an option that seemed less likely the more I drank.

I tuned back into the conversation.

Cat was talking about her unfruitful job hunt. “I just don’t get it. I know the jobs are there, and I’m a great interviewee, but no one is calling me back.”

“Did you use spell check on your resume?” Caleb asked. “Employers really frown upon it when you misspell professional dominatrix.”

Cat sneered. “Fuck you, Caleb. Don’t you have to go wash dishes at that cockroach inn you call a restaurant?”

“You guys don’t need to pretend to like each other on our account,” Angelica said with a laugh.

Okay, so Caleb’s methods wouldn’t appeal to me, but some guys considered that sort of banter flirting. I decided to stop wasting time trying to figure out Caleb and had another drink.

By the time people started arriving, I was feeling pretty good. Dinner was a success, and almost all of the food was gone by the end of the meal. I was clearing the table with Angelica when I noticed Caleb and Cat talking in a dark corner, their heads close. Caleb glanced my way, and I looked quickly away, hoping that I didn’t look as jealous as I felt.

“Do you need help with anything?” Bruce asked, walking into the kitchen. He didn’t know anyone but me at the dinner, so he’d been hanging kind of close.

“Nope, we’ve done all we’re going to do tonight.”

“Either one of you up for a game of charades?” Angelica asked.

“Sure,” Bruce said.

I grimaced. I was abysmally bad at charades.

“You’re in whether you like it or not, Kels.” Angelica squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll go see who else I can round up.”

After she moved into the living room, Bruce stepped closer and leaned on the counter next to me, our shoulders touching. “Think I’ve got a shot with Angelica?”

“A shot at what?” I knew exactly what he was talking about. I could tell he was nervous and in that tipsy moment, I felt like teasing him.

“Do you think she’d go out with me?”

I widened my eyes and stepped away from the counter to face him. “What about us? I thought we had a good time on our date.”

“Um, yeah…” He grew a shade paler.

“And I invited you to my dinner, and you decide to hit on my best friend?”

“I’m sorry, Kelsey. I thought that we both agreed there was no spark between us. If it makes you uncomfortable…”

I couldn’t help but smile. “It doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all. I just wanted to see the look on your face, and it was totally worth it.” I moved back to my position next to him.

“You’re not a very nice person,” he said, pretending to pout. “Do you think I should ask her out?”

“Yes. Maybe…” I suddenly remembered that I had told her about Bruce kissing me. I had better make sure she was clear that there was nothing going on between us. “Um, let me talk to her before you ask her out. Maybe the three of us could do something together.”

“What was that?” Bruce was facing me now.

“What?” I pretended to be fascinated with the label on my beer bottle.

“That ‘oh shit’ look on your face. What’s the problem?”

“I just think that I should talk to her first, because I might have told her that we…”

“Kissed? Did you tell her we kissed?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, yes, I told her we kissed. I’m not sure it will make a difference. I just think I should talk to her, or maybe we should plan something casual for the three of us so—”

“Did you tell her the kiss was bad?”

I pretended that I didn’t hear him. “…she can get to know you better.”

“You did tell her it was bad.” He groaned and ran a hand through his hair.

“I told her it was bad for me, not that it was generally bad. This is still salvageable.” I don’t know why I wanted so badly to help him get a date with Angelica, but he seemed like a truly nice guy, and Angelica hadn’t had the best luck with guys. “We’ll all go out together and do something fun. She’ll get to know you, and then I’ll talk to her afterwards and tell her the kiss was nothing, and I really would love it if she went out with you.”

“Really?” He looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. “You barely know me.”

“I know enough. You stood by Landon when he didn’t deserve it. That earns you a lot of points in my book.”

He knocked his shoulder against mine in an ‘aw shucks’ kind of way. “So what should we do? We could go skiing tomorrow.”

I shook my head. “I’ve only got one pair of skis, and I paid a lot of money for them. I am
not
wrecking them rock skiing.” Around Thanksgiving, there would be just enough snow to ski on, but not enough to completely cover the odd rock, which would gouge deep ruts in my skis since I was basically guaranteed to hit every rock on the mountain.

“I’ll loan you a pair of mine. I’ve got, like, three pairs of rock skis.”

“That’s really nice, but—”

“Kelsey.” A hand gripped my elbow, hard, and I spun around to find Caleb on the other side of me, his mouth set in a grim line.

I tried to shake him off because he was actually hurting me, but he wouldn’t let go. Bruce stepped toward me with a serious look on his face, and I figured I’d better defuse the situation before there was fight.

“I’m sorry, Bruce, I’ll talk to you later. Right now, I have to talk to this rude asshole.” I probably wouldn’t have said the last bit if I hadn’t been a little drunk, but Caleb completely deserved it.

Caleb loosened his grip and I followed him into the entryway. We were only a few steps from Bruce, but Caleb didn’t seem to care. He pulled up my shirt and gasped. “What happened?”

I had to look at my stomach to realize what he was talking about. I had forgotten about the bruise. Alcohol had long ago dulled any pain I felt from it. “I’m assuming Cat told you about the bruise, so I’m sure she also told you what happened.”