The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (24 page)

He smiled gently at me. “I guess that’s another thing I haven’t told you. Just because you can’t see Landon doesn’t mean he’s not here.”

“I know. There’s a second curtain that they hide behind. But I figured out how to get past it. I’ve been watching both planes, or whatever, and, aside from the odd passing ghost, no one has been hanging out listening.”

Caleb put down the coffee filter he was holding and walked back over to the couch. “Are you sure?”

I nodded. “When I was a kid, I could only hear ghosts. Then one day, I noticed the curtain… That’s what I call it; it’s not really like anything I can describe…and I knew the ghosts were behind it, so I concentrated and moved it aside. It’s been open to me ever since. A few days ago, I could hear Landon talking but I couldn’t see him, so I used the same idea and I pushed the second curtain aside and there he was. Unless there’s another curtain, no one’s been listening.”

“Shit,” he said, his eyes bright with excitement. He just stared at me for a moment and then he smiled. “You weren’t going to tell me that, were you?”

“Not unless I had to.” I smiled at him. “Not that I don’t trust you…”

“No, that’s good. You shouldn’t trust anyone right now. I mean, of course I want you to trust me, but you need to be careful with everyone else.” He sighed. “Am I making any sense at all?”

I nodded. “I think so.”

“Good. Don’t tell anyone else what you’ve just told me, okay. Don’t even mention it to me again. If anyone found out—”

“They’d kill me,” I said for him.

He looked at me as though he were reassessing me. Then he nodded. “There are some who would see you as a threat, particularly among the reapers. The rest of us, the living, we aren’t much better. You’re the only one we know with this ability, and if anyone else knew, your life would no longer be your own to choose.”

Not that it is now
, I thought, but I managed to keep that thought to myself. He didn’t have to keep my secret, and he could probably gain a lot of brownie points at Varius if he shared it. “Thank you,” I said.

“For what?” he said absently, his mind obviously somewhere else.

“For not using that information to get ahead in your job. I would imagine it’s the sort of information that would put you in line for a promotion or whatever. I don’t know how your corporation works, but…”

“Kelsey.” His face was suddenly close to mine. “Are we still alone?”

I looked around as much as I could, with his face only inches from mine. “Yes,” I breathed.

He kissed me, gently at first, and then harder as I responded. He pulled back only long enough to say, “You have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting to do that again, but if anyone saw us…”

“You aren’t supposed to date potential recruits?”

He smiled. “That, and there are a lot of people, living and dead, who would take any opportunity to hurt me. And they wouldn’t hesitate to use you to do it.”

“You didn’t seem too concerned about that when you kissed me on your doorstep yesterday.”

“That was really stupid. Running with you, I kind of forgot about all of the other crap, you know.”

“I do.” And he was kissing me again. It felt so good, and I wanted to get lost in that feeling, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing with all of the new information he’d given me. I was exhausted and confused and scared, and I wasn’t even sure how I really felt about him. I pulled away from him. “I’m sorry, but…”

He sat up. “No, you’re right. You should get some sleep. Do you mind if I stay for a little while?”

“That would be nice.”

I fell asleep, held tight in his arms, more relaxed than I’d been in a week.

I actually got to sleep for a couple of hours before Landon jerked me out onto the beach. This time, I had on a T-shirt and jeans, and Landon sat next to me.

“Hey,” he said with a smile. “Had a hard time finding you tonight. I hope you aren’t trying to hide from me.”

“No, I was just too tired to go home.”

“I can imagine.”

He leered at me. I worried for a moment how much he had seen. Me asleep in Caleb’s arms could be bad enough.

“It seems to me that you are spending way too much time with your friends, having parties, when you should be investigating my death, or at least quaking in fear at what I might do to you next.”

“I spent—”

“Do you know what I did when I couldn’t find you at your apartment?” he said lazily, inspecting his fingernails. “I decided to see what kind of trouble I could cause with Angelica.”

My stomach dropped. “I did what you asked, Landon. You said you wouldn’t hurt her.”

“But I didn’t know that. You weren’t where you were supposed to be, and I thought maybe you had run away and hidden from me.” He grinned. “Lucky for me, she was halfway to drunk, so it was real easy to just slip inside.”

“What did you do to her?”

“Relax, Kelsey. I just manipulated her conversation with Cat a tiny bit. I got from Cat where you were and I left.” He moved closer to me so that our shoulders touched and I could feel his breath on my cheek. “I expect you to be grateful for that, Kelsey, and to show me a bit of respect.” He moved back out of my space. “Now, what did you find out?”

“You were shot. Apparently, Reid gave Bruce incorrect information about your death, and I guess your family wants it that way.” Weird that they were okay with let the rumor that he’d overdosed circulate, but maybe they didn’t know about that. “I went to the police station, and they told me you shot yourself accidently.”

“I don’t even own a gun!” He paused and took a deep breath. “How the hell would I have shot myself? Someone killed me, and we have to find out who.”

“How?”

“Fuck if I know.” He sighed and slumped. “Did you tell Bruce I was murdered?”

“How would I explain that I knew that? He did seem to think he was wrong to believe you’d overdosed.”

“That’s good.” Landon looked out at the ocean for a long moment. “It’s not so bad here, you know? Except, I can’t forget for even a second that it’s all fake.”

“Why don’t you borrow Reid again and get the full 4D experience?”

“I told you why. I don’t want to get him fired and lose my police connection.”

“From what I hear, he’s a pretty useless police connection. Besides, you could use him without endangering his job as long as you don’t beat me up.”

“What do you care?”

I shrugged. “I’m just trying to understand. Couldn’t you find someone else?”

“If it were that easy, don’t you think I’d be doing it? You think I’m so stupid that I couldn’t have figured that out?”

“No, I’m just trying to be helpful.”

“Yeah, well, don’t bother. I’ll have my own full-time body soon enough. I’ve just gotta make your life so miserable that you beg me to take over.”

“Maybe you should accept that you’re dead as a result of the choices you made and move on. Even if you’re right and someone killed you, you must have given them a reason to do it.”

“Wow, that’s some pep talk. You’re right, I should just stay dead. Not.” He giggled. “What I’ve been trying to figure out about you, Kelsey, is what you hold most dear. I can threaten your friends, and I can make you miserable by hurting them or removing them from your life—”

“Can’t we just leave my friends out of this?”

“How selfless of you, Ice Princess. As I was saying, I need to make you wish you were dead, and to do that, I have to remove from your reach what you hold most dear. You wanna tell me what that is?”

The word leapt to my mind immediately—normalcy. Landon could ruin my life by taking from me any opportunity of having a normal one. Although, based on what Caleb had told me, a normal life might already be beyond my grasp. “Um, these killer new running shoes I just spent half a paycheck on?”

Landon smiled. “Don’t worry, Kelsey, I’m not expecting you to tell me. I’ve already figured it out, and I’m pretty proud of myself. See, I never liked you because you seemed so boring. You had moved to Briarton on some sort of impetuous whim, right? You told me one time that you had come here on vacation and just stayed, right? That seemed like a pretty fucking cool thing to do, so I thought maybe you were more interesting than you seemed, but if you were, I couldn’t figure out where you were hiding it.”

“I have a safe at the—”

“Shut the fuck up, Kelsey. You are not funny. You’re not funny, or fun, or even remotely interesting, yet you moved here. Why? As far as I could tell, you only skied about once every couple of weeks, and you weren’t into anything else that could only be had here in Briarton, so I figured you must be running from something.”

“You got me, I’m a runaway. I just couldn’t take another day in a world without snow.”

Landon didn’t even look at me. “You know what I’ve figured out about you today, Kelsey? I’ve figured out that you are a freak, and you had to run halfway across the country to get away from yourself. It’s your boring little normal life that you cherish so much, and I am going to take it from you.”

I think my heart stopped beating for a few seconds and I felt the beach shift under me like I was about to drop through and freefall into the abyss. I tried to cover my fear as quickly as I could, but Landon was watching me and smiling. “Oh, God, please,” I said as sincerely as possible. “I am so bored. You’d be doing me a huge favor.”

Landon shook his head and tsked. “Keep acting like this is a joke, Kelsey, and I’ll draw it out more. If you want to keep your dignity and your reputation, just give in to me now. Let me have your body and your dull, worthless little life, and save us both a lot of pain and effort.”

Part of me was caving in to the idea of letting him have what he wanted. If it weren’t for the fact that the people I cared about most already knew all of my secrets and still wanted to be my friends, I might have just let go. Even so, the idea of people at work, people I passed on the street, and all the potential guys I might want to date would look at me like I was a freak, and might even avoid me, scared me to a degree Landon had not previously reached. “No matter what you do to me, I’m not going to let you have this body without a fight.”

He rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Oh, goody.” Then he shoved me over hard, so that I fell on my side in the sand. I pushed up and stood to move away from him, but he was already standing next to me. He handed me a shovel. “Start digging. Right…” He walked a few steps and pointed at the ground. “Here.”

“Haven’t we played this game before?” But I walked over and stuck my shovel in the sand, anyway. I knew that arguing with him was a waste of energy.

“This time, it’s a little bit different. Be gentle; Angelica is down there.”

That stopped my heart for a moment, but I shook it off. Caleb and Cat had been sure I was the first person who a reaper had been able to bring over. There was no way he could have brought Angelica here. Still, I dug carefully, and after just a few shovelfuls, I saw the tip of a nose. I dropped the shovel, got down on my hands and knees, and carefully scooped sand off the face. In a few moments, Angelica’s face stared up at mine, her eyes wild with fear. She took one quick gasp of air and she was gone. The sand was back in place, as though I had never touched it.

I dug like that again and again. Angelica got one gasp of air before she was covered again. I worked steadily and quickly, even as I reassured myself that it was all an illusion. I had long ago lost count of how many gasps of air Angelica had gotten, and my arms were screaming with the constant work, when Landon told me to stop. Despite my belief that Angelica wasn’t really there, I couldn’t make myself stop digging. If I was wrong, and it was all real, my digging might be all that was keeping her alive.

Landon growled at me, then grabbed me around the waist, threw me over his shoulder, and walked out into the ocean with me. He dropped me into the icy cold water and held me down. I struggled against his hand, beginning to panic as I found him unmoveable and my lungs started to scream. Just as I thought I would black out, he released me. I fought for the surface, flailing and kicking...and woke up tangled in a blanket on a couch in a strange room. Staring at me was Caleb, in pajama bottoms and nothing else. He sat on the coffee table, and I instinctively reached for him as though I was still drowning and he could pull me to safety.

“Kelsey, are you ok?” he asked, kneeling beside me and rubbing my back.

“Yeah, yeah,” I gasped. “Just a rough landing.” I caught my breath, and Caleb moved back to the coffee table.

“You were with Landon?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”

“Yes, sort of. After you fell asleep, I went to my room and went to sleep, just in case we had uninvited guests. Speaking of which…?”

“All clear.” I tried not to be disappointed that he had left me. He was right that anyone might be able to see us, but I couldn’t remember why he didn’t want anyone to know that we had slept together. Last night, it had all made sense, but this morning… I peered around the room again and realized that the second curtain was closed to me. I concentrated and pushed, but I couldn’t get past it.

“Um, actually… I’m really tired and I’m not seeing so well for some reason. Do you have any coffee?” I started to push aside the blanket to get up and go make it, but my arms wouldn’t obey my wishes.

“Yeah,” Caleb said as he stood and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make you some.”

I gave up and let Caleb wait on me. My arms and I needed a break.

He returned to his seat. “Coffee’s brewing. It’s not unusual for exhaustion to interfere with your abilities. How much sleep have you gotten since all of this started?”

I quickly calculated my sleep for the last few days. “Um, about six hours.”

“Oh, well, six hours a night isn’t too bad.”

“No, six hours total.”

“Oh, shit. Landon isn’t letting you sleep?” Caleb frowned. “I guess that’s one way to wear down a potential host.”

“I think it’s just the start.” I couldn’t stop myself from shivering when I remembered Landon’s threat to return me to freak status, not to mention that he might start bringing my friends into my nightmare. “This time, Angelica was there. Is that possible?”