The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (27 page)

Caleb stopped and stared at me. Tucker looked thoughtful. “For my sake, I’d rather you didn’t, but the truth is, I have no idea. We don’t know why people cross over or stick around. We don’t even know where they go if they do cross over.”

Okay, so giving in to Landon wouldn’t be an easy fix. “I don’t know how to fight him,” I said. Caleb was walking beside us again, frowning but not interrupting.

“They talk about you on the other side, you know?” Tucker said. “They say you’re more powerful than your father. The son of a bitch never bothered to teach you how to use that power, but it’s there, and if you want it bad enough, it will work for you. I’m more worried you aren’t going to want it bad enough. You already look defeated, and when I saw you earlier—”

“My best friend doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore.” A lump formed in my throat, but I swallowed back my tears.

Tucker reached up as though to wipe away the tears I was holding back. “People are alone for all kinds of reasons, some of us for 135 years, but I believe that the people who are meant to be in our lives will be there, no matter what.”

The tears really did fall then, and I had to stop and take a deep breath to keep from crumpling into a teary mess. Luckily, we were just steps from Caleb’s building.

“You’re going to be okay.” Tucker smiled at me. “But I’m not going in with you. I can’t stand that bitch, Cat.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and Tucker faded out while I was laughing. Caleb was watching me with a worried furrow between his brows. I must have looked manic, on the verge of crying one moment and laughing the next. “I’m okay,” I said. “Tucker gave me incentive to fight by scaring the shit out of me.”

“Tucker doesn’t usually get involved. He must like you.”

“Or he’s expecting me to lose and hoping to get laid on the other side.”

Caleb didn’t laugh at that, which made my stomach knot. He must think my losing a definite possibility himself. Together, we climbed up the stairs, and he promised to send Jed out for my stuff while I showered and got ready for work.

Cat and Jed were on the couch talking, but they shut up as soon as I walked in. I ignored them and walked back toward Caleb’s room and his bathroom.

“Kelsey, where are you going?” Cat stood and followed me into Caleb’s room.

“I have to go to work, Cat. I’m going to take a shower.”

“You’re going to work? Where? At that bookstore?” she said the word like it was a venereal disease. “Jed and I have been waiting for you so that we can discuss a plan to fight Landon and whoever is helping him.”

I shrugged. “I really don’t see what help I’m going to be in creating a plan. You’re the ones with the experience here. I’m needed more there than here.”

Cat looked at me like I was completely insane, her pretty face scrunched somewhere between disgust and disbelief. “And Caleb agreed to this? He’s okay with you going off to work like everything is normal?”

I felt dead tired all of a sudden. “I need to keep this job, Cat. I’ve already lost Angelica and if I lose my job, the life I have built here will be over. If I’m going to fight Landon, I need to know there’s something worth fighting for.” I walked into the bathroom, but Cat followed me too closely for me to shut the door in her face.

“Fine, but I’m talking to you while you’re getting ready. There are a couple of questions I need answered.” She shut the door behind her and sat on the closed toilet. I considered racing out of that bathroom into the one I assumed would be in Jed’s room, but that just seemed childish. She had a right to ask me some questions.

“What do you want to know?” I’m not shy about taking off my clothes in front of other girls, so I just stripped right there, figuring if it made her uncomfortable, maybe she’d leave me to shower in peace. I turned on the water and stepped into the shower.

“How often—”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “Can I ask you something first?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you know where my dad is?”

“No, sorry. He was working for Harvest One until about two months ago, when he disappeared.”

“You don’t have any idea where he went?”

“There are some who have ideas. I try not to speculate. I didn’t know him very well.”

I thought about asking her what the people with the ideas thought, but figured there would be time for that later. What mattered was that Cat didn’t actually know where he was at that moment. “Okay, thanks.”

“How often do you see ghosts?”

I put my face in the spray and thought before I answered her question. “When I was a kid, I saw them every day. I liked having them around. Now, I see a ghost about once a week. More if I go somewhere like a mall or an airplane.”

“How did you get them to leave you alone when you were a kid?”

“When my mom started to freak me out about seeing ghosts, I asked them to leave.”

“And they just left?”

“They didn’t want to leave, but my mom had convinced me I was crazy and they weren’t real. I told them they had to go away and never come back and they did.”

“You’ve never seen them again?”

“Just one of them. She visited me again for the first time last week.”

Cat was so silent I thought maybe she’d left. I peeked around the curtain and saw her still seated, staring at Alice who stood in front of the bathroom door. “Is that her?”

“You can see her?” I asked, but Cat ignored me. “Yeah, that’s Alice. Alice, this is Cat.”

“We know each other,” Alice said. “Cat, you should not be speaking to Kelsey of such things.”

“So it’s true? She…” Cat glanced at me. “They just left when she asked them to?”

Alice nodded. “They are where they should be, and you should change the subject.”

“Don’t you think this information might be relevant to her current situation?”

Alice looked at me. “Yes, I suppose it is, though I fear it may do more harm than good. She did it unconsciously before and she could again.”

“Did what before?” I turned off the shower, reached for a towel, and stepped out, soap still in my hair. I wrapped the towel around me. “Please, Alice, I want to know. What did I do to my friends?”

“You ‘crossed them over’ as you call it. Some would say you banished them from your living world.”

I sat down hard on the edge of the tub. “I didn’t know…I didn’t mean to…”

Alice was suddenly beside me. “I know, and I’m sure they know that, too. They loved you, Kelsey, and they are in a good place.”

“How do you know?”

Alice didn’t answer me.

“Why weren’t you banished?”

“I’m older than the others,” Alice said carefully.

“She’s a damn angel,” Cat said.

“An angel?” I breathed.

Alice glared at Cat. “I am what I am, and I do not appreciate labels. I am stronger than those who have been dead for less time. That is all you need to know, Kelsey. You have the ability to banish ghosts, and you also taught yourself how to defend yourself from them.”

I smiled at that. “You mean by pretending I don’t see them.”

“No. Ghosts are usually drawn to mediums with your ability by a sort of sixth sense. You have blocked their ability to find you.”

“But some do find me. Doug and—”

“I think that if you really think about it, you will recall that you gave him a more obvious reason to talk to you. The ghosts you meet are accidentals, and you give away your ability by noticing them.”

“Accidentals?”

“Ghosts who just happen to be crossing the street at the same time you are or whatever,” Cat answered. Alice was gone.

“So I can get rid of Landon by asking him to leave me alone?”

“There’s probably more to it than that.”

“Don’t you know?”

Cat shook her head. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before. I doubt Alice has, either. She just observed that you asked the ghosts to leave, and they all crossed.”

“Maybe they were just ready to cross?”

“Not likely,” Cat said. “You should try to remember exactly what you did when you were a kid to get the ghosts to leave you alone.”

“Does it have anything to do with me blocking my signal or whatever it is?”

Cat shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never heard of anyone being able to do that, either. All the mediums I know get rid of ghosts by being assholes.”

“You aren’t a medium?”

Cat looked at me for a long moment. “I’m a reaper. This body is one I took from someone else on a permanent loan. Turns out the body I’ve got has the ability to see and hear reapers.”

“The body?”

“Sometimes, the ability is with the soul and sometimes, it is physical. For Agatha Simpson, it was physical. Other reapers don’t waste their time bothering me for anything; I have a reputation.”

I stared at her, feeling like I ought to be shocked or sickened, but actually feeling neither. Maybe my shock capacity had been reached. I started to get back into the shower when I thought of something else. “There’s something I wanted to ask you, Cat. Landon used Reid’s body when he attacked me the first time, but he hasn’t used Reid or anyone else since. Do you know why he would do that?”

“Landon’s young, and it takes more energy than he has to enter multiple host bodies. The first time requires the most energy, but slipping back into Reid again would’ve been easy. Based on what you’ve told me about Reid, he’s a crazy motherfucker, and Landon probably didn’t like sharing in that.”

“So Landon would feel that?”

“When he’s just squatting in a body, he would get a good bit of the host’s thoughts and feelings.”

“I wouldn’t think that would bother Landon,” I said, getting back into the shower.

“The only other possibility is that it’s some sort of strategy. Like, he’s enjoying messing with you in your dreams, and he’s saving Reid for some sort of big finale.”

“Great.” I groaned, turning the water back on.

“You just work on figuring out how you banished those ghosts when you were a kid, and we’ll figure out the rest.”

I heard the click of the door closing and then blissful silence.

When I stepped out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, I found clothes waiting for me on Caleb’s bed. Jed had laid out my nicest pair of dry-clean only black slacks and the only cashmere sweater I had ever owned. The sweater was pale pink, like the luminous inner lining of a seashell, and I almost never wore it. I was too scared of something happening to it. For the most part, I kept it in my closet and visited it every couple of weeks, just to feel it against my skin. I dressed and went out into the living room. Jed was on the couch playing a video game with Caleb. “Thanks for the clothes, Jed, but did you bring any of my other clothes?”

Jed didn’t look at me, just pointed at a trash bag near the door. My thrifty version of a laundry hamper. I usually did laundry on Sundays, but I’d been a bit preoccupied.

“I brought this, too,” Jed said and he held a ring out to me without taking his eyes off the video game. “It was on your dresser so I figured you wore it all the time.”

I took the ring from him and slid it on my finger. It was the ring Angelica had lent me when we went dancing. Hard to believe it had only been a few days ago. The ring looked good on me and if I squinted my eyes just right, I could almost believe she was still my friend. Her ring on my finger proved it. I’d give it back to her the next time I saw her.

Caleb looked up at me. “Are you ready to go?”

“Yeah, I’ll be back before eleven,” I said on my way to the door. I was putting on my coat when he stood and walked over to join me.

“I’m going with you,” he said, and his tone didn’t leave any room for arguing, and I didn’t mind having him with me. I might not be ready to hide in the condo forever, but I didn’t want to face Reid on my own again, either. Caleb had already pulled on his coat and was putting on his hat and gloves as I opened the door and started out.

We were at the bottom of the stairs when he spoke. “So Cat tells me you have a guardian angel.”

“What? You mean Alice? I didn’t think there were any such things as guardian angels.”

Caleb laughed. “Technically, there aren’t. I was pretty sure they were just an urban legend.”

“Doesn’t everyone have one?”

“Nope. If Cat’s right, Alice isn’t an angel at all. She’s just a very old, very powerful ghost who decided you’re worth protecting. The legend is that guardian angels are linked to a living person on a level so deep that they can sense if the person they are protecting is in danger, even over long distances.”

“So that’s why she showed back up so suddenly and why she appeared at the moment Cat was about to tell me something she thought would hurt me.”

“Pretty much. You must have done something pretty special for her.”

“I just played with her.”

Pounding footsteps behind us made my heart race and I froze. I hadn’t realized how afraid I was until that moment. The footsteps couldn’t be Landon, of course, but they could be Reid, ready to carry out his threats. The footsteps caught up to us, carrying a gasping, winded Jed. “Hey, we’re all set.”

Caleb nodded and kept walking as Jed fell into step beside us. “Good. I’m going to run ahead and check out the store.” And Caleb was off without another word.

“Wanna fill me in on what’s going on?” I asked, but Jed just smiled at me.

“Only if you tell me what’s going on between you and my brother.”

“No,” I said.

“He seems to really like you, and he won’t tell me anything about what’s going on between the two of you, so I figured I’d ask you.”

“And you think I’m going to tell you anything after you told me Caleb’s not talking?”

Jed smiled. “It never hurts to try. I mean, I can get why he likes you, though you’re not my type or anything. You’re too girl-next-door, like that chick from the Wonder Years.”

“I don’t look anything like her.”

“Yeah, but you know what I mean.”

“Um, no, I don’t.” He laughed and I couldn’t help but smile. The word jolly would perfectly suit him, and he made me want to laugh with him. “What is your type, anyway?”

“Oh, you know.” He used his hands to outline a curvy woman in the air. “Not that you don’t have a beautiful body, but I go for chicks that are more…not trashy exactly, but well…strippers. I date strippers or girls who look like they could be strippers if given the opportunity.”