The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) (2 page)

Mrs. Freeman answered the door before Cat’s
finger connected with the doorbell. “Hello, ladies. Come on in. I
baked cookies,” she said with a warm smile.

Something was wrong. Mrs. Freeman never
called us ladies. She always called us girls and the only thing she
cooked was toast. I took a step backward and Cat moved in front of
me. She had noticed the change, too.

Despite all I’d learned from Cat, she had
made me promise repeatedly to run at the first sign of trouble and
get back to the safe house as quickly as possible.

“Go,” Cat hissed over her shoulder, but I
couldn’t leave her. Cold and obnoxious she might be, but she was my
friend and I would do whatever I could to help her.

“Mrs. Freeman,” Cat said, her voice even.
“When did you start baking?”

Mrs. Freeman grabbed Cat’s wrist and pulled
her toward the house. I grabbed Cat’s waist and pulled back with
everything I had, but Cat jerked away from me and threw a round
kick at the elderly woman’s waist. Mrs. Freeman dodged the kick,
releasing Cat’s wrist, and came up with a knife that she slashed
across Cat’s stomach. Blood sprayed bright red and Cat doubled
over. Mrs. Freeman pulled Cat against her body, turning her and
wrapping an arm around her neck.

Somehow, petite, delicate Mrs. Freeman was
stronger than Cat and she couldn’t get free, though she struggled.
Her shirt was dark with blood, and every movement she made twisted
her face with pain. I leapt forward to help her, but Mrs. Freeman
put the knife to Cat’s throat and I froze.

I froze. I froze and Mrs. Freeman pulled the
blade across Cat’s neck. Cat’s expression stilled in shock and her
eyes met mine for a brief instant before they emptied. The depth of
sadness in them made me gasp. I stepped back, expecting Mrs.
Freeman to move on to me, but she jumped into the house, dropping
Cat’s body on the stoop. “Don’t run yet, little one. I want you to
tell them exactly what we did to her.”

I knelt beside Cat, but I couldn’t find a
pulse. Mrs. Freeman just stood there, sneering at me and waiting.
Cat’s spirit rose from her body, and she looked completely
different in her spirit form. She was still beautiful, but she was
shorter and thinner. I might have thought she was a child, if she
didn’t have full breasts and small lines near her eyes. She opened
her mouth to say something to me, but another reaper appeared and
punched her in the face before she could speak.

Fear pounded hard in my head and sorrow
weighed heavy in my chest, and both emotions held me back when I
tried to cross over to help her.

She looked at me through the misty veil that
separated the world of the living from the dead. “It’s okay,
Kelsey. I’ve had good lives.” Then she turned to face the other
reaper and began to fight.

Her words and her assumption that I wouldn’t
be able to help her, annoyed me enough to snap out of my fear. I
pushed away everything and tried to find my center and calm myself
as Tucker had been teaching me to do. Cat punched the other reaper,
who looked like a female bodybuilder on steroids, and kicked her in
the gut, but the woman didn’t back down. Cat looked sluggish, as
though she were fighting through a viscous liquid. I guess dying
will do that to a person’s reflexes. I crossed over as the reaper
pushed Cat to the ground and placed a hand over her mouth. I kicked
the reaper in the side with everything I had and she flew off Cat
and through the air for about fifty feet. Fighting in the spirit
realm while I had a living body in the real world gave me a sort of
super-strength.

Cat looked dazed as I pulled her to her
feet.

“You have to run,” I said.

Before either of us could do anything, I was
knocked to the ground by the roid-reaper, who barreled into my gut
with her head, knocking me to the ground, and sat on me. She smiled
and wagged her finger. “We don’t want to kill you, but we will if
you cause too much trouble.”

Over her shoulder, I saw another reaper
fighting with Cat, but it wasn’t much of a fight. Cat blocked a
couple of punches, but her offensive moves were weak and it didn’t
take the reaper long to knock her to the ground. I bucked and
twisted under the ‘roid-reaper, and managed to push her off me and
deliver a hard kick to her face. By the time I got to my feet and
started toward Cat, I could tell I wasn’t going to make it to her
in time. The other reaper had his hands on Cat’s cheeks like he was
a lover, and I could see Cat’s form getting less and less
solid.

It only took a moment, but it felt like a
lifetime, while I tried to make my feet move more quickly and Cat
faded away. Then she was gone and the reaper who’d destroyed her
winked at me and blinked out of sight.

The ‘roid reaper knocked me to the ground
again by jumping on my back. She was heavy, but I was super-strong,
so I pushed against her weight and rose to my hands and knees.

“Let her go, Dolly,” Mrs. Freeman said. “If
we destroy her, there will be no one left to tell them what
happened to Cat.”

Dolly backed up, hands in the air, and I
returned to my body.

Mrs. Freeman was still there, standing in the
doorway and smiling. “Run now, little lamb. Run back to your
minders and tell them what we’ve done. Tell them the war has begun.
We will do the same to any they allow to adopt a body. We will do
the same to anyone who threatens us. And we will do the same to
you, as soon as your usefulness is done.”

Mrs. Freeman lunged at me and I turned and
ran, like the coward I was.

I raced into the condo and locked the door as
though normal locks would protect me. I couldn’t stop sobbing long
enough to catch my breath. Cat was dead. I kept repeating the words
in my head, but I couldn’t accept it. Any moment, I was sure, she
or her ghost would show up, slap me, and tell me to get a grip.

“Kelsey? What happened?”

I startled, and looked up to see Tucker
hovering over me. I grounded myself in his eyes and took deep, slow
breaths until I could speak. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t help
her. I tried… I should have…”

“What happened?”

I told him between sobs. He nodded. “Don’t
blame yourself. I know Cat doesn’t. There was nothing you could
have done against them. For the old lady to be able to kill Cat so
easily, she must have been possessed by an extremely powerful
reaper. If anyone deserves blame, it’s me.” He frowned. “I thought
you were safe here with Cat and I went too far. I shouldn’t have
left. I’m sorry.”

“No, I should have been able to help her. I
just froze, Tucker, and I couldn’t cross over fast enough. I
watched them kill her and I did nothing.”

He wrapped an arm around me, but he remained
ghostly and his arm just passed through me. “We should have spent
more time working on you crossing over, but it might not have made
much difference. I’m not sure anything could have prepared you for
seeing Cat killed in front of you and shock does funny things to
all of us. Please don’t blame yourself.”

His words floated around me like hope, but I
couldn’t accept them. I felt like I’d swallowed a ball of lead, and
I was too heavy for something as light as hope. If I’d been a
better person, if I’d been stronger and braver, Cat would still
have been there with us. I knew arguing would be a waste of time
and breath, so I forced a smile and nodded. “I won’t, but we are
going to go after them, right? We can’t let them get away with
killing Cat.”

He smiled, but it was a sad, wistful smile.
“No, we can’t have that. I need to talk to some people. Do you
think you can call the corporations and your father and tell them
what’s happened?” I nodded and he was gone.

I called Harvest One first and explained the
situation to Cat’s boss, Laurie Merchant. She listened to the story
in silence and promised to inform her bosses and Cat’s family.

I called my father next and left a message on
his cell phone. I hadn’t spoken to him since he’d rescued me from
Caleb and I had expected him to take my call. That he hadn’t made
me worry just a bit. As angry as I was with him sometimes, I didn’t
want anything bad to happen to him.

I called Varius last and asked to speak to
Jed. I didn’t want to talk to him at all, but I didn’t know anyone
else at Varius. It didn’t matter, because he was out of the office
and I was transferred to his boss, a robotic-sounding man who
listened to my story and sighed like the weight of the world was on
his shoulders. He promised to pass the news on to his bosses at
Varius and he thanked me for letting them know, in a tone that
suggested he didn’t thank me at all.

My calls made, I was at a bit of a loss as to
what to do next. I had a good forty-five minutes before I had to be
at work, and I found myself dialing my mother before I realized I
wanted to talk to her. I hadn’t spoken to her in more than a week
and I needed… I just wanted to hear her voice. As much as she drove
me crazy, she was still my mother. She answered on the third
ring.

“Hi, Momma, how are you?”

“I’m fine, Kelsey. It’s been a while since
you’ve called, is everything okay?”

My mother rarely asked about me, she usually
dove into a tale of her latest woes as soon as she answered. My
heart froze in my chest as I wondered if she’d been reaped. I shook
off irrational paranoia, swallowed hard, and forced myself to
speak. “I’m great. I’ve just been really busy.”

“Well, believe me I understand busy. I’ve
been working overtime, myself, and I’m seeing someone new, who, let
me tell you is just a tad too clingy. He wants to spend every
moment with me that I’m not working. That’s why I haven’t called,
sugar. Plus, my AC broke and…”

Ah, there she was. I listened to her ramble
on about her normal life, and let myself forget the violence in my
own, for half an hour. I felt guilty every time I smiled at
something she said, since Cat could never smile again, but I
doubted Cat would begrudge me a few moments of escape.

Mom added guilt trips to my load. Like how I
hadn’t visited her in over four months, and how lonely she was with
her daughter so far away, especially with Christmas approaching.
The usual. I knew she was happier without me at home and I
preferred to keep my distance as well. She’d never really been
comfortable with my abilities and, now that I’d finally been able
to reassure her that her husband, my father, was truly dead, she’d
been busy moving on. I’d lied to her about his death, but he’d
promised never to see her again, so it was a safe lie. It hurt me
just a little that she was moving on from me, too, but I’d accepted
a while ago that it was better that way. I hoped someday we’d have
a closer relationship, but for now, I was happy to be able to call
her and listen to her prattle on about her busy life.

After we hung up, I changed and got ready for
work. I didn’t see any good reason not to go. I’d been threatened
by a reaper, but that was nothing new and I didn’t see how me
sitting on my butt in the apartment all day would do anyone any
good. I put on my coat, hat, scarf, and gloves, and headed back out
into the cold, but sunny day.

The empty store was way too quiet. Sunlight
streamed through the front windows, making dust dance in the light,
and my footsteps echoed on the hardwood floors. It was a small
space to begin with and so packed with inventory that it looked
even smaller. It smelled like books and coffee and I felt more at
home there than I did at the warded condo. I was the first one
there, as usual, and I headed upstairs to find some good music to
restart the day. I was very consciously pretending that nothing bad
had happened and that Cat was waiting for me at the condo, planning
to demand I go work with her at Harvest One. My heart skipped a
beat at that thought and I focused all my energy on choosing an
album for the day.

The store sound system was still pretty old
school, so we didn’t have Sirius or even a digital music system,
but most of the employees had one or the other and had brought in
their old CDs to share, so we had a pretty decent collection of
music. We could play anything we wanted, but everyone groaned if I
put in anything too heavy and I couldn’t stand to listen to pop
music – it made me want to hit things and rip off my ears. I
compromised with a Linkin Park album, and headed downstairs.

Angelica was already behind the counter
filling the register drawer with money. She raised her brows when I
stepped up next to her. “Bad morning?” she asked.

“No,” I said, a little too desperately.
“What? Why?”

She put down the money she was holding and
pointed up. “I was talking about the music, but you’re acting
weird. What happened?”

“What’s wrong with the music? Linkin Park is
mellow, right?” Angelica had been my best friend once. She’d been
willing to accept my ghost-communicating abilities, but the part
where ghosts take over living bodies had been too much for her. I
definitely wasn’t going to tell her about my morning.

She picked her money back up. “You’re
avoiding the question, and, no, Linkin Park is not mellow by
anyone’s standards. I’ll suffer through this album and then I’m
changing it, and I’m picking the next one.”

“Thanks.” She would probably pick something
like Norah Jones or Sarah McLachlan, which was tolerable. They
didn’t make me want to hurt anyone. They just put me to sleep.

I walked around the shop, straightening books
and putting merchandise back where it was supposed to be. Angelica
vacuumed and we met back by the register. There was plenty I should
have been doing upstairs, as the store manager, but I didn’t want
to be alone.

My phone rang just as Angelica opened her
mouth to speak. I considered turning it off without looking at it,
but that would probably only worry someone who would send more
people to disrupt my life.