The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) (28 page)

“And Jed? He was a good brother to you,” I
said, before I thought. Caleb’s self-righteousness had pissed me
off.

He stepped away from me, his hands clenched
in tight fists. He wanted to hit me, but he wouldn’t. If I went
with him and agreed to marry him, I doubted his self-control would
be so good. I’d never have thought of him as the kind of guy who
would hit a woman, but the look on his face left no doubt. “You
don’t know anything about that. He left me behind. He was the
golden boy, while I stayed home and worked like a slave. I owe him
nothing.”

I took a step toward him, almost wishing he’d
hit me so I’d have an excuse to beat his sorry ass to a bloody
pulp. I put a hand on his arm and spoke in a soothing voice. “I’m
sorry, Caleb. You’re right, I don’t know anything about it.” Then I
gave him the best look of admiration I could. I pictured him as
every super hero I’d ever rooted for, as every leader I’d revered.
His hands released, but the look on his face didn’t grow less
stony. “What you’ve done is amazing, Caleb. I’m so fascinated, I
just want to know every detail.”

“You don’t need to know anything but what I
tell you,” he said, his teeth clenched. “I’ve had enough of people
in my life questioning and doubting me. I need you to trust me
without hesitation. If I don’t get back to town within the next
twenty-four hours, we’ll have to wait another year. I want to give
you the normal life you deserve, but I need you to prove you trust
me and get me free.”

Shit. There was no way back. Not without more
time and me prostituting myself. I needed to think, but he glared
at me, impatient, and I knew I had to act quickly. If I kept him
there, he’d know I was playing him and we’d have every reaper in
Briarton descending on us to get him back by the deadline. If we
let him go, we had a shot at stopping the ceremony, but only if we
got back to Briarton in time and with enough manpower to get
through the guards they’d surely have.

“I do. I do trust you. But I’m a prisoner
here myself, I don’t think they’ll listen to me.” I couldn’t risk a
glance at Tucker, but I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye. He
agreed with me.

I crossed back over before Caleb could
suggest more physical contact.

Thad leaned forward in his seat on my bed,
elbows on his knees. Tucker had Caleb on his leash in the other
room. “Did you get any information?”

“She damn well better have gotten some
information after everything—” Holly started. She was standing,
leaning against the wall near the door.

“Well,” I said calmly, but firmly enough that
Holly stopped and looked at me. “I’m not sure I can trust you with
the information—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Thad slapped his hands
on his thighs and stood. “Kelsey, I’m sorry we didn’t share our
plan with you. We were only doing what we thought needed to be done
to keep you safe.”

“And what about Angelica?”

Even Isobel rolled her eyes at that one, and
I almost felt bad about beating a dead horse. Almost.

“We did what we could to help Angelica and
she refused to be helped.” Thad sat back down on the bed. “They
were going to kill you, Kelsey. What good would you have been to
Angelica if you were dead?”

“I made a deal.”

“You didn’t agree to die.”

“Maybe not, but you should have talked to me.
You should have asked me first.”

“We wanted to,” Thad said. “But everything
went to hell so quickly. There wasn’t time.”

“Okay, does everyone feel all warm and fuzzy
now?” Holly asked. “Can we get back to business?”

I ignored her and spoke to Thad. I told him
everything Caleb told me. “The thing is, he said he has to give
this reaper what she wants to end the curse. I think she’s going to
reap Angelica, so that she can live with Bruce. And it’s going to
happen soon. Caleb said the ceremony is tomorrow night. Which means
Angelica’s still alive, and we need to go back and get her
out.”

“If we go back the only thing we get is
dead,” Isobel said. “We should turn Caleb over to Varius and let
them deal with it. We keep Caleb from performing the ceremony, and
the reapers don’t get their power source.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her, but I
couldn’t think of a single convincing argument.

Thad looked around the room. “Any of you ever
hear of something like this ceremony before?”

Isobel, Holly, and Rooster all shook their
heads.

“Sounds like a witch thing to me,” Holly
said. “I don’t know any witches.”

“I do, but you kidnapped me away from her,” I
said. “If you took me back—”

“I’ll make some calls,” Rooster said. He
stood and left the room.

“So are we going to do this?” I asked. “Are
we going to go back and fight the reapers?”

“You sure you don’t have a death wish?”
Isobel asked. She was seated on the floor, her back against the
couch. Dark circles ringed her eyes and she looked about ten years
older than she had the last time I’d seen her. She didn’t appear to
have any injuries, though.

“It might seem that way, but I promise you I
don’t want to die. I’d just
rather
die than turn my back on
Angelica or this town.”

Thad grinned at me. “I don’t have any great
love for Briarton, but what you’ve gotten from Caleb is good. I
think we can use it. Now that we have Caleb, we have time. The
mayoral election isn’t for another month, so we have a few weeks to
recruit some more people and go back in.”

“It’s not like they’ll be going anywhere,”
Holly said. “But you really think they’re just going to let us keep
Caleb? They’re going to come after him. We need somewhere to keep
him they won’t find him, and we need more guards.”

“Wasn’t there a reaper you brought with you?
I mean an LC?” I asked.

“He got smart and left. He watched his
partner die and decided we didn’t have enough to offer him,” Isobel
said. “Look, I get that this town is important to you, but there’s
no point in wasting resources and people to keep Caleb away from
the reapers. Even if we manage to do it for the next 24 hours,
they’ll be after him, to try again the next day or the next.
There’s no way they’re just going to let an opportunity for power
pass them by.”

“So, what? We just let them take it? We let
them have the power source?”

Isobel shrugged. “I’m with you for keeping
Caleb safe for the next 24 hours, but after that, I’m out and I’m
not going to back to Briarton.”

“Without more information, I agree that our
best option is to hold onto Caleb. We can’t fight all of them, but
if we keep them from getting the power from the curse, I figure
some of the reapers will drift away,” Thad said. “In the meantime,
we can call everyone we know and try to put together enough people
to take out the ones who are left before they get a second shot at
breaking the curse. Isobel’s right, though. We can’t spend a ton of
time on this. We make our attempt and, if we lose, we walk
away.”

“And so we rest and recharge until the
morning,” Thad said, falling back onto the bed and propping his
head up with his hands.

Isobel shook her head. “It might be a good
idea to move further down the road. They’ll be looking for Caleb
and they could have easily tailed us here.”

“We would have seen them if they’d tailed
us,” Holly said, her tone curt. Apparently she felt Isobel was
insulting her in some way.

I tended to agree with Isobel. “We’re not
exactly well-hidden here,” I said. “Isn’t there a safe house where
we could go?”

“This is fine,” Thad said, his eyes
half-closed. “Hiding in plain sight and all of that. There are too
many hotels for them to search to find us.”

Holly grinned. “I’ll take first watch.”

“I’m going to train,” Isobel said. “We had
some lucky breaks tonight, but none of us are as good as we need to
be.”

“I’d love to sleep,” I said. “I’m not going
to be able to fight at all unless I get some rest.”

“Your funeral,” Isobel said and shrugged.
“I’m hitting the fitness center. Thad?”

Thad shook his head. “I’m sleeping.”

“Mind if I crash in here?” Thad asked after
Holly and Isobel left. “I don’t think I’ll get much sleep with
Rooster in research mode.”

“Sure,” I said. I was still in the pajamas
I’d had on when Jed kidnapped me, so I just crawled into bed. Thad
didn’t suffer from such modesty. He stood and stripped down to his
boxers. Seeing him shirtless, his ab muscles tight and rippling,
made me smile with the pleasure of seeing a beautiful body. Thad
caught my look and smiled back at me.

“You and Jed, right?”

“What?”

His smile widened. “He told me to stay the
hell away from you.”

He crawled under the covers and turned off
the light.

I lay in the dark and tried to figure out why
Jed would say that to Thad. Jed had never shown any interest in me.
If anything he seemed repulsed by my touch.

Still, I couldn’t help but smile in the dark.
More than likely, he was just telling Thad to stay away from me so
he wouldn’t convince me to join Len’s team, but I couldn’t work up
any real anger or annoyance.

I lay in bed for an hour, tossing and
turning, chased by worry and fear for Angelica and Bruce. Fear for
myself. I was so tired my eyes hurt. I desperately wanted to sleep,
but I couldn’t get there.

“Having trouble sleeping?” Thad asked,
sounding alert and wide awake.

I sat up in bed. “Yeah. Sorry if I’m keeping
you up.”

“Nah. I can’t sleep, either. There’s a bar
downstairs, why don’t we go have a drink. That always helps me
sleep better.”

A drink sounded like heaven. “I really don’t
drink anymore, because… well, you know.”

“No one could reap you after one drink. Not
unless you’ve got absolutely no tolerance.” He waited for me to
confirm or deny.

“No, I’ve always had a pretty high
tolerance.”

Thad flicked on the light and popped out of
bed. I headed to the bathroom with my bag to get dressed and
managed not to check him out again. In the bathroom, I found a
t-shirt, sweatshirt, and a pair of jeans. Jed had forgotten to pack
anything resembling a bra, socks, or underwear and there were no
toiletries in the bag. I’d have to find a toothbrush and deodorant
at some point, but at the moment, I was good enough to go out for a
drink.

It was probably one of the dumber things I’d
done in a long time, leaving the relative safety of the hotel room
to spend time in a strange bar. I probably could have attached a
neon sign to my head, flashing my name and an invitation to step
inside my body. I didn’t care. I was tired of being afraid, of
always looking over my shoulder.

The snow was deep on the ground, and the bar
was bright with Christmas lights. We stepped inside, stamping our
feet to knock off the snow, and were greeted with a roar of “Merry
Christmas” from the fifteen or so patrons, all of them dressed like
they’d spent the day hunting. They probably had.

“Merry Christmas,” Thad said cheerily, waving
to the crowd. They looked Thad over, the women lingering a moment
longer than the men, and went back to their drinks. I was pretty
sure I was invisible next to Thad, who had the gregarious smile and
happy energy that made him seem like the life of the party.

I sat down at the bar feeling sad and
exhausted. I thought of my mother and wondered if she was worried
about me. I couldn’t figure out how my life had gotten so twisted
that I missed Christmas. The holiday had never held the magic for
me that it held for some people. Too often, my father was out of
town, and that was before he left us for good. Christmas just
seemed like another reminder of his absence. Mom tried to make it
special, taking me out to a fancy dinner and buying me the nicest
present she could afford, but our relationship had been awkward at
the best of times and it was usually a relief to both of us for the
day to end. Still, I usually called her, at the very least, and I
knew I should find a phone and let her know I was okay.

“What’ll you have?” Thad asked, as he sat
down on the bar stool next to me.

“Whatever they have on tap,” I said, still
thinking of my mother and deciding not calling her was the safer
choice. I had no good tidings or happiness to impart, and I was
pretty sure the more distance I put between us the safer she’d be.
I doubted she’d worry long.

“Oh, come on, you can do better than that.
It’s Christmas and there’s a town full of reapers who’d like to see
us dead. Make your drink count.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the mock serious
frown on his face. “You really know how to make a girl feel
good.”

He got serious and looked me up and down with
a gaze that took the chill off, even though I knew he was teasing.
I was pretty sure he was teasing. “Oh, I do know how to make a girl
feel good.” He smiled. “Seriously, what’ll you have?”

“Seriously, I like beer. I’ve missed it. If
they’ve got Spider, get me that.”

I looked around as Thad flagged down the
bartender and ordered our drinks. The bar was tiny with room for
only ten tables against the walls, and another ten barstools. It
was also immaculately clean and every inch of it was decorated with
Christmas lights, and paper trees, and candy canes. If there’d been
room for a real tree, I was sure they’d have one. The bar was
happily free of reapers.

The bartender set down our drinks, my beer in
a bottle and a tumbler of something dark and heavy for Thad. Thad
paid and I took a long swallow. It tasted better than I remembered.
I missed being a girl who could have a drink when I felt like it.
Who could go out with a good-looking boy and not wonder if he was
going to be killed, because she’d convinced him to fight beside
her.