A blush exploded on Arianne’s face. “I’m nothing like Darla. She wins in the looks department.”
“Stop being so cynical. Just because you don’t think you’re worth looking at doesn’t mean others don’t notice. Niko was right, you are exquisite. Odd word to use though.”
“Right?” Arianne sighed dreamily. “But I love how formal he sounds. So gentlemanly.”
Carrie rolled her eyes. “A gentleman who doesn’t stay with you in the clinic?”
“See! That’s why, no matter what he says about how exquisite I am, I really think he’s just being nice.”
The sisters held down the fort until their mother arrived. Even an expensive power suit couldn’t hide the haggard chic the strawberry blonde embodied when she walked into the room with several grocery bags.
“Mom,” both girls said at the same time.
“Hey, ladies,” she breathed out, dumping her handbag and groceries on a table.
“Mom, you look—”
A warning glare from Carrie cut short the rest of Arianne’s words.
Their mother flipped her hair. “I’ll take nothing less than ravishing.” Her eyes narrowed at Arianne. “What are you still doing here? You’re father’s on his way home as we speak.”
Both girls grinned like twins. “Talking boys,” they answered.
Her face melted into a teary smile. She squeezed both her daughters into a tight hug. “I love you two!” She kissed them on each cheek then returned to mom mode. “Ari, I left lasagna in the fridge and a load in the wash.”
“I’ll take care of it.” She snuggled Sir Harold. “See you tomorrow?”
Carrie opened her mouth to answer, but it was their mom who said, “She has tests.”
Arianne glanced at the woman who managed to combine sophistication and fatigue into a cover-worthy pose. Her heart scrunched up a little more. “The next day?”
“Of course.”
The sisters hugged and giggled one more time before Arianne left. Counting the tiles on the floor, she gripped the strap of her school bag and hurried to the hospital’s main entrance. When the glass sliding doors parted and the balmy early evening Georgian air welcomed her with open arms, she lifted her gaze and halted in her tracks abruptly.
Chapter 6
NIKO SHUT THE DOOR to his master’s office and shook away the aftereffects of being in his presence. Sitting alone with Death felt like basking in the noon sun. Not only did it burn, it blinded. Normally, being ranked ninth gave him a certain amount of immunity, but with his power supply dwindling, Niko had to white-knuckle through the whole experience.
He refused to rub his eyelids despite his ever blurring vision, knowing Janika watched him like a predator from her seat on the waiting couch. It was upholstered in polar bear fur. He saw two of her when she spoke.
“Let me say this again—you look horrible,” she said. She crossed her legs and spread her arms wide over the top of the couch.
“As if you can match me in looks on my worst day,” Niko retorted. He tried on a smirk, but his lips trembled. Weakness stood arm in arm with him, whispering into his ear to give up. His legs refused to keep him upright. Only the force of his will kept him standing. Barely.
“Oh, why must you continue to antagonize me so? At least make it a fair fight, Nikolas. If I decided to crush you now, I’d only get a slap on the wrist compared to what I have planned for you. But it wouldn’t be a challenge at all in your state.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
“Despite being as weak as a whisp, you still challenge me?” With preternatural speed, she had him pinned against the wall, her long-nailed fingers digging into his neck. She licked his face from jaw to temple. “I like this suicidal side of you. Make one mistake, just one, and I promise I will be the first to volunteer to make you suffer.”
Niko dug the fingernail of his thumb into his palm, focusing on the pain it caused instead of the roiling rage inviting him to snap. He’d be no match for the alligator that had him in its maw. Mental note:
“Janika!” The avalanche of Death’s voice rumbled through the door.
She winced and released Niko. “I’ll see you around,
Niko tidied his suit jacket and tie with shaking fingers. He’d reached his limit. The light beside his gas gauge blinked.
He closed his eyes and concentrated. When he opened them, he still found himself outside Death’s office. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck until vertebrae popped, then tried teleporting again.
Slumped forward on a bench, arms on knees, Niko contemplated how he’d ended up an hour away from home. He’d concentrated enough on the location he wanted to arrive at, yet here he sat, on a bench shaded by a tree, facing a main road across from a hospital. His internal GPS had conked out on him. He didn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. He’d used up the last of his energy, bringing with it a buoyancy he’d heard associated with the Fade.
A woman walking a poodle gave him a half-hearted version of a concerned citizen.
“Are you all right, young man?” she asked.
Niko glanced up at her and squinted. He couldn’t find the strength to put on his usual mask of mortality. “I’m fine, ma’am,” he whispered, voice an inch away from the grave.
The poodle eyed him suspiciously.
Niko had to resist the urge to flick a ping of energy he couldn’t spare at the canine snob.
“Maybe you should go to the hospital,” the woman suggested. Her face said something along the lines of “I should’ve minded my own business.”
“Look, lady,” Niko said, “it’s obvious that you don’t really want to help me. And you won’t be of any help. Now, move along with your anorexic dog and leave me alone.”
“Well, I—” She sniffed then harrumphed and yanked at her dog’s leash, which caused the animal to yip.
Niko returned to figuring out the logistics of getting home. He needed to siphon residual energy as soon as possible. The hospital provided souls, but he needed to immerse himself fully, and the only place that contained enough souls, stored there by his minions, awaiting transport, was his basement. All he had strength for was to sit without falling over.
“Is this it?” he asked himself, tilting his head up to watch the sky change from pinch pink to bruise purple. “Why have I been so careless?”
The question intrigued him. If only he had time to reflect on it further. Why had he allowed himself to get so weak? Did he really want to fade away? He’d lived many lives. At the beginning, he’d enjoyed what his lives had to offer. He grew into himself, learning what it meant to be a Reaper, the power he accumulated in time to eventually find himself within the top ten—a private club with members that hardly changed. He couldn’t even remember the last time a new Reaper had joined their ranks. Then, and he wasn’t quite sure when, his lives started looking the same. Different lifetimes. Different decades. But everything remained the same. He grew up, went to school, graduated college, found an acceptable, yet modest job that kept him from being discovered as anything but human, then he died of old age to start the cycle all over again. He’d seen countless wars, reaped all those souls. He’d driven the first car. Watched man land on the moon. Observed the bursting of the dot com bubble. He’d seen the world change many times over, become a witness to the evolution of society. He should have been excited, happy, eager to wake up every morning with the knowledge that he did his job well. But as he sat on the increasingly lumpy bench, he found himself asking, “What do I have to live for?”
“Niko?” a voice he’d heard for the first time earlier that day swathed him in comfort. “What’re you doing here? And why are you in a suit like you just came from a funeral? Who died?”
