Now, among his peers, he did the same thing. He picked a corner of a gilded frame hanging on the wall opposite him and stared at it, shutting himself away from everyone else. Arianne’s words of hate echoed through the emptiness inside. He’d watched her from afar since that day at the cemetery. He couldn’t bring himself to leave her alone. He needed to make sure nothing happened to her.
Arianne didn’t come to school. Instead, she’d take long walks around their neighborhood without a real purpose. She wandered aimlessly, the dark crescents under her eyes a stark contrast to her ever paling skin. The tangled nest her hair had become slapped him black and blue. He remembered how soft those strands felt between his fingers.
Some nights, Arianne would sit on a park bench after hours of walking and fall asleep. Niko would then carry her home, using his gifts to keep her from waking. And every time her father or mother opened the door to let them in, their worried expressions eased somewhat.
“Thank you for looking out for her,” her father whispered to him the fifth time Niko brought Arianne home. Tears welled within the older man’s eyes.
Niko nodded at him, not saying a word, and left after settling Arianne in her bed and pulling the sheets around her. Nothing could keep him away from her for long. Not even his duties. She needed him too much, even if she didn’t know it.
“Nikolas,” his master’s cool tone returned his thoughts to the meeting, “have you anything to report?”
They all observed him. Some bored. Some attentive. Others curious. Only Tomas’s face wore concern.
Niko’s sigh came from a place deeper than the Mariana Trench. “Steady as she goes in Georgia. All Certificates have been and will be continually enforced. End of report.”
“Well—” Death tapped a rhythm on his chair’s armrest “—that was certainly…”
“I think the word you’re looking for, Master, is uninspired,” Janika purred, chin on fist. “If you’ve noticed, our dear Reaper of Georgia hasn’t been paying attention to the little gathering we have here.”
“Bite me,” Niko snarled under his breath, which he knew everyone still clearly heard.
“You see what I mean?” Janika shook her head without lifting her chin from her fist. “He doesn’t even have a decent comeback anymore.”
Niko had Janika pinned against the wall with her neck nearly crushed between his fingers before anyone could react. “Has anyone ever told you that you get on their nerves?” he said in a deadly whisper.
Janika presented him with her teeth. “All the time,” she rasped.
Tomas and Travis separated the two and shoved them into their respective seats.
“Do I need to change my very packed, very busy schedule just to scold you two?” Death asked.
No one dared speak. Not even Tomas.
An electric charge pinched every surface of exposed flesh on Niko’s body: his hands, neck, and face. And he had no doubt everyone else felt it too. “I apologize for my lapse in manners, Master. It will not happen again.”
The cowl turned to him, the darkness within complete and limitless. “I just took you off of probation. Today, I wonder if I have been mistaken in my decision.” He regarded Janika as well.
She had her head bowed when she said, “No, Master. We will behave.”
“You do that,” said Death.
As if on cue, the next Reaper began his report.
A hand caught Niko by the collar of his jacket as he filed out of the room with the other Reapers. Before he could spin around to punch the jerk with no manners, the scenery changed to his bedroom. He breathed in through his nose and exhaled through his mouth in an attempt to clear away the nausea that rose from not closing his eyes during the sudden teleportation. The hand that held him in place like an unruly kitten let him go. He turned, fist at the ready. When he recognized the dark suit with a light gray pin-stripe, he stepped back and dropped his hand to his side.
“You could have at least given me some warning, Tomas,” Niko said, his head bowed in shame for ever raising a hand against his mentor.
“What’s happened to you, Nikolas? Are you slipping back into—”
“I’m not depressed!”
Tomas came closer, resting his hand on Niko’s shoulder. “Then what it is?”
Niko shrugged off his touch and moved to the other side of his room. “Arianne hates me.”
“How could she—”
“I reaped her sister without knowing it.”
“You’ve got to stop interrupting me.” Tomas sighed like a father speaking to a troubled teen. “Last time I checked, conversations involve two or more participants.”
Appearing before his mentor, Niko lifted Tomas’s hand and pressed its knuckles to his forehead. “I apologize. I’m more on edge than depressed.” He returned to his previous position across the room. “I should have looked at the Certificates before enforcing them.”
“And what would that have done?” Tomas leaned on one of the posts of Niko’s bed. “Would you have stopped the reaping?”
Frustration manifested as Niko bared his teeth. “I could have prepared her, at least. She didn’t have to find out that I was a Reaper through the death of her sister. She thinks I killed Carrie.” He punched a hole through the wall. Flecks of plaster rained down from the ceiling.
Dusting off his shoulders, Tomas said, “It’s a common misconception that we’re killers since deaths do happen whenever we are near.”
“Are you lecturing me, Tomas?” Niko extricated his fist from the wall he’d injured.
“I am your teacher after all.” He raised both hands in a sign of surrender. “But I wouldn’t be that presumptuous.” He waited until Niko took several calming breaths before he continued. “I told you, first love can be fleeting. I think you’ve just reached the expiration date of yours. Let her go before you do something you would regret.”
Deaf to Tomas’s words, Niko stabbed him with a heated glare before disappearing.
Niko arrived at his destination behind a large shrub across the street just as Arianne pulled the front door shut. The once perfect pair of jeans that hugged her curves now hung baggily over her legs. The gray hoodie she zipped up engulfed the whole upper half of her body. She didn’t bother to look around, just scampered down the five porch steps to the lawn and took off at a brisk pace, hunched over with hands in the front pockets of her jeans.
“What are you doing to yourself, Ari?” Niko asked no one. He pushed away the urge to shake some sense into her by setting his jaw and following Arianne at a stalker’s distance. Not that he worried she’d see him. In his experience, not once did Arianne bother to be aware of her surroundings. She just walked and walked and walked. She only stopped at the park to sit on a random bench and fall asleep.
Niko hadn’t followed Arianne long when a red Honda came careening down the street. He paid no attention to the car until it crossed over to the opposite lane. It sped up as it approached Arianne. Heart at the pit of his stomach, Niko didn’t think.
Chapter 21
THE ALBINO CROW PERCHED on Death’s chair cawed just as he signed the last Death Certificate from the
