Was that what had gone wrong with Thane? Had he given up his humanity to avoid suffering guilt and loss? If I took the easy way out, would I turn out just like he had?
“You’ve only been dead for a month,” Tod said, drawing me out of the most terrifying temptation I’d ever experienced. “Your emotions are going to be inconsistent for a while.” His voice sounded kind of distant, muffled by the sound of running water. “Sometimes it’s hard to feel anything, then suddenly you feel everything all at once, and I honestly couldn’t tell you which of those is harder to deal with.”
“This.” My voice sounded hollow. Why did my voice sound hollow? “This is the hardest to deal with.” The numbness I’d been resisting for weeks was suddenly the most appealing thought in the world.
But Tod had made it. He’d held on to his humanity in spite of the pain, and if he could do it, I could do it.
“Come here.” Tod stepped into the doorway, and that’s when I realized he’d left the room in the first place.
I stood and took two steps toward him. Then I stopped and glanced around. The room was tiny—space only for the twin bed, armchair, and a small television on a cart. “Where are we?”
He tugged me into the other room with him and I realized it was a bathroom. A tiny bathroom, with a shorter-than-standard shower/tub combo, a toilet, and a pedestal sink, with hardly any room between them. Water was running in the tub. Steaming water.
“This is my place.” Tod slid his hands beneath the sides of my shirt, and his skin was
“You have a place?”
“It was supposed to be a surprise. Everyone gets a locker, but there aren’t enough rooms for all the reapers, and I’m kinda low on seniority,” he said, and I wondered if he was talking just so I’d have something to listen to. To keep my mind off things I shouldn’t think. “That never mattered before, though—I always just hung out at my mom’s house when I wasn’t working, whether they could see me or not. But after you died…” He shrugged, then tugged the sticky material over my head, careful not to let it touch my face. “I put my name on the waiting list the next day. This spot opened up yesterday.”
“Yesterday?” That was good timing. Too good. “Because of Mareth…” My eyes closed, denying this new layer of pain when I had yet to deal with the others. They were too heavy. I could hardly move. “This was Mareth’s room?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He dropped my shirt on the floor, in the corner, then turned me by my shoulders and unhooked my bra. “But she’s not the only one missing. Two more reapers have disappeared in the past few days. One before her. One after her.”
“And you inherited a room.”
“Yeah.” He reached for the button on my jeans, but I brushed his hand away. I could do it. I wasn’t a baby.
“Because Levi doesn’t think they’re coming back.” I slid my jeans over my hips and stepped out of them one leg at a time.
“Yeah.” Tod reached over to turn the water off while I stepped out of my underwear, and I was already calf- deep in the water before I realized I was naked. In front of him. I should have been embarrassed, or at least nervous. I’d been naked with him before, obviously, but last time there’d been more touching than looking.
But he wasn’t looking now. He was very obviously not-looking, which was good, because I couldn’t think about being naked. Not until the blood was gone. The water was pink with it.
There was so much blood.
Tod set a bottle of guy-shampoo on the edge of the tub, along with a bottle of guy-body wash. “I’m going to go…take care of things. I’ll bring some clean clothes, too.”
I caught his hand, and finally he looked at me. At my eyes, which were wet again, and I wondered if we could both pretend I’d gotten bathwater in them. “Don’t leave.”
“I’ll be back. You’re safe here. No one else can get in. There’s no door.”
“No door?” I hadn’t noticed, but now that he’d mentioned it, I realized he was right. The other room had no door, except the one leading to the bathroom.
“Reapers don’t need them,” he explained. “I’ll be back. If the water gets cold, run some more. Here’s a towel.” He laid one hand on a folded towel on the shelf above the toilet—one of only two. “Sorry, I don’t have a robe.”
“It’s okay.”
“Just…stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Then he was gone.
I lay back in the tub, but it was short, so I had to bend my knees, and they got cold. I opened the guy- shampoo and sniffed the bottle. It smelled like Tod’s hair, and for some reason, that made me cry.
I tried not to think, but that got harder with each second of silence. So I slid beneath the surface. I didn’t even have to hold my breath. I just…stopped breathing. I don’t know how long I stayed under, blinking up at the world through hazy pink water. Minutes, maybe. Or maybe an hour. I didn’t have to come up, so I didn’t.
Until someone shouted my name. “Kaylee!”
“Give her some privacy,” Tod said, and I blinked. Then I frowned.
“She’s not coming up!” Nash insisted. And it
Water sloshed around me as I sat up with my arms crossed over my chest, to find Tod blocking the bathroom doorway with his back to me, one hand on Nash’s chest, holding him back. “She doesn’t have to breathe, remember?”
Careful to keep myself covered, I scrubbed water from my eyes with one hand and blinked at Nash just as Tod shoved him into the bedroom. It wasn’t a hard push. But it wasn’t a push that would be misunderstood, either.
“I brought you some clothes, but I couldn’t get your robe out of the bathroom without having to explain something to your dad.” Tod set a stack of clothes on the closed toilet seat, because there was nowhere else to put them.
“Thanks.”
“How do you feel?”
“Lost. I feel lost.” I was supposed to save souls, not take lives. I was supposed to protect my friends, not kill them. How had this happened? This
Tod sank to his knees next to the tub and put one hand on my bare back. “You’re not lost, Kaylee. You can’t ever be lost, because I’ll always know where you are. And if I’m not there with you, I’m on my way, and nothing standing between us will be standing for very long.”
Tears blurred my vision again, but he was still beautiful, even out of focus. “Promise?”
“I swear on my very existence.”
I believed him. I’d never believed in anything more.
Tod stepped out of the room and pulled the door closed, but didn’t latch it, and while I lathered my hair on autopilot, I listened. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I heard enough.
“What am I doing here?” Nash demanded in a fierce whisper. “Listening to the two of you is like having spikes driven through my ears.”
“I think actual victims of impalement would disagree with you there.”
“She’s naked,” Nash hissed.
“That’s how a bath works.”
“You’re sleeping with her, aren’t you?” Nash made a horrible choking sound, and I flinched. “Is that why you brought me here? To rub it in my face?”
