I am smug in this response for a half heartbeat before he leans in and says, softly, “But what if I do? What if I do want to ‘eat you up’? What if I want to eat you up until you scream?”
Heat swirls low in my belly. It has been so long that it takes me a hot ass second to remember what the feeling is.
Now the realization makes heat flood my face. One side of Samael’s mouth pulls up as if he knows exactly what I am thinking.
Eat me up until I scream.
Did he really just say that?
He leans closer. Closer still, until I am unaware of anything in the world save for his proximity.
His arm slips around my waist, and I feel myself melt into him. My eyes fall shut as he brings his mouth close enough to mine to kiss.
He stops a breath away. “Time’s up,” he says.
There is a jump, a skip as if over the rocks of time. When I open my eyes, I am once again standing outside of my niece’s house, in the exact spot where the reaper found me an hour before.
And Samael is no where to be seen.
11
7:00 p.m.
That’s because it’s time.
The hourglass hanging above Rose’s head confirms it.
The sands therein are close to depleting. Whatever is going to happen to my dear niece, it is going to happen soon—in the next handful of minutes.
I wet my lips, my mouth suddenly dry, stomach nervous. I have felt so many emotions and sensations on this day that I feel simultaneously wired and exhausted. My teeth are set on edge. One hand is clenched into a tight fist around the rod of my scythe. My other hand toys with the elixir I purchased from the Abbah.
The front door of the house opens, and out steps Rose. The setting sun kisses her face as she crosses the porch and bounds happily down the steps. The oblivious peace in her expression coupled with the dwindling sands of the hourglass over her head makes my heart hurt.
Birds call out and summer bugs sing as Rose approaches the mailbox at the end of the drive. When she reaches it, she opens it and peers inside.
I glance up and down the street, expecting to see a car or truck barreling her way, but all is quiet. The sands in her hourglass are so few now, and I don’t breathe for Gods know how long because I don’t need to do so and I forget. My darling Rose has a matter of seconds.
My head is on a swivel, but I see no threat. I even glance upward, as if I expect an anvil or piano to fall from the sky.
The sky is a darkening blue as the last of the grains fall through and settle in the lower half of Rose’s hourglass.
Rose is walking back up the driveway to the porch looking through the mail she collected when she stops in her tracks, and gasps.
I move forward helplessly as the letters in her hands flutter to the ground. She drops with a thud two heartbeats after.
I move closer, crouching over her as she gasps for air, fingers clutching at her chest, eyes wide in confusion and terror.
I am no doctor, but I have seen enough in my seven years of reaping to know that Rose is having a heart attack. She is going to die, and the baby in her belly will die along with her.
Unless I act. Now.
I uncork the life potion and tip it toward Rose’s open mouth. The liquid moves over her tongue and down her throat as though it is alive, and knows exactly where it is going. The skin of her neck and chest glow green as the magic works its way toward her heart.
Her heart, which has just stopped beating.
I am still not breathing. I am not blinking or thinking or anything. Time stands still as I wait to see what happens next.
Rose’s eyes slip closed. Fear steals over me in a wave of frozen ocean water. I am about to issue a curse that will be heard in the heavens.
Then Rose inhales, sucking in air in a sharp gasp. Her eyelids flutter, and I slump down onto my bottom on the walkway beside her, watching as the magic works, bringing her back to life. The beam of her aura brightens, and my eyes fill with tears as I lean forward and place a hand she cannot feel over her belly, where I can still sense the presence of a new life.
Rose pulls herself up slowly, glancing around her as though waking from a dream. I should leave right now, but I cannot even make myself stand. I can only stare at her.
Until a voice says from behind me, “What in the name of the Father is going on here?”
I am on my feet in an instant.
I turn and find myself face-to-face with another reaper.
No doubt the one who had been tasked with collecting Rose’s soul.
Well, shit.
“What is going on?” he asks again when I do not say anything.
I don’t know how much he saw, don’t know what to do at all.
Knox. I’ve come across him before, and our interactions have not been pleasant. Most of the people who end up becoming reapers do so because they were bad enough in their mortal lives to warrant the punishment. My own backstory is a bit of an anomaly. Most reapers are paying a penance, not making a trade, as had I.
Knox goes to move around me, trying to get a look at Rose, who is now climbing the steps of the porch.
I block his path. His eyes narrow.
“What did you do, Cecilia?” he asks.
I feel the aggression coming off him, and it reminds me of when I was a human girl, and a man would make me uncomfortable with his presence and attention.
But I am not a human girl anymore,
