I adjust my grip on my scythe. “Leave, Knox. Just go.”
This is the wrong thing to say. I see immediately that it only further piques his curiosity.
His head tilts, dirty blond hair falling into his eyes. He flips his head so that it flicks out of the way. “I don’t think I will,” he says. “I have a quota to fill. You know that.”
I spread my free hand, lift my shoulders. “Well, as you can see, there is no soul here to be collected, so you can just be on your way.”
He slips his hand into the pocket of his black slacks, the other casually holding his scythe, which is larger than mine, because he is larger than me.
“What I’m wondering is why, though,” he says. He looks over my shoulder, where Rose has retreated into the house. “What were you doing when I walked up? Why were you kneeling over my query like that?” He touches his chin, as if in thought. “She was dead. And then she just got up and walked away. Very curious.”
I brace myself. The situation feels like it’s running along a lit fuse, bound to explode at any moment.
“As I said, there’s no soul to collect here.”
He holds up his list. I know the parchment well. I receive a fresh one myself every morning. The scroll unrolls as he pinches the top of it. Scrawled among the others, I see my niece’s name written there.
Knox runs his tongue out over his lips, flashing teeth long rotted in another lifetime, and making my insides cringe.
“I could maybe be convinced to keep quiet about this,” he says as his eyes scan the length of me. “But I’m going to need something in return… It’s been a long time since I touched a female who I could actually feel, and could feel me back.”
My stomach turns. He disgusts me. I get the feeling he uses a good amount of his free time spying on unsuspecting women and touching himself. The world of the reapers is small, and composed mostly of males. The very fact that I walk the same plane as them and am halfway decent-looking makes me a target.
“Fuck off,” I say.
His expression is equal parts excitement and rage. In my mind all I can see is the fuse reaching the powders, the silent bang that is about to happen.
My scythe is swinging before I can think twice. It cuts through Knox the same as it always has—like a warm knife through butter. There is only time for me to catch a glimpse of surprise on his face before he dissipates entirely, bursting out of existence as though he had never been.
I am dumbstruck as I stand there in the quiet neighborhood, under the warm, fading sun, birds and bugs chirping.
From inside the house, music is playing, old records that my parents had played as a kid, songs passed down through the family. Rose’s sweet voice rises with it, singing along.
I should run. I should get as far away from here as I can, even though no where in the worlds is far enough.
I turn to make my escape, anyway.
And run straight into Samael’s wide chest.
I do not stumble backward, because he catches me.
And slips magical chains around my wrists.
12
8:30 p.m.
I sit upon the ground, legs crossed beneath me, chains upon my wrists, and await my judgement.
I am waiting to be shredded for my crimes, for breaking the rules.
They have taken my scythe from me, and it feels like I have lost a limb. The thing has not left my side since I began this nightmare of a journey seven years ago.
The clearing in which I sit is quiet, no animal or critters crawling through the underbrush, no butterflies floating by on the breeze. Vlad sits on a branch nearby, but the bird is not speaking to me. He is as still as a statue, save for the occasional puff of his ebony chest. Will he be assigned to another reaper, the same way he’d been assigned to me?
I wonder if he will miss me. I wonder if I’ll be able to miss him.
“There is a void, Cecilia,” Sam had said. “So vast and so dark that not even light can escape it… Your soul will be dismantled into its most basic elements, stored, and repurposed into something not at all resembling what it once was. It will be millennia before it emerges from the void again. And then its evolution must begin anew.”
That was the fate I’d sentenced Knox’s soul to, and even though he might not have been the picture of kindness, it was not my job to make such choices. Perhaps I deserved the exact same fate.
I continue waiting. I do not know how much time passes. The silence is so loud that I close my eyes against it. I do not sleep, but never in the past seven years have I wished more that I could.
But there is no reprieve. Not for me.
The sun sets in this strange spot between the realms, and a moon rises, bearing a face full of accusations. I am still sitting as I was when the Father finally comes to visit me. I feel his presence as soon as he is near, and fear steals over me, chilling me to the bone.
He steps out of the shadows of the trees, and he is close, but I cannot see his face, cannot make out any specific features. I have only encountered Father Time once, on the day I was made into a reaper. Most reapers are lucky if that is the only time they do so.
I suppose I was never going to be like “most reapers.”
“Hello, my child,” he says.
“Hello, Father,” I reply.
“You’ve been busy.” His voice is low, a whisper, though I can feel the words as if they crawl over the coils of my brain.
“Yes.”
There is no
