I’d learned people could be cruel and greedy and prone to panic, especially in this hyper-connected world. But I’d also learned they could be equally kind and selfless and good-hearted.
It always comes back to balance. Balance is the key to it all.
But, sometimes, that shit is easier said than done.
“I am a servant of Father Time,” I tell her. “I’m here to escort you, Julia.”
Julia stares at me blankly for a moment, then alarm registers on her face. Thanks to the buttwipe who stole my first reap this morning, I don’t have time to console. I swing my scythe in a single swift motion, reaping her soul before she can finish her thought.
Vladimir lets out a small squawk where he perches on my shoulder. I let out a breath.
Two souls down.
Infinity more to go.
I ride from site to site, collecting my bounty.
I swing my scythe. I reap and reap and reap.
It is the same thing I did the day before, and the day before that. The same thing I will do every day for the rest of eternity.
Is it really any wonder the older reapers are such assholes?
Am I only a few decades away from being like Samael; Cold and heartless, a shell of a soul?
I swing my scythe again, this time taking the soul of a baby from its crib.
The babe is my tenth soul for the night, and all I feel as I collect her is relief.
Perhaps I already am what I fear most to be.
3 1:00 p.m.
The sun shines, but I have no flesh with which to feel it.
I sit in it, anyway, as if I can trick my mind into believing it’s real. And I guess it is real, just not for me.
Franklin D. Roosevelt Park buzzes around me. People walk their dogs and ride their bikes. Joggers breeze by with headphones plugged into their ears. Parents push strollers and gab while their older children chase each other across the expanse of green lawn.
Vlad perches silently on a nearby lamppost, overlooking the paved path. The bench I sit on is otherwise unoccupied, but nearby, a couple is having a picnic and soaking in the sunshine the same way in which I’m pretending.
They do not know how lucky they are.
I shut that thought off. There is no place for it.
“This is what you do with your free time?”
I startle, jumping visibly. Samael sits beside me on the bench, his appearance at complete odds with the surroundings. His black wings are tucked behind his back, his barbed tail curled beside him.
For the first time, his hood is off, pooled over his wide shoulders. His dark hair falls in shiny waves around his face, the features devastatingly visible.
He is beautiful in a way that is wholly inhuman, his eyes as dark as the abyss of time and space. He sits utterly still, though I can sense the power that coils just beneath the surface. I can sense the dark void that is his soul.
I know his story. Even reapers whisper.
The short of it is, he was an archangel, and then he fell. And there is no further fall than becoming a reaper. I should know.
“What do you want?” I ask, because I realize I am staring in the way I hate. The way I’d watched mortals stare at supernaturals since the Big Reveal, dumb and doe-eyed.
Samael stretches out on the bench beside me and lets out a sigh. “Just resting my feet,” he answers, which is not an answer at all. He waves a hand around us. “Mortals,” he adds with obvious distaste.
I was a human before I became a reaper, which I’m sure he knows.
“Supernaturals,” I reply with equal disgust and a chin jerk toward him.
This makes Samael grin, and it is as captivating as it is terrifying.
I hate him.
“Are you not afraid of me, child?” he asks.
“Stop calling me that.”
“Anyone south of a century is a child… So?”
“Of course I’m afraid,” I snap. “Is that what you followed me here to find out? Because I have to say, there are far better uses for your time.”
“All I have is time,” the senior reaper says as he looks out over the park, eyes catching on a spot of which I am hyperaware.
What’s left of the heart in my chest stutters.
I follow his gaze, though I know where it falls.
“Better uses than stalking a mortal as she goes about her days?” he asks.
I stiffen, anger now warring equally with my fear. “I’m not stalking her,” I snap.
“No? What do you call it?”
I search for a verb that doesn’t sound creepy and come up blank. This only makes me more angry.
“I’m just watching over her,” I say between gritted teeth.
Samael’s head tilts, the ghost of a smirk playing along his lips. The expression is as annoying as it is beautiful. “Watching over her. I did not realize that was something reapers do.”
“I’m not breaking any rules. I’m not interfering, and this is my free time. I can do with it what I want.”
“You are right on all accounts, of course. I only wonder why. Why watch over her if when something happens, you have no choice but to stand back and let the chips fall where they may? Would that not be worse than not knowing?”
I find myself answering truthfully, though I’m not sure I should bother. “I like watching her,” I say.
“Who is she?”
Again, I speak truth. Again, I question it. “Rose. My niece.”
I feel Samael’s eyes on me for a moment before they flick back over to the young lady sitting on a blanket by the edge of the lake some twenty yards away. The sun catches in the chocolate of her hair, which hangs in soft ringlets down her back. A book is open on her lap. She looks up from the pages and stares out over the water, none the wiser that two
