Even as I screamed, it didn’t move. It tilted its head, the only sign it heard me at all.
I leaned forward, bent over and carded my fingers into my hair, frustration eating away at me. “All I want is to get to see Gran again. I did what everyone wanted me to and I still lost, and now I don’t even have someone to help me figure out what to do. I can only take so much…”
The reaper came closer, doing that same thing it had before, as if leaning down to look into my eyes for a moment before it disappeared.
Great. Alone again.
As quickly as it happened, the reaper was back and beside him?
Gran…
Or, not exactly. I could see through her—a spirit? I’d never seen any type of immortal spirit.
Not that it mattered. I went forward and tried to touch her, tried to wrap my arms around her, but I passed right through her.
It made me despair again. So close, but always out of reach from what I wanted.
“Well, I didn’t figure I’d see this place again.”
I could have cried at the sound of her voice. Oh wait, I was… “I’m so sorry—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, you hush. I don’t have much time, but if I expected you to be sorry, I wouldn’t have done it.”
“Why did you? I’m not ready to be on my own.”
“Of course you are. You were where I was headed my whole, very very very long life. You think I didn’t know? That I didn’t see this? Of course I did.”
I wrung my hands together, wanting to stay right here, in this moment, the place where Gran was still here and everything wasn’t falling apart. “I can’t do this, Gran. I can’t lose you—I can’t beat Lilith.”
Gran moved over and sat on the bed—or at least it looked like that, since she wasn’t really there. She patted the spot next to her until I sat as well. “You can beat her. I’ve seen it—the first thing I ever saw, back when I was a kid. You’re the only one who can.” She shimmered, fading.
“Don’t go,” I pleaded.
“That isn’t up to me. In fact, I can’t believe I’m here at all.” She glanced over to the reaper who stood there, waiting. “Your buddy here tore me from another place, from wherever I was. Even I didn’t know that was possible.”
“How?”
“I think he knew you needed it.”
I thought back to when it—he?—had helped me before, back when he’d helped me understand how to save Troy, when he’d shown me my mother. “Who is he?”
She shrugged. “Even I don’t know everything, and it’s time for you to stop asking me. You don’t need me to tell you what you need to know, what you need to do. You already know it.”
I hated how much like goodbye that sounded. “Please, don’t do this.”
“It’s done. I’ve tried to teach you this and you’ve never accepted it. Sometimes things just are. This is one of those things. You can’t lie down and stop just because you don’t like it. You’ve been pushed out of the plane, and you can’t stop it, now. You can’t stop moving, but you can decide where you’re going to go, now.” She faded again, and the reaper came forward.
He reached out, and when he made contact with Gran, she disappeared, leaving the room silent and feeling empty.
Still, the reaper remained. It waited, watching me, as if to see what I would do now.
I wanted to curl back up and fade away like she did. I wanted to give up, to make this all someone else’s problem, but the reaper stayed. It watched me. It reminded me of exactly what Gran had said, her parting words.
You can decide where you’re going to go now.
“I can’t just stop, can I?” I asked the reaper as if he would answer. “No matter how tempting it is to give up, I have to keep going.”
He remained almost deathly still other than the floating of cloth around him, as if I knew damn well what the answer was without him.
A knock on the door came, and it opened without me having to answer. Funny that I had thought I was alone, because Troy, Kase, Grant and Hunter walked in. It was written in their expressions that they’d given me a little time to myself, but they were done letting me suffer alone.
The reaper remained, and while they caught sight of it, it must have been my lack of fear that made them not react.
“So, what’s the plan?” Hunter asked.
And there was only one answer. After seeing Gran, after being given that last moment with her, after pulling my head out of my ass, I had only one direction I could go.
Lilith had better watch out, because I was coming for her, and I was going to bring hell down on her when I found her.
She’d fucked with the wrong reaper.
Want to see more from this author? Here’s a taster for you to enjoy!
Sun, Sea and Sinful Delights
Jayce Carter
Excerpt
This dildo is way too big.
Jennifer had thought that plenty of times when a client asked her to make something well outside her personal comfort zone, but the payment had always been more than worth it.
Still, when the toy dwarfed the soda can it sat next to, she winced.
No one needs that much.
If any man came at her with that, she’d run in the opposite direction. There really could be too much of a good thing.
She snapped a picture, then finished packing everything into the box. A quick tape job before she affixed the label, and she was done.
Despite their odd proportions, she did love taking special requests. There was something fun and creative about working on a product for a specific client, a challenge that her mass-produced items lacked.
And, yes, so maybe making sex toys wasn’t
