Or do I continue to ignore it and hope that she soon grows bored of her childish games, and allows the other Reapers to Collect the souls in my stead?

  It should be an easy answer, but it’s not. And the fact that I don’t have much time to weigh the pros and cons of the situation?

  Well, that’s not helping at all.

  Chapter Three

  Angelica

  The sound of a now-familiar movie is running in the background. Even before I open up my eyes, I know that it’s the same slasher movie that’s been haunting me since I first met Grim. This makes the third time that I’ve seen it, and it always starts at the same scene: the busty blonde running down the street, with the killer walking slowly behind her. The sound of the ax scraping over the pavement is impossibly loud. The instrumental is loud, overpowering, and poorly put together. She hits the ground.

  I open my eyes and am slammed with the sensation of the world’s worst hangover, even though I know for a fact that I didn’t have anything to drink last night. Groaning, I press a hand against the side of my head. My fingers dig into my temples.

  “God,” I moan. My mouth is so dry that my lips are clinging to the fronts of my teeth. “What did I do last night?”

  Wait… I actually have an answer to that.

  The memory of the bird and the rose bush comes rushing back to me.

  I lurch upward, but I’m not on the balcony. I’m inside, on the couch. There’s no pricked bloody spot on my finger when I check. It’s not even bruised.

  Had that just been a dream? It wouldn’t be the first time lately that I had a strange nightmare but…something tells me it wasn’t just in my head. I know in my heart it really happened.

  “What the hell?” I throw my legs over the edge of the couch and sit up properly, wincing at the head rush. My mouth is dry as the desert sands, and my head feels like it’s been stuffed full of cotton. My eyes are just as dry, and there’s a headache pulsing behind the both of them.

  I need some strong coffee, a bottle of cold water, and the greasiest breakfast the world could offer. I would also settle for a few answers.

  In fact, I would happily skip the coffee and the greasy breakfast if it meant getting a few answers.

  There’s this feeling in my chest. It’s not the same as being uneasy. It’s something else, heavy and awful, like a warning sign cut into the muscle of my heart. I stand up, meaning to go put on the coffee, but instead I turn and I see that the door to the balcony is sitting open.

  I need to go see if the rose bush is still out there, but the thought of facing it down is terrifying to me. My heart skips a beat and I shake my head, trying to pull myself together. There’s no reason to be scared of a bush, right?

  Wrong.

  As it turns out, there are plenty of reasons to be scared of a rose bush. I’ve taken less than two steps toward the door when cold terror washes over me. About a month ago, I was struck with the sensation that something was coming; that it was on the hunt.

  The end result was that another Reaper showed up and swept Grim away for a Council meeting of some sort.

  This is almost like that; something is coming. I can feel it. But it’s the biggest burst of power that I’ve ever felt, and just the idea of having to be around it is enough to make my knees quake. The thing is, it’s not just a strong entity. Whatever has just entered the city, it’s filled with so much malice that it’s causing the very air to curdle.

  Turning on one heel, and not even bothering to change out of yesterday’s clothes, I throw myself through the apartment building and out onto the street. I’m half expecting it to have turned into the set of a horror movie but nothing is visibly different.

  “Grim,” I shout, unable to tell if the Reaper is nearby. All of my senses have been consumed by this oncoming threat. There’s nothing left within me but the knowledge that it’s coming, and it’s coming fast.

  No one answers me.

  My fight or flight instinct is thrown firmly into flight. I turn and take off, running as fast as I can down the street. I don’t know where I’m going. I just know that staying here, in one spot, isn’t feasible. I have to keep moving; I have to get out of here, I have to get distance between myself and whatever this looming threat is.

  And beneath all of that, I know this, too: I have to find Grim.

  The corner comes up. I go around it so fast that my feet skid under me, and I have to scramble not to go down on my knees. The energy is getting stronger and darker. It’s pressing down on me like a weighted blanket.

  When I was little my mother lived in a house with a basement. The basement was dark and I was certain that something lived down there in the shadows. In hindsight, that must have been my medium powers already starting to take shape.

  At the time, my mother thought that I was just a silly girl with an overactive imagination. She would send me down into the basement to do the laundry, and I would spend the whole time feeling as though I was being watched. Then I would go to leave, and it would be this rising surge of something is going to get me.

  I would sprint up the stairs and slam the door shut behind me, hard as I could!

  That’s what it feels like now, too. Like I’m sprinting up the basement stairs, trying to get away from the invisible creature chasing me. And it is invisible. I keep looking over my shoulder in fleeting glances, and seeing nothing.

  The sky isn’t even going dark. There’s no storm cloud brewing.

  “Grim!” I call his name out again, the word strangled by how absolutely breathless I am.

  This time, there’s a response. But it’s not my Reaper boyfriend. It’s Wil. The Omen, a black cat, is charging toward me, little paws slamming into the pavement with so much force, it’s a wonder it doesn’t hurt them.

  “Angelica,” shouts Wil. I very rarely hear him say my name.

  Thrilled to see a familiar face, and one that might be able to help me figure out what’s going on too, I drop down onto my knees and scoop the black cat up.

  Wil allows it for a moment, seemingly content to be crushed up against me. His fur is puffed up and standing on end. He must sense it, too.

  “What’s going on?” I ask, setting him back down when he gives an impatient twist.

  The Omen shakes himself out, but it doesn’t settle his fur any. He’s so puffed up, it looks like he’s been hit with a burst of static. “Where’s Grim?”

  “I don’t know,” I gasp out. “I was going to ask you.”

  Wil shakes his head. “They sent me back to the Reaper Chapel, on the other side of the portal.”

  “What? Why?”

  “That doesn’t matter right now,” answers Wil. “The important thing is that I got back out. I think I got here in time, too.” His ears twitch. “But not by much. We only have a few minutes. Grim needs to Collect a soul, and he needs to do it now.”

  “I’ll help you find him,” I promise, reaching out and scooping him up again. I rise up onto one knee, the other foot flat against the ground. The black fabric of my leggings stretches tight over my knees, going gray-thin. “What’s happening?”

  The power gets stronger, more all-consuming. It’s so great that I stagger and sink back flat onto my ass.

  Wil makes a low animal keen in the back of his throat, sounding like a rocker just went over his chair. Eyes gone wide, he says, “That.”

  I follow his gaze, watching with horror as the sky above the center of town seems to go dark. There are no clouds, just a massive shadow that has settled above the city. The black disc stretches out. A great red light shoots from it.

  Within the light, there’s a shape.

  I ask, “Is that a Reaper?”

  Wil says, voice low, “It’s Satania.”

  “Satania. That’s… Grim said that she was the head of the Council. I thought she didn’t enter the human realm?” I question, unable to take my gaze away from the being. The light is fading now, revealing the shape of the Reaper in more detail.

  She’s skeletal, like all of the other Reapers, but wears an ornate golden headdress. The three stones topping the spikes of it glitter with all of the color of the rainbows, weirdly bright. I shouldn’t be able to notice them from all the way over here, but I do.

  “She hasn’t been here in over fifty years,” says Wil. He doesn’t seem to be able to tear his gaze away from the Reaper. “This is bad.”

  “Grim needs to know what’s happening,” I question. “Right?”

  Wil’s ears go flat against the curve of his skull. “It’s too late for that. Satania is already here. She’s already made up her mind about things.”

  Before I can ask what Wil means by that, Satania makes a grand gesture. There’s a flash of bright red light, and then a long scythe appears in her hand. The handle of it is made of a dark yew wood, and the top of it, a fine silver blade. The connecting point of the blade and the staff has been embedded with the same weirdly bright rainbow jewels that are on her rings and her headpiece.

  “What’s happening?” My gaze shoots everywhere around me.

  I know that humans use the scythe in their stories about Reapers, but I’ve never seen Grim use one before. This weapon seems ancient, and dark, and evil.

  Maybe not evil exactly, but certainly, it seems like bad news. The kind of bad news that shouldn’t ever be in my city.

  “She’s here to Collect the souls that Grim has been ignoring,” says Wil, pressing himself up against my chest. He must be seriously upset to do something like that. Normally, the Omen tries to spend as little time in my presence as possible.

  But here he is, pressed up against me like I’m the only shield he’s got. I feel the same way, like Wil is the only safety net beneath me. I wrap my arms more firmly around him, watching as the Head Reaper twists her scythe.

  Three times she spins it. Then she slices it through the air with all the force that she can muster. It gives off an energy-shock wave that expands and goes through the whole city. The energy is enough to leave me dizzy and groaning.

  I sink down onto my side. Wil presses himself more tightly against me. I realize that I was wrong. He wasn’t using me as a shield against her. He’s trying to use himself as a shield for me.

  His golden eyes are glowing. There’s a thin veil of shimmering light around me, like a capsule. The shock wave takes on the form of a hundred screaming ghouls, who shoot through the city. I can’t see what they do, the buildings and streets blocking me.

  But I do see them return to Satania, carrying with them the pale but colorful souls of the humans that they have been sent to Reap. They slam into her scythe’s blade and vanish from sight, the souls settling in the palm of her other outstretched hand.

  Satania, uncaring, tosses each of the souls through the black hole of a portal behind her. I feel even dizzier. The world is spinning. One of the ghouls slams into the street in front of us. Wil takes a single step forward, spine arching, and yowls. The sound is so loud it makes my eardrums throb with pain. The ghoul pulls backward, startled.

  It looks like a human that’s starved to death, with horns that jut from its forehead and a piggish face. The stranger creature dances around on the pavement again, looking around with confusion. It’s not solid, but rather, it’s made of red and blue light, which twists together to form a shape that is neither solid nor intangible.

  “She isn’t for Reaping,” says the Omen, in a voice that is powerful and firm. He sounds like a prince. “Destiny and Fate have both spared her. Return home.”

  The ghoul hops about on all fours, shuffling, looking uncertain. Its gaze never once lands on me. The golden shield must be keeping me hidden from the creature’s eyes.

  Then it turns and it vanishes, jumping back into the air, transforming into a smear of light and vanishing the same way that it came. As soon as it’s gone, the golden shield shimmers and vanishes.

  Wil lets out a heavy breath, head sagging, the glow vanishing from his gaze.

  The power is too much. It’s crushing down on me. The fear curdles my blood. The strength of Satania’s malice cuts into my heart. The energy, the aura, the way the world is trembling.

  It’s too much for me.

  For the second time in two days, I find myself passing out. It’s more like everything goes blank; the HDMI cord on the TV has been unplugged and for a few long minutes, I’m just floating in the darkness. There’s no voice and no vision. No dream. No pain.

  Just darkness.

  And then my eyes open again, and I’m laying on the sidewalk, staring up at the sun. Satania is gone. The sensation of her presence is no longer crushing me. And there’s a warm, soft weight on my chest.

  “Wil?” I groan.

  “You’re up.” He lets out a soft exhale. “Good.” Then, as though he has to make sure he doesn’t look too soft, he adds on, “I was getting tired of waiting for you.”

  He gets off of me. I sit up, using one palm to brace myself against the sidewalk, and the other to rub at my head. The hangover headache from that morning has come back with renewed force and I find myself squinting, wishing I had my pair of black diamond-studded black cat-eye sunglasses with me.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  Wil says, “She made a bigger mess than I was expecting. We have to find Grim, now. He has to figure out how to clean up this mess, before the city has a collective breakdown.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I carefully stand up, then wobble for a few seconds, but catch my balance quickly enough. The headache is a pain, but not that terrible.

  Wil says, “We don’t have time to run through it all right now. Just trust me when I say that it’s bad news, what just happened. And Grim needs to play clean-up, now.”

  Chapter Four

  Grim

  In the wake of Satania’s mass Collection, the city is still and quiet. The sirens of ambulances and police cars appear to echo. There is no screaming, no sobbing, as if shock has fallen over the city, as dozens upon dozens of humans have simply dropped dead, right where they were standing.

  When a normal Reaper collects a soul, they must do it in the manner that Fate and Destiny have dictated. A car crash. A snapped neck. Murder, suicide, or even fire. I’ve seen it all. I’ve been there through it all. The world kills, and then we Collect.

  It’s something I told Angelica on our first meeting, even. Just because we deal with souls, doesn’t mean we kill mortals. That’s not our job.

  And yet, it used to be.

  There was a time, long before I was a Reaper, where our society were the bringers of death. We Collected souls with our scythes, weapons of mass destruction. The same sort of scythe that Satania used today.

  Hers is boosted with soul stones—illicit objects not meant to be used by the Reapers. She made one swing, and all of the souls that had gone without their Reaping were Collected. But… It wasn’t just the souls I’d put off that Satania took.

  She had also claimed the lives of everyone who would have naturally died today and been Collected by a different Reaper. With how strong her scythe is, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had gone ahead and Collected some of the souls that weren’t yet ready, too.

  My musing is interrupted by motion across the street.

  “Angelica!” I let out a breath of relief, crossing the empty street toward her. “And Wil! What are you doing here? I thought you’d been—they took you!”

  “Grim!” Angelica all but throws herself into my arms. I catch her, relishing in her warmth and in the way that the world bursts into clarity and color around her. She sags against me, until I’m the only thing keeping her up.

  “She’s all right,” Wil huffs out. “We both are. But this city isn’t. You saw what happened, didn’t you?”

  “I would have seen it even if I was blind,” I respond, running a hand soothingly over the curve of Angelica’s spine. “How did you get out of the Chapel?”

  Wil snorts, tail flicking through the air with a lash of anger. “You can’t keep an Omen somewhere that they don’t want to be. We aren’t the same as you Reapers. We can function just fine on our own, and find all of our portals without issue. That was just a show of power. No one actually expected me to stay there.”

  Angelica finally pulls back from me. Her eyes are shining with tears. “Wil says this is just because you haven’t been doing your job! I can’t have you neglecting your duties because of me, Grim. What just happened, God above, that was terrifying.”

  “I’m sorry.” I curl my hands around her shoulders. The touch is meant to be reassuring, but it’s hard to tell whether I’ve succeeded with that or not. “That could have ended badly for you. I just didn’t think Satania would jump to such extreme measures so quickly.”

  “You should have expected it,” says Wil. “She’s a vindictive bitch.” A pause. “And you haven’t done your work in weeks. I’ve been telling you that it was going to start causing things to shift out of their naturally balanced state.”

  “I know,” I say, with a heavy exhale. “I should have listened to you, and I know that. I’m so sorry I didn’t.”

  Wil flicks his left ear in my direction. “We just need to fix things now. You two, I don’t know. Figure your shit out, Grim. I’m going to go see what all is wrong in the city. There’s no way that this hasn’t just thrown everything out of whack.”

  The black cat leaves without waiting for any kind of response, vanishing into the shadows of the city. He ducks under a car that’s been parked and abandoned in the middle of the road and vanishes.

  Angelica looks up at me. “What does he mean, out of whack?”

  “Humans are not the most resilient creatures,” I explain carefully. “They tend to get rather…upset about death. We’ve already seen how you reacted to the woman in the road. You wanted to be with me, but her death unsettled you so badly that you nearly changed your mind.”

  Angelica nods her head thoughtfully.