Better to try to get it over with than to sit here and fret, anyway.
I spun around and grabbed my backpack, shoving my spare clothes inside. Once I’d pulled on my jacket, I slung the pack across my back, then yelled, “I’m off. I’ll see you in a couple of hours.”
“No, you won’t,” she said. “But I’ll tell Tao to have a Coke and burger ready for you when you do get home.”
Meaning she saw frustration in my future, because burgers were my food of choice when something was really pissing me off.
I grabbed my keys and headed back down to my bike. The morning traffic was rising toward its peak, so by taking the long way around the city, I actually arrived at the hospital close to eight. I parked in the nearby underground lot, then checked Mom’s text, grabbing the ward number and the parents’ names before heading inside.
It hit me in the foyer.
The dead, the dying, and the diseased created a veil of misery and pain that permeated not only the air but the very foundations of the building. It felt like a ton of bricks as it settled across my shoulders, and it was a weight that made my back hunch, my knees buckle, and my breath stutter to a momentary halt.
Not that I really wanted to breathe. I didn’t want to take that scent—that wash of despair and loss—into myself. And most especially, I didn’t want to see the reapers and the tiny souls they were carrying away.
I was gripped by the sudden urge to run, and it was so fierce and strong that my whole body shook. I had to clench my fists against it and force my feet onward. I’d promised Mom I’d do this, and I couldn’t go back on my promise. No matter how much I might want to.
I walked into the elevator and punched the floor for intensive care, then watched as the doors closed and the floor numbers slowly rolled by. As they opened onto my floor, a reaper walked by. She had brown eyes and a face you couldn’t help but trust, and her wings shone white, tipped with gold.
An angel—the sort depicted throughout religion, not those that inhabited the real world. Walking beside her, her tiny hand held within the angel’s, was a child. I briefly closed my eyes against the sting of tears. When I opened them again, the reaper and her soul were gone.
I took the right-hand corridor. A nurse looked up as I approached the desk. “May I help you?”
“I’m here to see Hanna Kingston.”
She hesitated, looking me up and down. “Are you family?”
“No, but her parents asked me to come. I’m Risa Jones.”
“Oh,” she said, then her eyes widened slightly as the name registered. “The daughter of Dia Jones?”
I nodded. People might not know me, but thanks to the fact that many of her clients were celebrities, they sure knew Mom. “Mrs. Kingston is a client. She asked for me specifically.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ll have to check.”
I nodded again, watching as she rose and walked through the door that separated the reception area from the intensive care wards. Down that bright hall, a shrouded gray figure waited. Another reaper. Another soul about to pass.
I closed my eyes again and took a long, slow breath. I could do this.
I could.
The nurse came back with another woman. She was small and dark-haired, her sharp features and brown eyes drawn and tired looking.
“Risa,” she said, offering me her hand. “Fay Kingston. I’m so glad you were able to come.”
I shook her hand briefly. Her grief seemed to crawl from her flesh, and it made my heart ache. I pulled my hand gently from hers and flexed my fingers. The grief still clung to them, stinging lightly. “There’s no guarantee I can help you. She might have already made her decision.”
The woman licked her lips and nodded, but the brightness in her eyes suggested she wasn’t ready to believe it. Then again, what mother would?
“We just need to know—” She stopped, tears gathering in her eyes. She took a deep breath, then gave me a bright, false smile. “This way.”
I washed my hands, then followed her through the secure door and down the bright hall, the echo of our footsteps like a strong, steady heartbeat. The shrouded reaper didn’t look our way—his concentration was on his soul. I glanced into the room as we passed him. It was a boy about eight years old. There were machines and doctors clustered all around him, working frantically. There’s no hope, I wanted to say. Let him go in peace.
But I’d been wrong before. Maybe I’d be wrong again.
Three doorways down from the reaper, Mrs. Kingston swung left into a room and walked across to a dark-haired man sitting near the bed. I stopped in the doorway, barely even registering his presence as my gaze was drawn to the small form on the bed.
She was a dark-haired bundle of bones that seemed lost in the stark whiteness of the hospital room. Machines surrounded her, doing the work of her body, keeping her alive. Her face was drawn, gaunt, and there were dark circles under her closed eyes.
I couldn’t feel her. But I couldn’t feel the presence of a reaper, either, and that surely had to be a good sign.
“Do you think you can help her?” a deep voice asked.
I jumped, and my gaze flew to the father. Before I could answer, Fay said, “This is my husband, Steven.”
I nodded. I didn’t need to know his name to understand he was Hanna’s father. The utter despair in his eyes was enough. I swallowed heavily and somehow said, “I honestly don’t know if I can help her, Mr. Kingston. But I can try.”
He nodded, his gaze drifting back to his baby girl. “Then try. Either way, we need to know what to do next.”
I took a deep, somewhat shuddering breath, and blinked away the tears stinging my eyes once more.
I could do this. For her sake—for their sake—I could do this. If she was in there, if she was trapped between this world and the next, then she needed someone to talk to. Someone who could help her make a decision. That someone had to be me. There was no one else.
I forced my feet forward. The closer I got, the more I could feel … well, the oddness.
Pain and fear and hunger swirled around her tiny body like a storm, but there was no spark, no glimmer of consciousness—nothing to indicate that life had ever existed within her flesh.
It shouldn’t have felt like that. And if death was her destiny, then there would have been a reaper here waiting. But there wasn’t, so either the time for her decision had not arrived or she was slated to live.
So why couldn’t I feel her?
Frowning, I sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up her hand. Her flesh was warm, though why that surprised me I wasn’t entirely sure.
I took a deep breath and slowly released it. As I did, I released the awareness of everything and everyone else, concentrating on little Hanna, reaching for her not physically, but psychically. The world around me faded until the only thing existing on this plane was me and her. Warmth throbbed at my neck—Ilianna’s magic at work, protecting me as my psyche, my soul, or whatever else people liked to call it pulled away from the constraints of my flesh and stepped gently into the gray fields that were neither life nor death.
Only it felt like I’d stepped into the middle of a battleground.
And it was a battle that had gone very, very badly.
Fear and pain became physical things that battered at me with terrible force, tearing at my heart and ripping through my soul. My chest burned, breathing became painful, and all I could feel was fear. My fear, her fear, all twisted into one stinking mess that made my stomach roil and my flesh crawl.
And then there was the screaming. Unvoiced, unheard by anyone but me, it reverberated through the emptiness of her flesh—echoes of agony in the bloody, battered shell that had once held a little girl.
Her soul wasn’t here, but it hadn’t moved on.
Someone—something—had come into the hospital and ripped it from her flesh.
THE REALIZATION HIT LIKE A HAMMER AND I began to shake.
Someone had stolen her soul.
Why
would someone do that?
How could someone do that?
Surely it wasn’t the reapers. They were charged with the protection and guidance of souls. They couldn’t be capable of anything like this.
Could they?
Hands suddenly grabbed my shoulders and wrenched me away. My fingers were torn from the little girl’s and it was as if a bucket of ice water had been thrown over my face. The darkness, the fear, the pain all sluiced away, and suddenly I could breathe again.
I took several gulps of air, then, with a shaky hand, swiped at the tears that were on my cheeks—tears I hadn’t even felt until then.
When I opened my eyes, I met Fay Kingston’s gaze. She knew. The knowledge of death was right there in her shadowed, tear-filled eyes and stricken expression.
I can’t do this. I can’t say the words that will destroy her world.
I clenched my fists again, my short nails digging deep into my palms. The pain didn’t help shore up my courage.
“It’s too late, isn’t it?” she said softly, her voice steady despite the grief in her expression.
Way, way too late. For her soul, for her future lives. I licked my lips and said, “I’m afraid she’s already moved on.” I hesitated, then added softly, “Her passing was peaceful. She was in no pain, and has moved on to a happier place.”
The lie burned my tongue, but what good would it have done to tell the truth? Losing a child was bad enough. They didn’t need to know that her last moments on earth had been a battle for the future of all her lives, not just this one.
A battle she’d lost.
Fear and horror rose up my throat like bile, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe again. I needed to get out of here. I needed to get away from the horror.
I backed away a step, then stopped as Mrs. Kingston grabbed my arm. “Are you sure she’s at peace?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. Then, when I saw her frown, I added, “Why?”
“Because—” She stopped, her grief making her hiccup. “Because I felt something last night. It was a darkness, a wrongness. It’s why I rang your mother. I needed to know that Hanna was all right. That her soul—”
A chill ran through me. Whatever had been here, whatever had stolen that little girl’s soul, her mother had been aware of it. I hesitated, fighting the instinctive need to grab her and make her tell me everything she’d felt, everything she’d sensed. If she was psychic—and her words suggested she at least had some ability—then she might hold some vital clue as to what this thing was. But doing that might give the game away. Might make her realize I hadn’t been entirely truthful about her daughter’s passing.
So I simply said, “Everyone who passes over does so with the assistance of a special guide. Sometimes we can sense them in the room—they are a warmth that seems to come out of nowhere, or a wrongness that often feels right.”
She was shaking her head even before I’d finished. “This wasn’t warm. It was cold. Evil, even.” She rubbed her arms, her gaze searching mine. “Are you sure she’s safe?”
“Yes, I’m sure.” I hated myself for the lie, but I had little choice. Even if the truth came out, there was nothing any of us could do about it, and she didn’t deserve to live with that. Neither of them did. “What makes you think it was evil?”
“My skin began to crawl the minute I sensed its presence.” She hesitated. “I read from the Bible. That seemed to drive the sensation away.”
But not before the battle had been fought and lost. “Maybe it was a ghost. There are enough of them haunting these halls, and some like to torment the souls of the dying.”
It was a safe statement, mostly because it was true. Ghosts did haunt the hospital halls, and not all of them were happy about their state.
Her gaze searched mine again, then she nodded and gave me a somewhat tremulous smile. “That must be it.” She reached out and touched my hand, steeping me in her grief. And in my own guilt. And once again I found myself resisting the impulse to pull away. “Thank you, Risa. Thank you.”
“I’m just sorry I couldn’t be the bearer of better news,” I said honestly.
She lifted her shoulder—a half shrug that somehow seemed so sad. “We knew. We just needed—”
“I know.” I squeezed her fingers, then stepped back. “I have to go.”
“Thank your mother for me.”
“I will.” Then I turned and escaped. The shrouded reaper was still waiting in the hall. That surprised me, but also gave me hope. Maybe the matter of the child’s passing wasn’t as settled as it seemed.
Once free of the ward, I all but ran for the elevator, wanting, needing, to get out of this place—and away from its oppressive atmosphere—as quickly as possible.
Once on the ground floor, I headed with speed for the front doors. Outside, it was raining again, but I didn’t give a damn. I just stood there on the top step and raised my face to the sky, letting the moisture soak my skin, washing away the scent of death and the feeling of wrongness.
It was only when I began to shiver that I opened my eyes and looked around me.
And saw my reaper.
He was standing at the bottom of the steps, staring up at me. He was still half naked, the rain beading on his warm, suntanned skin and running lightly down his six-pack abs. The leather holding his sword in place seemed to emphasize the width of his shoulders, and the wet denim of his faded jeans clung to his legs, hinting at their lean strength. Stylized black tatts that resembled the left half of a wing swept around his ribs from underneath his arm, the tips brushing across the left side of his neck. He stood like a fighter—lightly, warily, as if he expected trouble at any moment.
And if he was coming for me, he was certainly going to get it.
I continued to stare at him, unspeaking. Unmoving. For all I knew, this sword-carrying reaper might be responsible for the atrocity that had happened upstairs. And if he could do that, then God only knows what else he might be capable of.
“So,” he said, after what seemed like an age. “You can see me.”
His voice was mellow and rich—the total opposite of what I’d expected. On any other man it might have been sexy, but this wasn’t a man. He merely held that form.
“I can.” I kept my voice soft. I wasn’t sure whether others could see him, and I didn’t particularly want to be seen talking to thin air. Mom was a media star, and a daughter caught talking to imaginary people would certainly be great fodder for the gossip magazines. “And I know it’s not my time to die. So if you try to take me, you’ll have a goddamn fight on your hands. Sword or not.”
Something akin to surprise ran through the bright depths of his oddly colored eyes. “Reapers do not steal souls. If you can see us, you should be aware of that fact.”
“The only fact I’m aware of is the one lying in room six-eleven. Someone stole her soul. If not a reaper, then who?”
His gaze rose briefly, then met mine again. “Wait here,” he said. “Do not run, because I will find you.”
“If I’d wanted to run, I would have done so before now,” I said. “But in case you haven’t realized, it’s raining and cold, and I need to warm up.”
He obviously didn’t. I could feel the heat of him even from where I stood. It didn’t do a whole lot to warm the chill from my skin, but maybe that was due more to what I had just experienced.
“If the moisture bothered you so, you would have moved out of it before now.”
Had any other man made that statement, I might have suspected he was being sarcastic. But he said it without inflection and without the slightest hint of amusement. Did reapers even feel amusement?
I had no idea. I might have been aware of them for most of my life, and I might be related to them by virtue of my Aedh blood, but that wasn’t much help. Even Quinn—the half-Aedh vampire who’d taught me to control my Aedh gifts—hadn’t been able to tell me a whole lot about the reapers.
I glanced down the street and spotted a McDonald’s. “I’l
l be in there.”
He glanced briefly at the building then back to me, his expression giving very little away. “Good.”
And with that, he disappeared again.
I blew out a breath, then spun on my heels and splashed my way toward McDonald’s. Once inside, I found the restroom and changed my clothing, dumping my wet things into my pack then dragging on my leather jacket in an effort to warm the chill from my flesh.
Once I’d paid for my burger and Coke, I made my way to a table in the corner, as far away from everyone else as possible.
He appeared seconds later, striding through the restaurant like an animal on the prowl. No one seemed to think it odd to see a half-naked man wearing a sword, yet he was obviously visible, if the man who apologized for getting in his way was any indication.
I picked up my burger and bit into it, but barely even tasted it. My attention was on the reaper. On this man who could destroy me with a single touch of his finger.
His gaze met mine again. Those bright depths burned, and if reapers were capable of anger, then this one was pissed.
He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite me, his movements economical and fluid. The heat of him rolled across the table, and it did warm me even as the psychic part of me shivered away from the power of that fiery caress.
And yet, if he was sitting down opposite me, surely that meant he didn’t intend to take me.
Not yet, anyway.
“No reaper did that.” The words were said flatly, without inflection, and yet his anger seemed to blaze all around me. “No reaper would ever do that.”
“And yet you are capable of it.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded, the movement short and sharp. “As are you.”
“The Aedh are not as adept at soul stealing as the reapers, and a half-Aedh even less so.”
He acknowledged this with another nod, then said, “There are many other things capable of stealing souls in this world, but I’ve never seen one go after a child so young.”
I took another bite of the burger, but the little girl’s plight had really killed my taste buds and the burger tasted like ash. I dropped it back into its wrapper, brushed the crumbs off my fingers, then picked up my Coke instead. After taking a sip, I said, “So which of these other things is responsible for her destruction?”