Reap & Repent (3 page)

What am I? Uh, a girl would be a good start. What the hell?

She shook her head side to side, indicating “No.”

“No, you don’t understand? Or no, you don’t know what you are?” he asked, obviously growing frustrated.

She shook her head again.

“Okay, this isn’t going to work unless you speak. I don’t read minds, you know.”

Good to know,
she thought. What came out was, “I don’t understand.”

“When we ran into each other at the hospital, you had no aura.
What
are you? Are you a reaper? An angel? Christ on a crutch, you aren’t a valkyrie, are you?” he asked, running a hand through his hair, pushing it away from his face. “I’m betting no on the angel front because the Reiki energy doesn’t seem to work on angels. So
what
are you?”

“A student. Or, I was a student. Now I’m just… I don’t know what you’re talking about—angels and reapers and valkyries. I’m…human?”

“You are more than human.”

“I’m not. What do you want with me?”

“I want answers. In the hospital, I sensed something about you when we met… Your mother was Mary Scott. Correct? She died in that hospital room while you were there?”

“I didn’t do that. It wasn’t my fault,” she blurted out.

“Okaaay,” he proceeded cautiously. “Did you touch her before you left?”

She considered him, her mouth going dry. She
had
touched her. She’d given her that final kiss on the forehead.

“Yes,” she whispered.

Ruth couldn’t look at him as she began to realize what all of this might mean. Had her bizarre handicap really killed her father, and now her mother, too?

She was a killer.

“You’re not a killer,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“I thought you couldn’t read minds!” She sobbed, tears choking her throat closed.

It’s my fault. I AM a killer.

“You’re not,” he insisted. “I think you’re a reaper, like me.”

Her heart started beating faster and her vision started to go blurry around the edges. The whole room sped down a black chute into darkness. She was going
to pass out. She was going to pass out with a strange supernatural man in her house.

God help me.

Chapter Three

Ruth woke slowly, taking an internal inventory before she opened her eyes. It felt as if all of her clothes were still on, and there were no apparent missing or bloody bits.

That’s a plus.

Sitting across from her, now somewhat less patiently, was Scrub Man, or Deacon, if that was really his name. The gravity of her situation crashed down on her.

“Do you think we could try this again?” he asked, sighing. “I came to reap your mother’s soul. When I ran into you in the hallway and saw that you had no aura, I assumed that you were a reaper like me. But when I got into the room, and her soul was detached but unreaped, I was confused. I collected her soul and took it for processing. And then I came here to figure out what you are… Ruth, you’re more than human. Only reapers have no auras. Have you experienced anything out of the ordinary before now? Any sign that you might have special abilities?”

Ruth was flat-out dumbfounded.

He thinks I’m a reaper?

She was torn over how much to tell him. She wanted to talk about her gifts with someone who might actually understand. Maybe “reaper” was as good an explanation as any for what she could do, but how could she trust a man who’d stalked her and broken into her house? Of course, if he had planned on hurting her
or doing more than chitchatting, he’d already had ample opportunity. She closed her eyes and dove in.

“I’m just a girl…but I can see people’s auras. And I know that the light around someone turns white when they’re close to death.” She shifted, uncomfortable now that she’d gushed her crazy all over him.

“What else do you know about the colors?”

“Yellow is happy, green is peaceful, mustard is angry, brown is unhappy, and red is I-want-to-get-down-your-pants-then-steal-all-your-cookies. But that’s all. I’m not anything. I can only guess at everything else,” she lied. She knew a
lot
about auras and their colors. Too much maybe. Trying to decode the colors and their meanings had been one of her first research projects. It was what had set her on her nonexistent career path.

“Ruth, if you can see auras, you already know that you’re more than
just
a girl. And if you touched anyone else with a white aura, you might have hindered their passing by detaching their souls prematurely, making them difficult to retrieve. If that happened, their souls are likely still near their bodies. I reaped your mother’s soul. Have you ever knowingly touched anyone else who has a white aura?”

She hesitated. “My father maybe? When he died, it was the first time I realized what the white aura meant.”

Deacon sighed. “Anyone else?”

Ruth picked nervously at her fingernails. “No, I don’t think so. Ever since then I’ve tried to stay away from people. I keep to myself. I don’t like knowing
every little thing about how strangers are feeling, or worse, people I know. I feel compelled to tell them things because of what I see. Like that they should probably get their crap in order and make up with their loved ones because they’re about to
die.
Stuff that I’m smart enough to know will land me right in the nut house if I don’t shut up about it.”

Deacon sat quietly for several long minutes, probing her with his sharp eyes. Ruth squirmed under his scrutiny. She didn’t like being looked at, period, let alone this intensely. She felt as if he was counting her pores or wondering if her size-eight skin might fit well into his collection.

“Where is your father buried?”

“Why? You aren’t thinking of digging him up, are you?” She tried not to scream the words at him.

“I’m not going to dig him up…not exactly.” Deacon rose to pace the floor in front of her. “We need to go see if his soul is still hanging around. If it is, he’ll be stuck haunting his grave until he’s collected. I assume he’s been dead for quite some time now? He’s not going to be too happy about that. They never are.”

Ruth tried to process this random new development in her overstuffed brain. It wasn’t computing. Up until twenty minutes ago, she’d managed to keep her secret in a nice tight box in the back of her mind. Now that box was opening like Pandora herself had peeled back the lid.

Maybe I
am
going crazy.

She tried to keep it together, but the effort strained against her throat, threatening to come out in a nice loud scream at any second. Deacon approached her cautiously and held out his hand.

“Take my hand, Ruth.”

“Why?”

“I can help calm you.”

She took it. God help her, but she did. His hand was warm and comfortable. Familiar even. She didn’t know how else to explain it, but holding his hand seemed like a perfectly sane and acceptable antidote to the insanity that was building inside her.

Her brain was in conflict with her body. His touch made her feel better: warm, but not fuzzy this time. Clear. Sure. Content. Yet, her adrenaline refused to entirely release its grip.

Be afraid,
it warned.

He pulled her to her feet and into his chest in an embrace. She let him.

She curled into him like a kitten, and he felt so good against her that she wanted to purr. The longer he lingered, the better he began to smell, too. Like cedar trees and fresh earth. Ruth closed her eyes and breathed him in. She hadn’t been this close to a man in a long, long, long time.

Dangerous.

She relaxed so much that her inhibitions were in danger of failing. That was what pulled her out of her stupor, and she jerked back.

“What are you doing to me?” she whispered.

“I’m calming you. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Ruth. Let me help you relax.”

He led her back to the couch, and they both sat. He pulled her snug against his chest, and they sat there for a long moment, him pumping the happy juice through her until a pale orange glow surrounded both of them. It occurred to her that she should be asking more questions, like how come he had suddenly become a human glow stick for starters. Instead she relaxed into him. It was nice in that scary “what the hell am I doing with this strange man” sort of way. She was letting go, and he was holding her.

And damn if it didn’t feel good.

* * *

Deacon had no idea what he was doing here, on a couch with his arms wrapped around the girl he’d suspected of being a poacher up until twenty minutes ago.

This is wrong.

One thing was for damn sure, she wasn’t a poacher. He knew all too well that poachers could possess
anyone
—no matter how nice or normal or sane—if they found the right in, but Ruth showed no signs of possession.

Still, Deacon had let his inhibitions down to the point of stupidity tonight. He needed to figure out her game and be done with her, one way or another. He had work to do. There was no telling how many, if any, demons still roamed the city. Not to mention the souls that pulled at him incessantly even as he sat here on this couch, his arms around a strange woman.

So soft and warm.

Sure, it had been a little easier for him to juice her into submission than it should have been if she was a reaper. On the other hand, the fact that she wasn’t a blabbering vegetable after the amount of juice he’d already poured into her also proved she was more than human.

So what other explanation was there?

His gut told him she was an untrained reaper.

Chapter Four

I must have dozed off,
Ruth thought. She opened her eyes, slowly absorbing the fact that she was still on the couch, and the early afternoon sunlight was streaming in through the window. She’d somehow managed to sleep half the day away. The smell of bacon cooking in the kitchen filled the room. The day before came back to her in fuzzy bits and pieces. Her mother dying. The Scrub Man. Reapers. She got up and padded into the kitchen in the clothes she had now worn for two days. Deacon, the reaper, was flipping eggs on her mother’s stove. Surreal.

“Hope you’re hungry,” he said. “You’ll need to keep eating to maintain your energy. That’s one thing about being a reaper—most of the same human rules apply, you just get some benefits, too,” he said, a smirk on his face.

“Seriously, I don’t know why you keep calling me that. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” In the light of day, she still wasn’t buying the whole reaper thing. But she knew one thing for sure:
Deacon
was more than human.

That energy mojo trick is not normal.

It wasn’t that she was dismissing the possibilities of what he was offering outright. Her own experience was proof that not everything was black-and-white.

Most people said that they didn’t believe in the supernatural, but if they believed in God, they should at least believe in the possibility of everything else. If God, then why not other supernatural entities: Satan? Angels? Demons?
Vampires? Werewolves? Reapers? It was a slippery slope for sure. Open one door and no telling
what
might come through it.

Regardless, Ruth wasn’t ready to take it all on face value or the word of the very fine man who was cooking her breakfast. But she had to admit that he had some admirable points.

“You might as well accept it so that we can move ahead, Ruth. Unless, of course, you have a better explanation?”

She shook her head no and stared down at his plate longingly. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday.

“So, do you know where your father is buried?”

“Of course I do.”

Deacon popped a bite of bacon into his mouth. “Let’s go there after breakfast to see if he’s hanging around.” He filled a plate for her.

“You mean we don’t have to wait until the stroke of midnight or have a séance or take an Ouija board or anything?” She was a little disappointed with the whole thing. She’d expected something…more.

“We’ll go see if his soul is there. It all depends on whether or not you detached it accidentally when he died. If his soul made it with him to the cemetery, it will still be there. Let’s hope he’s been reaped. If not, we’ll reap him. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

Clearly, he was delusional.

Her urge to bolt from the house was only staid by the plate of oh-so-crispy bacon and eggs he placed on the table for her.

“Oh sure, no problem, trust you. I don’t even
know
you, and until yesterday my life was fine, and now …?”

“Fine? Really? You said yourself that you stay away from people because you can’t stand to read their auras. You were estranged from your own mother and from what I can deduce you have no family or friends. I’d say you are far from fine.”

“Who are you to judge me? You don’t know what it’s been like. I thought I killed my father. And now you’re telling me that I may have trapped or
lost
his soul? How do you think that makes me feel? Let me tell you. It makes me feel like shit. It makes me feel tired and like shit. I don’t know what the point of all of this is, but I’m already damn tired of playing.”

Ruth flopped down hard into a chair at the table, suddenly overcome with emotion. She put her head down on her arms. Hot tears welled in her eyes, and she could not keep them from leaking out. She was mad and sad and hurt. And most of all, she was really, really tired.

Deacon put a hand on the back of her head and pushed some happy juice into her. Maybe if she could learn
that
little method of self-medicating, she could pull it together. She didn’t know why she was picking now to fall apart.

Maybe I found the fault line in my brain.

“It’s going to be okay, Ruth. I’ll help you through this.”

“Why?” she sobbed. “Why do you want to? Aren’t you just cleaning up a mess? My mess?”

“Yes, but we need good reapers. Besides, I could use the help. You seem like a good kid and…hell, maybe you can work with me. Once you’re up to speed, of course.” His voice trailed off but he kept his hand on her hair.

She looked up at him. She must look like a hot mess. Her mascara, which had probably smeared around on her face in her sleep, had starting running and was pooling in dark semicircles under her eyes. Her nose was stuffed up from stifling her emotions, and she hadn’t looked in a mirror since Friday morning. She could only imagine what her hair looked like.