Road trips sucked more than I expected. I loved teleportation and mourned its loss as if it were a loved one. Being stuck in a tiny space with a demon I didn’t entirely trust didn’t sit right with me either.
“The only reason Donn hasn’t sent Phin to Tech Duinn is that Donn doesn’t think Phin knows anything.” Ezul was the one driving. For a demon, he drove responsibly. I wasn’t sure what I expected. Maybe for him to live up to the meaning of ‘speed demon’. He drove at the limit with cruise control on, so he stayed at a consistent speed.
“That’s what Morgana said.” Knowing Phin was safer in the dark didn’t make it any easier for me. Not when every word from Phin’s mouth felt like a rejection.
Maybe I’d earned what he’d said. Nothing had to change before Grym met Elliot. Phin and I hadn’t needed anything more than what we had. We were fuck buddies, which I liked. Phin was fun in the bedroom, on the beach late at night, and that one time in the park, which we’d agreed not to talk about. So what if emotions had cropped up? I’d pushed them down, burying myself in surfing and clubbing. Then Elliot came into our lives. Beloveds cropped up everywhere, even in the office. And I couldn’t push the emotions down anymore, and I didn’t want to anyway. Not when I knew Phin was my beloved. It turned out that getting away from Donn and his office realm was just the kick in the ass I needed.
I couldn’t hide behind parties and surfing anymore. I couldn’t bury my feelings, hoping Phin would stop talking about wanting more than just fucking. I could no longer avoid it.
“Everything has changed. He just doesn’t understand that.” Talking about it only made me worry about him even more. “So, what’s the plan?”
“We go to headquarters and escort Phin out of the building.” Really? That was Ezul’s grand plan. And Donn was just going to let it happen? Not hardly. Ezul wasn’t the one who would go to Tech Duinn when things took a turn for the worse.
“It would be a lot easier if we could teleport.” How risky was it, exactly?
“Donn knows when you teleport.”
“Every time?”
Ezul nodded. “We do things the long way. Driving, using phones. No teleporting, no inter-office notes. Donn will send you to Tech Duinn.”
“So you acknowledge that Phin and I have more at stake than you.” I wanted to know what his motivation was. It had to be something more than sympathizing with the reapers and beloveds.
“He’ll have something far worse in store for me.”
“Like…”
Ezul’s jaw clenched, and his dark eyes seemed to get darker. “Like stripping me of my essence.”
What the hell did that mean? “What is your essence?”
“It’s what makes me a demon. Like a soul, but not.”
“And you think waltzing in through the front door is the way to go here.” That made no sense.
“With Phin coming in every day, Donn has hope that you and the rest of the department will come back to him, that you’ll see reason. Perhaps he’ll think you’ve come back to work.” Ezul shrugged. “We couldn’t hide even if we wanted to.”
“So you’re playing with his emotions.” That was several levels of wrong.
None of us wanted things to change, least of all me. But beloveds existed. Phin was mine. For the first time in my life, I intended to lean into my feelings rather than run from them. I didn’t have a choice. Phin’s life in the living realm would end if I didn’t. I had to save him. That meant getting Phin to trust me again.
Chapter Seven
Phin
Being on time meant being ten minutes early. Showing up on time had always been a hallmark of a good work ethic, and I prided myself on giving one hundred percent. I parked my car. I had fifteen minutes before my workday was supposed to start. That left five minutes to get from the parking garage to the elevator, which could be slow. I accounted for that, too. Since I had a meeting with HR first thing, I was even more anal about time management than usual. Nothing scared me more than HR, except maybe Donn. Being late only stressed me out, and I was already tense enough.
There was just one tinsy-tiny problem. I couldn’t make myself get out of the car. I couldn’t even say why, other than the conversation with Ossy replaying in my head. If the entire reaper department had quit, as I suspected it had, then I was up a shit creek without a paddle. My grandfather used to use that idiom all the time. It was gross but appropriate to the situation I was in. That all the reapers were in, it seemed. What I didn’t know was why. Ossy had said he would tell me as soon as we saw each other again, but I wasn’t holding my breath for that to happen.Ossy was unreliable at best. He didn’t like it when things were uncomfortable. Ossy had always been a good employee, though. I couldn’t count on him, but the Bureau had always been able to, even if he was a little late some of the time. Which meant that if he wouldn’t tell me over the phone and the other reapers wouldn’t talk to me, I had to find out on my own.
It made my stomach twist in knots. Whatever the reapers were doing, they had left me out of it. Was I ever part of the Reaper family? Ossy had called me Phin Reaper during our conversation last night. The others had made the change years ago. None of them had asked me whether I wanted to. It had always made me feel separate from them. Well, that, and the fact that I was in the office, not in the field.
Was I so easily forgotten, so insignificant that the entire department had left me behind like trash? I must have been, because no one was answering my calls, not even Morgana.
Morgana’s silence hurt the worst, even more than Ossy’s flakiness. With Ossy, I expected it. I’d grown used to the pain. I’d never been important enough to truly matter to him anyway, but Morgana and I had worked closely together. I thought we were friends, to the point that we’d built a family of sorts. Apparently not.
I kept a pack of travel tissues in my car and grabbed one when my eyes filled with tears.
Never let them see you cry.That was what my grandma always said. I’d learned never to let anyone see me lose it. Not even Ossy had ever seen how he twisted my guts into knots and made my heart break a little each time he ditched me for waves and a good party.
