“That’s because I’m letting you.”
“What about him?” I said, gesturing to the body. “Is he dead?”
“Nah, just out of it. We should probably put him outside. He’s probably going to wake up soon.”
“We?” I said.
“Well, I don’t exactly have arms to move him.”
“Right.” I went over and grabbed the man by his arms and dragged his body toward the front door. Piper was there to open it and then took one of his arms and helped me pull him the rest of the way out into the hall, where we left him, and went back into my apartment and closed the door.
“You’re sure he isn’t dead?” I asked again, picturing one of my neighbors coming home and screaming at his body lying there.
“Positive. Borrowing doesn’t kill people. It just makes them tired and disoriented.”
“Borrowing?” Piper asked. It was the first time she’d spoken since he walked into my place, and although I couldn’t exactly see him staring at her, I did see his cloudlike form turn toward her.
“It’s something I can do,” he replied. “Get in someone else’s body and borrow it. I don’t do it that often,” he explained. “It’s kind of painful depending on the size of the personality inside the body. That guy was bigger than most. Felt like I was a sardine jammed in one of those tiny cans.”
Piper laughed.
I looked at her like she had ten heads. “This isn’t funny,” I reminded them. “Why are you here?”
“Actually, I just came to pick up something I left here,” the cloud replied.
“You’rethe one who put the body in my closet?” I asked.
“You saw that, huh?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to miss,”
“You were supposed to be in Scotland.”
“I wasn’t about to stay there after he left me without a word,” I snapped.
“Your boyfriend didn’t leave you. He was taken. By the Reaper, who he has managed to piss off in every way possible.”
“He is not my boyfriend,” I replied automatically, but then the rest of his words caught up to me. “And isn’t the fact he pissed the Reaper off old news?”
“He pissed him off some more. In new ways.”
“The level of idiocy that man displays is beyond me,” I muttered, thinking that the next time I saw him I was going to smack him upside the head.
But then my thoughts caused everything in me to still.
I really thought I would never see him again. I really thought it was over.
But it might not be.
Amongst the stillness, the butterflies erupted.
Maybe he really hadn’t meant to leave me. I looked down at his T-shirt that I was still wearing, the T-shirt he’d put on my bed to presumably put on after he joined me in the shower. Someone who was going to leave wouldn’t have bothered to do that. Would they?
“What did he do?” Piper asked, drawing me out of my thoughts.
“The Reaper had a secret stash of bodies kept under lock and key because they were important to him.”
“Okay,” Piper said, urging him to finish.
