I frowned, tilting my head at him. Instead of elaborating, he only offered me a weak smile.
“All right, copper.” Palms up, he extended both wrists to me. “You got me.”
My frown deepened into a scowl as I peered from his wrinkled, weathered face with its bright blue eyes and neatly trimmed white beard to the matching and liver-spotted hands he offered me.
“I promise it’s not like that, Mr. Bluford,” I said. “I’m not anything like a cop. There’s no judgment. I’m just… the middleman.”
“Please,” he said, dropping one hand in lieu of extending only the other, like a friend or even a rival offering a shake. “Call me Cielo.”
I took his hand, but instead of offering the name I didn’t have back to him, I zapped his soul into its more transportable shape—a pale pastel-blue sphere.
“Nothing personal,” I said to the soul, to Cielo. “Just… time’s up is all.”
Which was the truth. Also, caring about another Fated, at leastbeyond the capacity required by my station, was something I needed to avoid.
I only had a few heartstrings anyway, and Helena alone owned those.
Rising, I leaned my scythe against the desk of the nurses’ station while I worked to secure the Fated in my hourglass.
Inside me, my spirit tightened at the fate of this soul, this Fated, who never got to do what he wanted. Who had been granted more time than Helena, too.
Helena…
Was there truly nothing I could do?
After leaving the hospital, I went to pick up all the souls I’d kept waiting while I’d been playing hooky with Helena. After that, I went to collect the fresher ones. There’d been plenty to keep me busy until nearly five. That was typically the time Helena went home. It was also an hour after she said her coworker friend, Hunter, came into work.
A time frame that would allow me to talk to him without her there.
Because, until I figured out what was going on and what I needed to do, Ihadto stay away from her.
If for no other reason than that I wouldn’t be able to resist taking her like that again.
And right now, if I was going to save her life, preserve her soul inthisworld and existence—I needed to fuckingfocus.
36HELENA
I awoke just before sunrise to find Grim gone. Rather, he wasn’t with me.
After lying in bed for nearly a half hour while I waited for my entire being to reboot and enter recovery mode, I half fumbled, half fell off the mattress. From there, wrapped in a sheet, I went looking for him in case hehadstuck around. Grim…
I found a note instead, which he’d scrawled onto my sunflower notepad in pink ink since that was the only color pen immediately available.
Called to a Fated.
G
After peeling the note free, I stood in my dining room/kitchen staring at the paper as though, if I waited long enough, more wordswouldappear. Some kind of clue about when he’d be back, or even a winky face or a naughty promise—something,anything, to go on until Ididsee him again.
I hated having to fight the needling fear, too—the new fear—that this note carried a lie.
He’d already revealed how the Fated were rare. Relatively rare…
So maybe he’d just scratched out a convenient excuse.
Because maybe he hadn’t wanted to be here when I woke up, and maybe he didn’t want to come back, either.
In other words, maybe he was having regrets?
