Embarrassment engulfed me, scalding my cheeks, which blazed against the November chill. I couldn’t believe I’d said that when we’d never even been together. The word “boyfriend” had always been a cover for him. And what the hell was the Grim Reaper supposed to do with a girlfriend anyway?
Grim lifted skeletal hands to the hood of his cloak, which he drew back to reveal his human face.
“I don’t remember this soul,” he continued, “but I remember one from the same era. Her name was Rose.”
Oh, jeez. He wasn’t about to tell me about an ex, was he?God. Could it be this whole time I’d just been a rebound for some Victorian heartbreaker?
“She was nineteen when she died,” said Grim. “She wasn’t a Fated, in case you were wondering. She’d simply been thrown from a horse. When I came to get her, she refused to accompany me. Not until I agreed to take her to her ‘one true love.’?”
I frowned and tilted my head at this, glancing his way, though he kept his own stare down, on the stone lid of the tomb we stood next to.
“I wasn’t about to let some headstrong, upstart soul tell me what to do,” he said. “Aside from that, I had a schedule to keep. She wasn’t the only soul I needed to see to, and I had to meet my quota for that day. Still, she insisted that I take her to see her beloved so that she could tell him goodbye. When she refused to come with me without my promise to help her, I cleaved her soul from her body with my scythe, but she was willful and would not be collected. I rarely encounter souls strong enough to withstand me. But… after all this time, you made me realize it wasn’t her soul that gave her the strength to defy me. It was… the love between her and her young man. Who, much to my annoyance, I ultimately did take her to. Hecouldn’t see her, but she spoke to him anyway, promising him that she would always love him, and… that she would be waiting for him in the hereafter. That they would reunite one day.”
“That’s… so incredibly sad,” I said.
“She cried when I told her we had to leave. But she turned to face me, ready to go.”
“Then what did she do?” I asked, curious to see where this story would go, and to find out what exactly Grim was trying to tell me. And why.
“Then she thanked me,” said Grim. “I told her I hadn’t done it because I wanted to. And because I was still annoyed,moreannoyed, I also told her he hadn’t heard her anyway. But she told me I was wrong, and that it didn’t matter what I thought. Or what I thought I knew, for that matter. But then she took my hand and pressed it to her cheek—a show of gratitude despite my irritability. I took her soul after that and delivered her to the Blue Basin. You know I don’t know what becomes of the souls, but the story of Rose doesn’t end there.”
Grim turned toward me, pulling up his sleeve with one skeletal hand to reveal that his other had reverted to flesh and blood. He bared his tattoo-covered forearm at me, and I couldn’t help zeroing in on one of them. It was even one I’d admired before—a delicate rose.
“This showed up after my interaction with Rose,” Grim said. “And I’ve had it ever since.”
“Your tattoos,” I ventured, curious and intrigued. “Are you saying that… all of them represent someone? A soul?”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Grim. “Long enough that I don’t remember when I started, or even really where I’m from, or who I was. But I remember certain souls. Those that have, for one reason or another, because of our interaction, left a mark upon me. It happens once every ten or twenty years. I will meet a soul that brands me irrevocably. A soul that alters mine—to the point that I am marked both physically and spiritually. Certain souls… theyleave their scars. And I never understood Rose fully. Never until now. Because… I forgot my humanity. Something she was determined to appeal to anyway.”
“Wh-why are you telling me this?” I asked him.
Grim didn’t answer. Instead, he opened the collar of his robes, parting the mixture of black fabric and vapor with one flesh-and-blood hand and one skeletal hand.
And I had to suck in a gasp at what now occupied the center of his human chest—just over his heart.
Somehow, a bright yellow sun had appeared, shoving the other somber black tattoos that had been there aside to make room for the new cheerful symbol.
Unlike all the others on his form, this tattoo blazed with vibrant color. And the sun, the happiest of yellows, beamed almost bright enough to exude real light.
“That wasn’t there before,” I said, my gaze snapping up to him. And it hadn’t been. Because I’d gotten an excellent look at his chest—and many other parts of him besides.
“It wasn’t,” said Grim. “But it is now.”
“You’re saying it just showed up?” I asked, confused.
“I knew when I saw it,” said Grim, “that it was too late for me. But I thought that if I stayed away from you, if I cut everything off cold turkey, you’d eventually… forget me.”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head. “But—”
“You said it yourself,” he explained. “Fate seemed to forget about you. Death, true death, never showed up to claim you. And I was starting to think, to hope, that your optimism could be founded. That you’d somehow slipped through the cracks and that you might get to go on with your life. Rose was right. I didn’t—don’t—know everything. So maybe if I backed off, I’d find out you were right, too, and that you’d get to have your life. If I cared for you, I needed to let you go so that you could live that life. And I do. And I did. But then, tonight… I felt the call.”
I blinked at him, dumbfounded and a little lost. “You mean… it wasn’t because of The Judge.”
“Helena.” He marveled at me, mystified. “How could you ever think I could holdanythingas more precious than you? Let alone a fucking car.”
His words speared me through the heart—and left me shaking.Precious, he’d said.
No man had ever called me that.
