“I know it’s you,” she said. “And… I think it’s time we talked.”
Talk? That was not a good idea.Oran option. We’d spoken enough, and in that brief conversation, I’d already conveyed to her everything she needed to know about the situation at hand.
“I know you’re there,” she said. “Who else would always call after midnight with the ID listed as ‘Unknown’? Aside from that, I can feel it. And though I don’t know how… I can feel you.”
She should be afraid of me. Everyone was afraid of me. Why wasn’t she?
“Say something,” she pleaded. “Please.”
Why did I want to reply? I couldn’t.
“Am I going to die?” she asked when the silence only swelled.
Yes.
Thatwasthe answer. One that, if she was asking, she likely already suspected. But… why couldn’t I say it out loud?
“I admit I wasn’t sure before,” she pressed, her living room light flicking on, “but now I know youcantalk. Just… say something. Ask me if I like scary movies. Or demand a ransom. I’d ask your favorite color, but something tells me it’s death-by-scythe black.”
I lingered on the line for just a moment longer. Just until she appeared in that window, her visage framed like a figure in a portrait, her form backed by golden light that set her matching hair aglow like a halo.
That light. Oddly, it seemed to be coming…fromher.
“Can you see me?” she asked. “I think you’ve been watching me. I get this… funny feeling sometimes. Something like a spider sense. It’s spooky, but… kind of nice, too.”
Moving of its own accord, my hand went to my ribs, the place her fingers had sunk into that night on the balcony. When she’d fallen against me after I’d yanked her away from that ledge. For reasons I still didn’t understand.
An echo of that sensation rippled through me now.
“At least tell me your name,” she pleaded. “I… don’t know what to call you. I’m Helena. If… you didn’t already know.”
Helena. Fittingly, a name one letter more than that of the most beautiful woman in history. The name of a song I’d, years ago, learned to play, too. A song about grieving, yearning, the residue death hefts upon the living…
“Thank you, by the way,” she said. “For saving me. Both times. And I mean that. Even if… you can’t keep doing it.”
My soul gathered itself into a knot before thudding just once—its essence beating against my sternum, like a banging fist that brought with it the reverberation of some kind of murky remorse.
The emotion—less recognizable than all the others. I didn’t like it.
I didn’t likethis.
Killing the connection, I unfurled, unwilling to risk catching her eye and confirming what she already grasped. That fate had dealt her a bad beat. That there was nothing that could stop that. That, despite what either of us preferred, Iwascoming for her.
And soon.
10HELENA
Frustratingly, after I’d tried to talk to him, the calls stopped.
If there was one thing I’d learned about Reaper Man, it was that he wasn’t the conversating sort. A fact that led me to question why he bothered calling me in the first place.
But that question. Wasn’t it the last one in a long line of too many others left unanswered?
I just wanted to know what in the fiction turned nonfiction was going on. And since it was my keister on the line, didn’t I at least deserve that?
Of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t also long to hear thatvoiceagain. Buzzing into my ear over the phone.Orin person. Bossing me around some more. But maybewithoutthe threat of imminent death?
“Any wild party plans for tonight?” asked Cleo, one of my library assistants, the question stirring me from my bordering-on-dirty thoughts.
