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I’VE ALWAYS SEEN THE REAPERS.
Even as a toddler—with little understanding of spirits, death, or the horrors that lie in the shadows—I’d been aware of them. As I’d gotten older and my knowledge of the mystical had strengthened, I’d begun to call them Death, because the people I’d seen them following had always died within a day or so.
In my teenage years, I learned who and what they really were. They called themselves reapers, and they were collectors of souls. They took the essence—the spirit—of the dying and escorted them on to the next part of their journey, be that heaven or hell.
The reapers weren’t flesh-and-blood beings, although they could attain that form if they wished. They were creatures of light and shadows—and an energy so fierce, their mere presence burned across my skin like flame.
Which is how I sensed the one now following me. He was keeping his distance, but the heat of him sang through the night, warming my skin and stirring the embers of fear. I swallowed heavily and tried to stay calm. After all, being the daughter of one of Melbourne’s most powerful psychics had its benefits—and one of those was a knowledge of my own death. It would come many years from now, in a stupid car accident.
Of course, it was totally possible that I’d gotten the timing of my death wrong. My visions weren’t always as accurate as my mother’s, so maybe the death I’d seen in my future was a whole lot closer than I’d presumed.
And it was also a fact that not all deaths actually happened when they were supposed to. That’s why there were ghosts—they were the souls uncollected by reapers, either because their deaths had come before their allotted time, or because they’d refused the reapers’ guidance. Either way, the end result was the same. The souls were left stranded between this world and the next.
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket and walked a little faster. There was no outrunning the reapers—I knew that—but I still couldn’t help the instinctive urge to try.
Around me, the day was only just dawning. Lygon Street gleamed wetly after the night’s rain, and the air was fresh and smelled ever so faintly of spring. The heavy bass beat coming from the nearby wolf clubs overran what little traffic noise there was, and laughter rode the breeze—a happy sound that did little to chase the chill from my flesh.
It was a chill caused not by an icy morning, but rather by the ever-growing tide of fear.
Why was the reaper following me?
As I crossed over to Pelham Street, my gaze flicked to the nearby shop windows, searching again for the shadow of death.
Reapers came in all shapes and sizes, often taking the form most likely to be accepted by those they’d come to collect. I’m not sure what it said about me that my reaper was shirtless, tattooed, and appeared to be wearing some sort of sword strapped across his back.
A reaper with a weapon? Now, that was something I’d never come across before. But maybe he knew I wasn’t about to go lightly.
I turned onto Ormond Place and hurried toward the private parking lot my restaurant shared with several other nearby businesses. There was no sound of steps behind me, no scent of another, yet the reaper’s presence burned all around me—a heat I could feel on my skin and within my mind.
Sometimes being psychic like my mom really sucked.
I wrapped my fingers around my keys and hit the automatic opener. As the old metal gate began to grind and screech its way to one side, I couldn’t help looking over my shoulder.
My gaze met the reaper’s. His face was chiseled, almost classical in its beauty, and yet possessing a hard edge that spoke of a man who’d won more than his fair share of battles. His eyes were blue—one a blue as vivid and as bright as a sapphire, the other almost a navy, and as dark and stormy as the sea.
Awareness flashed through those vivid, turbulent depths—an awareness that seemed to echo right through me. It was also an awareness that seemed to be accompanied, at least on his part, by surprise.
For several heartbeats neither of us moved, and then he simply disappeared. One second he was there, and the next he wasn’t.
I blinked, wondering if it was some sort of trick. Reapers, like the Aedh, could become energy and smoke at will, but—for me, at least—it usually took longer than the blink of an eye to achieve. Of course, I was only half Aedh, so maybe that was the problem.
The reaper didn’t reappear, and the heat of his presence no longer burned through the air or shivered through my mind. He’d gone. Which was totally out of character for a reaper, as fa
r as I knew.
I mean, they were collectors of souls. It was their duty to hang about until said soul was collected. I’d never known of one to up and disappear the moment he’d been spotted—although given that the ability to actually spot them was a rare one, this probably wasn’t an everyday occurrence.
Mom, despite her amazing abilities—abilities that had been sharpened during her creation in a madman’s cloning lab—certainly couldn’t see them. But then, she couldn’t actually see anything. The sight she did have came via a psychic link she shared with a creature known as a Fravardin—a guardian spirit that had been gifted to her by a long-dead clone brother.
She was also a full Helki werewolf, not a half-Aedh like me. The Aedh were kin to the reapers, and it was their blood that gave me the ability to see the reapers.
But why did this reaper disappear like that? Had he realized he’d been following the wrong soul, or was something weirder going on?
Frowning, I walked across to my bike and climbed on. The leather seat wrapped around my butt like a glove, and I couldn’t help smiling. The Ducati wasn’t new, but she was sharp and clean and comfortable to ride, and even though the hydrogen engine was getting a little old by today’s standards, she still put out a whole lot of power. Maybe not as much as the newer engines, but enough to give a mother gray hair. Or so my mom reckoned, anyway.
As the thought of her ran through my mind again, so did the sudden urge to call her. My frown deepening, I dug my phone out of my pocket and said, “Mom.”
The voice-recognition software clicked into action and the call went through almost instantly.
“Risa,” she said, her luminous blue eyes shining with warmth and amusement. “I was just thinking about you.”
