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CHAPTER ONE
The needle dug into my skin, moving up and down my shoulder blade at an agonizingly slow pace. I kept my eyes fixed on the wall, not really seeing the artwork chaotically plastered all over it, and my arms around the backrest of the chair I was straddling. The pain felt good. It felt real. The incessant buzzing of the tattoo machine disconnected me from the here and now. I’d picked a complex model, so I’d be stuck under the needle for at least three hours. Gloria, the tattoo artist, had tried to convince me that we could do it in two sessions. Two hours now for the black ink, and another two hours next week to add the color. Anyone who knew me could’ve guessed my answer. No. Four hours. Now. She could take her time, too. Make it five hours, Gloria. I have nowhere to be.
Five hours under the needle. That should have exorcised some of my demons. Except we were three hours in, and the ache in my chest refused to let go. My hands turned into fists. I pursed my lips, and it wasn’t because the needle was inching closer to my spine, where the skin was more tender. Flashes flew across my vision. I screwed my eyes shut and prayed they’d go away, otherwise my trembling fists would find their way into my mouth, and my teeth would sink into the flesh before I’d have time to control myself.
“It’s coming along well,” Corri flappity-flapped around the chair. She floated a few inches from my face, the breeze her translucent wings created wafting over my sweaty forehead. I smiled and opened my eyes. “I still can’t believe you’re doing it,” she breathed. A cute blush spread across her pale cheeks. “I thought you were joking…”
“I never joke about tattoos.” One week before, she’d done me a favor, going against Morningstar’s orders. I said I’d get a tattoo of her, so I was doing it now. Corri’s pretty pixie self on my left shoulder blade. And not just because she was my friend and a super champ when it came to going against my father’s rules, but also because the whole endeavor was sufficiently complicated to keep me under the needle for long enough to have a good shot at forgetting about the small blades in my bedroom drawer. Thin, sharp blades that would leave the most elegant red lines on my stomach, breasts, thighs… Not on my wrists, though. Too visible. They would only tell on me; tell Valentine Morningstar that his plan had worked. I was nearly broken.
After year two at Grim Reaper Academy ended, Morningstar started putting his plans into action. As the new Headmaster, he had every intention to turn the professors, the curriculum, and the Academy rules and traditions upside down, eliminate all that didn’t suit his vision, and replace it with something better. Why was it better? Because he, Valentine, the greatest Grim Reaper alive, had come up with it. Among the first and most crucial decisions he’d made was that I was going to spend the summer vacation with him. Oh, and that I was going to break up with my two boyfriends, the demon Pazuzu Eremus, and the false god GC Apis. I did spend the summer vacation at his castle in the Scottish countryside, but I didn’t break up with my guys. We had teleportation devices now. Distance wasn’t an issue.
When I disappeared for two days in Hell, my father got me an Unseelie bodyguard. A tall, bulky fay with dark eyes and long, black hair, all dressed like some elvish warrior from some ridiculous fantasy game. It was their military uniform, apparently. Whatever. Having Crassus follow me around didn’t mean a thing when I wanted to see Paz and GC. So, I disappeared for another three days. Corri helped me distract the Unseelie guard, this time. Morningstar punished her with one week in the Blank. He punished me by sending me out to reap.
“You’ll reap in my place,” he’d said. “You’re ready.” Ugh, that fake smile on his stupidly handsome face! “I’m Headmaster now, and my responsibilities lie with the Academy. I can’t do two jobs at the same time and do them well. But I’m lucky I have you, my daughter. You’re so talented, such a natural, that I know I can send you on the field and rest assured that you’ll do a great job even if you’re not officially a Grim Reaper.”
I had to admit… I did feel a bit flattered. I knew he only wanted to get rid of me, and at the same time make sure I was too damn busy to run away to see GC and Paz, but I still couldn’t help feeling proud of myself that I’d only graduated year two, with another year to go, and I was so good that Morningstar said I could go reap on my own. I could, basically, take over his job. Oh, how naïve I was...
He didn’t only send me reaping. He got in touch with his Violent Death colleagues and asked them to give me the most difficult, dangerous, and disgusting jobs. The most heinous reaping cases were passed down to me the moment the other Violent Reapers got them. I had no idea how that was possible, how they could control a system that I’d always thought was random, but they did it. So, I spent my summer amongst serial killers, rapists, mobsters, and the poor. The poor always had it the worst. Thank God the war-ridden countries kept it light, but I did get summoned in the middle of a tribal conflict in Africa at the end of July, where I couldn’t believe what humans could do to other humans. That was when I started cutting again. My thighs, at first, then above the hem of my panties, on my stomach, drawing endless lines from one cigarette burn mark to another. Soon, my stomach was a map of bright red roads and pale, long-healed dots.
It was bad.
I couldn’t keep it up.
Not when I had to talk some poor soul out of doing exactly what I was doing every week or so. Of course, those cases landed in my lap, too. All because of Valentine fucking Morningstar, who wanted to punish me for disobeying him. Although, there were days when I wondered whether he was really trying to show me who was boss because I’d refused to break up with GC and Pazuzu, or there was something else there. Maybe he was punishing me because I existed. As simple as that.
Either way, I couldn’t keep cutting myself. I still needed to feel the pain, though, especially after a particularly horrible day. Tats. The idea came to me out of the blue, a
nd it stuck. The first one was under my breasts. I’d read that was one of the most painful places to get a tattoo, so I went right for it. An intricate sun and moon mandala with beads, rays, and strings coming out of it and curving up to hug the underside of my boobs. My ribs were next. Abstract geometry on the left, and a fox on the right, because I liked foxes. My stomach, my lower back, my upper back, and I was soon running out of ideas. What to get, what to get? Corri on my left shoulder blade. That should keep me satisfied for a while.
She’d risked being sent to the Blank for another week when she’d snuck Paz and GC into my room. I couldn’t get out of the house unless I went reaping, and even then, Crassus the Fay followed me, teleporting right after me wherever I went. Morningstar had given him one of those stupid teleportation pins. He was my shadow. My very tall, very big and ripped shadow. I eventually got used to him, but my guys were so close to being caught that night, that I vowed not to try again. The summer vacation was almost over, anyway. I wasn’t going to lose my mind if I didn’t fuck for three weeks.
The only good thing that came out of my involuntary volunteering to reap in my father’s place, was that Morningstar taught me how to teleport on my own. I didn’t need the tiny teleporting device attached to my cloak anymore. I was ahead of everyone at the Academy, and that could only serve as an advantage. I hated that I had to reap all summer. I hated that I had to look my poor victims in the eye and sever their string of life. And I hated that I had to turn my back to their aggressors and pretend that all was good in the world, that nature was following its course and I was just a pawn on this great chess board called life. Life and death. Life was white, death was black. White moved first, but that didn’t mean much, did it?
“Done.”
Gloria’s voice startled me. She was a beautiful false goddess with four arms and skin as blue as the sky. She was Hindu, and her name wasn’t Gloria, but that was what she liked to be called. In the supernatural world, one’s origin, name, and abilities were something to be proud of. Every time she stepped out of her tattoo shop, people insisted on calling her by her real name, which only made her become more introverted and antisocial. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have understood her. To be powerful and hide it? To have an exotic name that was barely pronounceable and change it? To be special and wish to be normal? But now I got it. Now I knew. And that was why I called Gloria by the name she’d chosen for herself.
“Thanks. Till next time.”
She smiled. “What will it be next time?”
