Rogue Reaper

by Riley Archer

  Previous me unlocked the door, and I was there again. In the cramped, rickety apartment I had been so proud of. The first place I’d lived in and paid for on my own, no government assistance.

  The scene went the same as always.

  My keys clinked in the glass bowl on the counter.

  His hand was plastered over my mouth, salty as I scrambled to push it away.

  Terror and adrenaline sloshed like a sick cocktail in my stomach.

  I couldn’t breathe. I watched the world blur. Everything darkened as my skin went cold.

  When the nightmare finally retracted its claws, whispers seeped out of the gaping holes it’d left behind. They repeated questions I couldn’t answer, over and over again.

  Who killed me?

  And why?

  The static of the paging system brought me back to life. It filled my room, and I bolted upright.

  Ever since I’d become a reaper, my dreams were wickedly vivid. I’d relived my death more times than I could count. It had terrified me at first, but I’d learned to relish the experience. It was my opportunity to scrutinize every detail, my only chance to pick up on something that might give me the answers I was dying to know—pun definitely intended.

  Now, it bored me. Not because I had gotten the answers, but because I’d already extracted the one clue that existed in that hellscape. In the reflection of the glass bowl, an embroidered, vertical business card poked out of my killer’s pocket. Apparently, he enjoyed visits to Black Diamond Gentleman’s Club before committing murders.

  The static ceased, and a voice took its place.

  “Collector Ellis Kennicot. Please report to the Command Section, Zone A.”

  Zone A?

  I was either getting an achievement award or in a ton of trouble, and I knew which was more likely.

  To spite Linda, I didn’t have anything I imagined as Zone A–appropriate attire, so I decided to walk the proverbial plank in a sweatsuit. What the hell, right? Speaking of, it was possible I’d soon be introduced to Hell with a capital H.

  The lights were low, the whispers lower. Busy little bees in their quiet little pods, working their night shifts away in silence. Yet another Reaper Collective attempt to steep its employees in familiarity; death wasn’t even close to a nine-to-five gig, but they did their best to convince us it was.

  When I reached the bolted, key-coded door of Zone A, a reaper who looked like a burly nightclub bouncer nodded his head at me.

  Enforcer. I thought of them as the Secret Service for the top tier of reaper society.

  “Identification, please,” he said in a tone that matched his appearance.

  I held out my access card, he scanned it, and I walked into the sleekest office space I had yet to encounter, all things in tones of muted gray and classy gold. The door clicked with finality behind me.

  A woman appeared out of seemingly nowhere, and then I saw the inconspicuous door behind her. “Collector Kennicot, Command Coordinator Atlas appreciates your prompt arrival. This way, please.” She didn’t give me a chance to respond.

  I’d never heard of Command Coordinator Atlas. Which made sense. Reapers operated and shared information strictly on a need-to-know basis. He sounded important though.

  One thing was for sure. I might be walking the plank, but they’d styled the tip of doom in luxury.

  “Go ahead and knock when you’re ready,” she said.

  I glimpsed her name tag before she swiveled away, which read Tamar.

  “Thank you, Tamar,” I said to the back of her glossy head, which was already several feet away from me.

  Regretting my outfit choice but ready as I’d ever be, I knocked.

  “It’s open.” The voice was too muffled to detect any defining characteristics other than that it was likely male.

  I let out a breath and turned the knob.

  The office was a master class in interior design. It smelled clean, and not in a just-been-bleached kind of way, more like a new-car or expensive-remodel kind of way. The man behind the gleaming oak desk held a hefty pen against his chin, his styled hair as gold as the polished nameplate on his desk—COMMAND COORDINATOR ATLAS. Suspenders on full display. The shape of rigorously toned biceps evident beneath his collared shirt. Not a wrinkle in sight, clothing or skin. I supposed he looked like an Atlas.

  A bookshelf wall was behind him, the spines within it thick and gilded. Did he actually read them, or were they decoration? I squinted at them.

  “Collector Kennicot, I appreciate you seeing me during your off-duty hours. Please, have a seat.” He articulated each word with care.

  I imagined he liked being in control, liked things orderly. But his composure was different than Otto’s; it had sharper edges, more rigidity. It made me want to iron my posture and mind my Ps and Qs.

  In comparison, Otto drew me in but also made me want to play darts with his beautiful head. I wasn’t sure which I preferred.

  “Of course, not a problem.” I settled into the chair. Straightened my sweater, as if that would help its appearance. “How may I be of assistance?”

  “I’d like to talk about what you experienced today.”

  Ah. So, it wasn’t an award or a slap on the wrist. It was a psych eval.

  “Right. I received Hailey Godwin’s file at 1300—”

  “No, no. I read all that in the report. I’m interested in the anomaly. Can you detail the call you described? Walk me through it.” He seemed genuine enough. But it’d take skills to get an office like this, deceptive or otherwise.

  I straightened my back. “Okay. I had just gained Hailey Godwin’s trust. She was reaching for my hand. As soon as I felt the tingle of the Abyss beginning to open up, it was like a war horn went off. A high-pitched alarm that set my teeth on edge—definitely not a human sound. It struck Hailey’s soul right to the core. She just ripped apart.”

  He scribbled something down with that fancy pen. “You feel that your mission was sabotaged?”

  “Sabotaged?” I hadn’t thought of it that way. I still didn’t. “I don’t believe it had anything to do with me, not personally anyway. I think something about the sound—the frequency or octave or something—specifically made the soul glitch.”

  “So, a trigger for Glitches?”

  I considered it. “Um, perhaps.”

  “Do you believe it could have been a coincidence? A man-made noise with an accidental result?”

  I looked him dead in the eye, surprised that his focus was equally as intent on me. Seconds ticked away, and I got the sense that I was either going to pass or fail depending on my answer.

  “No,” I said without flinching. “It wasn’t a coincidence.”

  Command Coordinator Atlas dropped his pen and leaned in. “I’m going to tell you something, something a bit above your pay grade.”

  There was no pay involved at my level, just benefits—like a beating heart—but I kept my mouth shut and listened.

  “Glitches have been increasing at an alarming rate. From seventeen to nearly fifty percent, and the trend continues upward. We have done quality assurance assessments within each step of our soul-collecting process. No identifiable reason has become clear. But you, and only you, have detected a potential cause.”

  A fifty percent Glitch rate? No wonder it had taken Tanaka so long to get to me.

  “I see,” I said, but I didn’t. I didn’t see how the Glitch rate could be so high, and I surely didn’t know what he expected from me.

  Atlas folded his hands together. “I have a proposition for you.”

  Like the idiot I was, I was intrigued. “What sort?”

  “How would you like to go undercover for me and live in the physical world again?”

  It sounded like a cruel April Fools’ joke. A tease.

  But if he was for real?

  I could finally investigate why I’d died.

  3

  The New Identity

  I stared at my new driver’s license. Someone had really botched th
e thing.

  The girl in the photo wore her hair in waves that didn’t come naturally to me. The same went for the shiny hint of rose on her lips and cheeks. But the starkest contrast was the smile. Wide, easy, ever-present.

  I mean, real me wasn’t exactly the epitome of doom and gloom, but come on.

  Sounding like Barbie’s ditzy but less attractive best friend, her name was Ellie Ken. My entire legal name condensed into nickname form. My middle name hadn’t even made the cut. I supposed Ellis Rosabell Kennicot would never be truly reintroduced to the living.

  But two things on this piece of plastic gave me a thrill: my new address—smack dab in the middle of New York, New York—and the invisible-to-human-eyes spirit chip embedded in the corner. The location didn’t necessarily make giddy excitement ball up in my chest. Where I was stationed didn’t matter as long as it was in the physical world. Now that I had physical world clearance via the chip, I could hitch a ride between New York and Alaska—my death state—multiple times a day. Covering my trail would be the hard part, but I’d figure that out later.

  Right now, it was time to pack.

  Five minutes later, I took my final stroll as a Collector through High-Risk Department’s halls. Packing wasn’t much of an endeavor. My possessions were few, as a human and as a reaper. I carried a small duffel bag and a stuffed animal I’d convinced Otto to snag from my apartment when he recruited me. I refused to be embarrassed that I’d held on to it well into adulthood.

  I ran into Diana before I reached the Command Section. Today, half her hair was fire-engine red, the same color she preferred on her lips.

  She gave me a friendly elbow bump. “Look at you. Congratulations, little Recruiter! And I thought you’d had a bad day yesterday. That look on your face was because you’ll miss me, huh?”

  I beamed, but my heart dropped a little. If Diana knew, so did Otto. “Come on. I won’t miss you for long. I’ll blink a few times, and you’ll be my roommate.”

  “Oh God, I hope not. Let’s be neighbors who enjoy their own showers. Where ya headed?”

  “New York—”

  “Not the Academy?” Otto said from right behind me.

  Shit in a barrel. I was already sucking at being undercover.

  “Not right away. Maybe the classes are overbooked right now or something. I’m not complaining.”

  Diana grimaced with friendly envy, and then her watch pinged. A file must’ve just dropped for her. A good one. I could see it in the way concentration settled in her face.

  “Ooh! Gotta go. Congrats again.” She patted my shoulder without looking at me and left.

  Otto took her place in front of me. He’d shaved. His fresh baby face was sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. “That is … interesting. Setting you up in the middle of a place crawling with things you’ve never even heard of and just as many reapers. Experienced ones.”

  Yeah, yeah, as if something worse than Glitches existed out there. Otto was baiting me like a fisher, and I wasn’t about to play trout.

  I slung my duffel bag over my shoulder and tucked my monkey plush under my arm. “Don’t think I can handle it?”

  “I think you’ll handle it as you handle all else.”

  “And how is that?”

  “Headfirst.” The quiet smile curling the corners of his mouth told me he’d meant it literally.

  I imagined myself trying to head-butt a monster and a smile of my own cracked. I bit the inside of my lip to keep it in check.

  He inhaled to say something, but the bouncer—erm, Enforcer from last night rounded the corner.

  The Enforcer cleared his throat and stood at ease. “Collector Kennicot. On behalf of the Command Coordinator, I will escort you to your transportation.”

  “Sure.” I hadn’t realized I needed a babysitter. “Can you give me a minute?”

  The Enforcer nodded once and moved back a pace.

  All humor left Otto. He stepped closer to me, closer than he’d ever been outside of physical training sessions. He smelled like clean linen and a trace of something sweet and smoky.

  I homed in on the freckle near his eye. It kept my vision from straying to his lips.

  “Ellis, don’t make the mistake of thinking the scythe is meant to protect Collectors. That’s a Grim’s last priority.”

  He walked away, leaving a chill in my bones and an ache in my chest. I was too old to fall for bogeyman stories. I shook my head clear of his influence, which wasn’t an easy thing when he looked the way he did.

  First things first. I had a private shower to attend to.

  Much to my surprise, Command Coordinator Atlas was waiting for me inside a swanky elevator hidden within the depths of the Command Section. If he had been composed yesterday, today he was a god of suits, slick hair, and posture.

  And subtle cologne maybe—unless the elevator came with the scent. No mold for upper management, huh?

  I lowered my head and stood at his side, obscenely aware that a worn stuffed animal poked between us. I blinked coolly, pulling my shoulders back like a serious grown-up. “Command Coordinator.”

  “Please, call me Atlas.”

  “Sure thing, Atlas.” Damn. The grown-up act didn’t last long.

  “Jed, to location twenty-seven, please,” Atlas said to the Enforcer.

  I supposed he was on first or last name basis with everyone. Like a psychiatrist. Cold skepticism pooled in my gut. I reached into the front pocket of the duffel bag and tapped the borders of my license for good measure.

  Enforcer Jed keyed something in, the doors closed, and the elevator purred to life.

  I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to ask about my mission, a game plan, or even about where we were going, so I kept quiet. The awkwardness was thick as an anxious cake when the walls of the elevator changed. They closed in slightly, pushing us together. Atlas glanced down at the stuffed animal touching his suit and cleared his throat.

  The density in the air changed too. This was a physical-world elevator; we must’ve merged into it. A rush of exhilaration thrummed through my veins.

  There was a ping when we reached floor fifteen. I’d had a mild fear of heights when I was alive, really alive, but being sort of undead had a way of putting things into perspective.

  I swallowed dryly while I watched Atlas unlock the door across the hall. My door. Room 314.

  The first step in was like a slap in the face—if that slap came by the way of a silken glove.

  This wasn’t just an apartment. It was a freaking luxury penthouse or something. High ceiling, state-of-the-art appliances, furniture and decor that must’ve come straight out of a magazine. The walls were a tasteful mix between wood and brick. And the art. No expense had been spared.

  Doubt reared its ugly head again. All this because I’d heard a scary noise?

  Enforcer Jed returned to the hall after doing a hasty sweep of the place.

  Now, in private, Atlas focused his attention on me. “These are my personal quarters. Mostly unused, I’m afraid. Due to the nature of this assignment, it should be relatively safe. And comfortable.” He polished an empty vase with a napkin from his pocket. “Should I call you Ellie? Collector is no longer your title, but Recruiter is not quite fitting.” There was a hint of mischief in his voice.

  I couldn’t peg the guy. Control freak with a rebellious streak?

  I tightened my hold on Mr. Georgie—okay, my monkey plush had a name, but I’d come up with it when I was five—and cleared my throat. “Ellis is fine. Or maybe we could come up with a fitting title after going over what this … job … entails.” I forced a smile, which I imagined looked like a squiggly line drawn by a toddler.

  The off-putting expression Atlas gave me confirmed my suspicion. “Perhaps. Regretfully, I can’t stick around long today, but take some time to settle in. I will return first thing in the morning.” Before he was gone, he peered at me over his shoulder. “There are some things in the closet for you, if you’re so inclined.”

 
I held my belongings tight to me as I did my own sweep of the place. Checked for cameras—clean. Inspected each of the cabinets. To my delight, the fridge was full of goodies. The produce was so fresh that it must’ve been recently plucked from the vine. My standards could have just gone wonky though. Physical-to-spiritual-world transport did weird things to vegetables. Anyway, I grabbed a handful of grapes before continuing my self-given tour.

  Oh my God, I thought as I bit into the fruit. So sweet.

  When I made it through the beautiful master bedroom and reached the closet, I gasped, and Mr. Georgie fell to my feet.

  A hooded black cloak hung in the middle, not quite as long as a Grim’s, and right beside it were matching leather pants. Of course, there was also an array of women’s suits and prim collared shirts, but they were far less exciting to me than they would have been to Linda.

  Whatever the Grim Reaper version of a spy was, I had a feeling I was about to be it. Half-spirit business lady by day, badass sleuth by night.

  4

  The Roommates

  The steam rose to my nostrils and caressed my skin. The water pressure pounded against the tenderness in my muscles, hot enough to make my whole body turn pink. Paired with some fancy-pants soap that smelled like a summer meadow, it was pure bliss.

  I stepped out of the shower and draped myself in the luxurious robe that hung outside it. It slid on like butter and felt like a wrap of clouds. This must be what princesses felt like, having their every whim anticipated and fulfilled. If Atlas were a god of suits, I was contemplating building his shrine. One more shower like this and I might be ready to worship.

  I’d been steaming it up for the last thirty minutes and worked up quite a thirst. After I poured myself a glass of ice-cold water in the kitchen, the door handle jiggled. I set the water down and crouched. A curved knife, kind of like a mini scythe, was strapped beneath the bar. Maybe Atlas was psychic, not a psychiatrist. Blade in hand, I peeked at the door just in time to watch two people tumble into the apartment.