by Michele Vail
I screamed.
I hurried to Rick, my stomach roiling when I saw the blood dripping from his temple. I heard Curt cussing as he rushed back in and we knelt on either side of Rick.
I heard a whisper in my ear. Sorry, brown eyes.
Rath? I felt a stab of gelid air, but he wasn’t around—not that I could see. No. All I could see was Rick. The blood was from a superficial cut near his temple.
“Rick?” I whispered. With Curt’s help, I rolled him onto his back. His blue eyes were wide and unseeing. I pressed a shaking hand against his chest. I couldn’t feel his heartbeat. I was afraid to put my ear against his mouth.
No. He wasn’t...
The couple who’d been sitting in the chair now hovered over us, peering at Rick. Curt started doing chest compressions. Panic flecked his gaze. He tossed his cell phone at me. “Call 911.”
“Too late, dude,” said the guy from the chair, who was staring at Rick in morbid fascination. “He’s dead.”
Chapter 5
“Oh, love! Why hast thou abandoned me?
Over the stillness of my lover’s body, I weep
She moves again, but she is not mine
Death steals the heart...and Anubis the soul...”
~from the poem “Abandoned Love” by Reid Michael
My hands shook so badly that I dropped the phone. The girl shoved aside her boyfriend, scooped up the cell and dialed. As if from a long distance, I heard her tell someone that there’d been an accident. The rest of the conversation faded from my hearing. I felt like I was falling into a dark hole, and it was getting darker and smaller as I descended.
Then I felt something within me pop, spark and glow.
The colors around me bled away until everything was gray and covered in shadows. Above the dark, dead figure of Rick, a ball of white light pulsed. It glittered like starlight and emanated comforting warmth. As I watched, it turned a very light blue, the color of sky, and started a slow rise upward. When I looked up, I saw a blue oval of light and I heard...sounds I couldn’t quite describe. Music, but it was a mixture of voices and instruments, and even that didn’t quite explain the splendid noise. I didn’t understand the melody, what the sounds meant, but the now-dancing blue orb obviously did. It wanted very much to go up there.
The light was Rick’s soul.
I’d never seen a whole soul before. Sure, I’d seen the ka, which looked like a sparkly blue worm, wiggling into the heart of the zombie. Ancient Egyptians used to believe that the heart was the seat of intelligence and emotion, and that the ka was the spark of life. They’d sorta been right. Inserting the ka into a dead person’s heart was the key to reanimation.
“C’mon, dude!” Curt yelled. Desperation made his chest compressions clumsy, and sweat dripped from his brow.
I knew that I had to capture the soul before it took the journey to the afterlife. Rick needed it to live. All I could think about, focus on, was catching it, and sticking it back in.
I had no perfect way to fix what death had broken. All the same, while Curt pounded on his friend’s chest, I stepped around him and grabbed Rick’s soul.
It felt warm and soft, like the fur of a kitten.
Then the soul began to separate.
What the—! I had never seen the other parts of the soul before, just the ka. But it appeared that soul parts were all the same shape and color. And those five wiggling blue strands clutched in my sweaty fist were the difference between Rick alive...and Rick dead.
One strand wiggled free. I couldn’t catch it, and it zipped upward, darting into the oval of blue from which still emanated the strangely beautiful sounds. A second one slipped through my fingers, and I watched it escape, too. No! Damn it. The three remaining strands fought against my grip, but I held them tight. Three parts of a soul were better than none. I swallowed the knot of fear clogging my throat. What are you doing, Molly? Ugh. Now the soul strands felt like long, cold, wet ribbons, and they struggled fiercely. I sensed their struggle against returning to their human vessel.
I didn’t care. His soul, what was left of it, was going back in. I knelt on the floor. Curt was still pushing right underneath Rick’s rib cage, and I slammed Rick’s soul parts against Rick’s chest, right where his heart should be. “Go,” I said, desperation in my words. “Just get in there!”
The strands sank into his flesh and disappeared. I didn’t know how I’d managed to do such a crazy thing. Usually, I just took the ka, and I had to use a special incantation to see it—a soul wisp that I directed into the heart to begin reanimation.
The blue oval of light and the music vanished. The color of the world returned as though someone had flicked on a light switch. The gray was gone, and I found myself sitting next to Rick, my hand pressed on his chest.
A second later, Rick sucked in a deep breath and opened his eyes.
“Holy shit,” said Curt. He glanced at me, his gaze relieved. “I’ve never seen that move before, and my mom’s a doctor. You have the touch, Mol.”
“I...I didn’t do anything.” Tears dripped down my face. He hadn’t seen me put back Rick’s soul. No one had. Only necros could see the magic we wielded—and only trained ka hekas could see the ka. No one else had entered the colorless landscape with me. How had I gone there without anyone noticing what I was doing?
“Holy crap.” The words came from Becks. Gena stood beside her, and they both turned wide gazes to me. I didn’t understand the expressions on their faces—part amazement, part WTH.
“What happened?” My dad pushed through the kids who’d gathered in the living room. The wail of an ambulance cut through the thick silence, and suddenly, everyone started chattering.
“He hit his head,” I said, my voice sounding far away. The room started to spin, and I felt sick to my stomach.
“Mol?” Becks leaned down. I couldn’t quite focus on her face. In fact, she looked really blurry, like I was looking at her image in a mirror smeared with Vaseline.
“I’m okay, Molly,” said Rick. He sat up on his elbows and gave me one of his wicked half grins. “Just got knocked out. I’m fine, Mr. Bartolucci.”
The front door opened, and medics rushed in, but all I saw was Rick alive... Not dead. Not a zombie. Alive. Because of me.
I heard Gena gasp, and saw Becks lurch toward me...
Then the world turned upside down and went black.
* * *
I woke up in my bedroom. My mouth was dry, really dry, and had a metallic taste, like I’d been chewing on pipes. An ache throbbed in my temples, and my body trembled. I grabbed my cell phone off the nightstand and groaned. Almost midnight. I’d been out for hours. What the heck had happened to me?
“How did you do that?”
The stern male voice startled me into full alert. I yelped and rolled off the bed, landing on my feet. The phone slipped out of my hand and plopped onto the carpet.
“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said impatiently. “Would you relax?”
I lowered my arms and located the source of the voice on the other side of my room. Rath leaned against the wall, one leg propped up, his arms crossed. My heart stuttered in my chest, and the spike of adrenaline soured my stomach. I pressed a hand against my throat and stared at the intruder.
“How did you get in here?” I demanded. My voice squeaked, which made me sound so not threatening. I blew out a steady breath and put my hands on my hips. “Seriously. What are you doing in my room?”
“Waiting for an explanation.” He eyed me, a mixture of fury and curiosity in his gaze. “You’re not even dead yet and you’re reaping?” He shook his head. “No reaper I’ve ever met has been alive. And no reaper has the ability to return a soul. So what the hell are you?”
I opened my mouth to answer his question and realized it would be stupid to give him any information. Especially since I didn’t exactly understand what he was asking. He obviously expected some kind of weird revelation about me, like, “Hi! I’m a soul wrangler! And I like unicorns!�
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Whatevs.
I was trying really hard not to freak out. I mean, I’d done something impossible to save Rick. And then I’d passed out. ’Cause I know how to par-tay. Ugh. And now Rath was hanging out in my room as though he did it all the time. I felt weak and nauseated...and scared. For a lot of reasons, but the main one was having some hot, angry dude staring at me like I’d committed murder or something.
“Get out,” I said, “or I’ll scream.”
He snorted. “Oooooh. Scary.” His eyes met mine, and an electric thrill shot through my chest. His manner seemed to soften, just a little. “What did you do, Molly?”
“Gah! Fine! I’m a necro, okay? I know how to make zombies. Sorta. I’m in training. So when I saw Rick’s soul, I just...grabbed it. And squished it inside.” Most of it, anyway.
He pushed off from the wall and straightened, keeping his arms crossed. His expression turned serious. “You squished his soul back into his body?”
“That’s what I said.” My knees felt wobbly, so I moved to the end of my bed and sat down. I sucked in a breath, then blew it out slowly. I felt a little steadier. I glanced at him. “I’ve never done that before. It was weird.” I glanced up at him. “You keep talking about reapers. Like, reaper reapers.”
“You are the oddest girl I’ve ever met,” said Rath. “You have no idea what you are. Or what you can do.” He studied me as though he’d found a new specimen of insect, and then he shrugged as if it didn’t matter. But I knew better. Something dark and cold slithered through me. I wrapped my arms around my waist, trying to stave off the feeling.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You’re not that thickheaded,” he said impatiently. “Obviously you’re a reaper.”
“Am not,” I said without any real heat. “No way.”
“You are what Anubis makes you,” he said, arrogance edging his tone. “You agreed to serve him, didn’t you?”
How could he know what I’d promised Anubis? I glared at him.
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Ease up, brown eyes. I had the dream on my sixteenth birthday, too. I was called into service, the same as you. And I accepted it. Embraced it.”
I went cold. My throat knotted. “You... Are you...you know, dead?”
“Duh.”
“You don’t look dead,” I said.
“Reapers can see other reapers. We can be corporeal when necessary.”
I tried to assimilate that information, but my brain almost melted. “So, you had the Anubis dream...and then you died, didn’t you?”
“Not for three years,” he said. He smiled grimly. “Car accident. On my way to pick up a pizza so I could get through an all-night study session. I had a big test on necro history.” He shrugged. Then he looked at me hard, judging me, and he shook his head. “I don’t think you have the chops for this, Molly. Death has purpose. It has meaning. And you screwed it up for Rick when you let him live. You think that’s a good thing?”
“I think it’s a great thing,” I said. “He’s not supposed to die.”
“Yeah,” said Rath. “He is. Only now? I can’t reap him. Whatever you did, it’s like you superglued his soul in there. Don’t think for a minute you did that kid a favor.”
Tears gathered in my eyes, but I blinked them back. Rath was just jealous that I could make souls return to bodies. He didn’t have that ability and it pissed him off. I didn’t want to admit I heard truth in his words, and that guilt was burrowing inside me like poisonous snakes. I knew, deep down, I had done something unethical, even though giving Rick his life back seemed like the right choice to make. Wasn’t saving someone better than letting them die?
“You didn’t think stealing a soul and sticking it back into the body was wrong? Really?” His gaze riveted to my face. “Are you so blinded by your own wants that you couldn’t let him go?”
“Wouldn’t you do the same?”
His gaze shuttered. “Had I the ability to save the ones I’m supposed to take, I wouldn’t. The afterlife has rules. Everything in this world and the next has rules, damn it.” He shoved a hand through his hair and then sighed. “There’s more to life than malls and cute boys. If you want any hope of utilizing those powers of yours, you’d better grow up, and fast.”
I was tired of Rath’s lecturing. He set my teeth on edge with his attitude. What business was it of his what I was? Or what I did? Why would a reaper even show up at my house?
Oh.
Oh, crap.
“You came here to kill Rick!” I stood up. The sudden move made me dizzy, and I listed to the side for a second before righting myself. “You jerk!”
“I don’t kill people,” he said, his brows slashing downward. “Reapers untether the souls and then guide them through the Shallows.” He looked at my expression and sighed. “It’s the gray, Molly. All the color disappeared, right? That’s the Shallows. One part of it, anyway.”
“I didn’t see you,” I accused.
“Because you locked me out,” he said, his voice low with fury. “I don’t know how, but you pranced right into the Shallows and made it impossible for me to get to Rick’s soul.”
Bile rose as I realized what his description meant. I had been in the Shallows. That...that weird thing had happened inside me, like a big, heavy lock falling off and a door swinging open to release a monster. Everything had gone gray and cold and strange, and all I’d seen was the color of Rick’s soul.
I didn’t say anything else, because I didn’t want to be told again how bad I’d messed up. I watched him stare at me while I tried to process everything he’d said. It became a game of silence.
And he won.
“I don’t want to be a reaper.”
“Too late. You don’t know anything, do you?” His sarcasm scraped me like razors. “Necros are like reapers lite. The five powers of reapers were divided and given to certain bloodlines in the human populace. It was supposed to help keep the balance. The reaper wars forced Anubis to take action, you know? If you’re just a ka heka...well, you shouldn’t be able to grab a soul from the Shallows and put it inside its former residence.”
The reaper wars? I searched my brain for info and came up with nothing. We’d recently covered the mythology of reapers in my Necromancy History class. No one really knew much about reaping, just like no one really knew what happened after death. It’s not like any necromancers had died, become reapers and then returned to the world and said, “Oh, yeah. Here’s how it all works.”
I didn’t want to talk to Rath anymore. My world had shifted in a way that was unfixable. I was striding down a path chosen for me, without a map or a way to avoid pitfalls.
Rath smirked at me, but worse than that was the genuine sympathy lurking in those eyes. Not even his arrogant expression could hide it. He knew something about me, about my life, maybe even about my destiny.
Sweet sixteen, my ass.
“I’m really a reaper?” I asked Rath.
He shrugged. “You accepted Anubis’s offer, right?”
Yeah. But you’d think he would’ve mentioned the whole you’ll be dead soon part. “You’re really dead?” I asked.
“Didn’t we go over this? It’s part of the reaper gig. In order to do your job, you have to be able to travel into the Shallows. Only dead people can do that. And you, apparently.”
Why hadn’t I asked Anubis more questions?
“Don’t look so down,” drawled Rath. “This is only the beginning, brown eyes. Welcome to reaperhood.” He put two fingers to his forehead and saluted. Then the air went cold and he disappeared, fading like the wraith he was. Huh. You know, it just wasn’t in me to be any more freaked out.
Instead, I was getting pissed off.
Frustration boiled through me. I barely resisted the urge to scream. Instead, I stomped around and muttered for a couple minutes, but giving in to my temper didn’t make me feel better. I finally threw myself on my bed and sprawled on my back, staring up at the ceiling.
Boooooring. I sighed, got off the bed to retrieve my cell. It was closing in on one in the morning. I had no idea what had happened after I fainted. Had Rick been taken to the hospital, or had he gone home? How long had it taken for everyone to bail?
I flipped out the cell’s keyboard. My fingers hovered over the keys. Should I text Rick? I wasn’t sure. What would I say? Sorry you died at my party, but hey, I saved your soul. You’re welcome.
I slid the keyboard back in. Then two seconds later, I slid it back out, chose Rick’s name in my contacts and texted: You okay? I clicked Send before I chickened out.
Crap. That text was awful with a side of lame. Why hadn’t I said something less sucky? Argh!
I saw I had texts from Becks and Gena. I texted them back to let them know I was all right (depending on your definition, ha), though they were probably asleep.
I put the cell on the nightstand, then groaned and stuffed a pillow over my face. Oh, Mina was going to be super happy. Not about Rick bashing his head on my fireplace, but about my total party fail. I could just hear the whispers down the hallway at school on Monday.
Mina emptied the whole punch bowl on Molly, and she just stood there. Moron.
Did you hear that Molly’s fireplace nearly killed Rick Widdenstock?
Oh, my God. Molly fainted at her own party. What a loser!
“Molly? You awake?” My dad’s voice filtered through my closed door. I debated for a second whether or not to answer him. He’d probably heard me stomping around and decided to check on me. After my run-in with Rath, I didn’t really want to be alone. In fact, I had the insane urge to run into my dad’s arms and cry.
He knocked lightly on the door. “Mol?”
“Yeah,” I called out. I got up and walked to the door. When I opened it, I was shocked to see how haggard and upset my dad appeared. “Daddy? What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come downstairs. You need to meet some folks.”
“Now?” I was incredulous. It was mondo late and we had company? My gut curled. “Is it the police?”