“I’ll be careful.” I kissed him on the forehead and left just as Josie’s booming voice echoed down the hall.
“Take your time. You get to explain why the elevator took so long to all the people waiting downstairs. If you’re going to get up early, don’t you think you should make it worthwhile and show up on time?”
She griped the whole ride down, definitely in full blown reaper mode. I changed my mind. Coreen would be lucky if we made it through a whole day together.
Grim’s conference room wasn’t nearly as decorated as his office. He kept everything simple and sharp, from the straight backed chairs to the shelves of legal books lining the walls. A cup of markers spilled across an atlas as I smashed my knee into a table leg. I grimaced. That was going to leave a bruise.
“California?” I looked up at Coreen.
“What exit method are we working with?” Josie asked. She was trying her best to keep me out of trouble.
Coreen’s snarl subsided. “He’s scheduled for a car accident around eleven. We’re going to follow him for two hours before.”
“So we have an hour and a half. What kind of prep work do we need to do?” Josie synchronized her watch with the clock in Grim’s conference room.
“It’s San Francisco, so we should probably go over the maps and the most common routes between his hotel and the venue his band is rehearsing at. We can’t pinpoint the actual location of the crash, but we do know it will take place in or near the city.”
“Swell.” I sighed.
Coreen turned to me. I was waiting for the first pea-brain comment of the day, but it never came. Her jaw clenched and then she cleared her throat, before unfolding a map on the conference table.
“You can have the honor, Lana,” she sneered and tossed a handful of markers on top of the map. “Josie, Kevin, I’ve got something else for you two to work on. Follow me.”
They walked out of the room, leaving me with the map and markers. A sarcastic swell was looking more and more like my word for the day.
I picked up a marker and walked around the table to get a better view of San Francisco. Why in Eternity did we need four reapers to pick up one soul? It just didn’t make sense. I slumped down on one of the swivel chairs and began deciphering all the routes and major intersections. Nearly an hour later, when I had the map covered in jagged lines and circles, the rest of the team joined me again.
“I hope this promotion includes better pay,” I huffed.
Coreen snorted. “We’ll discuss that when and if we get the soul.”
“What do you mean, if we get the soul? There are four of us.” I spun the chair around to face her.
I knew there was something more to this job, and it was starting to piss me off that I was responsible for carrying it out without all the details. Josie looked paler than she had before they left the room, not a good sign.
“Please tell me you’re not so dim that you didn’t notice how much Seth disapproves of our kind.” There it was, pea-brain comment number one.
“Yes, I noticed, but what does that have to do with this assignment?” I jammed the cap back on my marker.
“Seth is being closely watched now that he’s on the council, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely cut off from his resources. It’s possible that he has someone spying on us so he can take the soul for himself and find out why it’s so important.”
“Why is it so important?”
“Weren’t you listening at dinner? Grim can use the soul to help solve our problem in the Sea of Eternity.” Coreen cocked a hip and gave me a bewildered look.
I sighed. “Yeah, and Seth heard that version of the story at dinner too. I don’t think I buy it any more than he does.”
Coreen grit her teeth as she pulled a hand up to grasp her hip. “I don’t care if you buy it or not. We have a job to do, and if you don’t want to be a part of this team, then you can tell Grim yourself. He’s in his office right now.”
Maalik had been right. She didn’t have the authority to give me the boot.
I grinned. “That’s alright. I’ll figure it out sooner or later.” I kicked my feet up on the table and crossed my arms. If she couldn’t fire me, there was no reason to be all prim and proper.
Coreen pressed her lips together, flushing color into her pale cheeks as she tried to contain herself.
“We should really get going,” Josie intervened.
“Yes, we should.” Coreen ripped her glare away from me and pulled a handful of coins from the pocket of her robe.
Kevin reached for one first, and I just then remembered that this was his first day on the job. For his sake, I hoped everything went according to plan. You always remember your first job and base the success of every job after around it. Today could either make or break his career.
“There’s a record store across the street from the subject’s hotel,” Coreen said. “We’ll meet there. Kevin, take my hand. This is your first coin. I want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”
Kevin obeyed without hesitation. No wonder she liked having apprentices. Grim always gave her the best ones.
“See you on the other side,” she said before rolling her coin and disappearing.
Kevin would be fine. He was the best of his generation. Besides, you don’t get to be Coreen Bendura’s apprentice if you score poorly on your L&L, latitude and longitude exam. We’re required to know the global coordinates of every major city and then some before being allowed to use coins for the human realm. Beside reapers, most angels are familiar with coordinates too. That’s why they always show up where they’re supposed to, while rogue demons who manage to get their hands on a coin show up wherever and possess whoever they can, little girl or not.
I flipped my coin once and Josie grabbed my wrist.
“Be careful, Lana,” she whispered. “Coreen had me pack an unhealthy number of arrows. She really thinks something bad could happen. She didn’t want me to tell you because she wants you focused on retrieving the soul. Kevin and I are just backup. I couldn’t let you go out there without telling you first.”
“Thanks.” I found the cold steel of my scythe strapped across my back suddenly comforting. I smiled at Josie and rolled my coin twice more.
The record store was a dive. A zillion fingerprints covered the dust-caked shelves crammed with second-hand albums. A yellow cat stared at me from its napping spot next to the register, while the clerk was off in his own little world, flipping through a dirty magazine.
Josie scratched the cat’s chin and it rolled its head against her hand with a pleased purr. The clerk didn’t look up. He wouldn’t have seen anything if he had. Souls are blinded by their human bodies. Animals, however, can see us just fine.
The bell on the door jingled as a young, flannel-clad man hurried in. The clerk stuffed his magazine under the register and stood.
“Hey Mickey! Heard your show sold out for tonight. Congratulations!”
“Yeah, thanks. I was wondering if you wanted some more of our records to sell. Fans will be crawling the city tonight. Could be good for business,” he added.
“Sure, sure, I’ll take fifty more. Why not?” The clerk laughed and shoved the magazine further under the register.
“Great, I’ll be right back.” Mickey hurried off. The clerk gave a sigh of relief and checked his magazine’s hiding spot one more time.
“That’s our catch!” Coreen shouted.
“He’s coming back in,” I reminded her. And she thought I was a pea-brain.
Not a second later, the man was back with a box. I peeked over his shoulder to see inside. The cover of the record was a loud orange with scratchy blue lettering spelling out Sabotage. A picture of the band showed our catch sitting behind a drum set.
“Anything unusual about him?” Coreen was standing a little too close when I turned around.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Is he different from other souls?”
What had Maalik said? I see in sou
ls what other reapers can’t. Is that why I was here? Is that why Coreen felt so threatened by me? Was there really something I was better at than her?
“Well, he’s still alive, so I can’t exactly see his soul right now,” I answered with an annoyed frown.
She narrowed her eyes at me and stomped out of the store with Kevin trailing behind her like a shadow.
“He’s on the move,” Josie whispered.
Our catch took the check the clerk handed him and skipped out the door.
Outside, the traffic hissed by surprisingly close to the sidewalk. Our drummer boy jumped in front of a taxi, and the cabbie swore at him in a foreign language as he jerked the car around, barely missing him. I wondered if he actually had to be in a vehicle for his death to be categorized as a crash and decided to stick closer.
Coreen and Kevin were already waiting beside the Sabotage tour bus when we crossed the street. Our catch climbed inside, and the vehicle roared to life.
Coreen lifted her chin, ready to bark orders at us. “We’ll do this in two teams. Kevin and I will go first. We’ll wait at the next intersection. When the bus makes it through, you two jump ahead to the intersection after us. We’ll do that until the accident happens. Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered as the bus pulled away.
Coreen grabbed Kevin’s hand. They rolled their coins and disappeared. Josie gave me a worried look. The end of her bow peeked out from under her sleeve. She was ready for anything. Then it dawned on me. She had been promoted because Grim knew she was the only reaper I trusted. Coreen was with us because she was the only reaper Grim trusted. Kevin was simply stuck in this mess by default, since he was Coreen’s apprentice. I was starting to see how much this assignment actually revolved around me, and I wasn’t happy about it.
“Our turn,” Josie said, pulling me out of my daze.
The bus had made it past the intersection, and Coreen stared from the corner, waiting for us to move. We rolled our coins and appeared at the next light as the bus screeched to a halt. Coreen and Kevin jumped ahead of us to the next corner.
Up ahead, beyond two more lights, stretched the Bay Bridge over the San Francisco Bay. The band’s rehearsal location was in the opposite direction.
I swore under my breath and nudged Josie. “Let’s get up there with Coreen and Kevin. I think there’s been a change of plans.”
Josie nodded and we rolled our coins again. When we appeared next to Coreen, Josie had her bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.
Coreen glared at the bridge. “They’re going in the wrong direction.”
“No kidding.” I pulled my scythe out from under my robe. If Josie was on edge, I was on edge. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but it never hurt to be prepared. “Let’s just keep going like we are, stopping a short distance ahead of each other until we get across.”
“Of course,” Coreen snapped.
I forgot she was the one in charge of barking orders. I’d never worked with a team before, so sue me. The light turned green and the bus pulled ahead. Coreen fumbled with her coin and vanished. Kevin followed. We passed the next two lights, and sure enough, the bus was heading for the bridge.
The October breeze slapped over the bay water and sent random gusts of bone-chilling wind in my face, summing up the last week of my life. I hadn’t helped track down a still-living soul since my apprentice days with Saul. This sort of work normally required a dozen more classes that I had no intentions of taking. I was starting to see why.
Coreen and Kevin went out over the water first. They stood alert on the narrow ledge, the rush of passing cars and trucks pulling at their robes. Kevin gripped the beam behind him like a lifeline, rendering his knuckles an even paler shade of white. Something told me this wasn’t how he had imagined his first day on the job.
I rolled my coin again, but by the time Josie and I made it onto the bridge, the bus was gone, and so was Kevin.
“Lana! Move!” Josie cried as she loosed an arrow over my head.
I dropped and swung my scythe behind me. A dog-faced demon hissed. It was bigger than the ones I had seen with Caim. Lumpy, amber skin just barely held its form. Black eyes burned at me as it licked over the nub where I had severed one of its limbs. Josie strung two arrows at once and sunk them into the beast’s skull. It yelped and then vanished in a cloud of yellow smoke, reeking of sulfur.
“Where’s Kevin?” I shouted over the roar of passing cars and screeching breaks. Josie was already running in the direction we had last seen our teammates.
A mangled piece of railing hung off the side of the bridge. Traffic slowed as the curious humans tried to catch a glimpse of the chaos. I glanced over the edge and found the bus. Coreen appeared over the bubbling mess as she swan dived into the San Francisco Bay. I took off after Josie.
“How many were on that bus?”
“I don’t know! You saw the album cover. How many people are in his band?” she shouted back at me.
“Five, with a driver, that makes six. We can handle six souls.”
“And two more demons?” she quaked.
I grit my teeth. Two more of the nasty creatures waited ahead, near the skid marks the bus had left on the bridge. The marks were too dark and obvious. The demons had pushed the bus over. How the hell had they known where we were going to be?
“Go help Coreen and Kevin! I’ll take care of them.” Josie fired another arrow through the nearest demon’s eye. Puss exploded from the gaping wound. The beast wailed and clawed at its face before Josie darted it through the skull. Another cloud of murky smoke rose in its place. The second demon was quicker. It rolled away from her and scrambled behind a semi. Josie pounced onto the hood of a car and hurried after it.
The sound of traffic crunched in my ears. Angry horns blared as cars and trucks slowed around the charred bridge and missing chunk of railing. Humans may fear death, but they never pass up an opportunity to gawk at it.
I leaned over the wrecked ledge and caught a glimpse of the bus before it disappeared entirely. Kevin and Coreen’s robes laid abandoned on the crumbling bridge. I yanked mine over my head and tossed it next to theirs. It was no good to me in the water. I grasped my scythe in both hands and jumped.
The momentum of the fall pulled me under the icy water, and I found the bus, still bubbling as the remaining air inside tried to escape. I latched onto an open window and pulled myself around to the door.
Inside, Coreen and Kevin cut away the passengers’ seatbelts. Coreen jerked around and then relaxed when she saw it was only me. Kevin’s mop of curls floated around his face, rendered weightless in the dark water. He struggled with a dagger, trying to free the last man. I slipped the blade of my scythe under the buckle and tore it loose from the seat. He gave me a relieved smile, but only a brief one. Air bubbles leaked from the corners of his mouth and he pinched his lips shut again. He grabbed two of the men under their arms and heaved them out the door.
There were only five. One of the band mates must have been driving. Coreen grabbed the next two and left the drummer for me. He was unconscious. The others had a chance of making it out alive, and I hoped they did. We had enough problems. We didn’t need four additional souls to tend to.
Mickey, our catch, was slowly drowning in my arms. This wasn’t how he was meant to go, but I wasn’t about to go to the trouble of saving him just so he could die an hour later. That’s as far as destiny would take him. I was just saving him the extra trauma.
His soul glowed as I pulled it free from his body, and his eyes flashed open in surprise. I pulled him close and wrapped an arm around his waist to keep him from turning back and seeing his body. The shock is too much for some souls. I pulled him out the door and swam towards the ascending bubbles, fleeing for the surface.
“There she is!” Coreen gasped as we emerged. “Grab our robes!”
Josie stood on the edge of the bridge. Her whole body slumped with relief. She threw the pile of robes over her shoulder before digging out her coi
n. Several men in a small motorboat were pulling the other band members out of the water. Mickey called out to them, but no one responded.
“Let’s get out of here,” Coreen shouted.
I jammed my free hand into the pocket of my leather pants and rolled my coin, anxious to leave the catastrophe behind.
Chapter 12
“A friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty.”
-Mahatma Gandhi
“Well, you can see his soul now. What do you think?” Coreen rubbed a towel over her head. Her perfectly oiled curls were a chaotic mess. It made me smile.
We were back at Grim’s conference table, drying ourselves with a heap of towels, courtesy of Ellen. Our timid catch sat in a chair next to me with a towel wrapped around his head like a turban.
“He’s a soul like any other. What exactly am I supposed to be looking for here?” I shivered and reached for another towel.
The whole situation was ridiculous. After that disastrous encounter, the least she could do was tell us the truth.
“I don’t know, something,” she said. “You would think after all that trouble he wouldn’t be just an ordinary soul.”
She stood and leaned over the table to get a closer look at Mickey. He moved closer to me, probably because I had been the one who pulled him out of the bus. I wondered if he would have felt so safe had he known I merely pulled his soul from the wreckage and left his body behind.
“I’m not ordinary,” he snapped at Coreen. “My band is on the rise, and our show sold out for tonight!”
“Well, if your band doesn’t find another drummer, there won’t be a show.” Coreen laughed at him.
Shock and disgust creased Kevin’s face, like he had just caught his favorite rock star in an alley with an underage hooker. The first hint of defiance wove into his expression as he sympathetically watched our catch.
“What do you want with me?” Mickey shrieked.
“Just your soul.” Coreen gave him a vulturous smile.
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