Reaping Havoc

by AJ Rose

  Nate spluttered, barely managing to swallow the drink he’d just taken. When he could speak, he rushed to correct the assumption. “That’s not why I asked about her. She’s one of the few people I’ve talked to in town, but I’m not interested in dating her.” Nate wasn’t about to hide who he was in this new place. He’d come here to seize life, not hide from it. “She’s not on the team I bat for.”

  “You mean you’re….”

  “Gay,” Nate finished with a kind smile. “I’m just trying to make friends. But there’s kind of a wall between all the locals and those of us who seem like tourists. No one’s been mean or anything,” he rushed on, not wanting to seem insulting. “But I’ve always had a big group of people to hang out with, and it’s kind of lonely sometimes.” Lame, he berated himself. Way to make yourself look desperate enough to be friends with anyone, asshole. Mitch’s expression was shuttered, and Nate worried he’d stepped in it. “Not that I’m looking for just anyone to be friends with. I have standards, too.” Clamping his mouth shut on the babbling, he stared at the lid of his coffee. Then it occurred to him maybe it wasn’t his need to be around people, but the fact he was gay which had made Mitch close down.

  His stomach twisted as he made himself look up, hoping not to see disgust on Mitch’s face. There was none, but Mitch was carefully blank.

  “If you’re pissed about the gay thing, I can go. I don’t want any trouble.” Nate’s voice was ice cold. Mitch had seemed so nice, and yeah, Nate hoped they’d become friends, but he didn’t need friends that badly. He had Wes, at least.

  Mitch opened and closed his mouth several times before averting his gaze. “It’s not that at all. You just took me by surprise. Not often I find people in Caperville like me. A couple of tourists may ask about gay bars now and then, not that we have any. But as far as I know, the locals are all straighter than a ruler.”

  Oh. Oh. Well, considering the way the townspeople treated the Seeker family, maybe Mitch didn’t date often. Quit with the assumptions, dude.

  “No gay bars?” he asked, mockingly aghast. “That’s it. I’m moving.”

  Finally, Mitch laughed, and the ugly tension that had been roiling between them dissipated. “Not a lot of demand for it in this part of the country.”

  Nate leaned forward. “Are locals here… not okay with people like us?”

  “Oh, nothing like that,” Mitch said hurriedly. “Caperville’s fairly accepting. Hell, that’s almost something normal compared to—” He pressed his lips together, thinning them to skinny white slashes on his face.

  “Compared to what?”

  Again, Mitch’s attention seemed to rest behind and above him. The table at Nate’s back was now occupied, so maybe he just didn’t want to be overheard. When he bent forward and lowered his voice, Nate thought that must be it.

  “Compared to the things they think about my family. It’s nothing, really, but we’re sort of redheaded stepchildren around here.”

  Nate played stupid. “How do you mean?”

  “People like to talk about us. My dad is aging well and won’t tell anyone his secret. It’s family lineage, I guess, but we get accused of all kinds of things. Witchcraft, devil worship, you name it.”

  Nate’s brow furrowed. “Because your dad looks good for his age?”

  Mitch dropped his eyes and fiddled with his empty coffee cup. “Well, not just that. We… keep to ourselves. All adds to the mystique. I mean, doesn’t every town have that family? The one everybody talks about? The one living in a haunted house, who swim against the stream for one reason or another? In Caperville, that’s my family.”

  “Well, that’s stupid,” Nate said sternly. He reached across the table and grabbed Mitch’s hand, holding on when the guy jerked in surprise. “You’re a nice guy. Yeah, you look a little brooding, with your dark hair and gray eyes, and your face is very solemn, but I think that’s more about you being kind of reserved than anything worth gossiping about.”

  A small smile ticked up the corner of Mitch’s mouth. “You don’t really know me.”

  “I’d like to change that.” Nate squeezed his hand and let go, then cleared his throat when he realized how serious the conversation had turned.

  Mitch looked behind Nate once more.

  “Careful, buddy. Touching a Seeker gets you the death penalty,” a guy in his teens hollered from three tables away. The group he was with burst into laughter, and Nate looked around, realizing everyone was staring at them, some alarmed, most suspicious.

  “Are you finished?” Mitch asked politely. “Maybe we could get some takeout or something. I could show you the bookstore.”

  “No,” Nate said, making a decision.

  “Oh.” Mitch’s face fell. “Well, then, thanks for the coffee and conversation.” He scraped his chair back and stood, gathering their trash and not meeting Nate’s eyes.

  “That’s not what I meant.” Mitch stopped cleaning up but kept his face lowered. “I’m finished with my coffee, but I’m starving, and I think we should have dinner together and not let assholes—” he raised his voice loud enough for the table of teens to hear, then dropped the volume to finish his sentence,“—dictate where we’re seen in public.”

  Mitch stared at him. “You sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.” Nate set off his thousand-watt smile. “I don’t have so many friends I’m willing to turn my back on one just because of a few rumors. We both need to eat, right? I didn’t have dinner before coming here.”

  A slow, tentative smile stretched Mitch’s lips, and Nate suddenly wanted to kiss him. Here in Brewskis, in the midst of a bustling, noisy restaurant. He didn’t only because it seemed Mitch was more comfortable not calling attention to himself, and Nate didn’t want to upset him more than he was.

  “I’d like that,” Mitch said.

  * * *

  Danger! Danger! Mitch’s thoughts practically shouted as he drove to Italiano’s, the restaurant he and Nate had agreed upon when leaving Brewskis. It was definitely a date place, and while he’d been the one to suggest it, his internal barometer was going haywire, thinking this was a bad idea. He had to admit Nate standing up for him to the jerks at the coffee shop had melted his resolve to keep his distance. That, and a conversation with his dad earlier in the day.

  The headlights of Nate’s Jeep were a steady presence behind him, the added height of the vehicle shining light annoyingly in his mirrors.

  I have to know, though, he argued with himself. Nate had a soul with him. How? Why? While Mitch was certainly afraid of giving away too much about himself, he didn’t really have a choice. He’d never met a reaper outside his family, and certainly not one he was attracted to. He’d gone to work from the park with Sadie in tow, and she’d collapsed happily on her pillow in exhaustion. Mitch’s mind had been anything but idle. When he’d dropped his third stack of books at the sound of the door chime, Charles had been right there to pry, as always.

  “Case of the dropsies today?”

  Mitch hurriedly picked up the stack, avoiding looking at his father. “I guess. Just tired.”

  “Uh-huh,” Charles said skeptically.

  “Dad?” Mitch asked, hesitant to talk about it but having nowhere else to go with his questions. “There are definitely other reapers, right?”

  “Oh yeah,” Charles answered, giving the shop a surreptitious once-over to make sure no one overheard. The chime over the door had signaled a customer leaving, though, so they were alone. “There’s no way one family could cover everybody. There are a couple hundred thousand of us the world over. About ten thousand in the US alone.”

  “Why are we the only ones in Caperville?”

  “Caperville doesn’t need more than the three of us.”

  “Have you ever seen a reaper in town before?”

  Charles narrowed his eyes. “Well, we’re not easy to spot, even by other reapers, but I don’t believe so.”

  “How do you know when you’ve met one?”

  “W
e have that convention in Vegas every year, son.” Charles’s face lost its somberness, his lips stretching into a wide grin.

  “Ah,” Mitch said, remembering the stories. “Where the hotel you have it at thinks you’re a twisted bunch of reaper worshippers?”

  Charles grinned. “That’s the one.”

  Every year, Charles left Caperville around Halloween for Vegas. It wasn’t a convention organized by Divinity, the management branch of all reapers. It was mainly so everyone in the business could get together and blow off steam, given how what they saw in their lifetimes was enough to drive any sane person to the brink. Scheduling it around Halloween made the hotel staff think they were a faction of costume enthusiasts who simply concentrated on one type of “monster.” They had scythe relays—with real scythes until they couldn’t get a banquet center reservation for insurance reasons—and robe bedazzling contests. Awards were given for strangest, goriest, and funniest reap, and all weekend long, there were themed dinners and parties. Some of Charles’s descriptions of the food had turned Mitch’s stomach, though. For breakfast there was cinnamon bread shaped like intestines with raspberry filling and donuts frosted to look like eyeballs. Lunch included finger sandwiches, which were mini hot dogs cut to look like severed fingers, normal hamburgers renamed roadrash burgers, and a plethora of other themed foods. The big gala dinner one year had had a shrimp entrée designed to look like the shrimp hands from the movie Beetlejuice.

  The reapers who attended weren’t uncaring individuals, desensitized by their duties to the point of callousness. Quite the opposite, in fact. They cared so much if they didn’t find a way to laugh about it, they’d go nuts, much like some workers in the healthcare and death industries. This was the first year Mitch was invited to attend, though he’d already declined, much to Charles’s disappointment. But Mitch hadn’t reached the point where he needed to laugh about it yet; to do so felt disrespectful to the dead. Charles had understood, and Mitch promised to try next year.

  “Why are you asking?” Charles brought him back to the conversation.

  Mitch tightened his lips, slipping around the corner to stock a different shelf so his father couldn’t see his face. Charles was having none of it and followed.

  “Come on, Mitch. You gotta talk to someone, or a convention once a year won’t be enough to keep you sane. There’s a reason reapers are the sons in a family; we need someone to lean on and be totally open with.”

  His dad was right. Mitch sighed, resigned. “I might have met one.”

  Charles’s eyes widened. “How so?”

  “There’s this guy I ran into at the park while playing with Sadie. She almost knocked him over to get her tennis ball and when I ran up to apologize, I saw he had a soul tied to him.”

  “Did you ask him about it?” Charles asked carefully.

  “No. I don’t know what the rules are.”

  “We’re strictly forbidden from telling humans about reapers. That’s why there’s a block in place when a reaper gets engaged.” Reapers weren’t expected to hide their nature from their betrothed, but Mitch was well aware a block existed, making it physically impossible for a reaper’s spouse to say the words aloud in non-familial company. They’d lose their voices temporarily. Not that any of them would try it. Mitch’s mom said she followed whatever rules there were to be with the man she loved. She didn’t want people finding out, because it could mean danger for Charles and her children.

  “I know. But if one reaper meets another, how do we know if we can talk about it?”

  “Does it matter, son? This is a guy you ran into at the park. Do you know him?”

  Mitch didn’t answer for a long moment, slowly reshelving books to avoid eye contact. “I sort of said I’d meet him for coffee after my shift.”

  Charles took the remaining books out of his hands. “To do what exactly? What are you hoping to get out of it?”

  Mitch looked at him pleadingly. “He’s new in town and wants to know more about life here. That’s all. I don’t intend to tell him a thing about us. But….”

  Charles narrowed his eyes. “But?”

  “It’s him, Dad. The guy, the one I was trying to avoid getting to know because I don’t want to get sucked into possibly wanting to date him. I was so thrown seeing a soul attached to him, when he asked me for coffee, I automatically said yes. And I have to admit I’m curious about him now.”

  “You’re talking about the one who had you sighing and dying the other night?”

  “Yes, but that’s not why I’m curious,” Mitch said hurriedly. “I want to know what he’s doing here, why he’d get assigned to Caperville if we’ve got it covered. Maybe there’s some sort of disaster in our future, and I’ve only been doing this for a couple months. If there’s something big coming, I’m not ready.”

  Charles put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder and squeezed, stopping his babbling. “Breathe, kid. Usually we get time to prepare for a group reap, but they don’t happen all that often.”

  “Have you done one?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  Clearing his throat, Charles took Mitch’s elbow and gently guided him to a collection of armchairs meant for readers to get comfortable while browsing. They sat, and Charles set aside the books in his hands.

  “I’m going to tell you that story another time, because I don’t think you should hear it yet. You’re not ready. Meet your friend, and maybe something he says will tell you if he’s a reaper or not. I’m going to offer you one piece of advice to take with you tonight, and that’s this: don’t worry about a group reap to the point where you forget why you’re on a date.”

  “It’s not a date,” Mitch corrected, but his father didn’t stop to acknowledge that.

  “We have to move around often in our lives because of the aging pause. Can’t stay in one place too long, or people get suspicious. Perhaps your new friend is simply here because he’s trying to find a place to settle again. It doesn’t have to mean we’re getting an influx of reapers for some big disaster. Frankly, your uncle and I have struggled covering Caperville by ourselves the last several years, and Morgan promised he wouldn’t move until he was twenty-five so he could help out. But when you were both teenagers, it was hard on Thomas and me to keep up without making people suspicious. Now that I’m retiring, it’s just you and Thomas. I think having a third reaper, whether we know of them or not, would be helpful.”

  “So in New York. Where Morgan is, he doesn’t know who other reapers are until he has boys of his own, right?” Mitch asked, because this subject hadn’t come up in any of his training.

  “Right. We do our jobs, keep our heads down, and carry on with our lives in such a way the mortals don’t know who we are. If that means we don’t all get to kick up our feet with each other after a reap and have a beer, that’s fine, because it looks less conspicuous to the locals.”

  “Okay,” Mitch agreed, picking up the books to finish putting them away.

  “Mitch,” Charles said to his back. He turned. “I’m not saying pry, or tell this guy your secret, but if it happens to come out that he’s a reaper and so are you, there’s your answer.”

  “What answer?” Mitch asked, puzzled.

  “To a life not filled with loneliness. You’d have someone who’ll live as long as you will.”

  Mitch was so stunned, he almost dropped the books again. Charles knew it and grinned wickedly.

  The sharp rap of knuckles on his car window pulled Mitch out of rehashing the conversation with his dad and he startled. Nate held up his hands apologetically.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you. Are you ready to see if they’ve got a table?” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward Italiano’s.

  Mitch nodded dazedly and turned off the car, trying to shake the conversation and his dad’s revelation out of his mind. They entered the restaurant and were seated right away at a table by the windows with the mountain for a view. Sunset was well past, but twilight hung on, and the highe
st part of the peak still reflected orange and red, though a bank of clouds was moving in from the south, threatening more rain.

  “How long before the first snow, do you think?” Nate asked as the first splattering raindrops hit the window beside them.

  Mitch sipped Coke through a straw. “Usually mid to late November, but it’s happened as early as the beginning of October. You said they’re making snow in a couple weeks?”

  “Yeah,” Nate said. “I’m really looking forward to getting back on the slopes. It’s been too long.”

  The waiter came for their orders. Nate chose shrimp pasta, and Mitch was never able to stray from his Italiano’s favorite: lasagna. When the waiter retreated with the promise of breadsticks, they both seemed at a loss for words.

  “So where’d you move from—?”

  “Have you lived here all your life—?”

  They spoke at the same time. Through chuckles, Mitch answered first. “I left to go to college in California, but I came back as soon as I was done.” He bit his tongue on finishing with his desire to stay in Caperville as long as possible before being forced to move. “I liked Orange County, but I missed having seasons.”

  “I know what you mean,” Nate agreed. “Not that I’ve ever lived in California, but I need winters. I moved here from New Hampshire.”

  “Are you from there, or is that where you went to college?”

  “Both,” Nate answered, twisting his straw wrapper. “Grew up in Manchester and went to Dartmouth.”

  Mitch’s mouth dropped open. “Wow, so when you said a business degree, you weren’t kidding.”

  Nate’s discomfort was not lost on Mitch. “Yeah, well, it was a good opportunity.”

  He sounds like he’s spouting the party line. “Not if it’s not what you want to do with your life,” Mitch commented.