“You have beer this early?”
She looked up from her order pad and raised her eyebrows with disapproval. “We don’t serve beer at all, but if we did the answer would be no.”
He met her eyes and rewarded her with a little grin. “Well, I’ll just have an orange juice then.” He held the menu out to her.
She took it and shoved it under the counter. “All right, coming right up.” She ripped the order sheet off the pad and headed down the bar again. He watched her ass as she rounded the corner into the kitchen and let out a breath. Judging from how those hips swung back and forth, she was probably fucking awesome in bed.
He leaned back in his chair and took another swig off his coffee. The blonde with the sexy legs closed her newspaper and he spotted the large photo of an elderly man taking up an eighth of the page. He leaned forward a little bit so that he could get a better look. The head line above the photo read. “Gregory Estmond Funeral on Saturday.”
Jack did a small calculation of the days in his head and realized that it was indeed, Saturday. Shit. The entire brood of Estmond Keepers were going to be hanging around the graveyard, plus all the Keepers that had traveled over to attend the funeral. The last thing he wanted was to fuck with the entire lot of them. Trying to kill the new Keeper would be more of a suicide mission than the job it was intended to be.
Looked like he was going to have to wait a few days for the Keepers to thin out and go home before he could continue with his assignment. He let out a deep sigh as he envisioned his mother’s face and the condescending tone of her voice when she found out. She was going to be pissed. Really pissed. When she wanted something, she wanted it done right then, no fucking around.
Lisa arrived with his breakfast in one hand and a tall glass of orange juice in the other. “Here you are,” she announced as she set them down in front of him. “You want any ketchup or anything?”
“You have any tabasco?”
She reached under the counter and withdrew the spicy sauce, setting it in front of him as an answer.
“Thanks. This looks awesome.”
Lisa topped off his coffee without his having to ask. “It is awesome,” she told him with a tiny smile. “Enjoy your breakfast.”
While Lisa was gliding away, the old man next to him got up and threw some money on the counter. “Lisa, I’m leaving. Money is on the counter.” He eyeballed Jack as if to let Jack know that he was letting her know the money was there so that Jack didn’t steal it.
Jack merely smiled in response and dumped a bunch of tabasco on his food.
Lisa appeared around the corner from the kitchen again. “Are you heading over to the Estmonds?”
The old man grunted as he pushed in his stool. “Yeah. I think everyone in town is gonna be there or at the wake.”
Lisa nodded. “I’m going to try to get to the wake. I don’t get done here until two.”
“Maybe I’ll see you later then.” He lifted his hand in a weak wave and headed for the door.
Lisa came back down near him. “Jess, are you going over to Mr. Estmond’s funeral?”
The blonde with sexy legs next to him lifted her head. “I’m leaving in just a minute to go over there.”
Lisa frowned. “I feel like everyone is going but me. It’s going to be so dead in here with everyone over there.”
Jess nodded. “Yeah, I don’t know why Dave didn’t just close the place down for a couple of hours. I mean, he’s going, so his employees should be able to go too.” She shrugged. “Just my opinion though.”
Lisa laughed a little. “Well, it’s my opinion too.”
Jack watched the conversation between the two women with interest, scraping food into his mouth without really looking at it.
Jess ran her shiny French tips over the photo of Gregory Estmond. “I’m going to miss him.”
Lisa nodded. “You and everyone else. He was certainly one of a kind.”
Good lord. Fucking Keepers. Gregory Estmond wasn’t the only Keeper to have a reputation like that. You would never catch anyone talking about him, or any other Reaper for that matter, with such adoration. Most Reapers were assholes. In his case, at least he was a good looking asshole. It worked more in his favor with the ladies.
Jess folded her newspaper and left after she and Lisa had a few more minutes of discussion about how wonderful that old Keeper was. She offered Jack a tiny smile and headed out with her newspaper tucked into her handbag.
He finished up and paid for his breakfast, throwing Lisa a nice tip in addition to the cost of the food and then left the café, not sure of what he was going to do with the rest of the day since he couldn’t exactly proceed with his assignment anymore.
Half an hour later, Jack pulled his truck into the parking area alongside the road outside the cemetery. “Fucking finally,” he muttered to himself as he parallel parked his truck into a spot between a beat up old station wagon and a brand new Prius. It had taken him forever to find a spot to park.
He had been driving along the back roads aimlessly, exploring and getting to know the town when he’d decided, what the hell, why not go over and check out the funeral. None of the Keepers were ballsy enough to do anything to him while surrounded by a crap ton of people anyway.
After finally getting his truck wedged into the spot, he sat there and looked out over the headstones, through the trees at the crowd gathered around the plot. He recognized the pastor because he held a bible in his hands. Beside the pastor he saw several heads of dark red hair and knew those must be the Estmond Keepers.
Beyond the Estmonds, the crowd stood silently in the midday sunlight. Even farther, out in the cover of the trees, the souls were gathering to watch the procession. Jack felt his body tingle and his heart beat picked up a few notches.
He wanted to devour those souls.
It had been a long time since he’d had an entire soul. The little bits he took from the women were just enough to sustain him. The souls of the dead were far better to consume. Their energy lasted longer, kept him healthy longer, and all in all, just made him feel better.
The mist of the dead glittered and swirled among the shadows of the trees. It was all he could do not to get out of the truck and proceed to massacre those beautiful auras. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his fingers tightening on the steering wheel, trying desperately to maintain control.
Dammit. He was a fucking soul addict.
But he couldn’t help it, right? This was what he was. A Reaper. A soul Reaper. Reapers had to consume souls to live.
Right, like that kind of thinking made this shit any better. He was still a junkie.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered out loud and then slammed his fist into the steering wheel. Without giving himself much more time to even consider getting out of the truck, he rammed the vehicle into drive and shoved his foot down onto the gas pedal.
He peeled out of the parking spot, spraying up gravel and sped off down the crowded back road. The entire funeral procession probably turned to see what the commotion was, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass what anyone thought. At the moment, he just needed to get away from that fucking funeral.
As he drove, he took long, deep breaths and gripped the wheel so tight his knuckles turned white. He kept his eyes on the road, trying not to think of how amazing that blue, misty energy would feel absorbing into his body.
He didn’t want to go back to the house. He was far too worked up to go back there and just sit around doing nothing. He passed the city limits, but kept on driving. As long as he kept going, he would get control of himself.
He slowed the truck considerably as the highway began to slope upward and the turns got tighter. The little creek that ran alongside Summer Hollow could not be seen from the high altitude, but the oaks and pines grew even thicker.
He followed the twisty pavement for miles and miles until the trees began to thin and vineyards took over the view. As he drove, he felt his body begin to relax and the hunger slowly dissip
ate. When he reached the crest of the mountain, he pulled over onto one of scenic viewpoints to take it all in. He gazed out at the land before him, awed by its silent power. He wasn’t anywhere very special, but there was still something extremely calming about being so high up, staring down at acres and acres of grapes.
Beyond the grapes he could see the structures of the wineries. Some were old and antique in appearance. Others were more contemporary, having been built more recently. Farther out, he spotted large homes that were set against the hills.
Well … now that he was feeling better, maybe he should go do some wine tasting.
On second thought, nah, he still had to drive back to Summer Hollow, and he didn’t really care for wine all that much anyway.
With nowhere to go and not caring to go anywhere in particular, he opened the door and jumped down from the driver seat. He grabbed a pack of cigarettes that he rarely touched from behind the seat and crawled up onto the hood.
Lighting a smoke, he settled back against the windshield and puffed on his cigarette as he stared down at the beauty below him. He knew full well that the beauty of nature was about the only thing that he would come close to loving in his pathetic life.
Ethan let go of her hand and they strode quickly across the short expanse to the farmhouse. Lucy heard movement in the house as they stepped up on the porch. She hurried to the front door and flung it open to find all of her brothers and sisters had gotten to the house before her and Ethan. The entire brood of adult children were scurrying about in the kitchen uncovering the food and making coffee.
“Hey Luce!” Her oldest brother Gregory Jr, set a tray of blueberry muffins on the counter and embraced her. “How ya doin’?”
“I’m all right.” She gave Greg a squeeze and then wiggled out of his arms. “Just want this day to be over, mostly.”
“Well, we’re almost there.”
Thank God.
Lucy knew his intention was to reassure her, but she saw that his eyes were the ones holding back sadness.
Lucy knew Greg well enough to know he was regretting that he hadn’t been around as much the last few years. Well, longer than that really. Greg was thirty-five years old and lived in San Francisco, which was about four hours away from home. He had been called over to become Keeper for one of the Bay Area graveyards. The family who had been Keeping it had no living heirs to take over. Before that he had assisted her father at home in Summer Hollow, like all the children did.
Greg smiled, “Ethan, how ‘bout you man, you good?” He held his hand out for a shake.
Ethan returned the smile, but his was weak. Lucy knew he was happy to see Greg, but he missed Gregory Sr. Ethan grasped Greg’s hand. “I’ve been better, for sure.”
“Son of a …” James yelled from in front of the open oven. His sharp yell was immediately followed by the ear assaulting clang of metal muffin tin against tile kitchen floor. “Shit! I burned my fingers.” He stuck two of his fingers between his lips.
Lucy and Stephanie both hurried over and fell to their knees to try and save the muffins. “Use an oven mitt, dumbass! Look at what you did,” Steph screamed at him from the floor.
“Are you serious? Fuck the muffins, I burnt myself, Steph.”
“Well you wouldn’t have if you had used a fucking oven mitt.” Steph’s voice escalated and she stood up to face him.
James stood a full foot taller than Steph, but she stared up at him and fearlessly balled her fists at her side. Their identical dark brown eyes met and then he flipped her the middle finger as a silent challenge. Lucy stood up from the mess to intervene but Hannah slid in between them.
“Let me look at it, J.” She put her arm around James and gently led him away. The impending fight would have likely been an embarrassing scene had they been left to go at it. Sadly, it wouldn’t have been the first time the public had witnessed an Estmond family brawl.
“You got lucky!” Steph called as they headed toward the bathroom. “God, I can’t believe he is twenty-four years old and hasn’t learned to use the freaking oven mitts.”
Lucy sighed, trying to push her frustration with her sister aside. Stephanie and James were fraternal twins and one of the closer pairs out of the clan. They were the youngest, aside from Lucy.
Since birth the twins had fought a lot, but anyone who dared pick a fight with either Steph or James had to deal with the other half of the pair. “Leave him alone, at least for today,” Lucy whispered to her sister.
Steph rolled her eyes, insinuating a ‘yeah right, like that’s gonna happen’ and then bent back down to the floor. She gathered the remnants of the crumbled muffin mess and tossed it in the metal trash can at the end of the counters.
Across the kitchen, Olivia had her hair pulled up into a messy bun to keep any renegade strands from getting in the food. She whipped away from the Formica countertop with a tray of cookies and hurried toward Lucy. “Get this stuff out in the family room. I can see people starting to come over from the cemetery.”
Lucy frowned at her sister. “I don’t understand why we have to do this shit,” she muttered as Olivia shoved the tray into her hands.
Olivia sighed. “Because we are it. There isn’t anyone else.” She pointed at the door leading to the family room. “Now get your ass in there.”
Lucy clutched the tray and stalked out of the room, hearing her sister giving orders to everyone else. About thirty seconds after she set the tray on one of the folding tables they had set up in the room, the kitchen door swung open and the rest of her family marched out, each holding an item for the folding table. Ethan trailed behind them with a giant silver coffee pot.
“Open the door, Lucy,” Olivia demanded. “Ethan, put that on the buffet and plug it in.”
Lucy shook her head. Olivia had always been this way, it wasn’t just the stress of the funeral. She was a complete control freak. Lucy could only be grateful that she didn’t have to share a room with her growing up. She had to share with Stephanie, which was entirely on the other side of the spectrum since Steph was carefree and extremely messy.
A quick peek out the curtain before she opened the front door for the guests had her looking back at her family. “Man, we made all these snacks and every single person out there has a freaking casserole or something.”
“Lucy! Just let them in, for crying out loud.”
“All right, bossy.” She swung the front door open and then propped oven the screen door so that everyone could wander in and out freely.
“Hi, Mrs. Bradley.” She waved as the elderly woman navigated the steps with a casserole dish covered in aluminum foil.
“Hello Dear.” Mrs. Bradley smiled as she stepped up onto the porch. The smile added a few more creases to her age wrinkled face. “I brought you my special recipe, homemade mac n cheese.”
Lucy reached out to take the dish from her. “Oh, this is wonderful. I can’t wait to dig in to it. Thank you, Mrs. Bradley.”
In truth, she could wait. Mrs. Bradley brought her homemade mac n cheese to every public event involving food, and it tasted like what Lucy imagined a burnt piece of rubber might taste like. Whatever the special ingredient was, it did not help the recipe at all. But, somehow, every place she took that darn mac n cheese, she took the dish back home empty.
Lucy stood there while Mrs. Bradley nodded, apparently approving of Lucy’s comment about the mac n cheese and then she reached out, placing her liver spotted hand on Lucy’s shoulder, “I’m so sorry for your loss, honey.”
Here it comes.
“Your daddy was a darn fine man.”
“Thank you again, Mrs. Bradley.”
Mrs. Bradley withdrew her hand and left Lucy standing on the porch as she wandered into the house muttering “Yes, darn fine man.”
While the rest of the crowd began their ascent up the steps onto the porch, Lucy hurried into the house after her. Depositing the mac n cheese on the folding table without even bothering to uncover it, she caught Ethan’s eye across the room
and made a face. Ethan was just as familiar with Mrs. Bradley’s special mac n cheese as she was, so he gave her a smile and rolled his eyes.
The chatter of voices escalated as more people poured into the house. Lucy tried her best to be cordial as each person appeared in front of her, expressing their condolences for her loss. Each time she glanced up, one of her siblings was also engaged in conversation with someone. Even Ethan was being sought out by the mourners.
The walls of the house began to feel confining, too small and crowded. Lucy grabbed a mug, filled it with black coffee and stepped out onto the porch. Her hopes for a few minutes of alone time were crushed when she found several people out on the porch chatting with each other.
With no other option, she glanced out at the graveyard and quietly slipped off the porch. Once she had crossed the lawn and passed the fence, she found herself in the peaceful silence of the dead. Just what she needed.
Wandering slowly up one of the gravel pathways with her mug in hand, Lucy stared at the strips of sunlight filtering through the trees. The shadows from the branches moved back and forth with the gentle breeze. She found one of the old iron benches that were scattered throughout along the trails and sat down to stare out at the tombstones. The graveyard had always been one of the places she liked to go to think. This time, she found herself pondering why it bothered her so much that everyone had something great to say about her father.
People sure did love him. She tried so hard to be a good person like he was, but it came easy for him. For her, it was much harder to live up to his standard of goodness, she had too much intolerance for stupidity. She also didn’t like being around people that much, so kindness just didn’t come that easily.
“Just be yourself, Lucy Mae,” her father always said to her on the many long talks in the graveyard. “You don’t have to be like me. I am me and you are you. Besides, do you honestly think that I never get fed up with the idiots we come into contact with on a daily basis? We all have our moments, Lucy Mae, and it doesn’t make us any less caring and it sure as hell doesn’t make you any less of a person. It’s human nature baby girl.”
Keeper vs. Reaper (Graveyard Guardians Book 1) Page 3