Dating the Reaper came with its fair share of pitfalls.
The attention we drew wasn’t one of them, though it could get annoying when people insisted on staring at the pair of us whenever we went anywhere together.
In fairness, in their place, I might have stared too, since Xavier was gorgeous in a way which was frankly inhuman. Ironic, considering he wasn’t human, and while he could have made himself invisible if he liked, I’d have drawn even more attention if I’d been sitting alone at a table in the Black Dog, eating ice cream and talking to myself.
“Anyway, I think Aunt Adelaide has regrets about putting Aunt Candace in charge of the front desk yesterday,” I said to Xavier. “She was paying so little attention that two kids tried to take a book of practical jokes out of the library without checking it out. Instead of chasing them down like a normal person, she pushed them into the vampire’s basement.”
The blond Reaper grinned. “I bet that’ll guarantee they won’t forget again.”
“There was a lot of shrieking involved.” The vampire in question hadn’t woken up in decades, and nobody entirely knew how he’d ended up there in the first place, but I’d had a couple of unintended visits to his basement before, and I couldn’t say they’d been particularly enjoyable. “I decided not to tell Estelle. She has her hands full with her thesis, and I know she feels bad about leaving the rest of us to pick up the slack. She doesn’t need to hear about Aunt Candace making a nuisance of herself.”
“At least she was quick on the uptake,” he remarked. “I know she’s not exactly the most observant of people.”
“You’re telling me. She’s supposed to be in charge of my magic lessons, and it’s nearly impossible to get her to stay on topic.”
A few giggles drew my attention to the nearby table, where several teenage girls were watching us with wistful expressions on their faces. I assumed they were at the age where the idea of dating a Reaper seemed romantic and not terrifying, though there was nothing remotely terrifying about Xavier. Regardless, I had the occasional urge to pinch myself every so often to remind myself our relationship was real.
Xavier’s aquamarine gaze flickered in their direction for a moment before he returned his attention to me. The stares didn’t seem to bother him, though it took little to faze someone whose job involved escorting departed souls to the world beyond and who carried an invisible scythe strapped to his back for that very purpose. Teenage girls were hardly a threat, not compared to his boss, the Grim Reaper.
Yes… that Grim Reaper. Let’s just say it’d been a battle and a half to get him to accept I was dating his apprentice, since Reapers weren’t supposed to form attachments to regular people. Supposedly it interfered with their ability to do their jobs. I was more inclined to think his job interfered with his ability to pursue a relationship with me, since I could count the number of uninterrupted dates we’d had in the last few months on one hand.
Xavier called the waiter over to fetch the bill while the teenagers seemed to realise we’d noticed their staring and hastily turned back to their own table. As usual, Xavier insisted on paying for both of us. Where he got his money, I wasn’t entirely sure, given that the Grim Reaper wasn’t exactly the typical kind of employer. Regardless, he always seemed to have cash on hand, so I didn’t voice an argument. Relieved to get away from the giggling teenagers, I let him pay and turned to leave the pub.
I slid my hand into his as we walked out into the cold evening air while the girls swooned and sighed behind us. “I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d turned yourself invisible back then.”
“That wouldn’t have been nearly as fun,” he said.
“Why?” I asked. “It can’t be fun being stared at, either.”
Reapers had the handy ability to hide in the shadows wherever they wanted to, but Xavier’s confidence in keeping our relationship out in the open warmed me more efficiently than his hand in mine as we walked through the chilly night air.
“Sometimes I get bored hiding in the shadows.” His fingers stroked my palm. “It’d also mean I didn’t get to look at you.”
My stomach swooped downward. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?”
He bent his head to kiss me and then stiffened midmotion. “Ah… one second.”
“Let me guess.” I dropped his hand. “Your boss is calling you?”
“To escort a soul to the afterlife, yes.”
Typical. Instead of texting or calling like a normal person, the Grim Reaper used some kind of unseen magic to call his apprentice to his side, wherever he happened to be. “In other words, someone died.”
And it’d all been going so well.
“I’ll walk you back to the library first,” he said. “The body isn’t far from here, but I can’t imagine my boss will want me to bring you to the scene of the crime.”
My heart dropped. “You mean it was murder?”
“When a body is found in an open location, I tend to assume there’s a fair chance it was murder,” he said. “We’d better go.”
If nothing else, at least we’d got through the ‘date’ portion of the evening without an interruption. We made our way across the seafront and headed up the street which ran alongside the clock tower towards the town square. My family’s library dominated the square, an impressive brick construction five storeys high which towered over its neighbours. Working in a magical library was almost as demanding as Xavier’s position as Reaper, especially when I was still learning to use biblio-witch magic—my family’s speciality, which enabled us to draw magic from the written word. In between helping my best friend Laney adjust to being a vampire and running errands for my family, it was a miracle I found any time for a romantic life at all.
Xavier and I came to an abrupt halt when the Grim Reaper stepped out of the shadows like a piece of the night sky in the form of a hooded figure wielding a sharp scythe. Whether he’d ever been human, none of us knew. Except Xavier, of course, but I’d never probed him for more details despite my Aunt Candace’s endless questions on the subject.
My heart gave an unpleasant lurch. “The person who died isn’t near the library, are they?”
Instead of answering, the Grim Reaper addressed his apprentice. “I told you not to neglect your job.”
“I wasn’t neglecting anything,” Xavier replied. “I was escorting Rory home to the library before I came to find you. I didn’t think you’d appreciate it if I brought her to the scene of the crime.”
“You should have come to me right away.”
“You think he should have simply vanished and left me standing there?” The answer, no doubt, was ‘yes’. Typical of the Grim Reaper, who had zero understanding of human relationships.
Once again, the Grim Reaper ignored me, instead beckoning for Xavier to follow him. I might as well not have even existed. A jolt of annoyance travelled up my spine, and before I could question the wisdom of ticking him off, I fell into step with Xavier and followed the Grim Reaper across the square.
Xavier’s brows shot up. “Rory…?”
“If he’s going to interrupt our date, then I’d like to know why.” Besides, if someone had been murdered near the library, then maybe I knew who they were.
The Grim Reaper came to a halt at the end of an alleyway, where the body of a redheaded wizard lay sprawled on his back. Not someone I recognised, but given the location, it was better to be safe than sorry.
“His soul has already gone?” Xavier asked his boss.
“Yes, I guided him to the afterlife myself.”
Xavier studied the Grim Reaper’s shadowy form. “You didn’t need me to come here, then, did you?”
No. He just wanted to ruin our night. For someone who might have been hundreds of years old for all I knew, the Grim Reaper could certainly be as vindictive as a regular person. While part of me was tempted to call him out on it, I didn’t quite trust him not to use his scythe on me if I did, so I settled for glowering at him. Which he ignored.
Xavier returned to my side, and I whispered, “Xavier, do you know how he died?”
“No idea, but there’s no visible wounds on him,” he said. “Weird. If I’d spoken to his ghost, I might have asked…”
The Grim Reaper glided between us, bringing a chill which froze the blood in my veins. “What are you still doing here, Aurora Hawthorn?”
At least he’d finally acknowledged my existence. “You didn’t tell me to leave. Besides, someone has to report this wizard’s death to the police.”
“I’ll call Edwin,” said Xavier, referring to the local head of the police force.
“That won’t be necessary,” said the Grim Reaper.
Seriously? If you asked me, he was trying to ensure the two of us didn’t spend any longer together than he deemed suitable—but leaving the poor wizard in an alleyway overnight was petty beyond belief.
Xavier pulled out his phone. “He might have died of natural causes, but someone needs to be told.”
“Put that thing away.” The Grim Reaper gave the phone in Xavier’s hand such a withering look that you’d think it’d mortally insulted him. Xavier had had to fight a battle with him to get a mobile phone in the first place, as a way of staying in contact with me. With a sixth sense connecting the two of them at all times, the Grim Reaper didn’t need access to a phone or to the internet to be able to bother his apprentice at any given time.
Luckily—or not—a passing group of witches came tottering past on high heels at that moment.
“Hey… it’s the Reaper!” One of them nearly tripped over her own feet in an effort to get a close look at Xavier and then did trip when the Grim Reaper emerged from the shadows in front of their group. As she landed on her rear, the other two witches spotted the body lying in the alleyway behind us.
Several loud shrieks ensued while I wished I’d had the good sense to hightail it back to the library before I’d been caught next to a dead body in public again.
Xavier leaned in to whisper, “I’d go back to the library. They’re already calling the police, and it’s probably better if Edwin didn’t find you here.”
I dipped my head. “Will you let me know if you figure out how he died?”
“Sure.” He cast a guilty look in the direction of his boss, who stood nearby, an imposing shadow condemning us for daring to defy him. “I’ll see you later.”
“Tomorrow.” I planted a brief kiss on his lips before turning away, the sound of the three witches’ shrieking echoing across the square as I walked.
My mood deteriorated the closer I got to the library. Not because of the dead body—it was hardly the poor wizard’s fault he’d died—but because the Grim Reaper’s efforts to drive a wedge between Xavier and me had crossed a line between annoying and downright disruptive. He was forever dragging Xavier away on ‘Reaper business’, and I knew for a fact there weren’t that many deaths for him to handle, considering Ivory Beach was a small town and the Reaper’s territory didn’t cover much land outside of it.
No, he just wanted an excuse to keep us apart from one another, and I didn’t care for it a bit. While Xavier had given me a magical stone with which I could draw him to my side at any moment, I was only supposed to use it in emergencies. This situation, however annoying it might be, did not count as an emergency, so the most I could do was send him a text message and hope that the library’s notoriously unpredictable signal was cooperating tonight.
Entering the library, I crossed the darkened entryway to the corridor leading to our family’s living quarters. While the main part of the library was lit by floating lanterns at night which cast a warm yellow light over the shelves, the living quarters remained shadowed. Consequently, I nearly walked into my cousin, Cass, on my way in.
“You don’t look happy,” she remarked. “I take it your date didn’t go as planned?”
“Ooh, trouble in paradise?” Sylvester predictably popped up, the huge tawny owl perching on top of one of Aunt Adelaide’s store cupboards.
“No,” I said. “The Grim Reaper decided to drag Xavier away to see to a dead body, even though the departed soul had already been banished.”
“Who bit the dust this time?” Sylvester asked.
“A local wizard,” I said. “Don’t look at me like that, Cass. Someone else called the police, so I figured I’d be better off coming back here before we all got dragged in for questioning. It’s not like I saw how he died.”
Neither had Xavier, for that matter.
“Are you sure the Grim Reaper didn’t set you up?” Cass sounded entirely too amused at the possibility. “If he’s taken to sticking his scythe in random passers-by to stop you and Xavier from dating, you must really have got under his skin. Well done.”
“Don’t be absurd,” I said while Sylvester cackled in the background. “I’m pretty sure it’s against one of his all-important Reaper rules to take someone’s soul if the person isn’t already dead. He’s just being obnoxious.”
“Isn’t that part of the Grim Reaper’s job description?” Cass snorted. “If you expect him to behave otherwise, you might as well tell Aunt Candace to give up novel writing.”
“What did you just say?” Aunt Candace herself walked into the room from the kitchen, a pile of books tucked under her arm. Her auburn hair was as wild as ever, flowing free where Cass’s was tied back neatly.
“She was comparing you to the Grim Reaper,” Sylvester said.
“He’s lying,” Cass told her aunt. “I was saying the Grim Reaper is as inclined to be a grump as you’re inclined to be writing a book. Which is true.”
“She’s a grump, too, precaffeine,” said the owl.
That, I could agree with. “Forget the Reaper. I’m going to get an early night.”
“So you’re giving up?” Cass said. “You’re going to let the Grim Reaper win?”
“Pretty sure he always wins, considering the whole scythe thing.”
That made Sylvester snicker, but Cass merely rolled her eyes. “You know that’s not what I’m talking about. How many times has he cut your date nights short now?”
“There’s nothing I can do to stop the Grim Reaper from dragging his apprentice away if someone’s dead,” I said. “They’re connected via some kind of psychic link, so it’s not like he can switch off his phone.”
“Creepy,” said Cass. “Yes, I know that’s in the job description too. Maybe you can try to distract him.”
“Nothing distracts the Grim Reaper,” I said. “He exists for two things—reaping souls and training his apprentice to do the same.”
“Does Xavier even need any more training?” Cass asked. “I doubt it. Would throwing a soul in his path distract him?”
“Where would you get the soul?” I frowned at her. “If you want me to commit murder to get a date, then I’m out.”
Aunt Candace cackled. “If you do, please let me know so I can borrow the storyline for a book and interview you while you’re in jail.”
“Nobody’s going to jail,” Cass said. “You can work out the logistics with Xavier, can’t you? Surely there’s a way to… I don’t know, send a soul to lead him on a wild ghost chase for a bit.”
“I really don’t think there is,” I said. “The Grim Reaper wouldn’t let a simple lost soul get the better of him, and I’d be in real trouble if he found out I was responsible.”
While the Reapers weren’t supposed to take the souls of anyone who wasn’t dead, anyone who angered them was fair game. I’d prefer not to learn what it felt like to end up on the pointy end of a scythe.
She shrugged. “Your choice.”
“I can distract him,” said Sylvester.
“No, thanks.” The owl didn’t have a soul to reap, or at least I assumed he didn’t, being the embodiment of the library’s entire store of knowledge who everyone thought was simply a harmless familiar who’d been put under a permanent talking spell. Why he preferred to spend his time chasing late fees and winding me up, I hadn’t the faintest idea, but he and Cass were a nightmare to deal with on most days, let alone at the tail end of the frustrating evening I’d already had.
I left them to their scheming and retreated to my room instead of listening to more ill-advised suggestions from the pair of them. I’d come up with another strategy for getting around the Grim Reaper in the morning.
