Grim Crush (Grimly Ever After) (10 page)

Chapter 11

I loved nights like this, when the moon was full and the stars could be seen. People died less at night too, so I didn’t have to work as hard.

I waited in a tree outside Shilah’s house after eleven o’clock. There was still a light on in one of the windows, so I waited patiently till it went out, which was near midnight. By then it was time for me to reap another elderly soul in a hospital, so I went to do that, then teleported back to outside Shilah’s house.

At one of the open upstairs windows, Shilah had been looking outside. When he spotted me, he motioned for me to come in.

I teleported to him and found myself in a cluttered bedroom. A bed with its headboard against the back wall took up the middle of the room, and along the walls was a dresser on which a TV sat, a desk with a laptop on it, a bookcase, a bedside table, a musical keyboard, and a tall wooden drum. Posters of characters I’d seen in some human movies adorned the walls. There were also framed pictures of family members, some looking like they were of ancient ancestors.

“Wow. You have a lot of stuff,” I commented, facing Shilah after looking around. He still stood by the window, wearing a white tank top and plaid pajama pants. The moonlight from outside gave off just enough luminance to see by.

“I know. My parents spoiled me over the years,” Shilah said in a low voice. He walked closer to me. “Now, we have to be quiet. My mom’s a light sleeper.”

“I don’t make any noise. I’m not alive or dead, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Shilah sat on the bed. “What does that mean exactly? You said you can’t die…”

I sat in front of him, crossing my legs. “I have a body like a human, but I can never get sick or hurt. I’m always healthy.”

“Lucky you.”

Suddenly, I had an idea. “Hey, want to see something cool? Well, I don’t know if you’ll think it’s cool. Do you have a knife?”

“There’s one in the kitchen.”

“Where?”

“The drawer next to the refrigerator…what’re you going to do?”

I teleported downstairs into a fancy kitchen. I searched the drawer Shilah told me about, and found the sharpest knife I could. Then I teleported back onto Shilah’s bed.

I held out the knife. “Here, stab me as hard as you can.”

Shilah gave me a weird look. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. It won’t hurt me. Just do it.”

Shilah shook his head. “I’d rather not.”

“Chicken,” I teased. I turned the knife so that the blade was pointing toward me and thrust it toward my stomach. Shilah winced, but the blade bounced off my skin. I then sliced the knife across my wrist a few times.

“See? I can’t get hurt. My skin feels normal, but it’s impenetrable.” I ran the knife down my throat, and it didn’t leave a cut or anything. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Shilah muttered.

My face fell. “Oh. Sorry, am I grossing you out?”

“No,” he replied, a little too quickly. “I mean, not really. So you’re invincible?”

“Yep.”

“You’re not living, but you’re not dead. That’s…” Shilah paused, searching for the right word. “…uh, weird.”

The two of us laughed.

“Yeah, we’ve established that I’m weird,” I said.

“So what happens when you get older? Since you don’t die…”

“When I get too old to go out reaping, which is probably the age of fifty, I could become one of the superiors to the younger reapers or I could teach the children who will grow up to become reapers. I think I’d like to be a teacher because I hate one of my superiors, and I don’t want to turn out like her. When I get
really
old, maybe a hundred, I can retire. Then I get to go where all the dead souls go, which I hope is someplace nice.”

“Oh.” Shilah fell silent.

After a while, I asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“I’m wondering…about the future. About how things will be if we stay friends.”

My stomach felt like something heavy had dropped into it. I rarely thought past the next few days. Especially not the far future. If Shilah wanted to have a normal life, like going on dates and going to college and getting married…we might have to stop being friends. And that meant we could never be anything
more
than friends…at least not forever…

I blushed. Why was I even thinking like that?

Shilah shook his head. “Never mind. I don’t want to think about the future. Let’s just focus on the present.” He placed his hand on mine. After watching me, he said, “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” I asked, confused.

“You flinch when I touch your skin.”

“I do?” I thought I had stopped.

“You aren’t as jumpy as you used to be, but I still notice it a little.”

My face burned even more. “It’s just…humans aren’t supposed to be able to touch reapers. I’m not used to it. So when you touch me, it feels–”

“–weird?” Shilah finished with a grin.

I smiled too. “Yeah. But it also feels nice.”

“So if other humans can’t touch you, they–?”

“Pass through me.”

“So you’re like a ghost?”

“Not exactly. Spirits pass through everything; I only pass through humans and animals. That’s why I can pick up objects, but I’m not supposed to.”

“Why?”

“Other humans would see the object floating in midair…”

“Oh. Right.”

I stared at his hand on mine. “How do I feel to you? Your skin is warm. I know mine isn’t.”

“Yours is neutral. It’s never warm or cold.” Shilah spread out my fingers with his, placing our palms together. His fingers were slightly longer than mine. I had to admit, my golden-like skin tone against his bronze looked amazing together.

“Sometimes I wish I was human,” I whispered.

“Being human isn’t all fun, you know.”

“But you get to
live
. You can just hang out for a whole day or a whole week even. You don’t have to work all the time. You can listen to music and read books and drive a car and accomplish dreams and fall in love…” Those last three words slipped out before I could control them.

Shilah slid his fingers in-between mine, staring into my eyes. “Couldn’t you do some of those things if you wanted to?”

“Maybe…” My heart was beating erratically again.

Shilah hesitated, then took his other hand and cupped it around my cheek. His touch seemed almost electric again. Gosh, I could not take the way he was looking at me. I felt like I would melt.

When he started leaning toward me, I turned away, hopping off the bed.

“Um–uh…I-I think I should leave and let you get your rest now,” I stuttered without looking at him.

Shilah sighed. “I guess I do need to go to sleep since I have school in the morning. But I don’t want you to go yet.”

I looked at him. He didn’t seem upset that I’d pulled away from him. “Are you sure I won’t keep you awake?”

“I don’t know. I just want you here. You don’t have a soul to reap, do you?”

“Not for another hour. Fine, I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

Shilah crawled under the covers of his bed. I sat on the soft rug on the floor, my back to his bedside table.

He lay his head on his pillow, staring at me. “Will you meet me near the stream after school tomorrow?” He frowned then. “I might have homework to do when I get home, so maybe around five?”

I realized something. “Don’t you have any friends you’d rather hang out with sometimes?”

He looked guilty. “I’ve been abandoning my friends the last few days. They’re getting suspicious, too. At lunch on Friday, they kept questioning me.” He grinned. “They think it must be some girl I’m abandoning them for. I
was
going to introduce them to you, but…” he trailed off.

I felt horrible. “I’m complicating your life, aren’t I? I can’t meet your parents or your friends and they’re going to wonder where you go all the time. It would be much easier if you
did
find a human girl to spend time with–”

Shilah reached out and grabbed my hand. “Xia, I don’t care about what would be easier. I like hanging out with you.”

“Why? Because death is so much fun?” Sarcasm invaded my voice. I didn’t know why I was trying to push him away. I guess I wanted him to live a normal life, and he couldn’t do that being friends with me.

He scrunched up his face. “No. I like hanging out with you because of your weirdness.”

I slipped my hand out of his and smacked his arm as he laughed.

“No, seriously,” he said when his chuckles subsided, “you’re different from other girls. You don’t care about lame stuff like the hottest movie actors or what outfit you’re going to wear. You also make me laugh and you care about people, even though they’re
dead
people.”

I was touched. “I didn’t know you thought those things about me. Would you be offended if I said the only reason I was first interested in you was because you’re a reaper-seeing human?”

Shilah feigned surprise. “Oh! I thought you were interested in me because of my good looks.”

I shook my head, smiling. “Yeah, right. Anyway, now I like you because you accept me for who I am. You’re nice and you have a good sense of humor too.”

He sighed. “Still no mention about my looks.”

I rolled my eyes. “Would you just go to sleep, Mr. Arrogant?”

He chuckled and snuggled under his sheets, turning to gaze up at the ceiling. “Goodnight, Xia.”

“Yeah, it was a good night.”

“No, I mean–that’s what people say to each other at night. It’s kind of like saying ‘have a nice night.’ You’re supposed to say it back.”

“Oh. Well, then, goodnight.”

I couldn’t see his face, but it sounded like Shilah was smiling as he said, “Looks like I still have a lot to teach you about being human.”

Chapter 12

I swung my scythe in circles, waiting impatiently. When Ziri got here, I was considering using the weapon on her.

She knew we were supposed to be at the scene of a person’s death fifteen minutes early, and here I was alone, with one minute to go till this twenty-year-old-druggie kicked the bucket.

He was already starting to OD on the heroin. I hadn’t had an accidental overdose victim in a while. They were usually more common in Jayza’s area of reaping.

The druggie dude had just passed out when Ziri appeared, laughing.

“Oh, that was
so
funny,” she said, calming her giggles.

I stopped swinging my scythe and placed my free hand on my hip. “Where in Death’s name have you been?”

“I was at a movie theater with my friends,” Ziri explained, like she was a normal teenager coming home from a late night out. “There is this
hilarious
movie that just came out about pirates. It has the sexiest humans in it too.”

Beside us, the druggie’s soul was rising from his body. He looked from us to his corpse in confusion.

“Ziri,” I growled through gritted teeth. “You were supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago.”

“Chill out, Xia,” my trainee said. “I came in time for Kevin’s death.”

“What if he had died five minutes ahead of schedule? What would he have done if his reaper wasn’t here?”

“I knew you’d be here.”

“You’re supposed to be proving that
you
are
responsible so I can give good reports about you to our superiors! You’ll never get your own scythe acting like this.”

Ziri stared at the floor. “But the movie was too good at the end to leave.”

I rolled my eyes. “You have to learn that your job comes before anything else. Especially a stupid movie. You’re a reaper, not a human!”

“Says the girl who’s
dating
a human.”

I blushed, flustered. “I-I’m not really
dating
Shilah, but I
do
have to leave him every time my job calls! Even when I don’t want to. You need to learn to do the same!”

“Stop yelling at me! Or I’m going to tell our superiors you’re a horrible trainer.”

I clenched my teeth. “After I let you use my scythe when I wasn’t supposed to? I should–” Before I could hack Ziri with my scythe just for the heck of it, I froze. Ziri must’ve realized the same thing I had, because her eyes widened.

We both turned to look at the new corpse. Kevin’s soul was nowhere to be found.

I slammed my scythe’s bottom into the wooden floor. “Now look what you did! You let the spirit get away.”

“
I
let him get away?
You
did!” Ziri cried.

I massaged my temples with my hand. “We don’t have time to argue anymore. Let’s split up and look for him. He hasn’t had time to run far.” I teleported out of Kevin’s apartment.

I arrived on the decrepit street outside, looking left and right. Runaway spirits were the most annoying things about my job. I always eventually found them though. The longest it had ever taken me to find one had been twelve hours, in-between going to reap other souls.

“Xia!” Ziri called. I looked up to see her on the roof of the apartment building. She pointed behind it. “He’s running through the alley!”

The grim-in-training had made a smart move by going up high to locate the runaway. I teleported again and landed on the roof across from Ziri, searching the ground. I saw the spirit jumping over trash and cutting around corners, running like his life depended on it. I hope he didn’t think he still
had
a life.

Ziri disappeared after him first, and I followed. When I got there, Ziri was holding out her arms to block Kevin’s escape. He skidded to a stop and turned around, only to find his face within inches of my scythe’s blade.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I asked him, holding out my weapon threateningly.

“Gettin’ away from you crazy girls,” Kevin the Spirit said, backing away and glancing from me to Ziri.

“Sorry, we were busy earlier,” my trainee explained. “But we’re really here to help you. You know you’re dead, right?”

“Uh…
duh
. But I ain’t goin’ to Hell.”

“We never said you were,” I replied. “That’s not for you or us to decide.” I opened a portal along one wall of the alley. “Time for you to cross over.”

“Why should I trust ya’ll? Ya’ll might’ve been sent by the devil for all I know.”

“We work for the Angel of Death,” Ziri said, with surprising patience. “We’re grim reapers. We just want to help guide you.”

“Oh, ya’ll are grim reapers? Awesome.” Kevin eyed my scythe. “Can I hold that?”

“
No
,” I answered, and pointed to the vortex. “Goodbye, Kevin.”

The soul’s shoulders slumped, and he headed toward the portal.

“Have a nice afterlife,” Ziri called before he and the portal disappeared.

I nodded in approval at the grim-in-training. “Nice work. You’re getting better.”

“I know. I’m learning from the best.” Ziri grinned at me. “And I’m sorry for not showing up on time.”

I shook my head, getting rid of my scythe. “Nope. I’m not falling for that.”

“What are you talking about? Can’t I be nice for no reason at all?”

“You? Ha!”

“I’m just trying to pass my training so I can get my scythe. Geez.” Ziri crossed her arms and pouted. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine sadness or a trick to get me to feel sorry for her.

I walked over and placed my arm around her shoulders. “I’m proud of you for how you handled Kevin. But you’re
not
getting my scythe again. Last time you nearly took off a spirit’s head with it.”

Ziri sighed and teleported away, making my arm drop to my side. I started to leave too, but then something made me look up at the building to my left.

On the roof of it, Aquil, my
favorite
superior, was gazing down at me warily. When she realized I’d spotted her, she turned up her nose and disappeared.

I grinned. I must be doing a good job training Ziri for Aquil not to be meddling. The punishment I’d been given wasn’t as bad as I’d thought.

* * *

“Close your eyes,” I said.

Shilah shook his head. “No.”

I put my hands on my hips. “I thought you trusted me.”

“I do, but you’re a reaper. I don’t know what crazy plan you have up your sleeves. It might be something a human shouldn’t do.”

“You’re right. It’s way too dangerous for humans to do what I like to do. But I’ll be with you, so you’ll be fine.” I smiled.

“Xia…”

“
Close your eyes
. It’ll be cool, I promise.”

“I think your cool and my cool are two different things.”

I laughed, grasping his arm. “Trust me, this will be cool to both of us.”

“Oh boy, I hope I don’t regret this.” He closed his eyes.

“Okay, don’t open them until I tell you.” I teleported.

“Why did it just get colder?” Shilah asked when we arrived at our destination.

“You’ll see. Open your eyes. And don’t panic.”

His eyelids gradually rose, and he gasped. “Xia! Wha–why are we–take me back!” He clutched my arm tight.

“I told you not to panic. Do you know where we are?” We stood on the parapet of a tall building, and several feet below us were hundreds of lights and screens of all colors. Even though the sun had gone down here, everything was lit up so bright that it wasn’t dark.

“Is this…Times Square? We’re in New York?” Shilah looked at me in disbelief.

“Yeah! New York is beautiful at night. Especially from up here.”

“We’re on top of a building!” His voice was shrill.

“I know.”

“Take me down! Now!” His eyes were wide with panic.

I giggled. “Relax. This feels exhilarating!” I pulled away from Shilah’s grasp and spread out my arms. “We’re on the border of life and death.”

“I’m sure this is fun for you, but I
can
die you know!” Shilah glanced down toward the streets, swallowing. “I knew I was going to regret this.”

Even though he was scared out of his mind, it was hilarious watching his reaction. “Shilah, if you fall, I can just teleport and grab you before you hit the ground.”

“But–! Isn’t that breaking a Rule of Reaping?”

I nodded. “Rule One says not to interfere with a person’s death. But I’ve heard it’s next to impossible to stop death, so you don’t have to worry about me breaking that Rule.”

“
Xia
–!”

I bit my lips together to keep from laughing. “I’m a reaper. Trust me, I’ll know when it’s your time to die. I can sense death wherever I am, even if it’s unscheduled.”

“Are you sure?”

“
Yes
.” Shilah slowly relaxed, and I moved closer to him. “I’m sorry, did I scare you?”

He shoved me, and I stumbled backward along the lip of the building, laughing.

“Don’t ever do this again unless I give you permission,” Shilah growled. But by the tone of his voice I could tell he wasn’t
really
mad at me.

“Admit it, you like it up here,” I said.

He gazed around at the sights below. “This
is
a great view. I’ve never been to New York. But it’s pretty chilly up here.”

I glided forward and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Does this help?”

“A little. It’d be better if you were living and warm.” He put his arms around me too. “But I’d rather be here with you than a human any day.”

We held each other in silence for a long time, with the wind blowing around us. Standing between life and death was always soothing for me, and being here in Shilah’s arms made this moment perfect. I wished I could stay here until the end of time.

But of course, people would be dying back in my section of Arizona. A reaper’s work is never done.