Grim Love - A Novella (6 page)

Evangeline, blinking, looked between Jasper
and Lucius. “How could he hear you?”

“His strong connection to you. It allowed him
to hear us through the veil I created. Most people wouldn’t have
heard us.” Lucius smiled at her. “I’m certain you have other
questions. You always have questions, ones I can’t answer, but feel
free to ask them anyway, because this…” He gestured. “It isn’t
going to happen again.”

“If I were to walk away, he might
survive?”

“There's a chance he will, but he’s in love
with you and he wants to be with you. His love for a dead girl
makes his spirit weaker than it would have been before.”

Jasper took hold of her hand. “I don’t regret
the choice I made. She’s made my life better. If it wasn’t for her,
I’d probably be in prison right now. I feel complete with her
here.”

Lucius nodded. “That's the problem. No matter
how strong your spirit is, how hard it’s fought before, anyone who
feels that way when they die is going to move on to the afterlife.
I wanted Evangeline to leave because I thought that would hurt her
less. Being a reaper doesn’t make someone heartless, Jasper, so I
do care about her enough that I want her out of this situation
before it ends up shattering her.”

“Will she shatter?”

“It’s likely.” Lucius looked at Evangeline.
“Her life had been cut short by an accident, so she’d never fallen
in love like this before, and, if you die, she won’t know how to
cope with your loss. She's supposed to be a reaper. They roam
amongst the dying to guide them, not to stay with them. I wish none
of this had happened. I wish she’d just moved on to the world of
the dead the way normal people do because this isn’t fair.”

She laughed. “I remember someone telling me
if life wasn’t fair, how could I expect death to be?”

“There's unfair and, then, there’s this.”
Lucius glanced between the two of them. Evangeline looked like
she'd already shattered, her eyes full of pain, while Jasper looked
as though he'd already begun to move forward, even if she wasn’t
ready to let him go. “If I’d known what would happen, I would have
stepped in long before this, but I don’t have the gift of being
able to see the future in terms of love.” Lucius brushed a hand
through his hair. “What do you want to do, Jasper?”

“I think, Evie should walk away.” Jasper
looked at her and smiled, his love for her in his eyes. “We’ve had
more time together than I believed could ever be possible when I
first met you, focus on your job, and I pray, we’ll meet
again.”

Unable to believe what Jasper just said,
Lucius leaned against the wall. Jasper sounded more logical about
his death than Lucius had expected him to because most mortals
would have been angry at the unfairness of it all.

He remembered when he found Evangeline
standing in front of the school she'd once attended. She didn't
know she'd died until he told her, and, then, she screamed at him.
If he hadn’t found her, she'd have spent eternity wandering the
universe alone and desperate for a connection. Lucius had seen it
happen many times. Souls wandered, begging to be seen or heard.
Most would turn their despair to something sinister just to receive
the attention they craved in life and in death. Now, she sat beside
someone who shouldn’t be able to see or hear her, being told she’d
be better off if she walked away from the strongest love either had
ever known.

Evangeline shook her head. “Jasper…”

“You’re going to say you can’t leave me, but
you can. Even though I love you and I want to be with you, this
isn’t the time. Move on. I know it hurts. It's killing me to say
it, but you have to, Evie. I don't want to be in the way of what
you're supposed to be doing. I’ll be in the world waiting for you
and our time, I promise.”

“Maybe you should come with me now,
Evangeline.” Lucius took a couple of steps closer as she glared at
him. “I know you don’t want to, but Jasper's right. You will meet
again.”

“When my contract's complete.” She stood,
growling. “That’s a hundred years, Lucius. A hundred years. I
didn’t know when I signed it that I would or could fall in love
with the most wonderful man. Can’t we do something about it?”

“I’m sorry. Once a contract is signed, that’s
it. There's nothing you can do to get out of it, but Jasper already
said he's willing to wait for you.”

“For a hundred years? While I spend my time
reaping the souls of the dead.” Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“I’m not going, Lucius.”

“Evie.” Jasper stood and took hold of her
hands. “You told me I needed to accept my responsibilities, so why
aren’t you doing the same? It’s your job. You signed a contract. A
hundred years isn’t going to change the way I feel about you, love.
It isn’t going to change the way you feel about me.”

Sighing, she did her best not to scream.
Having Lucius and Jasper gang up on her wasn’t what she’d expected
to happen. She thought Jasper would be on her side, instead of
telling her it would be best for her to leave. “You’re going to
die, Jasper.”

“As soon as it's my time.” Jasper squeezed
her hands. “I know this isn’t what you want. It isn’t what I want
either, but I think it would be for the best if you were to go with
Lucius now and try not to think about me too much.”

As she looked between the two of them, she
realized she wasn’t going to win the argument, but that didn’t mean
she'd planned on giving up. Jasper's going to live a full life,
even if it had to be without her. Tears streamed like a waterfall
down her cheeks as she came to terms with her loss. “Okay.” She
kissed Jasper, knowing it would be the last time until he died. “I
love you, Jasper.”

“I love you too, Evie.” He let go of her
hands. “Now go.”

Nodding, she let Lucius take hold of one of
her hands and, in moments, they were on the other side. “I’m going
to assign Brick to gather Jasper’s soul, if he does die. Please, do
one thing for me.”

“Stay away from Jasper?” Evangeline finished
his request. Nodding she added, “I’ll do my best, but I’m not
making any promises, Lucius.” She managed to summon a smile for
him. “Time heals all wounds, right?”

Evangeline walked away before he could
answer, needing to be far away from him before she did something
she’d end up regretting. She knew Lucius thought this would be for
the best. Feeling nothing but anger, Evangeline needed a
distraction. Disagreeing with him didn’t mean she hated him for
what he’d done. A part of her wanted to hate him, but she convinced
that part of her that he wanted to help her because he did care. If
he didn’t, Lucius would have dragged her away without giving her an
explanation and done everything he could to stop her from seeing
Jasper. At least now, she could do what she needed to do to protect
the man she loved from a death he didn’t deserve. He deserved a
full and happy life without her in it.

* * * *

It wasn’t a surprise she ended up standing
outside Jasper’s apartment. She looked up at the window she'd once
looked out of, trying not to cry again for the man she missed
beyond words. Her eyes swelled with tears as if their separation
had just occurred. In the time that passed, Jasper had become more
of what he was meant to be. He thrived in his sobriety and new work
life. He'd begun to make friends and form bonds – even mending his
broken relationship with his grandfather.

Following him would be difficult because he
could see her, but she’d do her best to stay out of sight. He
deserved to live after all the work he’d done to fix his life.
Dying because of her wouldn't have been right.

“Death isn’t fair.” She hoped no one could
hear her talking to herself. “Life isn’t fair, and death isn’t, and
that’s something I need to learn to accept, but I love him. I can’t
just let him die, no matter what he and Lucius think. Maybe, it's
his time. Maybe there's no such thing as someone’s time and it’s
something we’ve made up to give us a reason for existing.” She
blinked away more tears. “I saved that drunk before and it was his
time. I mean, if it was, he wouldn’t have survived, something else
would have killed him moments later, so I don’t believe anyone has
a time.”

“Neither did I.” Lucius stepped out of the
shadows. “That's when I'd been a young reaper, Evangeline, and I
still thought people could be saved. Sometimes they could. Jasper,
unless you leave him alone, can’t be, so standing here, right where
he might be able to see you, isn’t going to help him. He needs to
do this alone.” He surprised her by taking hold of her hand. “If
things had been different, the two of you would have been together
for the rest of eternity, but you met at the wrong time.”

“Walking away from the man I love isn’t easy.
I've missed him more than I've missed living. To see him moving on
makes me love him more cause that's all I wanted for him, but why
does it hurt so much? It's not fair.”

“Of course it isn’t, but he might survive
whatever it is that’s going to cause his death if he’s allowed to
miss you. You standing here watching him isn't going to help either
of you. Even though it’s the last thing I want to do, I'll lock you
away if you get in the way of his death. If it’s meant to happen,
we have to let it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what you
think or feel because this is the way it works. We're reapers. We
take the souls of the dead to where they’re meant to be.”

“You already knew about the drunk, didn’t
you?”

“I did.” Lucius sighed. “When you’re new to
reaping it’s easy to make mistakes like that, so I’m not angry with
you and he seems to be doing okay now.”

“Can I stay here tonight? I’ll leave in the
morning, get back to my job, but tonight I need to be able to say a
proper goodbye.”

“I shouldn’t let you. It’s the wrong choice
to make and, if I didn’t know how hard this would be, I would tell
you to walk away now.” Lucius squeezed her hand. “Tonight only. If
I find you here again, I will lock you away. If I find out that
you’ve been following him again, I’ll lock you away. If I find out
that you’ve saved him,…”

“Yeah, I get it, you’ll lock me away.”
Evangeline shrugged. “What will you do if you find me in the
library hunting for a way to get out of my contract?”

“Laugh. You have no idea how many young
reapers I’ve seen in there doing the same thing. They all found out
for themselves, but I know you’re not going to believe me until you
see it for yourself.”

Chapter 6

If she wanted to get technical, Evangeline
wasn’t following Jasper. Being there at the times she thought he’d
be in the most danger wasn’t following him, but she knew what
Lucius would say if he found out. She'd do everything she could to
make sure he didn’t know and that Jasper didn’t see her. As she
wandered through the city, she wished things were different. She
wished she hadn’t died at nineteen because then they might have met
in real life.

Remembering how careless she'd been in life,
she couldn’t help thinking if they had met, she wouldn’t have been
able to help him. Instead, they would have ended up damaging each
other more. It'd be wishful thinking to believe their story would
have led them to change their lives together while she'd still been
alive. For what felt like the hundredth time, she blinked away
tears, knowing she needed to stop thinking about how things might
have been different. Stopping would be harder to do than she
thought.

Evangeline had known her position wasn’t going to be easy.
She’d never considered how complicated it would be. There still
hadn't been any explanation as to why she and Jasper had been drawn
to one another. It wasn’t fair, but maybe there existed a reason
for it have happened.
How could something that had caused so much pain
be meant to happen?

Jasper had just begun to get his life back
into some sort of order only to find that he's going to die? Lucius
could be wrong. She still didn't understand how everything worked.
If Lucius did turn out to be wrong, maybe Jasper could live a long
happy life.

Their
relationship caused the change in him because it made Jasper feel
complete. Were they soul mates? Maybe, that's why they were drawn
together.
Who
knows how the universe works?

“I hate this!” Screaming in the middle of the
city wasn’t something she would have done on any other day, but
everything had changed so much since Lucius asked her to help him.
“I have too many questions I can’t answer and I don’t know what to
do. Finding the answers in Lucius’ library is almost impossible,
even though I’ve tried, but there are so many books in there. Some
of them hold stories that might have a grain of truth and the rest,
they are like wading through treacle. They’re all written in old
English and it would be hard for anyone to understand, so I’ve been
translating as best I can, but I still feel like I’m getting
nowhere.”

“Maybe you're not supposed to be getting
anywhere.” Before Evangeline turned, she thought she recognized the
voice. She found herself staring into the eyes of the drunk man
she’d saved. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“With you?”

“Yes, with me. I may have been an old drunk
when you saved my life, but I’m getting straightened out now and I
want to help you because it’s quite obvious something has happened
to cause the anger you feel the need to scream in the streets.” He
shrugged. “I heard you scream. I recognized your voice and since
you saved my life…”

“Saving your life,” Evangeline paused, “I
made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t know whether
you were supposed to die or not, so I made a decision and it turned
out to be the wrong one.” She closed her eyes before continuing, “I
don’t regret it, though.”

He smiled. “You wouldn’t.” He held his hand
out. “I’m Sam.”