Chapter 3 The Present
Ihave officially hit rock bottom.
Not when I died. Not when I became a Grim Reaper. Not even when I let three serial killers wreck me in ways that should’ve been physically impossible for the dead.
No, rock bottom is right now—half-naked in the back of a stolen ambulance, hunched between rattling metal drawers and a toppled crash cart while Cassian drives like he’s auditioning for a car chase, Talon treats my suffering like his favorite show, and Nathaniel quietly panics over… well, probably everything.
The overhead lights flicker in sync with the siren we’re not using. The wheels slam into potholes so hard I nearly face-plant into a tray of bloody gauze. The place reeks of copper, rubber, and something stale I’d really rather not identify.
And guess what? I’m still naked, save for Cassian’s bloodstained, sticky jacket.
So yes, this is rock bottom. A chaotic, naked, rock-bottom moment.
And for the life of me, I cannot find a single damn thing to wear in here.
"You know what?" I mutter, swatting aside a pile of bandages. "I’m not even going to ask where we’re going anymore."
A simple anything would do at this point. A hoodie. A paramedic’s spare uniform. Hell, I’d even take a crusty pair of sweatpants with a questionable stain, if it meant not sitting here half-naked in Cassian’s blood-slick jacket.
But no. Of course not. That would be too easy. Too merciful.
Because apparently, my life has turned into one long cosmic joke.
The drawers and cabinets rattle open as we swerve again, clattering their contents at my feet. I dig through them like a desperate raccoon. Gauze. Gloves. A cracked defibrillator pad. More gauze. A moldy-looking blanket.
And then—
Bright.
Obnoxiously bright.
Blinding neon-orange scrubs.
I freeze. Stare. Blink.
They stare back, practically humming with fluorescent energy like they’re powered by radioactive shame.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Because that’s it. That’s all there is. In the entire damn ambulance.
No shirts. No pants. No modesty-saving miracle. Just a prison-orange uniform that screams escaped convict trying not to die of exposure.
A laugh explodes just behind my shoulder.
“Oh, please wear that,” Talon wheezes, barely holding it together. “Please. I swear I’ll actually behave if you do.”
“He won’t,” Cassian says from the wheel.
“No, he won’t.” Nathaniel doesn’t lift his head from his hands, agreeing.
And they’re both right. Talon wouldn’t know how to behave if someone stapled a code of conduct to his forehead. But right now, it’s not about them.
It’s about dignity.
And the fact that I have none left.
Because my choices are:
One, stay in the jacket, leaving a trail of literal crime evidence on every surface I touch.
Two, be absolutely naked.
Or three, put on these scrubs and look like I just fled a correctional facility.
Neither is ideal. But at least one option involves pants.
So I grab the scrubs. There’s no ceremony to it, just the slow, reluctant motion of someone whose soul has just given up.
“Turn around, Talon,” I mutter, already peeling off the disgusting jacket.
Of course he doesn’t. He was a menace when I was incorporeal, and something tells me that was just the warm-up act. Now that I have a real, touchable, mockable body? He’s probably about to show me his true colors now. A cross between a fuckboy, a psycho and an unhinged trickster hyena.
“Talon.”
I glance over my shoulder.
He’s still there, grinning like the devil himself, one hand gripping the side rail to keep from being flung across the ambulance as Cassian jerks the wheel again.
“What?” he says, all fake innocence. “I’m appreciating the moment.
Do you know how rare this is? Watching a Grim Reaper—sorry, ex-Grim Reaper, or whatever the hell you are now, change into neon-orange scrubs in the back of a stolen ambulance during a high-speed authority escape?
This is cinema, Little Grim. You should be honored. ”
Cinema. Uh-huh. Sure. This is cinema. For the kind of depraved, underground horror-comedy that gets banned in twelve countries before developing a cult following among emotionally stunted insomniacs.
Maybe for them.
“You’re lucky I don’t have my scythe right now,” I mutter, jamming one leg into the blinding pants. “I’d shove it somewhere anatomically improbable.”
“Aw,” he purrs, completely shameless. “I’d shove something somewhere too. Doesn’t matter where, as long as it’s yours.”
I yank the top on so fast I nearly choke myself.
What the hell did he just say?
“If that was your idea of sexy,” I snap, yanking the scrub top over my head, “you really need to recalibrate. You sound like a drunk frat boy.”
Talon has the audacity to look thoughtful. “Mm. No appreciation for art in chaos. Got it.” He tilts his head slightly, lips twitching. “You’re cranky when you’re exposed. I like it.”
“You’re about five seconds away from getting kicked in the face.”
“Worth it,” he says, grinning. Then his expression shifts. Not gone, just…lower. Smoother. Like a panther switching from play to hunt.
He leans back slightly, elbows on the rail behind him, watching me with lazy heat.
“How about this,” he murmurs, voice like melted sin. “You, scowling in those neon-orange scrubs, glaring like you’d rather murder me than breathe? You look like a little convict who needs to be punished. And fuck, it’s doing things to me.”
And I’m so caught off guard something inside me short-circuits.
But worse… He keeps going.
“I’d pin you against the side of this ambulance, tear those pants right off, and leave bite marks so deep your next life would feel them.”
My breath catches. My hands don’t move. Something tightens low in my stomach, coiling heat with sharp, dangerous interest.
“You’d hate it,” he adds, voice dropping. “All that control you cling to? Gone. I’d make you beg, just once. Just to hear how you sound when you say please.”
The back of the ambulance suddenly feels ten degrees hotter.
I want to slap him. I want to kiss him. I want to shove him against the wall and climb him like a tree. My power flares, crackling under my skin, and just like that, I start glitching.
One second, I’m standing there, pulse hammering. The next, I’m flickering out of phase like a broken lightbulb. The fabric of the scrubs disappears, then flickers back, then vanishes again.
Talon straightens a little, watching me glitch with open fascination. “...Okay, I was kind of joking, but—damn. Did I just turn you on that much?”
Cassian glances at me in the rearview mirror, eyes narrowing. “What the fuck is happening?”
I can’t answer. My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. My entire body feels like it’s being yanked between two planes of reality. My limbs hum and vibrate like I’m stuck in some kind of cosmic buffering loop. Like the universe can’t load me properly.
And then, I drop.
Hard. My knees slam the floor. The world tilts. Scrubs gone again, then back, then gone.
Cassian’s gaze flashes to me in the mirror; his already-thin patience ripping into full-blown alarm. “Skye! What’s wrong?”
I can't speak. I just slap a hand over my chest, trying to hold myself together as my vision distorts and reality buckles. My fingers slip through my own skin like mist. My body flickers. Burns. Then goes numb. Then burns again.
And underneath it—pain. Sudden, splitting bursts through my joints and bones, like I’m being unmade and put back together on loop, too fast, too raw.
I suck in a breath that only half fills my lungs. My chest tightens, then releases. Then tightens again. I ache. Then I don’t. Then I ache again.
It’s awful.
Nathaniel spins around. “Skye?”
Cassian curses under his breath, jerking the wheel. “Skye, stop it.”
“Stop what?” I somehow snap, my voice breaking as my body rebels, as I keep glitching out of my own skin. “You think I’m choosing this?”
Talon turns, his gaze dropping first to my chest, barely covered by my hand, then lower, to the sharp triangle formed where my thighs cross as I huddle on the floor. His eyes jump to my face, narrowing to try to see me through the flickering.
And for once, his smirk disappears.
“Oh,” he says, voice low and serious. “She’s flickered out of the clothes. Like she rejected them or something.”
Nathaniel moves first. Calm, controlled, terrifying in how focused he gets.
His mismatched eyes lock on mine like they’re trying to anchor me in place.
When he speaks, his voice is that slow, falsely gentle tone he used with the drowning pool girl.
The one that says I don’t know what you are, but I need you to stay very, very still while I figure it out.
“Skye, focus,” he says, calm as glass. “Remember how you calmed down before? You can do it again. Just breathe.”
“Uh-uh,” I mutter weakly.
But then Cassian jerks the ambulance around a corner with so much force that the world slides sideways—and so do I.
No. Literally.
One second I’m in the vehicle. The next, half my body is inside the floor. Inside. The. Floor.
My legs are gone, sunk through the metal. My spine’s halfway through the base, stuck between dimensions. I feel it. The cold, the hum, the sheer wrongness of being partially ghost, partially girl, and entirely fucked.
“Someone fix her!” Talon snaps, his cocky edge stripped away, replaced with something that sounds suspiciously like panic.
“I’m trying!” Nathaniel grits out, crawling toward me.
Then Cassian.
“Skye.” His voice cuts through everything. Sharp. Unyielding. Commanding. “Stay.”
Like I’m some unruly animal. Like I’ll listen just because he said it.
And yet, gods help me, I do.
Something inside me jerks to attention. Not my mind, not my will. Deeper. Instinctual. Like my bones recognize his voice even when my skin doesn't.
My power stutters.
The glitching stops for a breath, a blink, a heartbeat.
And then, I choke.