20. Chapter Twenty
~Leo~
Rationally, I knew that a plastic Halloween decoration didn’t pose any threat, but ever since Kalo saw it and called my name in the car, the fear in his voice just as strong as on the day he almost died, I hadn’t been able to get my heart rate back down.
It might not have been the reaper standing out in the field, but there was a reaper somewhere, keeping tabs on him, and in the afterglow of our unexpected intimacy, I’d been too quick to let my guard down.
It wouldn’t happen again.
Brendan’s wood-pannelled house with its glowing porch light looked warm and inviting, but as the middle-aged man ushered us inside, my eyes immediately mapped the space from a tactical point of view.
The back of the ground floor had no exit, the house being built into the slope of a hill, so on that level, our only escape would be back out the way we came.
Up the stairs, we entered a large living room with windows along the back wall and a sliding door that opened onto a deck.
I could glimpse the kitchen on our left and a hallway that likely led to bedrooms on the right.
A fireplace sat centered on the inner wall, and above it hung two swords, their metal blades glinting.
“What are those for?” I had to ask, gesturing at the weapons.
Brendan followed my gaze and waved a dismissive hand. “They’re ceremonial. Never been used for anything besides collecting dust.”
Wearing a knit sweater, well-worn jeans, and thin, wire-framed glasses, he looked exactly like the kind of man who enjoyed spending his time in dusty places.
Nothing about him screamed ‘threat’, but I still couldn’t relax.
Silo was no better, pacing restlessly in my head as Kalo and I took a seat on the leather couch while the guards who’d accompanied us positioned themselves on the room’s perimeter, one letting himself out the sliding door onto the deck and the other taking up a spot at the bottom of the stairs.
As Brendan took a seat in the armchair across from us, his attention zeroed in on Kalo with a frank curiosity that had Silo growling in my head.
Tell him to back off.
He’s not doing anything, I countered, trying my best to remain rational despite the urge I also felt to move myself between the two men.
He’s looking at what’s ours. That’s enough, Silo argued.
Instinctively, I shifted a little closer to Kalo on the sofa, and Brendan’s eyes finally moved back to me.
“I’m not sure how much Vaughan told you about our situation,” I began.
“Very little, actually,” Brendan admitted. “Only that you have a visitor, and that your pack believes a reaper is following him.”
My next breath came a little easier as I realized Vaughan had revealed nothing about Kalo’s genie past. We didn’t need more people determined to poke and prod into his abilities. Felix and Calista were quite enough already.
“What do you know about reapers?” I asked, since that was the reason we were there and he’d just given me the perfect opening.
“I know the things most people know: that they’re agents of death. Their touch is what severs the soul from the body, but they don’t kill people.”
Already, I didn’t quite follow. “If their touch is what makes death happen, how are they not causing it?”
“Death is determined by external factors,” Brendan explained. “Illness or injury, or just old age. The reaper doesn’t make those things happen. It reacts to them, and cuts the cord, as it were.”
“So they’re neutral,” Kalo interjected. “Like genies. They don’t control what happens, they’re just a conduit for it.”
Brendan’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t know if I’d call genies neutral. From everything I’ve read, they cause a lot more harm than good.”
Kalo’s jaw tightened, and I had to restrain myself from putting a comforting hand on his knee.
“But yes, as far as reapers go, I’d call them pretty neutral. They don’t decide who lives or dies, they just facilitate the process.”
I wanted to be sure I understood. “So, reapers never kill people who aren’t close to death?”
Brendan’s hesitation worried me. “Generally, that’s true, but I know of one exception. It’s possible there are others.”
“What was the exception?” Kalo asked.
“Several hundred years ago, a man figured out how to bind a reaper to him, and forced it to take souls that were not meant to die yet, in place of others whose time had come. When the reaper finally got free, it killed the man who bound it.”
Although I could understand why it would have done so, I didn’t like the implication. “It broke its own rules.”
“Yes,” Brendan conceded. “But only because the rules had already been broken first. As far as I understand it, reapers have free will. They just don’t usually use it.”
Silence settled over the room as I considered what that might mean. “This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t apply to Kalo’s situation. Why would a reaper still be following him if he’s no longer in danger? And why is it just watching instead of acting?”
Brendan held up his hands. “Honestly, your guess is as good as mine. I’ve never heard of a reaper stalking someone. Reapers don’t wait around. They come only at the moment of death, they act, and they leave.”
“So, something went wrong,” Kalo concluded quietly.
Brendan’s gaze flicked over to him. “You might have cheated death, but it doesn’t sound like the reaper got the message.”
Silo growled again, and I shared his frustration. “How do we get that message across, then? Can we talk to it?”
Fully prepared for him to say no, or that he didn’t know, his actual answer took me by surprise. “In theory, yes.”
“How?” Kalo and I asked at the same time.
“There’s an old account in local legend, about a man who attempted to trap a reaper to bargain for his lover’s life.”
I could understand the impulse. “Did it work?”
“Insofar as he managed to speak with the reaper, yes. But the woman still died.”
My stomach twisted, but Kalo ignored the second sentence to focus on the first. “How did he trap it?”
Brendan rose from his seat. “I have a book that explains the ritual. You’re welcome to borrow it, but I would be very, very careful about using it. Remember the story of the reaper who killed the man who bound him. I can’t say they wouldn’t do the same simply for trapping them.”
As he took a step towards a tall bookshelf, the overhead lights flickered.
Silo snarled, and every muscle in my body locked.
Do you see anything? I asked the two guards through our mind-link.
Nothing, Gamma, they both assured me. All quiet.
Brendan grabbed a book from the shelf and turned back, his gaze snapping up to the lights as they dimmed again.
“Here,” he said, extending the book towards me. “You should go. Now.”
“Is it the reaper?” I asked, standing up to take the book from him.
The older man’s eyes had gone distant. “You need to leave,” he repeated, more urgently. “There are things in this house that would not appreciate a reaper’s presence.”
What the fuck did that mean?
Before I could ask, Kalo appeared at my side, taking my arm. “Let’s go, Leo. We have something to try, at least. Let’s focus on that.”
When I looked down at him, I could see a flicker of fear in his amber eyes, and I remembered how he’d been able to sense magic in Felix and Calista’s experiment back at the pack house. Maybe he could feel something that backed up Brendan’s request for us to leave.
“Thank you for your time,” I said before mind-linking my men again. Let’s move out.
The lights continued to flare and gutter as we made our way back down the stairs and onto the porch. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as soon as we stepped outside, the temperature feeling significantly cooler than when we’d walked in, and it didn’t take me long to figure out why.
Standing beside the car, shadowy and hooded, was the reaper itself.