Don’t Go Baking My Heart (Village of Foxford #2)

Chapter 1

PETER

PURGATORY

Grim Reaper’s Head Office

Soul Assignment Department

“Matherson! I’ve got a new one for you,” Gregory said, slapping a file on Peter’s work-free desk. “Get your boots off the desk, or Chief will write you up for slacking. You can’t sleep in the office.”

The desk was probably older than death itself, the wood practically indestructible, with a thousand haunting stories to tell. In spite of that, it looked brand new. Hell, it didn’t even have a ring from the many cups of coffee it must have seen over the centuries.

“The dead don’t sleep. I was merely resting my eyes.” Still, Peter removed his feet from the desk and took off the cap protecting his eyes from the bright ceiling lights that never needed to be replaced.

The other twenty or so desks were empty; the other Reapers were out on assignments.

Peter preferred to work fast. He never drew out the collecting process, especially since his sentence called for him to collect ten thousand souls before his punishment was null and void.

He’d been sentenced to Reaping since his death at sixteen.

A decade had passed, and he was only halfway there.

Once his sentence was cleared, he’d get to choose between peace or continuing his duties.

“I cleared my quota for the month,” he told Gregory, rocking back on his rickety desk chair that had a habit of leaning to the left.

The office looked like a police precinct from the 1950s.

Time stood still in Purgatory, and it was up to the chief Reaper to decide on the décor.

Since he’d died in the 50s, he’d decorated for nostalgia’s sake, which meant ancient coffee pots and a lot of typewriters.

It was a nice change to be in the office without having to listen to their incessant clatter.

Typewriters might be aesthetically pleasing, but nobody ever mentioned how messy changing the ink ribbon was, or how damn loud they were.

A few years more, and Peter was going to find out if the dead could get tinnitus.

Still, considering that dead people had a strange habit of breaking electronics, they were a safer option for the countless reports that had to be typed out.

Slower, yes – but it wasn’t like the dead were going to run out of time.

“Death is unpredictable, and Foxford’s your jurisdiction,” Gregory said, taking a seat at the desk across from Peter’s.

As a mentor Reaper in charge of training the newbies, he rarely collected souls.

Peter looked forward to becoming a mentor himself – even if it meant training rookies, which wasn’t easy, considering that not every death was simple or clean.

Some were messy or violent, traumatising, or downright weird.

Peter sighed, having hoped to take some time off and visit his brother in Foxford. Even the dead needed a rest, especially when they spent all their time helping those experiencing the worst day of their lives find peace in the afterlife.

The black envelope mocked him. He sat up with a groan, wondering which poor sucker was next on the list. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to wait around; some souls called for immediate collection.

They died as scheduled, and he simply popped in to collect the soul.

In other cases, fate intervened, and the date and time could change, drawing out the collection or speeding it up.

One thing was certain: a soul would be collected eventually, and he just had to be patient.

Death wasn’t an exact science. As much as he’d have liked to speed up the process, his last soul had taken three months to collect thanks to medical intervention, and he didn’t like spending so much time on the fringes of someone’s life.

He liked to keep busy – get in and out of collections, so he didn’t get too invested.

Rule number one of collection: no forming attachments.

He flipped open the file, and if he’d had a heart to stop, it would have.

He shoved the paperwork away like it had burnt him, but the photo slipped loose from the paper clip and lingered on his desk.

Green eyes stared up at him, framed by short auburn hair and a sad smile Peter would recognise anywhere.

Judging from the flour smudged on her cheek, the picture had been taken while she was working at the café.

“You okay, Matherson?” Gregory asked gruffly. “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

It was hard to fool his mentor, who’d witnessed Peter’s own death.

That, and he was a Hawthorne, who were good-natured and known for their healing magic.

He noticed any hint of displeasure or trouble in someone, which was why he made such an excellent mentor.

Peter usually appreciated this; knowing he couldn’t get away with anything kept him on the straight and narrow.

Still, he glanced down, hoping to conceal the sorrow in his eyes as he thought of Faye, the girl he’d gone to school with, crossing over before she turned thirty.

Even if she’d had eleven years more than Peter amongst the living, it was still far too short for someone who gone through so much and had found so little happiness.

She deserved better. He clenched his fist, rings cutting into his knuckles as his sorrow turned to anger.

“I’m fine,” he growled, turning the photo face down on the desk. He couldn’t concentrate with that smile staring up at him.

“Any issues? That handsome face of yours is looking a bit green,” Gregory pressed.

Peter considered mentioning the conflict of interest; they weren’t supposed to collect the souls of loved ones or even acquaintances.

However, part of his punishment involved serving his community and other magic sanctuaries, such as Willow Valley village.

Luckily, he’d only been assigned to collect the souls of those passing through his former village.

He’d always thought being there for the last moments of someone he loved would be a blessing as much as a curse.

He smoothed his shaggy ash-blonde hair back and pulled his black baseball cap back on. Hooded robes were outdated, though they did have to wear them for formal occasions such as a Reaper graduation, promotions or when they decided to go to their final rest.

“None,” he said, not letting an ounce of emotion show in his voice. He didn’t want Gregory to realise how troubled he was by this assignment.

“This is hopefully your last case before the new year, unless any new ones pop up; handle it correctly and there could be a promotion in it for you. You could collect worldwide – much nicer than being stuck so close to home – and you’ll be able to finish your sentence a lot sooner,” Gregory said, but Peter didn’t care about a promotion, not if the price was Faye’s soul.

He liked being close to home; his family was there, and he could check in on his brother and mum between collections.

Dying at sixteen meant he’d missed out on so much, but keeping in touch with his family made him feel alive.

He’d met Reapers who had lost everyone they’d ever known, and they lost a human part of themselves in the process.

A blankness haunted their eyes, and Peter didn’t want that to happen to him.

Collections might bother him now, but he was far more worried about the day they no longer affected him.

Death by ten thousand cuts – that was his penalty for trying to cheat fate.

He picked up Faye’s picture and ran his thumb over her hair. He couldn’t betray Death again, but he had no idea how the hell he was going to collect either.

“I’ve got to meet Felix at the airplane crash – far too many souls for a newbie to handle. You good here?”

Always keeping an eye on me. Not many became Reapers out of punishment, and Peter suspected Gregory was waiting for the day he went rogue.

“I’m good. Just going to do some research on the subject and head out. The anniversary of my death was only a few weeks ago, so I should stop by and see the family.”

Gregory hesitated, tapping his stack of files of the souls to be collected from the mass casualty event. “Okay,” he said eventually, “give your brother my best. Oh, I forgot to mention – I heard from my mum that Lucinda and Benedict are going to be bound.”

He dropped the bomb as if it wasn’t atomic. A Matherson is being bound to a Hawthorne?!

“What? Your niece? Lucy and Benedict? Grams must be confused. There’s no chance in Hell those two could be engaged – they can’t stand each other!”

Gregory shrugged, crinkling his salmon-pink shirt. “Who knows where life will take the living? Something happened with the coven. If you see him, maybe you can find out the full story? I want to make sure he does right by my niece.”

“No problem. If Benedict won’t talk, my mum will,” Peter promised, wondering how the hell this had come about.

He’d always suspected that something more than hate lingered between Benedict and Lucy, but this had happened way too fast. What was his brother playing at?

He hoped this wasn’t another scheme for power over the Foxford coven.

At least it was a welcome distraction from the daunting task ahead, and now he had a good excuse for his return; Benedict knew he didn’t like to stop by around his anniversary.

Peter waited for Gregory to leave, then rifled through the rest of the papers in Faye’s file until he got to what he desperately needed to know.

Death: car accident, October 14th 2025, 11:34pm

Over a year? He had to wait a year before he could collect!

A year of having to stay close but not too close.

He suspected the chief didn’t want him to be wondering aimlessly, and knew an assignment would keep him nearby.

That was the problem with being assigned to small towns – sometimes there could be as little as one soul to collect in a year.

Anywhere else, he’d be kept far busier and fill his quota a lot faster.

Peter dropped the file, scraping his hands through his hair.

Faye Parker, how the hell am I going to do this?

He had to collect the soul of the woman he’d spent the last year trying to protect.

How could he survive this? Now that her file had been served, Death would come for her – it was only a matter of time.

He could delay it, but once the file was stamped, there was no stopping it.

Except for a case of divine intervention, such as the people who’d suddenly decided not to board the Titanic before her maiden voyage, which in his ten years he’d yet to witness.

And he wasn’t going to rely on some rare miracle to save her.

Thankfully, no one was in the office to see him empty his breakfast into the bin by his desk. He wiped his mouth with a groan and rested back in his chair, staring at the tear-away calendar on the desk.

A year. If I have a year, maybe I don’t have to cheat death.

Maybe I can just alter its path. Slow it down.

He had learnt that every choice affected the outcome of a person’s life; what if he could just lead Faye in a different direction?

It was risky, he thought, looking at the closed shutters of the chief’s office.

If anyone found out what he was up to, he didn’t want to think of the increase in his sentence – but if saving her life was the outcome, it would be worth it.

Hell. It was that thought process that had led him to becoming a Reaper in the first place. I’m doomed.