Chapter 15 The Present
The trickiest part about breaking Mark isn’t the plan itself. It’s the feathered surveillance state parked outside the hospital.
The crows.
We can’t move until we get past them.
And honestly? I don’t think the universe is ever going to hand me something this cinematic again—an entire town’s worth of crows flocking to my whereabouts at any cost. I would be an absolute clown not to weaponize it.
I want those fucked-up little zealots to crown the willow tree like harbingers of divine malpractice. I want them to rattle the branches like a war drum and croak doomsday into the clouds and shit on Mark’s porch until his very ancestors feel it.
I want them to peel him open.
But there’s a flaw.
I can’t exactly tell them what to do.
I have no power.
Not anymore.
So, I need Pain’s help.
And if humiliation were a sport, I’d be doing laps in gold trim. Given the history between us, I might as well be wearing a crown. Still, there’s the silver lining:
He should understand the grammar of my agony.
I plant myself in the center of the room, exhale every scrap of pretending, and let the truth leave me with my breath. The guys are already braced. They know what I’m about to do.
“Pain,” I say, my voice caught somewhere between invocation and surrender. “I need you.”
For a beat, nothing.
The crows tap at the glass.
The boys are scattered around the room, watching.
And then a sound comes—
A sigh that folds into a groan that curdles into an eye-roll.
And there he is.
Pain steps out from the shadow between the kitchenette and the corridor. His eyes are a snarl. Judgment rides his shoulders, loud as a shout. He’s all brittle grace and coiled violence, radiating the bone-deep exhaustion of having to deal with me.
“I told you—” he pauses, jaw tight. “I am working.”
I hate that I flinch. I hate that he’s right. He is working. And I know exactly what would happen if he weren’t.
I’d be getting another pep talk from Death.
And I don’t know how many more of those I can take before he just… puffs me out of existence.
“Well, this is important, too.” My voice comes out smaller than I intend. “For both of us.”
His gaze flicks across the room—Talon first, then Cassian, lingering longest on Nathaniel. Knowing how he feels about them makes this worse. He probably thinks they manipulated me into calling him here. That I’m some marionette dancing on their strings.
Without dignity.
Without autonomy.
Without a say.
He’s wrong.
“More important than life and death?” he bites out.
Across the sofa, Talon cocks a brow. Cassian grunts like he means to clear his throat but never commits.
“Listen, I know carrying souls is real work, but—”
“But what, Skye?” Pain cuts in, voice like a blade. “Don’t waste my time. Say what you need from me.”
Ouch. We’ve officially passed the anger now and gone straight into contempt. Got it.
“I can’t leave this building,” I grind out. “There are crows outside, and they’re physical with me now. As you know”—I make sure he feels every word—“I have a body. So it’s a problem.”
He tilts his head, all sharp, birdlike interest. The arrogance doesn’t vanish, but it shifts and becomes something curious. The tiniest thread of willingness to listen snakes in.
“Problem how?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again.
It should be obvious.
The heat under my ribs swells, anger or humiliation or both, and before I snap, Talon rises and saunters across the room.
“These are just scratches compared to what they want to do to her,” he says, showing the fresh red lines along his arms. “They aim for her face. Her eyes. Her hair. And if they can’t get in, they camp outside forever.”
“We’ve already boarded up most of the windows. Left some to monitor the situation,” Cassian adds, voice low, measured. “And we’ll need to resupply soon. Skye hasn’t set foot outside since the last hit.”
Right on cue, a crow slams its body against the nearest pane, talons scraping, feathers exploding like shrapnel against the glass.
Pain smiles at the sound.
“I still fail to see how that’s my problem,” he purrs.
I blink at him. Twice. Slowly. So I don’t stab him with my mind.
“You’re kidding,” I say flatly.
He isn’t.
“Why would it concern me?” Pain asks, cold. “When I made it abundantly clear I don’t need you for my duties. It’s you who always needs help. You who always drags us into disaster because of your…” His eyes flick toward the men again. “urges.”
There it is. The judgment. Dense enough to choke on.
I breathe in through my nose.
I could scream.
Or ignite.
Or throw furniture.
Instead I recognize the truth under the venom: jealousy.
Petty and raw. He’s still stuck in his half-grown metaphysical chrysalis while I’m over here fumbling through a brand-new mortality with skin and nerves and wants.
He nearly sacrificed himself for me not that long ago. The sting isn’t about inconvenience.
It’s about replacement.
“It’s only a matter of time before they hit something fatal,” I grit out. “If I step outside, I might die.”
“Then don’t go outside.”
“I have to. There are things I need to do.”
He blinks once, slow and incredulous. “Like what?”
The question isn’t curiosity. It’s a dare.
Prove how much you need me.
“If you want help, then include me in whatever grand secret you’re hiding,” he says. “What do you want from me? I assumed you were busy wasting time with these three until the next wraith arrived.”
My pulse spikes hard in my throat. I glance to the others. Nathaniel’s the only one who doesn’t flinch. He just smiles at me, small, knowing, like he already heard my answer before I speak it aloud.
“I am doing that,” I say, lifting my chin. “But I figured I could multitask.”
“Multitask,” Pain echoes, bone-dry.
“Yes.” I fold my arms. “For example… I could haunt Mark. With their help.”
That gets him. His mouth tightens like a wound pulling shut.
“You’re helping her get revenge?” he asks the men.
They nod.
All three.
No hesitation.
He doesn’t see the confession tucked inside:
they don’t just stand with me —
they stand for me.
“Why?” Pain asks, suspicious.
“Because we care about Skye,” Cassian replies. “And we intend to see her even the score. Simple as that.”
Simple. Exactly. For once, nothing is buried under strategy. No hidden leverage. Just loyalty sharpened into action.
Pain absorbs that, breathes once, the line of his shoulders loosening by a hair.
“Alright,” he says softly. “I’ll bite. What exactly do you need from me?”
Well, look at that.
He wants a swing at Mark just as much as I do.
“You’d have to control the crows long enough for us to get to Mark’s street,” I tell him. “Just long enough for me to stand under that willow and have him watch them swallow his yard.”
“Our yard,” Pain corrects.
“Yes. Our yard.”
He turns toward the window, eyes narrowing. “You want to scare Mark with them?”
“For starters,” Nathaniel answers.
“There’s more planned,” Talon adds.
Now Pain’s expression shifts; the barest memory flickers behind his eyes. The ghost of fingers crushing our windpipe. His. Mine. The overlap where Pain ends and I begin. He remembers as I remember; the thought of making the person who hurt us feel small. The need to retaliate.
He watches the crows a moment longer, jaw working once, twice. Then he turns back to me. Something hungry and distinctly raven flashes through his gaze.
“All right,” he says slowly. “I might take some pleasure in that. But I can’t control these crows. They’re not mine.”
I blink. “What?”
Ever since I became a Grim Reaper, crows have lingered near me like satellites. Always there when I stayed somewhere too long. If Pain is the personification of my Grim Reaper power… shouldn’t they be his?
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“Exactly what I said,” he replies. “They don’t answer to me. They’re not mine. They belong to the others.”
A cold feeling slides down my spine.
“You mean other Grims?” I say, my voice low. “The ones you said wouldn’t lose a chance to strike?”
He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “The same ones. They sent the crows onto you. Someone wants to monitor where you go, and stop you from leaving.”
Around us, the guys shift. Talon’s face goes slack with disbelief, like the universe just dumped another complication on his doorstep. Cassian’s hand tightens around the folder of fake scans until the paper creases. Nathaniel’s jaw ticks sideways. He’s probably already thinking ten steps ahead.
“We haven’t seen any Grim Reapers around,” Talon says, hopeful but skeptical. “If they were here, we’d notice.”
Pain looks at him like he’s just said something adorable.
“Not if they already know you can see the supernatural.”
That stops all of us.
“What?” I say.
“How would they know that?” Cassian asks.
Pain’s gaze slides to him and then to me.
“You haven’t been to the afterlife properly for a while,” he says at last. “But things have…” His eyes flick toward the ceiling, like language itself is failing him. “Changed.”
“Changed how?”
Afterlife was never a place I saw. I only ever carried souls there. I guided them into the shapeless abstract where concepts spoke louder than matter. I always remembered the dead, not the terrain.
While alive I thought in flesh, so the abstract blurred behind me like a dream dissolving on wake.
“Before, the afterlife was pure abstraction. You only brushed against the edge of it when guiding souls. No translation. Just passing through. But when the system broke, the barrier thinned.”
Now, that’s even more confusing.
“What do you mean by that?” Nathaniel prods.
“Too much happened too fast,” Pain says.
“A wraith was born. A human who should’ve died stayed.
A Grim Reaper disappeared ahead of her time.
Jurisdictions collapsed. Others overlapped.
And once the system broke, the others learned it could break.
Meaning: Grim Reapers began finding ways to cease existing ahead of their murderer’s death, while still getting revenge anyway. ”