Chapter 29
Cathy pulled back first.
Dustin wasn't surprised to see her swiping one hand across her face before sitting up straight. Her jaw set and her shoulders squared like she'd allowed herself thirty seconds of falling apart and the thirty seconds were up.
She looked at Greg who hadn't moved from his chair. Tyler's chair.
“You were sent to collect my son,” Cathy said.
Greg swallowed. “Yes.”
“So I was right.” Her chin jutted in defiance. “If I hadn't made the deal, he'd have died and you would have walked him out.”
“Yes,” Greg said again. Quieter.
Cathy nodded once.
She looked at Dustin.
“I don't regret it,” she said. “I'd do it again.”
Dustin had no words to say in response. He wasn't even sure what he was feeling. It was neither pain nor relief but something uncontainable that grew inside of him, too big for the space it was in.
His mother had sold her soul for him and she'd do it again, without hesitation.
Hell.
He'd stood on cliffs that were over a thousand feet high but none of them now seemed as monumental as the leap his mother had made—for him.
“Mom—”
“Don't.” She held up a hand. “Don't tell me it wasn't worth it. Don't tell me I shouldn't have.” She pointed at his chest. At his stubbornly beating heart. “You wouldn't be here to berate me if I hadn't done it.”
He closed his mouth.
Cathy turned to Greg. “So what happens now?” she asked, putting herself back together because that was what she did. “You can't collect him, so what now?”
“I don't know,” Greg said, as honest as ever. “I've never seen anything like this,” he went on. “Demonic contracts aren't part of the standard training.”
“There's training?” Cathy asked.
“Very extensive training,” Greg said with a hint of pride before he faltered. “I mean, we received binders and manuals, but…” He hesitated. “None of them covered this.”
Cathy was studying Greg, processing this information. Processing him.
Dustin could guess what she was thinking.
Nobody expected death to look like Greg.
But Cathy quickly moved past that fact. “Can you find out?”
Greg hesitated again. “There might be something in the archives.”
“What archives?” Dustin asked.
“Back at headquarters,” Greg explained. “We keep records. If something like this has happened before, and I'm sure it has, there'll be files.”
That sounded reasonable, but… “Won't you get in trouble?”
Greg looked down at his clipboard. “I'm meant to investigate,” he said stubbornly.
“Are you still trying to collect my son's soul?” Cathy asked.
Greg's gaze snapped to her almost comically fast. “No, ma'am. I'm… I'm on your side.”
“Really?” The look Cathy gave Greg… Dustin knew that look well. It was all Mom. You couldn't lie when she looked at you like that.
And though Greg had never had a mother, he didn't seem immune to the effect.
“I like Dustin,” he said. “I like him a lot.”
He didn't even turn red, saying that.
Dustin was a little impressed.
“Is that so?” One of Cathy's eyebrows lifted. She shot Dustin a glance that meant 'we will talk about this later,' and then she got up. “I'm making more coffee,” she said, and walked to the counter like the last thirty minutes hadn't happened.
Dustin released a breath, watching her putter about the kitchen.
That was his mother. She could fall apart and reassemble herself in the time it took to cross a kitchen. She'd been doing it his whole life. He'd thought it meant she didn't feel things deeply enough for them to stick.
Wrong. He'd been so wrong about that. She felt things so deeply she had to put them down fast or they'd crush her.
The only way to go on was to keep moving.
Maybe they were more alike than he'd thought.
Greg pushed back from the table.
“I should go,” Greg said to Dustin.
Dustin nodded and walked him to the front door. Down the hallway and past the row of photos on the wall that showed a happier family.
Greg hesitated before stepping out of the house.
“Are you sure you'll be okay?” Dustin asked.
“I don't know,” Greg said, once again too honest for comfort. “Valerie said Morrith was mad at me. I hope he doesn't catch me.”
“Maybe you shouldn't go.”
Greg thought for a moment. “Do they have information about demonic contracts at human libraries?”
“Probably not,” Dustin admitted. “But I still don't think you should go.”
“It's the only way I can help you.”
Dustin studied his reaper's earnest face. Here was yet another person willing to sacrifice for him. “Maybe I don't want you to help me,” he said. “Maybe I only want you to stay.”
“Oh.” Greg made a little surprised sound. “That's… um.” He looked down, averting his gaze. He struggled with something, Dustin didn't know what. “You know I would dissolve,” he said eventually. “Even with the clipboard, I can only stay so long.”
Dustin felt like he'd been punched in the stomach.
He'd ignored that little fact and he wanted to go on ignoring it.
He preferred it when Greg was solid and awkward and flustered and real.
Not thin soul stuff that couldn't persist in the mortal world.
“Dustin?” Greg asked when Dustin remained quiet for too long.
“It's okay,” Dustin lied. “Go do your thing. Find out what happens to people who make deals with demons.”
“I will.”
“And don't get caught by Morrith.”
“I'll try.”
“And come back.”
Greg looked at him. His eyes were hard to read. Something was going on behind them that Dustin couldn't get to. “I will,” he promised. And then he adjusted his glasses and walked through the door.
Between one stride and the next, he was gone.
Now there was just empty air where a reaper had been standing.
Dustin stared at the spot.
Greg was gone and the porch was empty and the feeling in Dustin's chest was —
What? What was it?
He didn't name it. He wasn't ready to name it.
How could he, when Greg was someone who could disappear at any moment?
Dustin went back inside.
Cathy was at the table with two mugs. She pushed one toward Dustin's chair as he came in.
“So,” Cathy said. She wrapped both hands around her mug. “He likes you a lot.”
“Don't.”
“I'm just repeating what the man said.”
“He's not a man,” Dustin said. “He's a reaper.”
He'd meant it as a deflection. The kind of thing he'd usually throw out with a smirk. But the words landed wrong — or right, maybe— and sat between them on the table.
He's a reaper.
That was the problem, wasn't it? Greg's entire existence was built around being temporary in other people's lives. He was supposed to show up, collect, and leave.
And yet he was the first person in three years whom Dustin had wanted to stay.
“Dustin?” Cathy was watching him. Her voice had softened. She must have caught something on his face.
“It doesn't matter,” he said.
“Looks like it does.”
Dustin shook his head. “Pretty sure reapers aren't allowed to date mortals.”
“And since when do you care about the rules?”
“I may not, but he sure does.”
“And yet he's trying to help you.” Cathy took a sip of her coffee. “He likes you,” she reminded him again. “Were you going to tell me that you've got something going on with a reaper?”
Dustin huffed a laugh he didn't feel. “Were you going to tell me you sold your soul to a demon? Maybe we should have a family rule about not messing with supernatural entities.”
“I think it's a little too late for that.”
“Fair point.”
They looked at each other. Something passed between them—some of all that Dustin could not put in words.
That he forgave her. That he didn't. That he understood.
That he didn't. That he loved her so much it felt like his ribs were too small to hold it and he was angry and grateful and terrified and sorry, so sorry, for every phone call he'd cut short.
The feeling seemed mutual.
“Sit down,” Cathy said. “Drink your coffee before it gets cold.”
Dustin pulled out Tyler's chair and sat in it.
Cathy's mug paused halfway to her mouth. She looked at him in the chair, and something moved across her face that was too quick and too raw to name.
She didn't say anything.
They drank their coffee, and the kitchen clock ticked, and for the first time in three years the silence between them wasn't empty.
It was just quiet.