How to Reap a Soul and Lose an Assistant (Soul Management Bureau #2)

Prologue

Phin

All the reapers would be present for the meeting taking place in half an hour.

The office wasn’t full throughout the day.

Reapers came and went, mostly finishing intake forms, but they didn’t congregate very often.

Each reaper lived and worked in a different sector.

They came in when Morgana, the head of all the reapers and my boss, called a meeting.

The reason for the meeting was on my desk.

The paper had burned into existence yesterday afternoon.

Bob, the reaper in Sector Two, had finally announced his retirement.

He’d been the oldest reaper. No doubt his soul was tired.

I liked Bob a lot, even though he’d stopped coming into the office two years ago.

He filed his paperwork from home. It was always on time.

What would Bob’s afterlife be like? Sector Two was the most desirable because it was in the tropics. I had it on good authority — by which I mean Hale, the office gossip — that Bob lived in a villa on the beach. He spent all his free time fishing. How could one upgrade from that?

Perhaps where his life would end was how it would continue. In a villa by the water, so he could spend his time on a boat, holding a fishing pole.

I hadn’t been Morgana’s assistant for very long. At least not in reaper terms. Even the last reaper had served the Soul Management Bureau for over a hundred and fifty years. That was three times my age and five times as long as I’d been an assistant.

Not that I was talking to Ossy, the youngest reaper, who had been with the Bureau the shortest time.

Ossy had stood me up for the last time. He made a good reaper, but a poor choice for office romance.

Not that we were supposed to fraternize with each other.

That was the only rule I had ever broken.

I thought Ossy was worth breaking a rule for. I hope I wasn’t wrong about that.

I pushed my glasses up my nose and tried not to think about all the things Ossy had done last night instead of showing up for our date.

Jealousy didn’t look good on me, and it wouldn’t do for anyone to notice, especially Ossy.

I was pretty sure the reapers had figured out that Ossy and I had been sleeping together. At least the most observant among them had. But no one would say anything about it.

Grym was the first reaper off the elevator. Not surprising, given how much of a workaholic he was.

He stopped at my desk and set a cup of coffee in front of me. “Good morning, Phineas. How are you today?”

I smiled and brought the cup to my lips, sipping. I shut my eyes, letting the sugar and caffeine work through my system. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Grym remembered my coffee order.

He remembered what I liked whenever we ordered pizza or Chinese food for office lunches.

Not that I was special. Grym remembered everyone’s orders.

It was the fact that he did that made him boyfriend material.

So why did I have to fall for Ossy, who didn’t even remember when we made plans for a date?

He’d even been the one to ask me. Not the other way around.

Last night hadn’t been the first time he’d ditched me, but it would be the last.

“I’m well and still not telling you what the meeting is about.” I smirked, took another sip of coffee, and set the cup on the corner of my desk.

Only then did I remember the paper sitting in front of me, visible to anyone. I tried to turn it over, but Grym had already grabbed it.

I huffed, but only because Grym had been faster. It was really unfair that he had it all. He was the complete package. He was handsome, hardworking, and genuine. He also had a sexy accent.

I couldn’t even see without my glasses. My sister, who had bug eyes, always teased me about having eyes that were set too far back in my head.

I completely disagreed with that, but I was now self-conscious about it.

Tara had been a rotten older sister when we were kids.

She wasn’t that great as an adult, if I were being honest, but that was mostly because her latest bad choice was a worse boyfriend than all the others combined, and that was saying something, considering one of them had gone to prison for ten years for a crime he had, in fact, committed.

In her defense, I wasn’t doing any better in the love department, considering Ossy didn’t bother to show up half the time.

As Grym read, his smile widened. The pure happiness was unmistakable. He came back to himself, schooling his features. A cool calculation took over, and the wheels spun in his mind.

Grym had a good chance of getting it. Morgana liked his work ethic, as did all the reapers. What pushed him to the front was his willingness to help other reapers when they got into a bit of a jam. Grym was also quick to react.

“Morgana will announce it today, but keep it to yourself for now.” It wouldn’t do for the reapers to know before Morgana could make the announcement. What good would the meeting be if that happened?

Grym nodded. There was an extra spring in his step, and for good reason.

If I knew Morgana at all, and I knew her better than just about anyone, she’d choose Grym for Sector Two.

It would be between him and Azriel, with Grym having the edge.

Morgana would consider his longevity in his current sector before anything else.

“I hope you get it, Grym. Truly.” I meant it. He deserved a break, and Sector Two would give him one.

“Thank you, Phin.” Grym headed into the meeting room.

I’d already set the boxes of donuts in the center of the long table. Morgana liked to soften them up with sugary dough, but I hadn’t made the copies she’d requested yet, and I was a little late starting the task. I grabbed the papers from her desk and headed to the copy room.

I was ten minutes into the stack, collating the pages, when the door opened and then clicked shut softly.

The copy room doubled as a supply closet, with shelves blocking the view of the door and of anyone entering.

The lock clicking into place was subtle, but it might as well have been deafening for how it affected me.

I knew exactly who had entered. My whole body recognized Ossy. Every cell hummed in appreciation of his presence, remembering the last time he’d touched me.

I didn’t turn away from the copier or outwardly acknowledge his presence. The last thing I wanted was to make Ossy aware of the effect he had on me.

But then he pressed in behind me, and our bodies lined up perfectly.

He held me around the waist, and his chin rested on my shoulder.

“This is our place of employment, Osiris Reaper. Fraternization isn’t appropriate.” Not to mention, I didn’t want to talk to him. It was easier to stay mad when he wasn’t holding me so gently.

“I love it when you say my whole name like that. My mother used to say it that way, too.” Ossy kissed my shoulder. “My last name wasn’t Reaper back then, though.”

“That’s hardly a compliment.” Being compared to his mother made me cringe. I was the guy he was fucking. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe we had a relationship in which I was constantly acting like his parent. The thought made me shudder.

Gods. Were we turning into the kind of couple with mommy-and-daddy issues? Please, for the love of the gods, no. Just no.

“It wasn’t meant as one.” That was another thing. Ossy said things like that, clearly intending to argue, yet everything he said sounded casual and nonchalant, as if he were talking about the weather. Sometimes I couldn’t tell when he was serious. “Good morning, Phinny.”

“Is it?”

“Every morning is good when I’m with you.” Then where was Ossy last night?

“I doubt that.” I squirmed, trying to get him to let me go.

“Why?” Ossy let me go.

I pressed the print button before turning. I folded my arms across my chest and narrowed my eyes. “If you found my company so pleasurable, you wouldn’t have stood me up last night.”

Ossy had enough sense to wince. “I’m sorry, Phinny. I got caught up in something else and lost track of time.”

“I’ll bet. What’s his name?” Asking the question aloud for the first time brought home the sense of betrayal I probably shouldn’t feel.

Ossy had made it clear he wanted nothing more from me than something casual.

While I was ready to take the relationship to the next level, I respected Ossy’s position.

But I was ready for something deeper, something more.

It was starting to become a source of contention, and one he wouldn’t be able to ignore or avoid for much longer.

Ossy drew his eyebrows together as if confused. “What?”

“I’m talking about the other guy, Ossy.”

“What other guy?” It seemed that just asking made Ossy realize what I was getting at. Understanding sparked, then anger. “There is no one else.”

He slid his arms around me and pulled me closer. I resisted as best I could, but with Ossy, I was easy. He knew it, too.

I sighed and let my arms drop to my sides. I probably looked like a rag doll in his arms.

“I’m only having sex with you, Phinny. That’s how it’s been since we’ve been fucking. I swear it.”

One thing I knew about Ossy was that he wouldn’t lie to me about it. If he were fucking someone else, he’d tell me as soon as I asked. Not that he’d volunteer the information, but he wouldn’t lie about it either. So I believed him.

“I was surfing. The waves were so good yesterday. You should have seen them.” Ossy was a water bug.

He talked about catching waves all the time.

He could really get into his experiences, too.

He told great stories that made it sound like he was having the time of his life.

“By the time I was done, all I wanted was a drink, so I went to The Greasy Shark. I got to talking to Kai, a surfer friend of mine, and lost track of time. That’s the truth. ”

It sounded like Ossy. The only part I didn’t buy was his losing track of time. That was total bullshit. He avoided me on purpose. “You just didn’t want to talk about taking our relationship to the next level.”

Ossy kissed my temple. “Why does it have to change?”

It had to change because he held me as if I mattered. He kissed me as if he cared. Then he said he wanted to keep it casual. His actions and words didn’t match.

“I won’t wait forever, Ossy.”

“Phinny.” He didn’t like that statement, but he kissed me anyway. Ossy knew just how to wind me up and make me forget everything else.

The door handle jiggled, and then someone knocked.

Ossy stopped kissing to chuckle.

I smiled even as I pushed him away. “Get out of here before you get me in trouble.”

Ossy stole one more kiss before pulling his cloak's hood around his head and disappearing from the supply closet.

Only after he left did I realize how easy I had made it for him.

“Damn it.” Why did I always give in to Ossy Reaper?