Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Mmmmm . . . warm . . .
Oh. One of these dreams. That was fine. That was just fine.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had sex.
Well, she could, but counting up the years was too depressing.
Normally she dealt with her biological urges with assistance from her trusty Hitachi.
But alas, there hadn’t been room for Senor Shaky and all the boxes of hair dye.
She wriggled closer to the warmth and mumbled appreciatively when strong fingers threaded through her hair, felt warm breath, heard deep, contented humming.
Then there was a warm mouth on hers and she had no interest in waking up.
Instead, she luxuriated in the kiss, burrowing still closer for warmth, and her fingers skated across cotton and delved lower as . . .
. . . as . . .
She cracked an eye open and found herself staring at Gray’s eyelids, and yelped into his mouth.
“Shit!”
“What? Ow, fuck!” Gray was as horrified as she was, going by his appalled expression and how he’d pulled away so hard he’d tumbled to the floor.
She peeked over the edge. “Are you okay?”
“I—I—” He gaped up at her and did the goldfish thing a few more times. “Fuck.”
“Well put.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” She blinked down at him and cast about for something—anything—to explain herself. “If it helps, I wasn’t molesting you. It was the dream man.”
“I was just about to make the same excuse.”
The mortified hilarity hit them both at the same time. “It’s my fault,” she tried to explain between giggles. “I haven’t had sex in ages—”
“Same. It’s been almost a year for me.”
“—and I was having this lovely dream . . .”
“I know! I guess we can be grateful our terrible morning breath woke us up before we got, um, dreamier? Our timing is terrible.”
“So is everyone else’s,” she replied dryly. She glanced over at her phone and nearly groaned when she saw the time; more Reaps beckoned. Every day of her life. Forever.
And so no time to waste.
“What a fucking bizarre weekend.”
She shrugged as she rolled out of bed. “Ready for more? After we’ve brushed our teeth?”
“And after coffee, sure.” Gray yawned and sat up. “Our ritual humiliation aside, I slept great, so that’s something.”
She smiled. “I did, too. And I imagine Hilly will have several gallons of coffee for your slurping pleasure.”
“I’m really glad you let me come along.”
The subject change—if that’s what it was—gave her pause, and she shrugged. “Like I could have stopped you.”
“Yeah, Amara,” he replied seriously. “You could have. I think you could stop pretty much anyone you wanted. But you didn’t. You indulge me all the time, not just this weekend. I need to remember not to take that for granted.”
“Do you always get maudlin after you make out with your best friend?”
“Apparently,” he admitted, and that set her off again.
* * *
Two children. A new mother. A happily married man in his forties who wept, not for his own demise, but the family he was forced to leave behind. (“My twins graduate tomorrow.”) A teenage girl who’d gotten her driver’s license two hours earlier.
“Jesus Christ!” Gray collapsed in the passenger seat beside Amara, rubbed his eyes with his fists, glared at the roof of the Mustang. “How did your dad do this for a million centuries?”
“No idea.”
“Oh, man, the kid who went through the windshield. Can’t get her out of my head. She wasn’t even begging to live, just to talk to her mom for a second because they’d had a huge argument . . . fucking brutal.”
“It is.” Almost . . . too brutal?
Gray straightened in his seat and in the almost-telepathic flash shared by best friends, plucked the thought out of her brain and put it out there where it couldn’t be ignored: “It’s almost like someone is manipulating events to make a shitty job everyone knows you don’t want even harder so you’ll quit. ”
That . . . sounds right.
Which wasn’t just insane, but impossible. The idea was so large, so bizarre, it seemed to bury her brain in dread. She had to work to keep her reply calm and even. “It does seem like that.”
“Which is impossible, right?”
“I . . . would have thought so.” And here, the hideous irony: The one person she could have discussed this with? Was in a fucking coma.
“And also paranoid?” Gray continued. “Because Death’s whole thing is that you can’t change if someone’s gonna die, right? If they’re on the scroll or Death’s fax or app, that’s it? So shall it be forever and ever, amen. Right?”
“As good as. It’s actually more forbidden than impossible.
There aren’t many who could even try it.
” Amara was staring out the windshield, hands clenched at ten and two, thinking about the same girl Gray couldn’t get out of his head.
How the argument with her mother made her late, how she got lost, drove too fast to make up time, panicked, skidded, over-corrected, and then got even more lost. Permanently lost.
She felt Gray’s hand cover her two o’clock hand and gently squeeze. “Shitty as this is, it’s good you feel bad.”
“Not the ‘numb is worse’ cliché.”
“Yes, the ‘numb is worse’ cliché. Don’t you think being dead on the inside is worse?”
“I’m thinking a lot of things, actually.”
“Oh ho. At least all the Reap-ees were where they were supposed to be today. Unfortunately,” he added in a mutter.
Amara mentally conceded the point, then started the car and answered Gray’s unspoken question. “I had a word with my mother before we left this morning; she’s calling a conclave on my behalf tonight.”
“You and the death gods are gonna elect a new Pope?”
“Death gods were holding conclaves long before the Catholic church muscled in on it. This one belongs to our family and Death’s colleagues.”
“Okay. Good plan.”
“Yes, I thought so.” Necessary plan, more like. She was reminded of being stuck with a long crochet project, like an afghan. Fun to start, but the middle was a drag and took forever, though it was only a few days. Then you blinked and realized you’d made a huge blanket from a pile of wool.
Not her best analogy. But things had seemed impossibly mysterious when she and Gray got off the train a few days ago.
Subsequent events only added to the conundrum.
And then she came to realize the problem wasn’t the puzzle she was trying to solve, nor even the design.
It was that someone put the puzzle pieces in the wrong spot.
Or maybe she was just clinically paranoid. Either way, the conclave had to happen.
“And I know you’re going to explain why I think it’s a good plan. You’re great at that.”
“I could,” she replied, summoning a grim smile. “Or you could just wait and be surprised.”