Reap & Repent (2 page)

He gave her a questioning look, his eyebrows raised, his dark hair falling across one eye. Shrugging her shoulders from his steadying hold, she skirted around him without explanation, because there wasn’t one. She knew it was rude, but she was finished with people for the day.

Even this strange—and strangely beautiful—man.

Who had no freakin’ aura!

At another time, another place, she might have submitted to her curiosity and tried to find out why he had no light. As it was, she just wanted to be alone.

* * *

Deacon was shaken. Being a reaper, he was not easily undone. He should have pursued the girl, questioned her. Truth was, he had been so surprised by her
missing aura and the way she’d pinned him to the floor with her doe-eyed stare, he hadn’t been able to think straight. At the time, he’d consoled himself with the lie that she’d been too fast. That she’d scurried away into the bustle of hospital activity before he’d had time to respond.

But now, after the fact, even he couldn’t make himself believe that bullshit.

Something else was going on.

He’d been on his way to retrieve a soul, the one he’d felt tugging at him from Purgatory, when he literally ran into her. She was beautiful: petite, with long, curly dark hair and pale, smooth skin.

Basically, he knew just one thing about her…she wasn’t human. Even if her nonexistent aura hadn’t been a dead giveaway, he would have known that from the way she’d looked right at him.

Reapers naturally repelled the attention of “normals” when they were on the job, and could turn on the charm if necessary, manipulating subtle changes in humans’ auras to bend them to their will. Most of the time, they could pass by completely unnoticed. Not invisible exactly, but certainly less than memorable.

She’d definitely noticed him, and then some.

What the hell?

When he walked into the hospital room after their encounter, he was surprised to find that the dead woman’s soul had been detached but not reaped. He’d assumed the girl was a reaper. Because of all the supernatural beasties in his known universe, only reapers didn’t have auras.

So if she isn’t a reaper, what is she?

He procured the prize, and then checked the visitor log on the way out.
Ruth Scott
had been the last visitor of Mary Scott, the soul he’d retrieved. The girl was the daughter? He would have followed her, but she was already long gone. The dead and dying he could track; the living were trickier.

He’d have to go old school to find her.

The mother’s house?

The living always gathered at the deceased’s residence at some point. He could bide his time if necessary, but he would find her again.

And question her. Something wasn’t right.

If she was a reaper, she’d failed to do her job. Considering the state of things lately, he would have been informed if another legitimate reaper had been assigned to his territory.

If she was some new type of poacher, he was even more confused.

So many questions.
The last thing he needed was to be distracted from his job. Bad things happened when a guy got distracted.

Chapter Two

Ruth walked into her apartment and stared at the answering machine blinking on the kitchen bar. She didn’t carry a cell phone. It was just another bill to pay, and honestly, she didn’t have any friends who would bother calling her anyway. Punching the button to play back the message, she already knew what it would be about.

It had only been a few hours since her mother’s death and already people were following up with her about the various minutiae that needed to be addressed. It was amazing how many details had to be considered by the living on behalf of the dead.

Luckily, her mother’s no-frills life would carry through to her death. She’d left a letter detailing her wishes—cremation, burial beside her husband and no service. Easy enough. All Ruth had left to do was sign some paperwork.

Mother is dead.

Ruth had watched the white light of her mother’s aura fade to nothing, winking out like a burned-up star. And yet she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around it.

Her mother had been sick for many months, and she’d expected that she’d feel something more when her light faded away. Surprisingly, the thing she felt most keenly was regret.

She sat at the bar with her head in her hands, trying to figure out what to do next. Then, from the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her favorite and
most precious family photo on her faux hearth: her and her father standing in front of a bulletin board in her second-grade classroom after she’d won the spelling bee.

She’d never been good with people, but she had always loved words. Her father had been the same way, and he’d spent hours reading aloud to her while her mother worked nights as an RN in Meridian. He’d even penned a few short stories for her himself, filling her in as the heroine every time. She had so many good memories of her father.

Ruth smiled as she surveyed her piles and piles of books stacked in tall vertical columns along the walls like a Verizon cell signal because she lacked the appropriate handyman skills to construct even a makeshift bookshelf.

She felt a strong pull of nostalgia for her early childhood, back when she and her father and mother had been a real family, and before she even realized it, she was packing. What she needed now was to be close to those few good memories. They were all she had left. She loaded what she could into her father’s old Lincoln Continental, from floor to roof to trunk, and headed south into the growing darkness.

She was going home, and she wasn’t coming back.

* * *

Later on that night, she pulled down the long tree-lined driveway to her childhood home. It was small and cozy and…small.

A bungalow,
she supposed.

Realtors would undoubtedly use words like
charming
and
quaint
to describe it. It was actually a turn-of-the-century rock-sided house. Ruth always
thought of it as a giraffe house because the large, flat sandstones that were mortared to its frame on every side made it look like a prehistoric giraffe.

This house had once represented the hopes and dreams of her parents. Now it was much like her mother had become: functional but barely. It boasted all the basic trappings of a home—plumbing, electricity, furniture—but it lacked any sort of warmth or personality because her mother had ceased to exude either of those qualities after her father’s death. Still, there
were
good memories here, as well—they were what had drawn her home.

Parking her car in the open-fronted double garage behind the house, she grabbed the first of several armloads of belongings and carried it inside. She retrieved her things one trip after another, leaving them in a heap in the living room until she could decide what to do with them. A crushing heaviness settled into her chest as she surveyed the house. It had been quite a long time since she’d been home, preferring to avoid her mother’s disdain.

Her heart lurched as she looked around the living room. All of the little touches and reminders of her father were gone: the gilded painting of the Last Supper he’d always loved and made up stories about, his collection of leather-bound classics, and the framed and autographed photo of Harper Lee. After his death, her mother hadn’t been able to bear looking at his things anymore, and she’d stowed them all away. It had been heartbreaking for Ruth.

Her motivation waned and exhaustion took her over as she sank down into the overstuffed chocolate-colored sofa, feeling foolish for thinking home would
fill the empty hole she felt growing inside her. Everything caught up to her and brought her to a halt.

Both of her parents were dead, and she had no living relatives.

She was truly alone.

Rolling into a tight ball, she rested her head on the arm of the couch for a pillow.

The cicadas in the trees outside buzzed loudly, their calls penetrating through the rock walls. The noise became a din in her head. The rhythmic buzz lulled her into a dreamless sleep: a welcome break from her emotional and physical exhaustion.

* * *

Deacon flashed into the small rural cemetery and waited for his eyes to adjust to the moonlight. It was dark in the countryside. He’d decided to try the Scott house tonight. In case he could get that lucky.

After the week he’d finished, he was pretty confident luck was not on his side. He was not a patient man, and this was an inconvenient trip. The address was in the middle of nowhere, nearly thirty miles from his regular hunting grounds. Plus it was
two miles
from the nearest cemetery. He could have chosen a more conventional mode of travel than the consecrated subway reapers used to get around, but nothing was faster. Even with the walk.

He really didn’t want to make this trip very many times. If she didn’t show up, he’d have to track her down another way, but that would take even
more
time. Time he couldn’t afford to waste. Souls piled up if you weren’t diligent. And
while the souls of the newly dead pulled at him, that feeling began to fade after a day, or sometimes even a few hours, making them more difficult to track down. If too much time went by, it was all but impossible to find them unless you practically stumbled upon them. The lost and lingering souls were called sleepers. He’d found a few in his day, but it was like picking a needle out of a haystack.

Even one day off would create an uncomfortable backlog. Most territories the size of Deacon’s were serviced by a team of reapers, but he was single-minded in his work. He didn’t take vacations. He didn’t socialize. He worked.

As a result, he drew attention—good and bad—but all of it unwanted. What he really wanted was to be left alone to do his job. His profession was not necessarily enjoyable, but the intense and pressing nature of the work didn’t leave him with much time to ruminate on things. He spent zero time in his head because it was almost constantly occupied with detecting, locating and transporting souls. The rest of the time was devoted to sleep even if it was an hour or two at a time.

Because he’d been on the job for a long time, his body didn’t require as much nourishment as it once had—a benefit of being a seasoned reaper. But all this demon hunting was wearing him out, and it was taking a lot more energy than usual to fuel his body.

Seasoned,
he scoffed, as he exited through the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery.

Disgruntled, he stalked down the secluded driveway, his steps crunching against the gravel. At least it would be quiet here—maybe he could get a few
hours of sleep while he waited for her to show. As he reached the house, he stopped. There was a car in the garage and a light on in the house.

Looks like this might be my lucky night after all.

* * *

The unpleasant sensation of being watched jerked Ruth awake. Her fear was confirmed by the presence of “No-Light Black-Scrub Man” in the chair opposite her.

What the hell?

She scrambled up and over the couch, landing hard on the wood floor behind it. Without taking the time to regroup, she raced toward the back door.

Her legs operated solely on instructions from her adrenal glands as she clambered forward in slow motion.

She was reaching for the knob when Scrub Man suddenly appeared in front of her. She crashed into him. Again. The man was built like a concrete dam, and the air rushed out of her lungs on the impact.

He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, his hands growing warm around her upper arms. The heat flowed down her arms and up her neck, relaxation pouring over her like a hot bath as her legs turned squishy.

Ruth tried to fight the growing heaviness of her eyelids, which clearly had no natural cause. Conflicted by the urge to run and the calming effect he was imposing on her, she slumped forward toward the floor.
Toward him.
Scrub Man scooped her up and carried her to the couch.

After easing her down onto the cushions, he backed away to the hearth. Her body immediately mourned the loss of contact as the warmth of his touch faded. Sitting across from her, he leaned forward, alert and coiled.

“Ruth, I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

Uh-huh.

The warm fuzzies lingered, tingling up and down her nerve ends. Shaking her head to clear the fog, she considered her options, gauging the distance to the front door.

Fight or flight?

“Ruth, look at me. Please.”

Against her good judgment, she peered up at him, studying him for the first time. His dark black hair, a little too long on top, drooped into a wave across one eye as he leaned forward, his intentions unclear. Dark stubble covered his sharp, angled jawline, accenting high cheekbones. The hot glare of his bright blue-green eyes pierced through her, making her more self-conscious than afraid. She guessed that he was in his late twenties, perhaps early thirties. The sleeves of his scrubs cut into his chiseled biceps.

He must have been just over six feet tall because her head had barely reached under his chin when he’d held her. A silver chain disappeared down the front of his shirt. She couldn’t see what dangled from it, if anything. With slow caution, she pulled herself together.

“Thank you.” He smiled, and her heart betrayed her by doing a little clinch in her chest. “I want to ask you a few questions and explain why I’m here,” he
said. “But I can’t do that if you’re going to sit over there plotting ways to kill me or escape. Do you think you can sit there, nice and calm, for a few minutes?”

She nodded unenthusiastically. She didn’t trust her voice not to break if she said it out loud. There was no use in screaming. The nearest neighbor was a good mile away; the next was farther.

“Ruth, my name is Deacon. You might have noticed that I have some rather unusual abilities. For one, I’m very fast when I want to be. For another, I can affect your mood by touch, which I did just now to calm you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I
do
need to know a few things. What are you?”