by Brindi Quinn
“Marley.”
Pine calls my attention to him once more.
Whoops, I was totally zoning out. But, hey! My breathing’s gone back to a normal level again! Oh shoot. Not anymore. Thinking about it makes it get louder!
Damn it, Marley Craw!
“What do you want?” Pine persists, stare unwaveringly on me. “To wake HIM, or to go outside with me.”
I slip a peek at Minx. He looks comfy over there, buried in his pile of cushions. It doesn’t look like he’s even moved at all. Heavy sleeper, I guess. I don’t really feel like going outside to that nether-powered mountain that appeared out of nowhere, but it wouldn’t be very nice to wake Minx up when he’s sleeping so soundly, would it?
“Do I have to pick one of those things?” I ask.
Pine nods.
I study Minx again. There’s something sexy about it – the way he’s sprawled out like that. So vulnerable too. I wonder what he’d do if I woke him up, anyway? Probably just want to cuddle or whatever. Hm, what would cuddling Minx be like? I remember that cozy, sleepy feeling of melting against him. I remember the comforting, soothing sound of his voice.
Holy potato salad.
I think I really want to wake him up!
My heart beats like a traitor, so loud that I’m sure Pine can hear it.
The corner of Pine’s mouth frowns. “Got it.” He starts to pull away.
“Wait!” Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve grabbed the tie tucked into his vest, and stopped him from leaving.
His eyes widen just a tiny bit. Mine do too, I’m sure, because I have no idea why the heck I just did that.
Pine waits for me to say something else.
“Uh . . .” I look at Minx and then I look at Pine and then again at Minx. Lastly, my eyes settle on Pine.
He shakes his head, but it isn’t because he’s upset. There’s a strange little something hiding now in the corner of his formerly frowned mouth. “Don’t force yourself,” he says. “If you want to wake him up, that’s what you should do. He was telling the truth before. ‘No cheating or faking, or you’ll have a miserable afterlife.’ Remember that?”
I do remember that, but that’s not what I’m thinking about now. With my hand still firmly on Pine’s tie, I tip my head. Something just occurred to me.
“Why do I even have to pick?” I ask.
Pine looks taken aback. His mouth opens and closes and then he says, “What?”
“I have to either go outside with you or wake Minx up from a nap? WHY?”
Pine’s hand slips from its resting spot over my head. “You just do,” he says.
“Okaaay, sure. But what relevance does it have?” I persist.
Pine studies me a moment, then starts, “You have a choice, Marle–”
“Yeah, I get that.” I’m suddenly realizing that this whole ‘choice’ the reaper gave me is a little suspicious. I squint at him. “And what’s your deal, anyway? Are you, like, the boss in this scenario?”
Pine narrows his eyes, and again says, point-blank, “What?”
“There’s something different about you. You seem . . . I don’t know, more mature than Minx does. No, that’s not right. I don’t mean mature as in your maturity level.”
Pine raises his eyebrows.
Am I not making sense? My bad.
“I mean, you seem more experienced. Like you’ve been at this longer than him. Like you’re the one in control. I get the feeling you’ve reaped a LOT of souls. Loads, probably. And you’re not as eager . . . or something. Like you don’t actually care all that much about any of this. Sure, you seemed a little disappointed that I might want to hang out with Minx over you, but . . . maybe you don’t really care. Maybe you’re the one that’s faking.” I tug on his tie. “You said I make the rules? Then this IS a game. And you don’t really care if you win, do you? I don’t know, it’s just a vibe I get from you. Am I making any sense at all?”
Pine’s face has fallen into concern. “Too much.”
“Then again,” I go on. “Why should you care? You don’t actually know me at all. This whole thing feels off. Like it’s some kind of a setup, and it’s your job to seduce me. Am I in the ballpark, or–?”
Pine’s forehead furrows. “How are you–?” He stops himself. “Why would you come to that conclusion?”
“Easy peasy. This one time, Amy Jo asked my crush to go to the game with her, but it was only because she knew I liked him, not because she actually cared about him. You could just feel it, you know? The whole night she was doing everything over the top, just so that I could see! And she positioned the popcorn right under her boob, too, so that whenever he reached for popcorn, he’d have to graze her chest. That’s kind of the feeling I get from you. . . . Well, not the boob part, but you know what I mean.”
Pine swallows uncomfortably. “Are you a psychic? There was nothing in your file about you being a psychic.”
“I’m just thinking practically. You’re acting all over me and stuff, but why should you? It’s just like with Amy Jo. It isn’t real. She was doing it because it was part of a game; not because she actually liked Noah.”
“Don’t.” Pine shakes his head. “You aren’t alive, Marley. Stop thinking like you are, and whatever you do–” Pine points at sleeping Minx– “Don’t say any of that in front of him, understand? He’s . . . dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” I examine sleeping Minx. He doesn’t seem any more ‘dangerous’ than a sleeping puppy.
Pine lets out a grunt and shakes his head at the ceiling. “This doesn’t usually happen. You shouldn’t be asking questions like those.” He sets his stare on me. “If your mind tries to think about it, don’t let it or you’ll be sorry. This ‘setup,’ as you called it, is all for your sake, Marley, so stop pretending to be alive. Stop thinking as though you’re alive and let us do our jobs. Besides–” Without warning, he takes both my shoulders and slams them into the wall.
The sudden use of force makes my stomach kick and the blood in my veins rush.
Whoa.
Pine lowers his mouth to my ear. “Your wrong. The choice has to be yours. That’s why I can’t force you into anything. That’s why I have to let you go to him if you want to.” He takes a small bite of my earlobe.
Ah!
Shivers run all the way down my back.
“But, of course I care if I win,” he says with my ear lightly between his teeth, “because the prize . . .”
“The prize?” I repeat, breathless.
“The prize is your soul, Marley Craw, and there’s nothing I’ve ever wanted more.”
And for the first time, I believe him.
~ #508, Pine ~
Chapter 5: Heart-Pounding Encounters of the Reaping Kind
When I was alive, everything was different. Time moved expectedly, from morning to night, and if I closed my eyes, I’d probably dream, barring the existence of caffeine in my system. In the morning, I’d see Milo, looking pale as ever, stuffing waffles down his gullet. I’d check my phone twice, once to see if I’d gotten any texts, and again to see if my sister, Mallory, had sent me any funny pictures of her boozer of a roommate the night before. Once, I got this great one where the boozer woke up in the middle of the night next to a cat she’d stolen from someone else’s room. But since cats aren’t allowed in any of the dorms, it meant someone had originally smuggled the cat in in the first place, and well, the boozer never did figure out whose cat it was, and they ended up naming it Kitten Chow and making it the dorm’s mascot.
College life, man.
Not that I’ll ever get to go to college now.
But I don’t really want to think about that.
What’s important is that back then, everything was different. Now, time doesn’t seem to move at all. Either that, or it moves insanely, crazily, too-quick-to-realize fast. I can’t tell which it is. I have no idea how long I’ve been dead, or even how long Minx has been napping, and the harder I try to think about it, the less certain I am.
“So I’m not allowed to ask about any of this?” I ask Pine as he zips up the front of his shirt. Apparently, leaving the room warrants putting on his nether-hoodie.
“No.”
“I’m supposed to just go with the flow?” I press.
“Yes.”
“And at the end of this, whichever one of you wins gets to eat my soul?”
Pine blinks at me before flipping up the hood of his sweatshirt. “We aren’t demons, Marley. The winner gets to reap your soul. You keep it, but we get to reap it.”
“Riiight. That SO clears it up. And in order to ‘win,’ you have to . . .?”
Come on, Piney, old buddy, old pal. Fill in the blank.
He turns to face the glass. “Don’t worry about it.”
Damn.
Boo, hiss, drat.
I just KNOW it’s got something to do with their seductive tendencies. My guess? Whichever one of them gets to me to swoon the hardest gets to reap my soul . . . whatever that means.
Well, it’s a little late for that. Both of them have made me swoon plenty hard already.
Pine takes up his reaper stance, putting his right middle and pointer fingers on his left wrist and vice versa. “The wages of sin is death,” he says, more like a command than an announcement or a confession. There’s something ultra demanding about his tone, like he’s forcing the words into existence at gunpoint, rather than just saying them.
His bossiness works. The dark-haired reaper is immediately enveloped in netherly wind. It billows around his hood and sleeves as though it’s fighting to remove the black sweatshirt I’m only now realizing might be a magical source all its own. His hands light with the green glow I’ve seen from them before. The aura around his body takes on a wholly supernatural feel.
I check to see if the commotion’s woken Minx at all.
Nada. Looks like Pine was right: The lazy reaper won’t get up until I get him up.
With his hands enveloped in mystic glow, Pine raises his right two fingers to the window and draws a large X.
“Criss cross applesauce,” I mutter.
The glow of his hands transfers onto the glass where he drew, and a visible X flares green upon the window. Satisfied, Pine drops his hands, but the glow on the glass doesn’t fall with them. It remains, searing, stained into the window.
“Now what?” I whisper, eyeing the mark with disdain. I don’t trust it. It looks kind of cursey.
Then again, it could just be a regular old X. Occultism isn’t really my know-how.
Pine removes his hood. “Come here.” This time that commanding voice is directed at me. My stomach doesn’t mind. My throat doesn’t mind. My skin doesn’t mind, either.
It makes them feel . . . wanted.
Before I can even say anything, Pine grabs my hand and forces it to the glass. He uses the whole of his hand to press mine against the center of the X, spreading my fingers out with his and holding my hand in place with his palm. His palm is warm over mine. It covers all of mine. His hand is mature and strong, and it doesn’t falter or shake.
The green X sears with conjured power, I expect. Downright magic, I expect. Touching it doesn’t burn me like I thought it would. To tell the truth, the glass doesn’t feel any different from regular glass at all.
Except . . .
For whatever lame reason, when I look at Pine’s hand over mine, my stomach gives a small hop followed by a big hop.
But I refuse to let my neck get hot.
I refuse to let him get to me.
Now that I know the name of their game, I intend to win.
No one said I couldn’t, right?
Go, me! Rah! Rah! Rah! I’ll even be my own cheerleader if I have to. Speaking of which – internal uplifting aside, I never had much of an interest in cheerleading. Remember me? Clumsy feet . . . zero agility . . . yeeeah, being thrown into the air and flipping across the field and all that jazz sounds like a WHOLE lot of fun. Just the absolute BEST.
Not.
Even those god-awful pom-pom movements are enough to send a person straight to an asylum. It takes a special kind of control freak to be able to perfectly match their movements to someone else’s.
It’s all a little creepy if you ask me. Body snatchers come to mind. Robots, too.
Either way, coordination is overrated.
Then again, I might just be bitter over my lack of skills.
Huh.
“Ready, Marley?”
Yowsa. As is becoming standard practice for me, I zoned off to zoney land again. If I keep doing that, the reapers are going to think I’m dim in the brain. Well, Pine would for sure. I don’t really know if Minx would even notice. Anyway, now that I’m back to reality – after-reality, I mean – I realize just how close Pine’s face is to my ear. Why are the reapers’ mouths always abnormally close to my ear!? Part of their game, I’m betting.
Reapers 1, Marley 0.
Pine’s breath tickles, as he says again, “Ready?”
Ready.
“It depends what I’m getting ready for,” I answer, swallowing down the hotness that badly wants to rise up my neck.
Come on, body! Would you work with me, here?
Leaving our hands pinned against the glass, Pine wraps his free arm around my side and pulls me in front of him. His hand is big against my waist, and I swear he draws my shirt up just a little on the way. Either that, or it’s a natural phenomenon of friction. Even friction wants me to swoon. Thanks a lot, physics.
. . . Or is it mechanics?
“Tribology,” Pine says against my ear.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You said something,” I insist.
“Hardly.”
Whatever. He did say something, but whatever.
Being held like that, with his hand cupping my waist, makes me feel small and slender for some reason.
It also makes me feel like I’m under his control.
Phoo. I focus on my breathing to make sure it isn’t too deep.
“Are you ready?” he says a third time.
“For what?”
He clenches my fingers against the window. “To go through,” he says.
Oh . . . yeah . . . sure . . . through the glass and out into, what, the AIR?! There’s nothing directly below the window – not for a long, long way, at least.
To make matters worse, Pine pushes his hand harder against mine, forcing me firmer against the window, and this time, the glass reacts. From the center of the X outwards, the glass starts to ripple.
And then it’s gone.
WHOOSH!
Faster than a shot of . . . well, anything, really, the glass disappears, and now Pine’s holding my waist and hand, keeping from falling through the open hole. We might have been inside the aquarium at some point, but we definitely aren’t there anymore. The wind and chill of the outer mountain is real as real can be. It blows my hair around my face and bites at my skin, and if Pine weren’t there to hold me back, I would have teetered to my second death by now.
I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. We are really, truly on top of a mountain. A real-death, rocky-mountain-high MOUNTAIN.
Oh gawd. I think I’m going to faint.
“Ready?”
Nope. Definitely not ready to jump from, you know, the HIGHEST OF HEIGHTS!
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m not.”
Wide-eyed, I look up at him. “You can fly, right? You’d better be able to fly, Pine, or I’ll never forgive you!”
“Relax,” he says with a hint of a grin, uncovered eye lighting at my usage of his name. “You’re already dead. You can’t die again.”
Oh.
I guess that’s true.
But still!
I root my feet to the edge of the room, where the carpet meets the opening, and push against the reaper, trying to get him to back off. It doesn’t do even an iota of good. Pine wraps his arms around me like a straight jacket and�
��
“WAHHHHHHH!”
Before I know it, we’re falling through the air, sinking like a cartoon anvil – careening, even. The wind past my ears is deafening. And there’s one other major problem.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe!
I clamp my eyelids down tight and wiggle in Pine’s arms, but through the screech of the wind, his voice is clear:
“Feel me, Marley. And think. What do you desire?”
All that baloney about DESIRE again?! How the heck am I supposed to think about my DESIRES when we’re totally, impossibly falling to my second death?! DESIRE, my ass! Stupid DE–
Desire.
Right. How could I forget? Pine has a FEEL to him, doesn’t he? More than a FEEL, he has an overtaking aura that pricks through every centimeter of my skin that touches his. Calming down quick as quick can be, I take in a deep breath, and my lungs aren’t only filled with air; they’re filled with wanderlust. My heartbeat, formerly speeding from fear, speeds now with something else, which I’m pretty sure is excitement.
Wait . . . do I . . . like this?
Clutching to Pine’s arms that are still wrapped firmly around me, I open my eyes just a smidge and discover that we aren’t falling straight down anymore. We’re falling diagonally down the mountain.
What the–!?
Nether-powers at work again. Go figure.
In the distance below us, the tips of pines flash by in a smear of green. Overhead, the sun is much, much larger than it should be. Through the chill of the wind, the top of my whipping hair is warmed by unnatural rays.
“Well?” Pine says, and his voice is almost inside my head this time. “What do you want most right now?”
Thrill. Adventure. Awakening. To fall to the far-off corners of the world. If I could be on a rollercoaster with anyone, I’d want it to be Pine. Even the Killer Dragon would be manageable with him, I think. Maybe even fun. Exciting.
