by K. D. Worth
Table of Contents
Blurb
Dedication
KODY—Chapter 1
KODY—Chapter 2
KODY—Chapter 3
MAX—Chapter 4
MAX—Chapter 5
KODY—Chapter 6
MAX—Chapter 7
MAX—Chapter 8
MAX—Chapter 9
MAX—Chapter 10
MAX—Chapter 11
KODY—Chapter 12
KODY—Chapter 13
MAX—Chapter 14
MAX—Chapter 15
KODY—Chapter 16
KODY—Chapter 17
MAX—Chapter 18
KODY—Chapter 19
KODY—Chapter 20
MAX—Chapter 21
KODY—Chapter 22
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Copyright
The Wounded Heart
By K.D. Worth
The Grim Life: Book Two
Dating is tough… especially when you’re dead.
Teenage reapers Max and Kody are ready for their afterlife to settle down. But their boss, the mysterious Slade, fears that spirits stuck in limbo have taken an interest in Kody. Which means the spirits’ evil counterparts—the wraiths—can’t be far behind.
Max would be livid if he found out Kody was still checking up on his family, but Kody’s mother and sister are struggling after his death. Though it breaks all the reaper rules and may put him in danger, Kody wants to help them. Unfortunately, the wraiths have found a doorway to the land of the living, bringing death and destruction with them. Max and Kody hope to stop them before anyone gets hurt, but they may not be strong enough.
Through devastating losses, an ominous prophecy, and a new destiny revealed, Max and Kody must find a way to trust and accept each other. Their enemies are powerful, but there’s a single force they cannot stand against—love.
To anyone who has lost someone and was left to pick up the pieces. You can move on.
KODY—Chapter 1
“SLADE ISN’T taking it easy on you, is he?” Max observed. “Second assignment and he sends you to a car accident.”
“Sends us,” I corrected, squeezing my boyfriend’s hand with gratitude.
We had materialized into the back seat of a swerving car, the stench of beer and a cheap vanilla air freshener overwhelming us. A middle-aged man clutched the wheel, jerking it to-and-fro as he tried to keep the car in his lane. In the rearview mirror, I saw his face, puffy from alcohol, eyes bloodshot and blinking rapidly.
“And a drunk driver no less,” Max muttered, flinching when the driver, one Jeremy Kane, roughly yanked the wheel again.
Nervous anticipation itched at my skin at the prospect of helping another person cross over to heaven. Though I’d spent three months training for this, Max had been on the job a lot longer, so it was wonderful having him at my side.
Especially at a time like this—hiding in the back seat of a sedan barreling down a country highway at breakneck speed. I winced when he swerved again.
This guy was gonna kill us!
Well, not really.
My name is Kody Michaels, and technically, I’m already dead.
“Go for it,” Max said as we braced ourselves on the seats in front of us when the car fishtailed once more. “He’s about to hit that tree.”
Up ahead through the windshield I saw a large oak, old and possibly broken by lightning. A sharp branch jutted out from the side—the blade waiting to claim Jeremy’s life.
Overcome with sympathy at the gruesome way this man was about to die, I rested my palm on his shoulder to deliver the reaper’s Touch, the very thing which separated the spirit from the body and ended the life. I wasn’t exactly killing him. Everyone died when they were supposed to, but it was still difficult for me to remember that. I felt bad, guilty even for doing it.
The opal ring on my finger heated with the power of holy spirit as I gave him the Touch.
A sudden rush of energy was forcefully sucked from my body.
Buckling over, I gasped.
Max gripped my elbow and teleported us from the car a millisecond before impact. We reappeared on the shoulder of the road the instant the car struck the tree. Tires squealed, glass shattered, and the large crash exploded before us.
Thank God I still had my eyes closed when that branch ended the man’s life.
For a heartbeat, the world spun and I couldn’t move, couldn’t think. I bent over and put my hands on my knees, trying to recover, shocked that I didn’t collapse.
What the heck?
I felt as if Jeremy had just sucked all the energy from my body.
“You see his spirit anywhere?” Max said, surveying the scene.
I forced myself to blink a few times, trying to understand what had just happened, and then I looked around too. “No.”
Wrapped around a telephone pole, the crumpled burgundy sedan had strewn pieces of bent metal everywhere, and glass littered the empty stretch of road. The engine choked, steaming and smoking. When it eventually died, everything around us fell silent. In the distance I heard another vehicle approaching—super hearing was a cool reaper perk. The car was several miles away, so it would be a while before the authorities arrived.
By then we would be long gone.
“Kody?” Max questioned. “Are you okay?”
“Fine, fine,” I assured him, though I felt surprisingly winded. I stood upright and tried to locate Jeremy’s spirit. We had a job to do, and I didn’t want to mess it up.
“You see anything else?” Max’s voice went unsure as he darted an anxious glance over his shoulder. My heart skipped—he wasn’t just looking for our assignment.
He was on the lookout for wraiths.
I shivered at the thought, knowing we were both on edge, waiting for an icy cold aura to announce their evil presence.
Thankfully no chill filled the air now.
I had no desire to have a run-in with the undead.
Scanning the area for my charge, I spied a tall, distraught man coming from around the back of the car. Jeremy examined the wreck, eyes wide with disbelief.
“W-what?” he muttered, grabbing on to his hair with both hands. As we approached, the hole in his chest began to close, but I don’t think he realized it.
Kind of weird, but a spirit didn’t look like a TV ghost. They didn’t wander around with an ax in their skull or a bullet hole in their chest if that’s how they died. They did at first, but then they healed, returning to their healthiest living version, a representation of how they perceived themselves. Jeremy changed from a drunken, middle-aged man to a frat boy in his midtwenties. His hair shortened and darkened, just as his paunchy belly flattened and the circles under his eyes faded.
“What’s happening?” Jeremy moaned. When he spied us, he rushed forward. “Help me! I think I was in a car accident!”
Max gestured to the car where the tree branch had impaled windshield and driver. “Yes, you were.”
“Oh my God!” Jeremy’s jaw dropped when he recognized his own body, dead behind the wheel. He raced back to his car.
“Great,” Max muttered, following the man. “We got a runner.”
I frowned at my boyfriend’s back. “Be nice. He’s in shock.”
Max harrumphed.
“Sir,” he addressed our wayward spirit, “do you know what’s happening?”
Eyes wild, Jeremy shook his head, grabbing at his hair again. “No! I can’t be dead. This can’t be happening. I have a family and—” He froze midsentence, some lucidity returning to his expression. “I had a family,” he w
hispered, voice small and defeated.
Before Max could chime in with his signature sarcasm, I asked, “What do you mean?”
He stared at me, blinking a few times. Then, as if clarity had come to him, his demeanor changed and he calmed. “Nothing,” he answered, but I heard his thoughts as if he spoke them aloud. I had a family until Fiona left me and took the girls. But what did I expect after what I did to her?
“When did she leave you?” I asked.
Max’s head snapped around, and he gave me a funny look.
Startled, Jeremy stared at me too. “Two months ago.”
Now, I didn’t know if all reapers experienced this, being only my second crossover, but I had a deep connection with this man. A strong, urgent sense of pity and kinship. He was terrified, and I desperately wanted to help him.
Had this been what Max felt for me the night he’d saved me on the bridge?
Whatever it was, with every passing second, I felt weaker than the last. I didn’t know why this crossover was draining me more than when I’d helped the old man yesterday. But I did know heaven was Jeremy’s destination, and I would get him there.
Taking a deep breath, I indicated the car. “Do you wanna tell me what happened, Jeremy?”
“I-I,” he hesitated, swallowing hard. “I just had a few beers at lunch….”
“A few?” Max intoned and I held up a finger to quiet him. To my surprise he raised his hands, locking his lips, and throwing away the key.
The gesture would’ve been cute if the circumstances weren’t so serious.
“Well, maybe,” Jeremy began, guilt visibly weighing down his body as shock gave way to pain. “Maybe more than a few. But, it just….”
When his face crumpled, I heard the words he didn’t have the power to voice as clear as day. I felt his regret for all the after-work beers with the guys from the engineering firm, and the times that drinking led him into the arms of other women. The shame he’d seen in his children’s eyes hit me hard and sharp. And the pain he’d caused his wife….
Stepping forward, I quietly finished his thoughts out loud, “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
He nodded, lips trembling.
“Jeremy,” I began patiently, heart still racing. Forcing a deep breath and finding power from somewhere I didn’t know I possessed, I fixed all my concentration on him. “You died. You know that, right?”
He darted a look at the accident. No, no, this can’t be happening.
The car I heard earlier had finally arrived at the scene. A woman exited, phone to her ear. But her frantic voice faded as the three of us moved farther away from the human realm.
“But I’m not…,” he began.
“No,” I said firmly. “I’m sorry, but there are no buts. Only facts. You died in a car accident, and I’m here to help you get to heaven.”
The man stared at me for a full moment. “Heaven?” he whispered. “I get to go… even after everything I did?”
I smiled, my kinship stronger to this man than I expected. Hadn’t I uttered similar sentiments after my death?
“You’re only human, Jeremy,” I assured him, wanting him to have the hope Max had given me. “We all make mistakes. But God doesn’t hold grudges like humans do. He is love, mercy, and kindness. Of course you’re going to heaven.”
“Really?”
Still out of breath, I managed to smile. “Yes, really.”
I held out my hand and he took it.
Revitalized by his cooperation, I created a wooden door in the road.
I still couldn’t get over the fact that I could actually do magic. Obsessed with Harry Potter as a kid, when I realized I would never get a letter from Hogwarts, I’d turned to magic tricks with cards and sleight of hand. But as a supernatural being, I could conjure doors, turn on the lights with my mind, and even teleport—just like a wizard!
While magic was awesome at first, as I led Jeremy to the door, I realized something had been taken from me after giving him the Touch. Magic might be cool, but the real-world application of it took more out of me than when Max and I had practiced.
Funny, but no one had bothered to tell me that tidbit in training.
The accident had all but faded away, but swirling shapes of the road were still distinguishable, as if we were under water staring up at the surface. The door and the three of us were the only things in crisp focus.
“It will all be okay now, Jeremy,” I told him as I opened the door. On the other side, a white light blinded us for a moment. When our eyes adjusted, I gestured him forward. “It’s time.”
“Are you sure?” he asked in a childlike whisper.
Smiling, I nodded. “Trust me.”
Taking a deep breath, the man walked through.
Relief washed over me and I sighed, some of the tension leaving my body. Jeremy obviously had a lot of dragons to slay, but I had faith he would find the truth in his death he’d been unable to find in life. But it would be a long journey, because dying didn’t change a person, or magically fix them.
Heck, I was the same neurotic kid I’d always been.
Being dead wasn’t exactly how I thought it would be. Though I don’t really know what I’d imagined it to be like. An end to the sadness, the guilt? A chance to start over, unsullied and washed clean? Maybe. Maybe not. But death had been on my mind a lot when I’d been living.
In fact, I tried to kill myself twice. Once at a camp designed to “fix” me, and the other while I was in college.
The second time, Max had been the reaper assigned to take me to heaven.
Instead of letting me end my life, he’d saved me.
Now, he and I work as reapers, escorting people through the pearly gates to meet the Big Guy. And yeah, I mean God. You know? The One who created everything around us. Not everyone believed, but He’s as real as it gets.
When I’d been alive, my entire existence had felt like a disappointment to God, my family, and everyone else I cared about. How could I be gay and a Christian, I used to ask myself. Was there a way to reconcile those two things? I would never deny God’s existence and that I love Him. But I couldn’t ignore who I was on the inside either. I’d grown so emotionally and physically drained from the inner struggle, the never-ending debate in my head, that death had seemed like an easier option than choosing one side over the other.
Thankfully Max had helped me to see these two sides of me could coexist. And every day that passed I grew closer to believing him.
Once sure Jeremy was safely where he was supposed to be, I closed the door. The light and door vanished in an instant, leaving Max and I standing in the street. I felt as if I could breathe easier, some of my energy restored.
“That was different,” he observed.
“What?”
“Being all super intuitive that his wife left him. Telling him he was going to heaven.” He shook his head, perplexed. “How did you make the door?”
“Um, Heather told me she walks people through a door. I thought this guy would like that.”
Max put his arm around my waist, his warm touch bolstering me. “You amaze me.”
“Why?” I fidgeted. Had I done something wrong? “Wasn’t I supposed to make the door?”
“No, that’s fine. It’s just your kindness that never ceases to amaze me.”
Sighing, I brought his shorter body in for a much-needed hug. “Thanks.”
I placed my chin on top of his head, relaxing in his embrace. His positive energy helped ease some of my exhaustion. I always felt better when Max touched me. So warm and wonderful. Reapers were cold, but Max was so warm that he made me feel warm inside every time he hugged me, almost like being alive again.
He pulled back to look up at me. “Are you okay? You seemed kinda weird when you gave him the Touch.”
I cocked my head to the side. “Did I not do something right?”
“No, you did everything perfect. Like a real pro. You just seemed….” He studied me a moment. “Off,” he eventually said.
I averted my gaze. “This crossover was a lot harder than my first one.”
Max shrugged. “It was a shocking death. Of course it was gonna be harder. Wait till you reap a little kid. Those really hit you hard.”
My stomach dropped. I hoped I never had one of those cases.
“You ready to go home?” he asked, stepping back.
Reluctantly, I let him go and sighed. “Definitely.”
Now I understood why Slade had only given me one assignment per shift. Helping people cross over was very draining, both physically and mentally. Louie had been much easier because he’d lived his life to the fullest and was eager to rejoin his deceased wife. No wonder Jeremy’s resistance had taken a toll on me. Though I knew instinctively he wouldn’t have become a shade, apparently the harder a spirit clung to the mortal realm, the more a reaper had to give of themselves in order to be successful.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was doing something wrong.
I’d have to get out my books and study some more so I could be as good as Max. I didn’t want to disappoint him or Slade.
Max teleported both of us back to the reaper base, rematerializing us in the large library. The vast room overflowed with ancient tomes, edicts, and stories about reapers from the past. Max and I agreed an upgrade with Google would’ve made the whole process of my training more efficient, but neither of us wanted to suggest it to Slade.
I smiled at Max. “I’ll never get tired of traveling that way.”
“I know. Teleporting is so cool.”
Exhausted, I stepped away and reached for a chair to sit down.
Face bright with intrigue, Max pulled on my hand before I could sit. “No sitting down now. I wanna show you what I found yesterday.”
“Do I wanna see it?”
“Yes, you totally wanna see this,” he assured me.
We’d spent the greater part of the past three months in this library while Max taught me how to be a reaper, and he completed his punishment for interfering in my death—writing “I will never disobey the rules of being a reaper” eleven thousand times on a chalkboard. Eventually, once I’d picked up all the nuances and the things my new spirit form could do, we left the library for practical lessons. The day we started teleporting around the office had been my favorite, but the real honor had come when Slade presented me with my very own opal—the stone that helped us separate a soul from its body, then open a way to heaven.
