Grim Love - A Novella

by Grae Lily

  * * * *

  It wasn’t a surprise she ended up standing outside Jasper’s apartment. She looked up at the window she'd once looked out of, trying not to cry again for the man she missed beyond words. Her eyes swelled with tears as if their separation had just occurred. In the time that passed, Jasper had become more of what he was meant to be. He thrived in his sobriety and new work life. He'd begun to make friends and form bonds – even mending his broken relationship with his grandfather.

  Following him would be difficult because he could see her, but she’d do her best to stay out of sight. He deserved to live after all the work he’d done to fix his life. Dying because of her wouldn't have been right.

  “Death isn’t fair.” She hoped no one could hear her talking to herself. “Life isn’t fair, and death isn’t, and that’s something I need to learn to accept, but I love him. I can’t just let him die, no matter what he and Lucius think. Maybe, it's his time. Maybe there's no such thing as someone’s time and it’s something we’ve made up to give us a reason for existing.” She blinked away more tears. “I saved that drunk before and it was his time. I mean, if it was, he wouldn’t have survived, something else would have killed him moments later, so I don’t believe anyone has a time.”

  “Neither did I.” Lucius stepped out of the shadows. “That's when I'd been a young reaper, Evangeline, and I still thought people could be saved. Sometimes they could. Jasper, unless you leave him alone, can’t be, so standing here, right where he might be able to see you, isn’t going to help him. He needs to do this alone.” He surprised her by taking hold of her hand. “If things had been different, the two of you would have been together for the rest of eternity, but you met at the wrong time.”

  “Walking away from the man I love isn’t easy. I've missed him more than I've missed living. To see him moving on makes me love him more cause that's all I wanted for him, but why does it hurt so much? It's not fair.”

  “Of course it isn’t, but he might survive whatever it is that’s going to cause his death if he’s allowed to miss you. You standing here watching him isn't going to help either of you. Even though it’s the last thing I want to do, I'll lock you away if you get in the way of his death. If it’s meant to happen, we have to let it, no matter how much it hurts, no matter what you think or feel because this is the way it works. We're reapers. We take the souls of the dead to where they’re meant to be.”

  “You already knew about the drunk, didn’t you?”

  “I did.” Lucius sighed. “When you’re new to reaping it’s easy to make mistakes like that, so I’m not angry with you and he seems to be doing okay now.”

  “Can I stay here tonight? I’ll leave in the morning, get back to my job, but tonight I need to be able to say a proper goodbye.”

  “I shouldn’t let you. It’s the wrong choice to make and, if I didn’t know how hard this would be, I would tell you to walk away now.” Lucius squeezed her hand. “Tonight only. If I find you here again, I will lock you away. If I find out that you’ve been following him again, I’ll lock you away. If I find out that you’ve saved him,…”

  “Yeah, I get it, you’ll lock me away.” Evangeline shrugged. “What will you do if you find me in the library hunting for a way to get out of my contract?”

  “Laugh. You have no idea how many young reapers I’ve seen in there doing the same thing. They all found out for themselves, but I know you’re not going to believe me until you see it for yourself.”

  Chapter 6

  If she wanted to get technical, Evangeline wasn’t following Jasper. Being there at the times she thought he’d be in the most danger wasn’t following him, but she knew what Lucius would say if he found out. She'd do everything she could to make sure he didn’t know and that Jasper didn’t see her. As she wandered through the city, she wished things were different. She wished she hadn’t died at nineteen because then they might have met in real life.

  Remembering how careless she'd been in life, she couldn’t help thinking if they had met, she wouldn’t have been able to help him. Instead, they would have ended up damaging each other more. It'd be wishful thinking to believe their story would have led them to change their lives together while she'd still been alive. For what felt like the hundredth time, she blinked away tears, knowing she needed to stop thinking about how things might have been different. Stopping would be harder to do than she thought.

  Evangeline had known her position wasn’t going to be easy. She’d never considered how complicated it would be. There still hadn't been any explanation as to why she and Jasper had been drawn to one another. It wasn’t fair, but maybe there existed a reason for it have happened. How could something that had caused so much pain be meant to happen?

  Jasper had just begun to get his life back into some sort of order only to find that he's going to die? Lucius could be wrong. She still didn't understand how everything worked. If Lucius did turn out to be wrong, maybe Jasper could live a long happy life.

  Their relationship caused the change in him because it made Jasper feel complete. Were they soul mates? Maybe, that's why they were drawn together. Who knows how the universe works?

  “I hate this!” Screaming in the middle of the city wasn’t something she would have done on any other day, but everything had changed so much since Lucius asked her to help him. “I have too many questions I can’t answer and I don’t know what to do. Finding the answers in Lucius’ library is almost impossible, even though I’ve tried, but there are so many books in there. Some of them hold stories that might have a grain of truth and the rest, they are like wading through treacle. They’re all written in old English and it would be hard for anyone to understand, so I’ve been translating as best I can, but I still feel like I’m getting nowhere.”

  “Maybe you're not supposed to be getting anywhere.” Before Evangeline turned, she thought she recognized the voice. She found herself staring into the eyes of the drunk man she’d saved. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “With you?”

  “Yes, with me. I may have been an old drunk when you saved my life, but I’m getting straightened out now and I want to help you because it’s quite obvious something has happened to cause the anger you feel the need to scream in the streets.” He shrugged. “I heard you scream. I recognized your voice and since you saved my life…”

  “Saving your life,” Evangeline paused, “I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t know whether you were supposed to die or not, so I made a decision and it turned out to be the wrong one.” She closed her eyes before continuing, “I don’t regret it, though.”

  He smiled. “You wouldn’t.” He held his hand out. “I’m Sam.”

  After a moment she took it. “Evangeline.”

  “Evangeline, the reaper. You’re much too pretty to be a gatherer of souls. I would have thought whoever did these things would have made you a guardian angel instead. Who knew reapers could look like you?” Sam looked at her as if the red cloak hid nothing of her features.

  “Like I said…”

  “You made a mistake. I know. Yet, here I am, still walking through the city so I can’t help thinking that, if you didn't make a mistake, I'd be dead by now. Since I'm alive, I’m willing to help you with whatever difficulties you've found yourself in.”

  “They aren’t something I think you can help with.” Evangeline brushed her hand through her hair. “I fell in love and we can’t be together.”

  “Because you’re a reaper.”

  “Well, yes. I don’t think Lucius would have had much of a problem with the two of us being together, which still surprises me, but the problem is Jasper's supposed to die and Lucius thinks it will shatter me.” She sighed. “When I agreed to become a reaper I signed a hundred year contract, not knowing that I'd end up falling in love with someone or I'd be so desperate to help him live a normal life. You were my second job, Sam, and Jasper, well, he should have been my third job. I keep messing things up.” Recalling wha
t he said, “You can see me? I mean, I look normal to you? Not dead?”

  “Sure can. You don't look like any Grim Reaper I've ever seen in movies. Anyway, why are you so desperate for him to live a normal life?”

  “I died young and I regret the choices I made. I had a normal life. I didn't see it, but I did. Jasper didn’t. He went through so much as a boy. Before we met, he wanted to die. His spirit turned out to be too strong to let him die. I'd been sent to gather his soul, but I couldn't. I don't know why. So I helped him to sort himself out because, I guess, I cared about him. I knew I shouldn’t have let things go that far. I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from someone who needed my help the way he did. I fell in love with him.” She smiled, remembering. “I’d never been in love before, Sam. There had been people, dates, flings or what have you, but nothing that mattered. Falling in love now has been a surprise. Leaving him like this, feeling the way I feel, is impossible. I've seen him. His life is moving on – without me.”

  Of course, there's a reason Evangeline saved the drunk man, Lucius thought as watched the two of them, hoping Sam could talk some sense into her before she did something stupid. Lucius knew she'd been keeping a close eye on Jasper. It didn’t surprise him.

  Walking away had been the hardest thing she’d ever had to do, so he could understand why she'd been making such terrible choices, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to have to do as he threatened if she tried to save Jasper’s life. It'd been a long time since Lucius needed to make use of that cell. He smiled. The last time had been when he dealt with another compassionate reaper who'd been doing her best to save the lives of people she thought deserved a second chance. Those who were in charge of that sort of thing made her into a guardian instead. He believed Evangeline should be a guardian, too.

  Being a reaper meant Lucius saw more of the dead than anyone else, so he knew who'd be capable of being a guardian. Guardians weren’t angels because angels had a different job altogether. They were spirits who did the same job that Evangeline had done with Sam except they had more knowledge of the ins and outs of such things. Very few reapers were ever lucky enough to become guardians and that's why he hadn’t said anything. That didn’t mean he wasn’t trying to convince the leader of the guardians to assign her. Most reapers were simple. They did the job. A few, like Evangeline, were much more difficult because they were more compassionate or have this belief that they know who should be dead. He’d often found that those are the very ones who go around killing the type of people who should be in prison for certain crimes.

  He knew of one who went around killing wife beaters because she’d been in that unfortunate position during life and she wanted them all dead. Lucius had done his best to convince her that it wasn’t her choice who lived and died. It seemed obvious she held a grudge against one specific type of person. Although understandable, but she couldn’t keep doing it. Some people who were meant to be reapers just weren’t ready for the job no matter what he did or said. That forced him to make difficult choices. A contract had been signed, though. So, he’d sent it off to someone who could make changes to them, which meant that instead of killing wife beaters, she'd be better suited to guide them to their deserved afterlife. Maybe in her next life, she’d let go of all that pain, but she’d never be a reaper again.

  Evangeline would never be a reaper again either if she became a guardian. It would be a better position for her, he felt. She'd still work under Lucius most of the time since she'd still have the ability to know when people would die - the same way the other guardians did. She'd have to report to the leader of the guardians, too. At least that leader would be someone she could talk to if she found herself helping someone she didn’t connect with on a more spiritual-emotional level. Lucius just hoped he'd be able to make it happen before she tried to save Jasper’s life again.

  “Sometimes you have no other choice but to leave the one you love behind, Evangeline.” Sam explained. “My wife would have stayed if she could, but she had terminal cancer and the doctors exhausted all their options. They did all they could do for her. They made her comfortable and she died at home. After that I sold the house because I found myself unable to live there any longer, and spent most of that money on booze in an attempt to stop myself from thinking of her. Thinking of her had been more difficult than I could have imagined until you saved me. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be here now, trying to put my life back together, so I thank you for the mistake you made. It reminded me that she would have wanted me to live my life.” He sighed. “I haven’t seen our three children since I sank to the bottom of a bottle. Once I’m better, I need to apologize to them for being so selfish.”

  As Evangeline thought through what Sam said, she knew he might be right. She needed to walk away. The thought made her shiver. She might be able to save Jasper’s life and if she could do that, then, she should. Evangeline didn't realize she had that kind of power until she became a reaper. “I understand what you’re saying, Sam. Maybe I'm wasting my time as a reaper focusing on him. I can’t help thinking I wasn’t meant to be a reaper in the first place, no matter what Lucius thought.”

  “Talk to Lucius. If you tell him what you think he might be able to help you.”

  “I’m trapped in a contract and he’s already told me there’s no way out of it.”

  “No way out of it doesn’t mean there’s no way of changing it.” Sam started. “You say you don’t think you were meant to be a reaper, but maybe you were meant to be whatever the opposite of a reaper is because you saved my life and I don’t think you understand what that means to me. Telling me I should have died, makes me even more convinced you're something other than a reaper and whatever you’re meant to be is so close to being a reaper that Lucius misread it.”

  “Do you mind if I go now?” She could feel Jasper would be safe for the moment and talking to Lucius seemed to be the best option because he'd know much more than she did. “I promise I’ll come back and let you know how things go.”

  “You don’t have to do that. As long as you’re doing something to sort things out, that’s all I care about. Dying early doesn’t mean you don’t deserve happiness.”

  Nodding, Evangeline went to Lucius’ office. He sat, staring down at his desk. “I wondered how long it would take you to come here.” He looked up at her. “Sam got you thinking, didn't he?”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I have to be careful about what I do and don’t say. There's an opposite to the reaper, a guardian, but there are no guarantees that you’re meant to be one. I think you may be one of them - unless you’re just a compassionate reaper that I’m going to have to keep a close eye on over the next hundred years.” He shrugged. “When we first met, I sensed a connection. Both of us know, it’s that connection that terrified you into agreeing to help me. I thought I was doing my best not to scare you.”

  “You were?”

  “Being a reaper means spirits find me terrifying. If we’d met on the street, as unlikely as that would have been, you wouldn’t have felt the same way. Now that we’ve been working together a while, it’s getting easier to talk to me, isn’t it?” She nodded. “Look, if you aren’t meant to be a guardian there's very little I can do. You are…” He sighed. “You died a different person from the one you are now. Saving Sam was only the first step along a path you might not have taken if you weren’t where you needed to be to do that. If you hadn’t been that person you might not have wanted to help Jasper. Every decision you’ve made has turned you into the person you could have been if you were still alive and that means you're not in the best position to be a reaper.”

  “Okay…” Evangeline studied him. “If I hadn’t saved Sam, you wouldn’t be talking to whoever it is in control of the guardians because I wouldn’t be this Evangeline. Do you think I would have walked away from Jasper?”

  “I do. If you’d come across him a day earlier, you wouldn’t have chosen to help him. Maybe that’s a bad thing.”
<
br />   “We both know it’s not, Lucius.” A voice came from the door of the office and Evangeline turned to find herself facing a giant of a man. “So this is Evangeline. Come here. I’m not going to hurt you, but I do need to study you if we're going to make any sort of decision. Lucius thinks you’d make a good guardian.”

  She looked between the two of them. “What if it’s not what I want?”

  “You can continue on as a reaper. We’re not forcing you to do anything.” Lucius smiled at her. “It’s up to you.”

  After taking one step toward the leader of the guardians, she felt something she didn’t believe she'd feel. “I’ve got to go.”

  Chapter 7

  Lucius looked at Gabriel, who grinned. “That really does tell me all I need to know, Lucius.” He shook his head. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I have no idea. She must know I felt it too, but that doesn’t matter because it’s Jasper.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling, even though he knew he shouldn’t be. “I told her if she tried to save him I’d lock her up. There are deaths that are meant to happen and I think Jasper’s is one of them. Unless, of course, he happens to live through this one as well, which is possible, but I don’t think he’s been away from her for long enough.”

  “We both know it’s not about long enough. Jasper asked Evangeline to leave and that's something he’s going to hate himself for no matter how logical he seemed at the time. If he happens to get through this one, tell me. She’s both, you know - one of the unusual spirits who's both guardian and reaper. Get her to sign a contract with me and I’ll assign her the man she loves, if he survives without her help.”

  “That means locking her up.”

  “Do it then.” Gabriel shrugged. “Sometimes we have to be cruel to be kind, especially when it comes to someone like her. She can’t be allowed to get involved. You need to stop her and you need to do it now. Do it yourself. The two you have working for you now, they aren't cut out for this sort of thing.”