“Is that supposed to make it easier?”
“Well, yeah,” Brooke said. “Duh.”
Jack worked his jaw. "Is it wrong that I should have a problem with her job?"
Brooke shrugged. "How the hell should I know? Everybody keeps telling me that I'm not a relationship expert. But maybe instead of being a passive aggressive asshole about it, you should talk to Avery."
"Is she going to quit?"
Brooke thought about it for a moment. "Probably not."
"Then there's not a lot to talk about, is there?" Jack said.
"That's probably not a healthy way to look at it."
"Like you said," Jack replied. "You're not a relationship expert.”
Brooke just sighed and shook her head. She pointed to the burning pyramid. "I need to focus on this. Wouldn’t want to put you in another awkward position of putting out one of our fires."
nineteen
Avery skidded to a stop in front of room ten-oh-five and watched as the blue hazy fire enveloped the door. It didn't burn the door. The hazy fire simply wrapped itself around the door like an early morning fog, before dissipating into nothingness.
She had found the location of the soul catcher.
"Okay," Avery said to herself. "Here we go."
She gripped the handle and pushed open the door.
Avery was ready for anything but what she saw.
The light in the room was dim. The only illumination came from the partially closed blinds and at that moment, clouds were rolling across the sky, blocking the sun.
Her eyes were naturally drawn to the figure eight built from sticks and twine and the flames at its base. But that wasn't where the focus of the room was.
On the bed laid the woman. She must have been in her late sixties. Her skin had an unhealthy pallor to it, pale and clammy to the touch. An ugly white tube was attached to her mouth, the other end connected to the ventilator. There was a steady, soft pumping as the machine breathed for her. The other machines around her beeped and hummed, insisting that everything was okay. That everything was under control. That everything would work out.
But Avery knew better.
There was no life left in this woman.
Then there was the white haired man sitting next to her, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. His hands were wrapped around hers, as though through the contact he could pass along a part of his own life force to her.
And with that, Avery understood. She exhaled slowly and relaxed, the tension draining from her body. She grabbed the other empty chair and pulled it up to the side of the bed.
He glanced at Avery briefly, as though acknowledging an annoying fly that had drifted into the room. "I know who you are," he said, before she could speak.
“Good,” Avery replied. “Saves me the trouble of introducing myself.”
“You’re here to stop me.”
“Something like that,” Avery said.
“I’m not going to stop.”
“You’re going to have to stop,” Avery said. Her voice was gentle, but firm.
“Make me,” he said.
“I will if I have to. But I don’t want to.”
He paused at that, but he didn’t look at Avery. He kept his gaze on the woman in the bed. "I'm not dumb."
"Didn't cross my mind," Avery replied softly and honestly. "I’m sorry for your loss.”
"Don't," he snapped. "I don't want to hear your false platitudes."
"It's not false," she told him.
“All everybody says is how sorry they are,” he replied. “As though that’s supposed to take away the pain. As though it’s supposed to make everything better.”
“To bad it doesn’t.”
He didn't say anything to that.
He stroked the woman's hand gently. “You have questions.”
“A few,” Avery admitted.
“I don’t have any answers,” he told her. “At least none that would make you happy.”
Avery shrugged. “You don’t know what makes me happy.”
He glanced briefly back at the figure eight, but didn’t say anything.
Avery spoke again. “What you’re doing, there’s consequences.”
“You don’t think I know about consequences?” he asked her. His voice got angry. “I know all about consequences. My life has been one giant string of consequences.”
“You don’t know about these consequences,” Avery started.
He cut her off with a look. “I don’t give a damn about the consequences.”
Avery jerked back in her seat, startled by his anger. She paused, looking for another avenue. “There are other people in this hospital,” she said. “Other people whose time has come and they’re not passing.”
He turned back to the woman on the bed. “Not my problem.”
“Actually,” Avery said, pointing to the figure eight. “It is.”
He closed his eyes, squeezing them shut to hold the tears back a moment longer. “So, what? I’m supposed to just suffer like this? I’m supposed to just give up my entire life because I’m inconveniencing a few people? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I’m saying that you’re messing with things you don’t understand,” Avery replied. She looked at the woman. “There’s nothing here for you to catch.”
He opened his eyes, staring at the woman’s restful face. “You don’t know that.”
“I do actually.”
He shook his head. “I told her that I wouldn’t give up on her.”
“There’s nothing to give up on,” Avery said.
“Shut up!” he shouted suddenly. “Shut up! Shut up!”
This time the anger didn’t surprise her.
He fell silent again, gripping the woman’s hand even tighter.
“It hurts,” Avery said softly. “I know it hurts. And it’s going to keep hurting for a long time. I wish there was a way that we could just make the pain go away, but there isn’t. And this? Stuff like this? What you’re doing here? This doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t make it easier. It makes it worse. Because, eventually the pain does go away. It takes a while. For some people it takes a long while. But when you do this? When you mess with the nature of things like this?” She shook her head. “Sometimes the pain never goes away. Sometimes all you’re left with is an empty, hollow feeling that you spend all your time trying to fill and never succeeding. Is that what you want? I don’t think it’s what she would want for you.”
The silence filled the room again. The soft ticking of the clock on the wall sounded like the ticking roll of thunder compared to the silence.
"It's cancer, in case you were wondering," he said. His voice was practically a whisper now. "We were married for almost forty years. It was going to be a personal best for both of our families. Then came the cancer." The tears streamed down his cheeks, he couldn’t hold them back any longer. "Neither one of us ever smoked. Couldn't stand the smell or the taste. The same went for coffee, you know. We walked every day. We ate healthy. We drank plenty of water. We lived our lives as stress free as possible. And still she got cancer." He sucked in a sharp gasp of air and shuddered as the dam he had built to hold back his grief came crumbling down. "I just didn't want to see her go."
Avery reached over and rested her hand atop of his. "But you have to let her go," Avery whispered. "You know that."
There was something in her voice. Something genuine that connected with the white haired man. He finally looked at her and saw that there were tears brimming in her eyes, too.
"I don't want to," he said, his cheeks glistened with sad tears. "She was my best friend. How can I just let her go?"
"Because holding her like this isn't what she would want," Avery said. Her voice was filled with sadness, but also firm. "And you know that."
He shuddered again and dropped his head to the bed. "Oh, Sally," he moaned. "I'm so sorry. So, so, so sorry." The rest of his words dissolved into sobs.
Whoever this man was, he wasn't a reaper.
He didn't have any evil intentions. He simply wanted to save the love of his life.
Avery got to her feet and walked over to the figure eight. She gently plucked the diamond from its center. It was attached to a gold band. An engagement ring.
Avery was overcome with sadness again.
The flames flickered out.
She quietly set the ring down next to the white haired man and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. How long she stood like that, she didn't know. But eventually Avery took what remained of the soul catcher and left the man to his grief.
twenty
By the time Avery returned to the waiting room Brooke had made a cursory effort to pack everything back up into the duffel bag, but got bored halfway through. She was back in her chair, texting, when her sister walked up, tossing the soul catcher in with the pile of remaining pyramid sticks.
"That it?" Brooke asked, twisting in her seat to get a better look at the catcher.
"That was it. People dying again?"
Brooke nodded. "Jack hauled ass out of here a few minutes ago. Nature has resumed it's natural course. Although, I'm sure there's going to be quite a few people around here who aren't happy about it. Also, you should know, Jack totally has some serious issues."
"Really not the time," Avery said. There was something in her terse tone Brooke didn't want to argue with.
"So, what happened up there?" Brooke asked.
"A guy built a soul catcher," Avery said, sitting down next to her sister. She felt suddenly exhausted, as though she had been up for days running a marathon.
"And?" Brooke prompted.
"And I convinced him to shut it down," Avery finished.
"What about the guy?"
"What about him?"
"Shouldn't we turn him over to Russell or something? He wasn't a reaper, was he?"
"Nope," Avery replied.
"Do you know how he built it?"
Avery shrugged. "Adam said everything's on the internet.”
"And you think that's it?"
"I think that's the best we're gonna get," Avery replied.
"Well," Brooke said, stretching out in her seat, "I'm pretty sure the Council would like to know about a non-reaper who's going around using reaper magic."
"I'm sure they would," Avery agreed. "Too bad I never got his name."
Brooke looked at her sister, not sure what she was hearing. "Something happen up there?"
Avery leaned her head back. "Just life, Brooke. Just life."
“Hey.”
The sisters looked up at the sound of the new voice.
Jack stood there, running a hand through his hair.
Avery sighed. “If we’re going to have a fight about my job can it wait till tomorrow at least? I just need twelve drama free hours.”
“Actually, that’s not what I’m here for.” He looked at Brooke. “Stanley’s out of surgery.”
Brooke got to her feet. Suddenly she was anxious, hopeful and worried all at once. "Can I see him?"
Jack paused, wringing his hands.
Avery looked at her boyfriend and sat up. She knew that expression.
“Brooke, they managed to get the bleeding in his brain under control. But," he paused again, a somber look passing across his face, "Unfortunately, Stanley slipped into a coma."
Brooke lost all feeling in her legs and she sank back into her seat. "I don't understand," she whispered. She looked to her big sister for help, but all Avery could do was hold her hand.
"We've done the best we can," Jack continued. "At this point all we can do is wait and see."
Brooke tried to talk, but the words wouldn't come out. She felt the room spin around her.
Avery spoke for her. "What are his chances?"
Jack sighed. "Honestly, I'm not sure. With these kinds of situations we can tell you one thing and it could end up being something else altogether."
Brooke sank back further into her chair.
Avery looked at Jack. There was no anger left in either of them.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
She nodded her head in quiet understanding and Jack left the waiting room.
Avery let her sister rest her head on her shoulder. "Don't worry," she whispered, stroking her sister's hair. "It'll be okay."
twenty-one
It was late that night when Avery found herself in the office that once used to belong to their father and now belonged to his daughters.
She turned on the small desk lamp and started rummaging through the desk. She was pretty sure Brooke kept a bottle of something alcoholic in there. The job didn't normally drive her to drink, but every so often there was a day like today. And those were the worst days.
The front door opened and Avery stopped her search for the alcohol. She stood up straight and composed herself.
"Am I supposed to offer my condolences?" Dicky Ramburg asked as he waddled into the office. He spoke with a foreign accent. It sounded like something from one of those countries that would sprout up just outside of Russia every couple of years. "Do you do that for coma patients or is that only for the ones who die?"
In the dim light, Avery couldn't make out much of Dicky Ramburg and that was fine with her. The man was a walking greaseball that dressed itself in tacky velour suits. Thanks to rolls of fat in his face, he had squiggly lines where other people had eyes and a mouth. Overall, he was pretty disgusting to look at. So Avery was thankful for the dim lighting.
"I don't know," Avery replied. "You're the one that put him in a coma. Maybe apologies before condolences? Or you could just split the difference and get him a fruit basket."
Dicky laughed, but it sounded more like a wheeze. "You're funny. I never knew how funny you were." He paused, licking his dry lips, and looked around the office. "Where is your lovely sister?"
"You won't be dealing with her anymore," Avery said.
"Ah, right to the point then? Is that why you call me here?" Dicky asked. "You going to tell me whose boss now?"
"Something like that."
Dicky stared at her in the dim light. "You know, I wondered why I never knew about your sister. I think I figured it out, though. She's the weak one. You never put the weak ones out in front."
"My sister is anything but weak," Avery said. "And it's probably best for your health if you stopped talking about her."
Dicky wheezed out another laugh. "That's funny."
"I'm glad I amuse you," Avery said dryly.
"You should be," Dicky replied. "Because otherwise, the alternative would be that I kill you." He waited to see if she had anything to say to that. She didn't.
"Understand, Avery, I don't care who I am dealing with. I don't care who is boss now. I just want my damn skull and you're going to get it for me."
"Tiny problem with that," Avery said. "The only man that had any details about the skull is now in a coma thanks to you."
Dicky shrugged. "So figure it out. You were always good at figuring things out. Like your father." He turned for the door and paused before stepping out. "And, Avery," he said over his shoulder. "Don't make me do something silly and add, 'or else.'"
Dicky left and Avery dropped into the chair behind the desk, exhaling a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.
That didn't go nearly as well as she hoped it would have.
Volume Two of
Reapers in Heels
continues in:
A Diamond Before Dying (Book 4)
No Diamonds Upon Death (Book 5)
Diamonds and Death (Book 6)
Only the Dead Wear Diamonds (Book 7)
Death, Debutantes, and Diamonds (Book 8)
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Alex Cheradon
(A science fiction, action adventure, fantasy series)
Volume 1
Fruitbasket from Hell (Book 1)
A is for Amnesia, B is for Bullet (Book 2)
Little People, Big Crimes (Book 3)
Volume 2
One Time Only (Book 1)
Welcome to Crazytown (Book 2)
Odd Man Out (Book 3)
Heaven’s Superhero
(Christian science fiction, fantasy, adventure series)
Volume 1 – The Third Creation
Heaven’s Superhero: The Third Creation – Part One
_______________
Reapers in Heels
(Urban fantasy romance series recommended for Mature Readers, 18 & Up.)
Volume One - Death & Stilettos
One Stiletto in the Grave (Book1)
Diamond Before Dying (Reapers in Heels #4) Page 9
