The Reaper's Kiss

by Abigail Baker

  He looked at me no different than a moose staring down the barrel of a twelve-gauge—incredulous and vaguely challenged. “Does that mean you want to see the dolphin on my left butt cheek? I assure you, it’s remarkable.” His hands went for his ZZ Top belt buckle.

  “Hades, no! I do not want to see your dolphin.” Well…maybe. Yeah, definitely.

  His long fingers fell away from his buckle. “Right then, I’ll save the porpoise for later.”

  “I’m sure you’ll find some other friendly soul to show your porpoise to.” With Papa’s words of wisdom in my head, I was back to speed walking. The southerner followed on my heels.

  And why wouldn’t he? My day was brimful of one Reaper encounter after another. At the rate I was going, Head Reaper Marin would soon pop out from behind a tree with black balloons and an ice cream cake. If Gerard couldn’t hold off the Watchmen, what would I walk back into? My arrest? A trial right there in the middle of Salon de Tatouage?

  No one would believe me when I said I had not meant to be so aggressive with Moose. My heat—my power—was unwieldy. I was still learning my skills, trying to hone them into perfection. It wasn’t my fault!

  “I’m sorry,” the southerner said, wrenching me from inner turmoil. “I’m a little rusty at courtship these days. I hope you don’t mind my…oh.”

  A shot of terror ran from my toenails to my bulging eyeballs when I caught him staring at my hands.

  Not again. Please.

  I found my fingers were pink like rare meat, and that meant big, red-hot trouble. Lamenting what I had done had brought on fear and anger, and that always led to my hands overheating. When I was a teenager, I’d burned through my foster mom’s entire silverware set. Adolescent Scrivener hormones do that, I guess.

  Rising panic had me scanning for a water fountain or ice cream truck to cool the forthcoming inferno. Most importantly—I needed to get the hell away from this Reaper.

  His big blue eyes softened, and he slowly backed away. Even though he gave me space, the blistering heat in my hands intensified. A familiar spine-prickling sensation, like bugs crawling under my flesh, fanned out from my fingertips.

  The lumberjack shrugged. “I don’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry.”

  “Please, I need to—”

  “But I think you should know that—”

  “—get back to work—”

  “—your coffees are smoking.”

  “What?”

  He pointed at my drinks.

  Charged ozone attacked my nose an instant before the metal mug and Gerard’s cup dissolved in my hands. Coffee and bourbon splashed over the sidewalk.

  I don’t know why I blew on my hands, like that would cool them down and salvage my melted cups of joe and my ego, but I did it with vigor. The color of my once pink and ink-free skin was now ruby red, exactly as it had been when I jumped away from ill-fated Moose that morning.

  I hated the sight of it even more than the way it felt. Even more so, I loathed how the few Reapers and normal Scriveners who had seen this happen stared at me like I was a freak that should be locked away in an inflammable asylum for unstable pyromaniacs.

  “By Hades, you are gorgeous,” Lumberjack uttered, his cool blue eyes locked on the fire red skin of my hands and wrists. “Are you too hot to touch?”

  “Don’t.” I jerked back when he reached for my fingertips. If he knew I struggled daily to control my power, he wouldn’t have called my hands gorgeous or tried to touch me. Only today did I learn what would happen if I got this hot while tattooing a human. I didn’t need to learn what would happen to a fellow Stygian.

  Would I mark them like I had marked Moose? Would I burn through their souls, too? Gerard didn’t know how to help, and neither did Mama and Papa. Everything about my goddamn abnormality was a pioneering misadventure.

  “Leave me alone. Please.”

  He watched my hands slide inside my jacket pockets. The singe of disintegrating cotton was unmistakable. With it, my self-respect frittered away.

  “I’m sorry, darlin’. Let me buy you another coffee for the trouble. I’ll even throw in a donut or two.”

  My stomach rumbled and my heart trembled in spite of my shame. Diamonds or fancy meals meant little to someone like me. But… “Coffee?”

  “And a donut.” He smiled warmly.

  Grim Reapers loved their sugar cane. Candy, cakes, even sugar packets. The substance gave them a blissful high that often distracted them from their task of ferrying souls. Marin’s reason for banning sugar was a practical one. Sugar made Reapers lethargic drunks. Lushes would not compromise the balance of humanity if Marin had any say in it. This threat didn’t stop them from consuming every gram of sugar they could get their hands on, however.

  Sugar never had any such affect on me. My drug was coffee—something this handsome Reaper was smart to notice.

  “I can’t carry my coffee if I am hot.” I started to pull my hands from my pockets but stopped myself.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “Give me your hands.”

  “No!” Was he nuts?

  “Trust me.”

  How I found it in me to trust him was not clear, but I slowly pulled my fingers from my jacket pockets and dropped them to my sides. As I did, he collected a bundle of fresh white snow from the sidewalk. Though no Stygian had dared to touch my skin in this state, and rightfully so, he covered my hands with the snow.

  Steam rose from our connection. The snow melted, cooling the heat within seconds. Once all that remained was dripping water, I gradually untangled my fingers from his. Together, we dried our skin on our jackets. There was no particular way to break from such a connection without making awkward but flirty faces at each other.

  “I’ve never done that before,” he said. “Glad it worked.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Now you can hold your coffee.”

  I giggled.

  Fuck! I giggled?

  “Thanks,” I said and then began a lazy stroll back to work in Old Town. There was good reason for this forced calmness. Acting casual seemed like the sexy-confident thing to do. But I would have preferred to stay far away from the tattoo shop for the remainder of the day. Since I couldn’t, delaying my return was my only means of controlling a situation that had spiraled down the toilet bowl of shitty luck.

  “So what brings you to Québec, uh…?” I gave the universal “I don’t know your name” look as I waited for him to formally introduce himself.

  “The name is Brent Hume, hailing from Beattyville, Kentucky, ma’am.” He slid his hands inside his jacket pockets. “I’m in Québec because I’m looking for work.”

  “Ferrying?”

  “Nah. I need a paycheck so I can eat.”

  “You don’t get Obol payouts from each soul you ferry?” Whenever Reapers removed a soul from a human body and sent it to the Afterlife, a coin—an Obol like the one plucked from Moose’s lips—appeared. Obols weren’t much money after they transformed into local currency, just enough to cover food and incidentals, but something is better than nothing.

  “I was banned from receiving Obols. Don’t ask,” Brent said before I could. “It’s a story I’ll dredge up another day. Do you have any job leads?”

  Gerard occasionally hired Reapers to clean the shop, but for some inexplicable reason, inviting this hunk to work where I tattooed Deathmarks seemed no different than putting a hungry lion inside a cage filled with bleeding zebras. Or maybe deep down I knew he’d be too distracting, pushing a mop around me as I worked.

  Brent didn’t seem like he was in such dire straits that he was starving anyway. However, he did wear a worn jacket, jeans ripped at the knees, and those hiking boots taped at the toes.

  “Chez Ashton serves cheap grub,” I said. “Great poutine. My treat.”

  “No, darlin’. I’ll never take a penny from you.” Judging by his strained grin, he didn’t enjoy the hodgepodge of French fries, cheese curds, and gravy called poutine quite like I did. Too easily, I
visualized a hungry Brent Hume eating alone in Chez Ashton, and it tugged at my sympathy. I had a talent for finding melancholy in everything, even this rugged Reaper dining by himself.

  Papa had teased me for it, and Mama had said it was humanity, Hades’ gift to me that Mama swore no other Stygians were privileged to have. I still had yet to understand why this was a gift, as I wept over sad television commercials as I shoveled pints of Ben and Jerry’s down my throat.

  “I haven’t spoken with a Scrivener in ages,” he said rather abruptly.

  I was suddenly nervous and craving Chunky Monkey. “How do you know I’m a Scrivener?”

  “Lucky guess. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.” He reminded me why we were walking to another coffee shop. My fucking, red-hot, trouble-making, death-dealing hands.

  “Well, Brent Hume, I’m not just a Scrivener,” I said with a bite. “I’m an artist. One of my favorite pastimes is sitting in Le Nektar and drawing pictures of the visitors. I have a dream of opening an art studio and selling my charcoal drawings.”

  As we crossed the street, Brent’s hand splayed over my lower back to guide me toward the sidewalk. I jumped onto the curb, dodging a puddle of gray slush. He sloshed right through it, kicking water without a care for the mess he was creating.

  I buried my cooled hands into my threadbare pockets as I thought about Le Nektar and its best barista, Eve.

  Hell would have me by the throat if I had to come up with a plan to keep her from coming to the tattoo shop, where she might feel compelled to request my Deathmark. Surely I wasn’t the only Scrivener in history faced with such a dilemma. Unlike Reapers, this job made it difficult not to connect with humans. Scriveners spent hours inscribing death into people’s skin, and that inevitably led to conversation.

  Sometimes we grew fond of our doomed clients. And then we grew a conscience and, well, we don’t want to tattoo them any longer. That was what I had been toying with since Eve mentioned the birthday wish she’d told her mother, but listening to me rationalizing my thoughts wasn’t the kind of conversation Brent the Kentuckian Grim Reaper sought, was it?

  To change the subject, I mentioned the first thought that came to mind that didn’t have to do with Eve. “I’m intrigued. Do you really have a dolphin tattooed on your butt?”

  He looked off to the left, seeming to ponder a question that had a simple yes or no answer, and then set his blue eyes back to me. “I don’t have a porpoise on my ass.”

  “That’s probably for the best.”

  “I’d let you put one there if it strikes your fancy.” He winked.

  Brent did have a very nice backside, the kind asking for a slap and a bite. I supposed a dolphin was benevolent enough. Although tattooing another Stygian—no matter the reason—was a Level Ten Offense, punishable by death and eternity in Erebus. No buttock—not even one as round and fine as Brent’s—was worth the offense.

  “After we grab a round of coffee, it’s probably best if we go our separate ways,” I said, as I forced my mind away from his backside and what it would look like with a dolphin there. Or my bite marks.

  Disappointment washed over his face, an emotion I recognized in many faces these days. “We didn’t get off on the right foot. After your shift today, why don’t we start over with a beer and honest conversation?”

  My initial instinct was to scream “no” and take off running in the opposite direction. But why was I so afraid to get to know this Reaper, who had seen my hands grow hot and didn’t seem freaked out about it in the slightest? What was wrong with letting my guard down for one day? After all, maybe spending some time with this sexy out-of-towner would be enough to eradicate the incident with Moose from my memory.

  So, I went with my second, less guarded instinct and said, “Beer and conversation sounds harmless.”

  Chapter Three

  “We are border patrol officers, not wayward gods, but humble servants to our human masters.”

  —HermesHarbinger.com, Rebel Blog

  When I turned the corner onto Rue Charlevoix, I quickly back stepped and sought refuge inside the doorway of a used bookstore I had grown to love during my years in Québec City. Outside of the tattoo shop was an ambulance, its backdoors wide open as two paramedics loaded a gurney covered in Moose’s dead body into the vehicle. The ambulance was not what sent me into alarm. The white, window-less minivan did.

  Watchmen drove those minivans.

  Clutching a drink in each hand, I was reminded of Brent’s audacity with the Watchmen outside of Le Nektar, and his kindness in tempering my heat and buying me two cups of coffee—one for me and one for Gerard. After reluctantly agreeing, before parting ways, to meet him after work, I hustled back to the tattoo shop. Only now did I wish that I had encouraged him to join me on the return trip for one reason—Brent had a way with handling Watchmen.

  As I sank into the protection of the doorway, I reminded myself that showing fear would give the Watchmen a reason to think I had done something wrong. Truth was, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I simply let my abilities get the best of me. But with Master Scriveners on Marin’s list of troublemakers, showing signs of anything out of the ordinary—even though I wasn’t a Master—was problematic.

  Breathe, I thought to myself, honoring Gerard and Mama’s advice. Breathing with intention tempered my heat. It always had, but I seemed to forget this whenever fear or anger gripped me.

  “Face your fear, Ollie, and keep breathing,” I quietly rallied. Of course, that voiced confidence did little to force me from the safety of the doorway. It took another ten minutes before I inched my way out and around the corner to peek at the red and black awning of Salon de Tatuoage. This time the ambulance was gone. The white van was not.

  “Brought you coffee,” I said to Gerard who sat behind his drawing table staring at me when I came in, with his eyes full of concern. He was trying to get me to notice the person standing in the back corner of the shop, but I had spotted the dark blond male when I walked in the door.

  “Bonjour,” I said as I set Gerard’s coffee down on his drawing table, addressing the stranger. “You are?”

  “I’m Chad,” the blond man said. He smiled in a way that was forced and marginally wicked. When his eyes flashed not gold but red, I was acutely aware of why Gerard remained quiet. Chad was not a Watchman, but an Eidolon Reaper. Eidolons ranked high above Watchmen and lowly Reapers and Scriveners like Gerard and me. They were Grim Reapers for Grim Reapers and Scriveners—that was their one and only job. The only two Stygians above the Eidolons were the Deliveryman of Styx’s Deathlists and Head Reaper Marin.

  There was no clever or discreet way to slink out of the shop’s door. I couldn’t announce that I suddenly felt feverish and needed to rush home. I had to stick to my dwindling confidence. What I had done to Moose had been an accident. There were no signs of anything strange or rebellious. Nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Gerard didn’t tell me we would have a guest, so I didn’t bring you coffee,” I said to Chad, trying to kill with kindness. “I can run back out if you like.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Ollie. You have a client,” Gerard said and gestured with his eyes to the corner behind me.

  Frustration hardened into dread when I turned to face my newest customer. And when I laid eyes on her for the second time that day, my heart swelled and pounded inside my ribcage.

  “Hey, sweetie.” Eve waved. “Did you get lost on the way to the shop?”

  “I, um, spilled my coffee and grabbed another. Eve, why are you here?” My voice broke.

  “I didn’t get a chance to tell you before you left with the sexy foreigner that I would come by today for a tattoo. I’d love to have it done and healed before the party this weekend so Mom sees it in all its glory. She will love it. Her first birthday gift to me in years.” Eve’s face, with its charming innocence, would have made me smile on any other day.

  I was profoundly aware of Chad the Eidolon just feet away. He had the power to take Gerard
and me out with minimal effort. Eidolons had that kind of sway, something they earned after decades of moving from the ranks of average Grim Reapers to third in command after Marin. Chad was here for one reason only—to observe and to catch me in the act of breaking the rules.

  Gerard peered over the rims of his glasses. His eyes were full of urgency. He wanted to talk, to tell me something dire, but wouldn’t with the Eidolon hovering nearby.

  “So you finally decided to get tattooed, Eve?” I tried to speak evenly as the tension grew and grew. Eve was unaware of what was happening between three of Death’s employees. For her own good—and mine—I needed to remain oblivious.

  “Figured now is no better time.” Eve’s face glowed with anticipation. Her attention swept to Chad who lingered in the corner, watching, waiting. Warmly, she grinned at him. He returned the expression with eerie precision, much like a serial killer to his victim.

  I passed my tongue across my dry lips and glanced at Chad. He had the same look I had seen from tortured Stygians who had avoided Erebus by going to prison. They wore a tormented but cruel expression, itching to impart their suffering on others. What left my skin in goosebumps was Gerard’s obvious apprehension. Something happened between them while I was away. And it was ugly.

  “What about Victorian rosemaling for a tattoo?” I asked my client, knowing full well that I could not do such a thing. “I’ve been wanting to do a piece like that. It’d look beautiful on your arm.”

  “Oh, that sounds nice.” Eve’s cheeks squished her green eyes with a grin. “But I want a Day of the Dead skull on my bicep. Mom’s favorite. And since you’re known for your skulls…”

  My world started spinning off its axis.

  Whenever a skull crossed my path—around Halloween or embroidered on a woman’s purse or on a man’s T-shirt—I pushed the images into the recesses of my brain, where I hoped they’d fade away forever. Eve’s comment jogged my memory of her pristinely accomplished Day of the Dead makeup this past October, which I would gladly forget all over again.

  And another thing—I never talked about my work, about skulls in particular.