by Cara Wylde
“You don’t like my new look?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You’re wearing red and blue. What are those? Strawberry earrings?”
She blew out her cheeks. “I’m so tired of wearing black black black. And that awful cloak! I don’t even feel like a woman anymore.”
“Five years, Mila. You’ve only been reaping for five years. You have one hundred and ninety-five more years to go.”
“I get bored easily, I guess.” She smiled, but I could tell she was just making meaningless chit-chat.
“You don’t. You worked hard to become a Grim Reaper. No one gets bored of their dream.”
“Fair. But I swear to you, sometimes…” She shook her head. “Sometimes I wish I were like you. Human, normal, young… a whole life ahead of me.”
“I’m not normal. And I’ll get old, you’ll be twenty forever.”
I would have expected her to have a snarky comeback, but she was silent. She sipped her black coffee, and I sipped my elderberry tea.
“I got something for you,” she finally said, reaching into her bag.
I smiled. “Of course you do.” She always got me the weirdest gifts. Last year, she’d gotten me an intricately woven carpet made by the goblins of Goblin Mountain. Since the goblins rarely parted with the beautiful things they created threading gold and precious stones, I understood how special it was. Still, it didn’t mean I could do shit with it.
She pulled out a jar that contained some sort of herb.
“Tea?” I asked, rather disappointed. I didn’t want to seem greedy, but I was hoping for something from the Carnelian City. A bracelet or a brooch, maybe. Tea was fine, of course.
“Something like that.” She placed the jar between us. “Actually, this was supposed to be your eighteenth birthday present, but I changed my mind and thought you deserved to have two years to decide.”
“Decide what?”
“If you want to take it or not.”
“I don’t follow.”
She leaned forward and held my gaze with intensity. “I’m going to tell you a story, Yoli. You ready for it? Because it might just change your life. If you want to, that is.”
I sighed. When it came to Mila, things were always intense, or mysterious, or life changing. If not all at once. I’d gotten used to it a long time ago.
“Tell me.”
“It’s the story of a woman who happens to be the most skilled dream jumper I know. It took her years to map out all the inter-connected universes, and when she was done with that, she needed a new challenge. So, she started traveling farther and farther. Farther in time, farther in space, and farther where neither exists. She found a world very different from ours, a world without life or death. Simple existence. And in this world where simple existence reigns supreme, she found a flower that grows in the marshes, and identified it as the flower Gilgamesh himself has once used to extend his life.” She pushed the jar toward me. “She plucked it, and gave it to me. As you well know, I have no need for it. But you might.”
I glanced at the jar, then back at her. I didn’t know how to react. My cousin was telling me she’d brought me a life-extending herb, and I was oddly mute and unresponsive. I shrugged instead.
“I’m talking about my mother, Yoli!”
“That I’ve gathered…”
“And about the world of the Great Old Ones. It’s the only one I know where things aren’t born, and they don’t die either. Katia says if you make tea out of it, it will add one hundred years to your life and keep you as young as the day you first took it. Personally, I think it’s neat. But it doesn’t matter what I think, because this is about you. She told me to give it to you when you turn eighteen.”
“Why?”
“So you don’t die, stupid.” She chuckled. “So you can be just like me. Part of my world. Our world. So, in exactly one hundred and ninety-two years you can apply to Grim Reaper Academy.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. The jar was between us, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it, let alone open it and smell the strange herb.
“You’re early. I’m only sixteen.”
“Yeah. Honestly, I couldn’t hold onto it any longer. Secrets like this have a tendency to eat at me, you know? It’s better that I give it to you now. You have plenty of time to decide if you want to drink the elixir of life at eighteen, at twenty, or thirty. Your choice. Whenever you think you look the hottest.” She grinned.
“And if I don’t drink it at all, I’ll have a normal life, I’ll grow old, and die.”
“I’d much prefer the other option, but then again… I repeat: your choice.”
I nodded.
“Katia can get you more.”
“A human who can live forever… What a paradox that would be.” I looked up at her. “Mila, I don’t know if I want to be a Grim Reaper. And even if I wanted to, nothing guarantees I will get an invitation to apply.”
“Are you kidding me? Of course you will! You’re a damn hero! You retired Morningstar. It’s like the job is already yours. You just have to live long enough, get your diploma, then… I don’t know… retire me.”
I smiled. “I don’t think I’d be a Violent Reaper. I’m not like you.”
She laughed. “What? You’re not messed up and insane? True, true…”
“Thank you, anyway. I’ll think about it.”
“Good. That’s all you have to do.”
I dragged in a breath and grabbed the jar. The glass felt cold and smooth in my hand, but there was nothing weird about it. It didn’t buzz, didn’t vibrate, didn’t glow. Of course not, silly. It’s not a magic jar, or anything. The plant inside it, though… A cup of tea and one hundred more years to live. It sounded easy enough. And convenient. Why not? Who wouldn’t want to live forever? And especially if they got to keep their humanity and dream jumping abilities. It was the best of both worlds.
I stuffed the jar in my backpack and looked back at Mila. “This is it? This is your present? An ugly jar with some weed in it?”
She laughed, and I laughed with her. “I’m pretty sure you can smoke it, too.”
“Let’s go do something.”
“Yes! But I need one normal day. Just one,” she pleaded. “Let’s go watch a rom-com at that rundown cinema down the street, and eat dinner at Lena’s.”
“Eww! I work there. You don’t want to know what these two eyes see every day.”
“Trust me, I know. I worked there before you. It was even dirtier then.”
“I know you want junk food, but please choose another place.”
“Aww… you’re no fun.”
“I’m not a revenant like you, Mila. Can’t eat worms and shit, and live to tell the tale.”
“Take that back! Revenants don’t eat worms.”
We paid, Mila left a tip that was just ridiculous, then we stepped out into the warm spring sun. The beginning of May could make even this small town called Hazard look pretty and friendly. It was neither, but I’d gotten used to it over the years, and it wasn’t that bad. Mila had hated it. She still did. But her life was very different from mine. Compared to her, I felt privileged. And I was. She’d gone through the worst, so I could have the best. She took my hand, and we walked down the street, caring very little about the looks we got from some people.
“You know what I’ll choose,” I said, figuring it was dumb to pretend like I hadn’t already made up my mind, like I wasn’t going to make the same choice as, literally, any human being given the opportunity to become close to immortal.
“I do.”
“I’m doomed, aren’t I?”
Mila chuckled. “To a life of greatness? Yeah.”
“You don’t look like you’re living a life of greatness.”
“I won’t lie to you. Being a Grim Reaper, and especially a Violent one, is tough. But it’s worth it. I mean, what else are you going to do, huh?”
I shrugged. “I could go to college, get a degr
ee in… I don’t know… Chemistry. Get married, have children. Take care of Mom and Dad when they’re old.”
“Or, you could go to college, get a degree in something that’s actually cool, like Criminology, take care of Mom and Dad when they’re old, make a career as a Grim Reaper, then get married and have children. I mean, you could do all that and more. Be greedy.”
I smiled. “That’s you, not me.”
“What?”
“Criminology and being greedy.”
“Fine. Study Chemistry and be nice, and humble, and inconsequential for a while. Get it out of your system. You’ll get bored, I promise. But you have one hundred and ninety-two years to play normal, and then the Academy will be waiting for you.”
“It sounds like a good deal.”
We stopped in front of the old cinema. “You’re getting all the good deals around here,” Mila said. “This movie sucks.”
“We can teleport to literally anywhere in the world.”
“No. Normal day, normal cinema, normal movie. I don’t care if it sucks.”
“It sounds like you do,” I laughed.
She looked at me and made a funny face. “Your birthday sucks. And this is my I-don’t-care face. We’re going in.”
I rolled my eyes. And that was how my dear cousin and I saw the worst rom-com in the history of cheap cinema. But that was okay. I couldn’t say my birthday sucked when I’d just gotten the frickin’ elixir of life as a present.
THE END
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In 2020, stay tuned for…
Grim Reaper Academy – Legacies!
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The Hanged Maiden
Amazon US | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon CA
This was never supposed to happen.
When Valentina’s coven is attacked and she’s the only survivor, she saves the Suit of Spades, which she is sworn to protect, and flees. Thank the Goddess there’s a solid protocol in place! All she needs to do is find the Major Arcana, and Keepers who are more powerful and experienced than her will take over from there and protect the Mysteries of the Tarot.
Or not.
What happens when half of the Major Arcana is destroyed? Valentina doesn’t know. There are no protocols. No precedent. She’s lost, but the good news is she’s not alone. She can count of her best friend, Piper, a hobgoblin who decided to follow them, and now on this handsome, hot as sin guy who claims he’s Loki himself, the God of Mischief.
It could have been worse.
Oh, wait! It’s going to be. Because in order to save the Tarot, Valentina will soon have to deal with even more gods. And, it is known, gods are impossible to work with! Mainly, because they hate each other. One witch to convince nine powerful gods to play nice?
Unlikely.
FREE Prequel Novella HERE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cara Wylde loves to write about strong, feisty women and their hot Alphas who will do anything to make them happy. Her books are filled with romance and just a dash of mystery, suspense, and that eerie atmosphere she fell in love with reading too many gothic novels. With a master's degree in Comparative Literature, she can't help but play with tropes and themes from various genres, trying to come up with fresh perspectives on the paranormal characters her readers love so much. Vampires, shapeshifters, demons, witches... Cara will always make sure they get their own twists.
When she's not writing, Cara is reading, planning her next story, or daydreaming. Oh! And also studying and reading Tarot. If you’re interested, you can visit her Tarot Website.
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