Silver Reaper

Chapter 1 A shiver swept over my body as I stared at the reflection of a person a short distance away from me, a grinning skull where their head should be. Whoever they were, they were about to die. I turned around to see who the death portent belonged to, matching the green singlet and khaki shorts to a young man barely out of his teens. Fit, healthy, he gave no indication of his impending demise. Instead, he joked with two friends while they checked out a poster for a new Xbox game in the window in front of me. I’d been reading about the game myself, wondering if I should order a copy for my younger brother’s upcoming birthday. The game was due for release in a week’s time, but the young man standing next to me would not live long enough to play it. He had less than twenty-four hours to live. Unless I could somehow stop him from dying. He looked over at me, a wide smile on his face as his gaze skimmed my body before settling on my eyes. ‘Hey, gorgeous, how you doing?’ ‘Busy,’ I said, tempering my rejection with a smile before I fished my mobile phone out of my handbag and moved away. I pretended to check something on my phone while surreptitiously watching as he and his friends entered the electronics shop. I had no idea what form his death would take, so I didn’t know what I could do to save him. He didn’t appear to be sick, unlike the elderly woman whose soul I had reaped the week before. She’d been in the palliative care unit in the same hospital as a client I had been called for. When I first entered the room, she had not been marked with the death portent. It appeared just before I left, in her reflection in the gleaming stainless steel machine she was hooked up to. I’d been called back to reap her soul exactly twenty-four hours later. The young man’s death could either be the result of an accident or foul play, but I had no idea which. I would have to stick close, hoping when the time came I would be able to do something to prevent his dying. But how was I going to do that without being arrested as a stalker? I cringed at the idea of using his earlier attempt to flirt with me. Even though I was sure Sam would understand why I was doing it, pretending I was interested in another man would still feel like a betrayal. We had been through so much, overcome more obstacles to our happily ever after in the first two weeks of our relationship than most couples do in a lifetime. But we’d made it. Six months on from the battle at Killian’s compound, with the threat posed by Almorthanos and the Tr’lirians who sided with him vanquished once and for all, we were happier than ever. He’d accepted my role as reaper to the people of Easton and I had grown accustomed to reaping the souls of all those who died. The worst part of being a reaper was when I knew someone was about to die and could do nothing to prevent it. I couldn’t do anything for the elderly woman who’d passed away in her sleep after a protracted illness, or the little boy who had been born with a rare and deadly disease. But at least those reaps had been peaceful transitions to rebirth. There had been nothing peaceful about the reaping of a woman I followed home from the supermarket, after witnessing the death portent in a freezer door as she made her selections. I had been helpless to do anything other than watch as a truck ran a red light and smashed into the side of her small sedan. I could not sit back and watch another person die right in front of me. I had to save him. But how? The forgotten phone in my hand rang and I jumped, fumbling to answer it, relief flooding me as I saw who the caller was. ‘Sam, I need your help.’ In a rush of words, I explained the situation to him. ‘I need you to arrest him. If he is locked up for the next twenty-four hours no one could hurt him.’ ‘Tyler, I can’t arrest a guy just because you tell me he is going to die. It doesn’t work like that.’ ‘We’ll make it work. I’ll say he attacked me or something.’ ‘Sweetheart, you can’t do that to the poor guy.’ His voice was calm, reasonable. I was feeling anything but reasonable. ‘That poor guy is going to die if we don’t save him.’ ‘I know. I know. But accusing him of assault isn’t going to help anyone.’ I shook my head, gripping the phone tightly. ‘What’s the point of being able to see the death portent if I can’t do anything about it?’ ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sit tight, and do not approach him. I don’t want your name turning up in a police report.’ I hung up the phone, nibbling at my bottom lip as I waited for Sam to arrive, hoping the young man and his friends would stay inside the store until he did. I caught glimpses of them as they roamed the aisles, breath catching in my throat when not five minutes later they approached the door. I had to stop them leaving. I stepped forward, planning on faking a faint at the feet of the guy who was going to die. Before I could act, a pained expression crossed his face. He groaned, hands going to his head. A second later his body dropped to the shopping centre’s tiled floor. My eyes stung from unshed tears as the hollow below my throat went cold, and the call to reap his soul hit. His friends kneeled over his body, shaking him, alarm in their voices as they desperately sought a response that would never come. He was dead, life extinguished in the blink of an eye. All that was left was for me to release his soul and send it on its journey towards rebirth. I took a deep, shuddering breath and quickly scanned the people who had stopped to see what was going on, relieved when I found only adults. Young children could often see into the astral plane and I tried to avoid reaping a soul in front of them. Death was hard enough for them to deal with at any time, let alone witnessing something no one else could. I forced my feet to move and soon kneeled at my client’s side. I tried to make it look as though I was checking for a pulse as I called his soul. It shimmered in the air in front of me, a thin glimmer of light connecting it to his body. Beautiful, vibrant, so full of potential; it eased some of my heartache at not being able to save him. I touched his soul with a fingertip to release it before I rose and shuffled backwards. A Good Samaritan quickly took my place and began a futile attempt at CPR. I surveyed the growing crowd of onlookers, and when my eyes met Sam’s I gave a wobbly smile. He reached out and took my hand in his, pulling me through the circle of people. We didn’t speak as we walked away. What was there to say? A young man had just lost his life and there had been nothing I could do to prevent it. That would not stop me trying to save any others for whom the death portent appeared.