Page 14 of SIN Bone Deep

“Hey!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “Hey!”

I saw him start, and then he ran, heading towards the stairs down the cliff.

There was no way that giving chase would help, there was too much distance between us. I pedalled up to the house, leaving my bike leaning against a rear wall, before bursting into the kitchen, startling Aunt Fennel who was doing a tarot reading at the kitchen table for the butcher’s wife, Mia Johnson.

“Elenyx, really! Some decorum please.” Callista scolded as she stepped out of the pantry holding a jar of her miracle face cream. “What is the meaning of bursting in like this? Here you are Mia, dear. Apply sparingly by the moonlight right before bed, and you will look five years younger by morning.”

“A man,” I panted. “There was a man in the pines by the graveyard with binoculars pointed at the house!”

“Fucking Robert,” Mia said to Fennel. “I told you that he was being stupid about me coming here to have my cards read.”

“Did you fall off your bike?” Callista had noticed my bleeding knee.

“Oh, poor dear,” Mia tut-tutted. “Seeing Robert must have given you a fright.”

“Ah, yeah,” I looked down. The wound had been exacerbated by the effort of pedalling up the hill and blood oozed in a line down my shin. “Something like that.”

“Well, off to the shower for you, Nyx,” Callista wanted me to leave Fennel to her reading. “And put a bandage on that knee.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I edged around the table and into the hallway before taking the back stairs.

In my bedroom, I flicked through my book, past invocations, to the one page of information on grim reapers, tracing the outline of the sketch of a hooded figure. There really wasn’t much in the book about them, other than their roles as pyschopomps, guiding the dead into the afterlife. The scythe, of course, was merely symbolic of the harvest of life.

“The grim reapers, like Death him or herself, are impartial. They are neither good nor evil. They serve as guides for spirits, escorting them from life to the afterlife.

Those spirits who have done evil presumably then are claimed by Hell, whilst those that have done good, presumably go to Heaven. Although there is evidence that some of both are reborn which throws that theory into some debate.

We who are living cannot know the ways of the afterlife and cannot question how this division is made, however.

Grim reapers, who walk the veil between life and death, have never been known to interact with the living.

Their sightings have only been made by those balanced on the edge of life and death and miraculously survive the experience, or those who are extraordinarily sensitive and have witnessed a death.”

That would be me, I thought as I closed the book and went in search of a change of clothing.

Grim reapers were not like a werewolf or a vampire, who were humans infected or cursed by magic. Nor was a grim reaper like the Fae or Mer, who were born as they were, but rarely interacted with humanity. And they were not like someone of demon or fairy-kind, who regularly did interact with humanity, not always to humanity’s benefit. I was not exactly sure how a grim reaper came to be or what they did other than escorting the dead to the afterlife.

Perhaps he was a demon, I debated with myself as I showered and applied the medicinal herbal salves and bandages that the aunts kept in the bathroom cupboard to my elbow and knee.

A demon would be simpler.

Demons could be good or could be bad news, depending on their nature. Many minor demons would accept the role of witch-familiar and would grant the witch they served (or who served them, depending on who was telling the story) accentuated power, as well as advice, and company. What they received in return varied – it was said that for some it gave status, for others fulfilled some requirement of their master, the Devil. And that depended on the witch herself, and her destiny and role to play amongst humanity.

Callista and Fennel had never summoned a demon, but they were oddities in the Vossen family. Most of my ancestors had a familiar without whom they were never seen. In one of the family Grimoires, it was speculated that perhaps not every child born to a Vossen was conceived with a mortal man and that there had been ancestors who had been lovers with their demon. One ancestor even went so far as to suggest that the witch’s sexual relationship with their demon-familiar might be what strengthened the power in the family line.

When I had asked Callista her reason for not summoning a demon she had told me that if she had wished to be tied to a man for life, she would have married one. I had never dared to ask Fennel. I think I had always suspected that her reasons related to the scars that she wore, and that asking would be traumatic for her.

Grim reaper, corporeal ghost, or demon? An unusual selection of options for a lover if one was anything other than a witch.

Did it matter what Ender was? I asked myself as I did my hair and makeup in the mirror. If he were a ghost, or a grim reaper, or a demon, would whatever existed between us change? No. There I was, after all, instead of preparing for bed, applying a full face of makeup in the hope that if I went into the garden after dusk, he would be there, as he had been the night before…

I went down to the kitchen, to find that Mia Johnson had left with several jars of potions and creams that my aunts had cunningly exchanged for the notes that kept us afloat.

Nova frowned at me. “Why are you wearing makeup?”

The aunts both paused in setting the table and I felt my cheeks heat. I grabbed a plate and a glass and sat at the table. “No reason.”

“The act of dressing for dinner is one very under-esteemed,” Fennel said smoothly. “Perhaps something we should all adopt in the future, hmm, Callista?”

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