Page 26 of Paris and the Reaper

Mac returned to the present and his food, slurping a spoonful of still steaming soup. Paris was glad he’d leaned toward over-warm. “No, thankfully, and we had another reaper helping.”

“I wish I could’ve been there to help you.”

“Me too.” He aimed one of his soft smiles in Paris’s direction, and Paris flip-flopped again on which expression to paint. He had time to decide, the rest of the picture still coming together in his head, the rest of the world still on fire. He wanted to paint Mac when it wasn’t a necessity; when instead it was simply a matter of joy and appreciation.

They finished their soup and sandwiches in silence, jazz music playing in the background, and when Paris rose and carried the dishes to the sink, Mac joined him. “We took the physical weapons,” he said. “But the money is yours. We’ve secured it.”

“Use what you need for Nature’s cause.”

“Paris.”

He flung a soapy hand in the air, gesturing at their surroundings. “How much have you spent on paints, on clothes, on food, on taking care of me?”

“That’s not even a blip on the radar of what you’ve inherited.”

Paris gulped. He’d known his father—their family—was rich, but he’d purposely looked the other way, ignored the how and why and stayed in his privileged golden cage. No more. “I don’t want that money.”

“If you don’t claim it, someone else will, and not for good.”

“Fine,” he gritted out, fists balled under the soapy water. “Use what you need for the cause, then I’ll find more good uses for the rest. Deal?”

“Deal.” Mac bumped his shoulder and warmth rippled out from the simple contact, easing Paris back down from his momentary fuss. Unclenching his fists, he got back to washing dishes, and Mac grabbed the closest dishtowel to dry. “Dinner was delicious,” he said.

“The witches have been good to me.” Checking up on him, teaching him about auras, joining him in the meadow to pick flowers and other herbs they’d discovered among the weeds. “I wanted to do something nice for them. More than just regular bread deliveries.”

Mac gifted him another soft smile, then, once they were finished, wandered out of the kitchen area. “You stayed painting while I was gone. They’re so bright,” he said from in front of the wall of flowers bursting with color, pretty things his father would never let him have. Belittled him for painting. “You left this, though,” Mac said with a nod toward the mural of the giant from the ridge.

“I didn’t know if you had enough light or enough time to take a picture before you left.”

“I did, and we got a positive ID on him.”

Pride swelled inside Paris’s chest. He’d done something right, had turned the worst moment of his life into something good, into something he could use to help Mac and the team. He’d been told his entire life he was a fool, that he was worthless, but in this case he’d remembered enough, painted well enough to give Mac a lead. Maybe Icarus had been right when he’d told Paris not to sell himself short. “Have you found him yet?”

“Not yet, but Icarus’s sister is digging into his financials and internet history. We’re trying to pinpoint where he might set up for Samhain.”

“One of the other altars?”

“That’s the thinking, but we have to find them first.”

“Are there other thin spots like the one on the ridge?”

“More than a few,” Mac answered. “But we don’t have an insider like we did with Abigail and the last one. We’ll have to approach the rest with caution.” He gestured again at the wall. “Let’s paint over this one.”

“In the morning,” Paris replied. “You need to go to bed.”

“I do,” he conceded. “But if I have any hope of sleeping, I need to get out of my head first. Mindlessly rolling paint onto a wall should do the trick.”

“Fair enough,” Paris said with a chuckle. “You get the paint ready. I’m going to turn up the music and swap these sweats for the paint-stained ones.”

A quick trip to the bathroom, then Paris returned just as one of his favorite tunes began to fill the cabin, its cresting and breaking melodies reminding him of the waves he’d gone too many days without again.

The ocean . . .

“Wait!” he called out to Mac who was running the roller brush through the tray of white paint. Mac paused, gaze straying over his shoulder. “I want to start from a different base color,” Paris explained. He snagged his tubes of blue and indigo andadded several dollops of the former and a single dollop of the latter to the tray. He swirled them into the white, mixing the colors, but it still wasn’t quite the shade in his head. He snatched his tube of green off the nearby table, added a dollop of that too, and after several more stirs, the tray of paint finally transformed into the lovely blue-green shade he missed so much.

“The ocean,” Mac said, catching on.

“Not just the shore this time.” Grinning, Paris made a giant sweeping gesture. “I want a whole wall of ocean.”

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