Page 29 of Death Wish

Now it was my turn to smile. “Maybe.”

He laughed, and that adorable dimple appeared again.

Who knew what would happen after things settled down and Azrael came back. He may want me to carry out my assignment and cross Cole over. Actually, the more I thought about it, the more that was very possible. Especially if he found out he could see me and we had made contact. With the censor gone, he already knew too much about the spirit world and what my job was. Azrael wouldn’t like that at all.

As for right now, I needed Cole to save Kay, so I couldn’t off him yet. He was the only contact I had to the living world and its information—besides Kay, and she was a little indisposed right now. He knew people who knew things. He had been tracking down the demon who had possessed Laurence. He had the tools I didn’t. For now, I had to work with him. What came after was a mystery.

“So…” he began, flicking off his windshield wipers. We had come out on the other side of the storm. “What’s it like to be a reaper? What does that entail exactly?”

I should have expected him to ask that type of question one way or another, but still, it hit me strange. After a year of working mostly in secret and with the censor blocking me from sharing anything with Kay, it felt weird to have someone know what I really was. Let alone discussing it openly. Like it was as normal as being a cashier or elementary school teacher.

I killed people for a living.

But then again, so did he.

I still wasn’t sure how much information I should reveal to him, if any at all. The fact that he knew I was a reaper and was sent to kill him was dangerous enough. Like Simon had said, he could decide to track us down someday.

I was careful with the words I chose. “I suppose it’s like yours, but without all the fancy guns and bullets. Oh, and the money.”

“You just get a deadly touch and light beams shooting from your fingertips?”

“I already told you, I have no idea how or why that happened. It’s a first for me.”

“Maybe it’s a power from your life before?” he pressed. “Were you a supernatural before you died?”

Okay, that hit a nerve. Of course he wouldn’t know that the erasing of my memory after death was a sore topic for me, but damn if it didn’t make annoyance flare. I drew in a deep breath. “I don’t know honestly. Any memories of my life before death were erased. It’s part of the gig.”

“Oh.” He made a face, as if realizing he’d made a mistake in asking. Were my facial expressions that obvious? Probably. I had a hard time keeping my feelings off my face.

“Besides,” I said, “I don’t know of any supernaturals that can do that.”

“The only thing I could think of that would be close is a witch. Some kind of light spell?”

Interesting thought. But no other powers had shown themselves during my year dead, and I had never heard of light spells repelling demons like it had with Xaver.

Instead of answering him, I switched the conversation onto him. “What about you? A half-demon using guns? What about that fire manipulation? Seems pretty cool.”

His hands gripped the wheel so tight, the leather squeaked and his knuckles popped.

It seemed someone didn’t like talking about who he was, either.

He was quiet for a while, even slowed the Jeep down to twenty miles per hour over the speed limit instead of forty. Then he muttered, “The fire stuff isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Believe me.”

At the last minute, he swerved onto an exit ramp and slammed on the brakes to take the curve slower. The Jeep reared up on two wheels for a breath-taking second before readjusting, the tires screeching loudly. Cole didn’t even blink.

“You said you knew the basics about demons, but I’m guessing you don’t know that the fire power we’re cursed with is corrupting. Meaning, every time it’s used, the more of the demon takes over the human half. It’s why I trained with weapons.”

“Shit. Really?”

He nodded. “Most half-bloods lose themselves to the demon side pretty early on. Then they’re recruited back to Hell. I’ve been able to dodge that by barely using that part of me. I’d rather not have it at all.”

That’s when I remembered what Andre had said back at Red about Cole being on a useless mission to get rid of part of him. “That’s why you were tracking down Xaver tonight? To ask him to expel the demon in you?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. “It’s not as easy as ‘asking’ for a cure. I’ve been hunting for a way to get rid of my demon half for years.”

“No luck, I’m assuming?”

His entire body stiffened as we pulled onto a two-lane main road and he was forced to slow down even more. Wherever we were, the area reflected more of a small southern town with a one-pump gas station and an auto repair garage on one side and a Waffle House that needed some major repairs to its roof and parking lot on the other. Every hanging stop light blinked yellow, as if the rules of the road were really up to the drivers instead of the law, and every car on the road was a different color pickup truck.

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