Page 158 of Veil of Death and Shadow

Thorne.

His expression, usually stiff with a mixture of anger and boredom, twitched briefly, as his stare catalogued me.

Great, I’d ditched one reaper, just to be bothered by another.

With trembling fingers, I wiped away my tears. “It’s not a waste. I’m not leaving this world until I know that my friend is safe. She’s my family.” I shot him a defiant glare. “There’s no other way I’d rather go out.”

For a long moment, he considered me, his dark stare unreadable, save for the slight tension in his mouth that looked almost like a grudging respect. He sat down beside me, careful to put as much space between us as possible.

“You don’t have to stick around, you know.” It was so painfully obvious that Thorne despised every second that he had to spend in this realm. He wasn’t drawn to it the way that Kieran seemed to be. “Kieran will be here . . . to suck out my soul or whatever. You don’t have to monitor him.”

“It’s not souls that we’re after,” he said. His voice was quiet, but still somehow seemed lethal. “I don’t even know if such a thing exists. We collect shadow magic. Before The Undoing, that meant we only pulled from the supernatural. Now, we’re also tasked with the shards of it that have lodged themselves in humans, too.” He was silent, so preternaturally still that there could be no mistaking him for a human. “Unfortunately, I can’t leave until Kieran returns. And Kieran can’t leave until you are dead. That means I’m stuck here, until either you die of natural causes, or he kills you. Seeing how you seem to skirt death at an impossible rate, and his general stubbornness, I suspect you’ll be stuck with me for a while.”

“Why don’t you just do it?” I asked, though it was probably a bad idea to lodge the option in his brain. “Kill me, I mean. If you want me dead so badly, if you want Kieran back to his regular programming, why haven’t you just handled it yourself?”

“I would,” he shot me a look out of the corner of his eyes, “but I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Reapers are sent to siphon shadow magic from one charge at a time. Usually, we aren’t called to them until just moments before they die. On the rare occasion when they’re still alive,” he turned to me, his stare making the skin on my cheek prickle with awareness, “the reaper on the other side of that tether can simply reach in,” he shifted his ringed hand between us, but stopped just before his fingers could touch me, “and take their life.”

“But you’re a reaper, too.”

“I am, yes,” something passed over his expression, “but if a reaper steals the life of someone they aren’t tethered to, something is stolen from them in return. The fates like balance.”

I narrowed my eyes. “What will they take?”

“The memories that it’s taken me years of my death to collect, and all of the power that I have stored.” Something flared in his eyes when they locked onto mine. Emotions that I couldn’t pass, but that I hadn’t seen in their depths until now. “We don’t all waste our strength on a night of frivolity in the mortal world.”

“So, if you killed me, you’d forget who you were?” I nudged my head towards the house, where I knew Kieran was probably brooding. “But if he kills me, he goes on as normal—onto the next charge?”

“More or less.”

“Why?”

“Because taking a life that we aren’t asked to signals a connection we aren’t supposed to have. It would be interpreted as feeling too strongly about something in this world: be it rage, nostalgia, or something else. Our memories are used to keep us in line.”

“Oh.”

It was the only thing I could think of saying in response.

Thorne nodded, his usual mask replacing the brief shadow of something else I’d seen in his expression. “So you see,” his lips curved into a dark smile that had the hair on the back of my neck standing on edge, “personally, I’d love to kill you and put an end to this ridiculous production. End it—and you—here and now. But you’re not worth losing everything I’ve worked for. So instead, here I am, stuck with babysitting duty until Kieran gets his shit together or you die.”

“Does he do this often?” I asked, fighting the urge to inch away from Thorne after hearing how badly he wanted my death. “Draw it out, I mean.”

“No.” Thorne let out a dark chuckle. “He’s as power hungry as the rest of us. It’s unusual, to say the least, for him to drain the measly power stores he has left after wasting them on a night in the mortal world. And unwise as hell, considering what he must return to.”

A soft breeze blew my hair between us, and Thorne clocked the movement with vague, fleeting interest.

“What do you mean,” I asked, “what you have to return to?”

“Our world is a dark one. Power reigns there, more obvious than it does here.” He shifted his gaze back to the street, and I knew, just like I knew when Kieran was skirting a topic, that he wouldn’t be adding more detail to that statement.

After a few breaths of silence, Thorne stood, as if to leave. And the possibility of him following through gave me the courage to voice what I couldn’t until now. “Will I end up there? In your world? Like one of you?”

“There are many stipulations that need to be met to become a reaper.” He stopped his retreat, staring down at me. “Only supernatural creatures end up as one of us.” His nostrils flared slightly. “You are touched by the magic, yes, but you are decidedly human. Even if you weren’t, even if you met the otherrequirements of our kind, which I don’t think you do, the newest recruits to our . . . vocation have already been culled months ago. Another cohort won’t be called for at least a year.” He shook his head, then added, “So no, you will never exist in our world, never be one of us. You are one of the lucky ones.”

When his eyes met mine, the depth of those words sank in. It was strange to think of myself as lucky, when I knew that I was about to die. But something about the way that his voice dipped when he spoke of his world made it clear that he meant it.

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