Page 17 of The Reluctant Reaper
Gray yawned again, apologized again, and kept chattering while she wondered if she was losing her mind. Going home—bad enough. Exposing Gray to the dangerous chaos ever-present in her parents’ home—bad and possibly stupid.
She didn’t have to bring him. Easy enough to ditch him, in fact. But if she was going home in a long-overdue attempt to stop running from her problems—if that’s even what she was doing—abandoning Gray spit in the face of that.
Far more worrisome: Ditching him would put an unwelcome strain on their friendship.
Also, she was lonely. Even with her parents. Even when the house was full of death gods and their accompanying shenanigans. But it was impossible to be in Graham Gray’s orbit and feel alone.
“Gah, sorry,” Gray said after another yawn. “Long day and I didn’t nap on the train. Too busy marveling at the big soft bed to actually sleep in the thing. So what am I in for?”
“Sorry?”
“Besides your folks. Who else is gonna be there? I’d love all the dirt ahead of time.”
She snorted. “It’s not a class reunion.”
Gray shuddered. “Thank God. I’ll sit down with death gods before any of the shitheads I went to school with. Also, La Croix said something about calling the guide?”
“Gede. Pack of death gods. The usual gang of suspects.”
“Uh-huh. Pretend I’ve never met a death god.”
“Well, La Croix, of course. His territory’s south, but he’s fond of my mother. And if Death really is sick”—she was still having trouble swallowing that one—“he would hurry to her side. Hades and Persephone, too.”
“Wait. Greek mythology Hades and Persephone? Demeter’s daughter? The reason we have winter? That Persephone?”
“Yes, but the myths don’t get everything right. Sometimes they don’t getanythingright. She adores her husband, and her mom was always overprotective. Demeter made the classic mistake; she made the Lord of the Underworld forbidden fruit.”
“‘I forbid you to see him again, young lady.’ Like that?”
“Exactly like that. Oh! And my favorite. If I had favorites. Which I don’t, but I can’t wait for you to meet my old teacher, Scáthach. And you’ll like Chernobog, but you probably won’t meet him right away; he’s always late and he comes at night.”
“And they’re your dad’s friends?”
“Colleagues. My father doesn’t have friends.”
“Oh. Yeah, I guess that would be weird. Is that why you don’t want the job?”
“Don’t! Please, it can’t be. It can’t be my time yet! It’s a mistake, please. Please, I’ll do anything. Take my mother. Take... anyone. Just not me.”
“That’s one reason,” she replied carefully.
“Because, Amara, we’d still be friends if you—God forbid—had to take over for your dad.”
And then they were over the small bridge that marked the start of her family’s territory, thank Christ, and it was a relief to climb out of the car and suck in the cold air.
That’s how you knew you were back in NoDak; you inhaled and your esophagus hardened instantly.
Amara was seeing the farm with fresh eyes thanks to Graham Gray: Unabashed Tourist, which needed to be a podcast. And she had to admit the three thousand acres were splendid, even this time of year: all fallow fields and leafless trees, the monotony of white and gray broken by acres of evergreens. The grounds were vast, the driveway snaked for three miles, and the two-story, ten-thousand-square-foot house?—
“House? That is not a house, Amara. That is a stadium with bedrooms!”
—was on a private lake, and somehow designed so that every window had a water view. Even the basement! (Amara chalked it up to dark magic or genius architecture.)
If you stepped out the back door, you had your choice of four docks and half a dozen canoes and kayaks. The barn and outbuildings were on the other side of the driveway.
“Holy shit, this is a compound!”
“A hub and a homestead,” she agreed. “My folks entertain. And they get a lot of pop-ins. Sometimes by the dozen. So.”
