Page 8 of The Reluctant Reaper
“Yeah, I figured. Bad news about your dad, huh?”
“You have no idea.”
* * *
“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. Please.”
ChapterFive
“Amara! Over here!”
“Come to us at once!”
Sure, sure. I’ll get right on that, gents.Amara had barely crossed the Chart House’s threshold when they started hailing her. She cursed herself for being late (the garbage collectors weren’t the only vendors her new boss hadn’t paid), hung up her coat, and trudged to the table in the farthest corner, where her only friend was getting cozy with a death god for no good reason.
“Gray.” She stopped short, stared down at him. From this angle she could see the small white scar he got from being shoved off the swing. One of the times he was shoved off the swing. It was something of a miracle he’d lived long enough to meet her. “I canceled.” Which had sucked. She loved eating with Gray. She loved doing anything with Gray.
He raised his hands, palms up, in awhat-can-you-do?gesture. “Well, yeah, once I was already on my way.”
“I was delayed,” she grumped.
“Cool, cool. Anyway, I was practically in the driveway by then and remembered I could enjoy chicken parm without you. And then La Choy here?—”
“La Croix,” she and La Croix corrected.
“Yeah, yeah. The French pronunciation, right?La Croix. What’d I say?”
“Not La Croix. Is what you said.”
“He spotted me and came to me,” La Croix added, looking surprised yet smug. “It was as though he knew me of old. He saw my nature at once.”
“Mostly I saw your sport coat. Is it purple? Is it black? Depends on the light. But, yeah, also your nature.” To Amara: “It’s gonna sound nuts, but he gave off death-god vibes.”
“It’s entirely sane since he is, in point of fact, a death god.” Her inner thoughts were much less calm.Fuckfuckfuck! I’m wearing off on Gray. I’m shedding paranormal sight like skin flakes!
Tomorrow’s problem. Meanwhile, La Croix was on his feet and pulling out a chair because he was a slick son of a bitch. “Join us, please. Partake in many walleye fingers and calamari. Or perhaps you wish to sample some of your dear friend Gray’s cakes of crab.”
“That rotten bitch is entitled to zero percent of my cakes of crab,” her dear friend snapped. “Any seafood, actually.”
“This?” Amara asked. “Again?”
To La Croix: “She lived in Boston for, what? Three months? Four?”
“Eleven,” she corrected. It had been fun, until it wasn’t.
To Amara: “Comes back with the accent?—”
“I did not!”
“—terrible driving skills?—”
“That’s fair.”
“—and seafood snobbery.”
“Walleyes aren’t seafood.” She was pretty sure. She took her seat and decided not to mention how very much cheaper and fresher calamari was in Boston.
She liked the Chart House, and not just the menu. She liked the lake views and the enormous windows and the way it seemed like you were outside by the lake but weren’t, which meant you weren’t cold in winter and didn’t have to deal with mosquitos in summer.
