Page 56 of Finders Reapers

Jamal shifted closer, his arm reaching towards me. My body succumbed to a war between running and leaning in into his warmth and his embrace.

Was he going to kiss me?

I closed my eyes tight.

My lips tingled.

The kiss never came.

My eyes fluttered open.

He’s been reaching for his damn towel. It was behind my head.

My nipples obviously hadn’t gotten the memo. I ducked down in the jacuzzi until only my head was visible. Jamal eyed me as if he couldn’t decide if I had lost my mind or not. I gave him a smile that might have been an inch too wide to be believable, but he didn’t say anything.

He got out of the hot tub, fishing his phone out of the rolls of his towel. He clicked through, and the second he opened one of the apps, the device began to vibrate like a magic wand.

Jamal rocked back on his heels and let out a groan. He cursed under his breath.

“More exes?” I arched a brow.

“Accident on the I-515.” He said, not looking down at his phone. “Multiple deaths. We’ve got to get dressed and go.”

I pushed myself out of the pool and wrapped my towel around my shoulder. “Do these alerts come before or after the deaths?”

Jamal sent his phone to sleep. “Before.”

“Do you ever think that you could find a way to stop it?” I said. “The deaths that don’t need to happen.”

“The universe doesn’t let us.” He replied. “I saw you try at Asylum. If your action prevents death, the universe won’t let you.”

“How does the universeknow?” I wondered.

“Have you ever heard of God?” Jamal replied, flashing me a grin.

I blinked before pushing a lock of red hair behind my ears. “I assumed that there was a god. Especially since you mentioned there are fricken angels.”

Jamal stifled a laugh. “Don’t question the universe.” He warned. “Apparently, she’s a bitch.”

We gathered our things and headed towards the main hotel, but Jamal didn’t follow.

“Aren’t we going back to the room?” I flung a hand over my shoulder in the direction of the Bellagio.

Jamal shook his head. “No time. We’ve got to find a doorway. Souls that linger for too long tend to cause mischief.”

“How?” I frowned. “They can’t touch anything.”

Jamal didn’t answer. Instead, he gestured towards one of the staff doors behind the cabanas. I tightened my towel around my waist with a sigh and resigned myself to going on a work outing in my bikini.

I would never get used to the idea that demons were real, and demon magic was also real.

“Dva Ra Karam Boesh,” Jamal said as he placed his hand on the door handle. The words were demonic, and as I tried to commit them to memory, they dripped from my mind like water.

Jamal placed his hand on my back, his fingers long enough that his palm rested on the center of my spine, but his fingers brushed the edge of my bikini string. I bit back a shiver, as we stepped through the doorway together.

A ringing bell greeted us immediately, and we stepped into the dry and noisy air of a parking lot by the freeway. I turned back and saw the door of a diner with windows dustier than the vegetable drawer of my fridge.

Jamal seemed to know where we were going, but I caught him glancing at his phone once or twice and realized that the soul collection app had a GPS map feature. Handy, if not slightly disconcerting.