Page 23 of Forgotten (The Soulbound #1)

The first lesson of the night? Cleaning up a murder that doesn’t involve draining a body of blood is surprisingly low-effort—but it comes with significantly higher risks.

The second lesson? Talon has the worst timing in the entire goddamn universe.

“You were trying to trick us,” he accuses, opening the car door and jerking his chin toward the interior.

We’re not even in the safe zone yet—still parked a few streets away from the wraith’s old house, a body wrapped in multiple plastic bags slung over Cassian’s shoulder like an oversized duffel. And Talon wants to have this conversation now ?

“Get in,” Cassian barks, striding past me with his cargo, the plastic crinkling as he moves.

I exhale slowly through my nose, summoning every ounce of self-control not to let my irritation combust into a full-blown aneurysm. We’ve been walking like this for far too long—completely exposed, like a parade of absolute morons. If some nosy bastard so much as peeks out their window at the wrong moment, the guys are fucked. Not just a little fucked—deeply, irreparably, call-your-lawyer-and-start-praying fucked.

Because, of course, they didn’t just commit a crime. No, they practically gift-wrapped it, left a thank-you note, and signed it with their full legal names right in front of the Candy Maker’s—aka, the neighborhood wraith’s—shop. And now? Now they’re casually strolling around with her corpse slung over their backs on her street.

What’s next? Dialing up the cops for a group confession? I don’t want to be a part of that.

And yet, I’m the one being interrogated. Like I did the worst thing ever.

“Are we seriously doing this in the middle of the street?” I gesture at the dimly lit road around us. “Or are you just itching to get arrested for everything you’ve done? Because if so, you’re doing a great job.”

Talon looks like he wants to smirk but holds it back, too busy being pissy about how I ‘lied’ to them. Except, technically, I never lied. I never told them what would happen to me if they killed my ex-husband—I just... gracefully omitted the subject altogether. I focused on what they wanted to hear. A tit for tat.

And now?

“Here I thought you started warming up to us,” Talon breathes. “Guess not. Still a cold-blooded dead chick, huh?”

Ouch. If Cassian had said that, I wouldn’t have cared—he’s a dick, that’s his whole personality. But Talon? We were... buddies.

And the worst part? He’s wrong.

I have changed. Seeing another Grim Reaper, realizing the differences between us, nearly ceasing to exist because of a goddamn candy-making murderer turned wraith—it’s done something to me.

I’ve gone soft.

So soft, in fact, that my lips want to... pout?

Oh, god.

“Get in the fucking car,” Cassian barks again, sounding like he’s two seconds away from throwing me in himself if he could.

And honestly? That could have been safer than what my brain is considering as an alternative. Because if I don’t get in, I might actually lick my lips and give Talon a juicy, trembling look at my pretty lower lip quivering.

What in the actual fuck is wrong with me?

I slide into the car like a normal, non-deranged person and strategically take the seat farthest from Talon. He can stew in his righteous fury all he wants. I haven't done anything wrong. If they’d just take five seconds to engage their critical thinking skills, they'd realize any Grim Reaper in my position would’ve done the exact same thing.

Nathaniel gets in next, dragging the Skystone shards onto his lap. Talon follows, still looking at me like I personally reached into his chest, yanked out his still-beating heart, and squeezed it dry.

Cassian, meanwhile, dumps the corpse into the trunk with zero grace, slams it shut, then gets into the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel like he’d rather be strangling someone.

The car ride is silent.

Too silent.

I pretend to be deeply, profoundly interested in my nails, but I can feel them staring at me. The tension is thick enough to stab. Talon is the first to crack.

“You should've told us,” he says, all wounded pride and barely concealed judgment. “I'm not saying you'd still get what you wanted, but damn, little Grim. You just wanted to leave us out cold.”

“She's not a team player,” Nathaniel agrees. “That's why we decided to dig up and carve out her bones in the first place.”

I roll my eyes and lean against the window, watching the city lights blur past.

“She even saw me jerk off,” Cassian adds, apropos of absolutely nothing.

I inhale wrong and start choking on absolutely nothing.

“You what?” Talon and Nathaniel demand in unison, the combined force of their horror strong enough to make my eyes bulge out.

Cassian doesn't doesn’t even look embarrassed. No, that would require shame, a concept he has never once met. If anything, he looks smug— smug —amidst all this brewing violence inside him.

“You heard me,” he purrs, completely unbothered. “She watched. She liked it.”

I gape at him, scandalized, before slamming my hands into my lap like that might somehow stabilize me. This cannot be happening.

I must be in a coma. That’s the only reasonable conclusion.

For the past five years, I’ve just been lying in a hospital bed somewhere, drooling onto a pillow while my brain procured the weirdest dream ever.

Must be.

…

Wishful thinking, huh?

“Alright, you are getting ahead of yourself,” I finally manage, jabbing a finger at Cassian like I’m about to hex him. “Talk all the shit you want about me. Drag my name through the filth, outline in excruciating detail how I personally ruined your trust or whatever. But if you start rewriting history just to make yourself sound like some Olympic-level exhibitionist freak, I’m gonna—”

“What?” Cassian interrupts smoothly, tilting his head as he dares to glance at me, amusement flickering in his gaze. “Gonna kill me?”

His voice is too casual. Too amused. Like we didn’t just almost die. Like we don’t have a literal corpse wrapped in garbage bags stuffed in the trunk.

I will never get over this.

“Hate to break it to you, sweetheart,” he continues, voice saccharine with mockery, “but I don’t think you’ve got the tools for the job.”

Sweetheart?

Cassian just called me sweetheart ?

First of all, absolutely fucking not. That’s gross. I have nothing but horrifying, visceral memories associated with that nickname.

Second of all…

Why doesn’t it suddenly sound nearly as bad as I remember it?

“Oh, fuck off.” I snap, twisting in my seat to glare at him. “I didn’t watch. I walked in. There's a difference.”

Cassian hums like he’s genuinely considering my argument, which is infuriating. “You stood there.”

“For half a second.”

“Much longer than that.”

“What, you were counting?” I lean forward, incredulous. “Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to whip out a stopwatch while you were—”

“Pumping my dick?” he finishes, casually, eyes still locked on the road.

Nathaniel makes a strangled sound, the noise of a man physically in pain. Talon groans, rubbing at his face like he can scrub the last thirty seconds out of existence.

“Alright, that's enough,” Nathaniel mutters. “We have an actual problem, and you two are flirting—”

“I’m not flirting!” I squawk, voice so high-pitched I might as well start communicating with bats.

“You kinda are,” Talon mutters.

I whip toward him, betrayed. “You're supposed to be mad at me, not agreeing with his psychotic delusions!”

“Doesn’t mean you’re not flirting,” he shrugs. But something’s off in his tone. Something sharp-edged, irritated. Like he’s pissed off for an entirely different reason now.

I hate this car ride.

I hate these men.

I hate existence.

Things were much simpler when I was just a ghost on my willow tree.

Cassian, that smug bastard, smirks. “For someone so adamant that it didn’t happen, you sure do remember a lot of details.”

I inhale sharply, forcing myself not to act on my impulses. I bet I could do it now. I could just whip out my scythe and force Cassian’s soul out. Just like that. And if I couldn’t? Doesn’t mean I couldn’t try.

“I remember just enough to regret every single life choice that’s led me to this moment,” I grind out.

Cassian hums again, like he's pleased with himself. Like he won.

I hope the next time he jerks off, something interrupts him for real. Something worse than me. Something with claws and hollow, gaping eye sockets. I hope the fucking wraith flashes him through the window.

Nathaniel slams his fist against the dashboard so hard the whole car jolts. “Oh my fucking gods, can we focus?” He twists in his seat to glare at us. “We just released a fucking wraith, we’re carrying a corpse, and you’re all making this so much worse than it has to be.”

That shuts everyone up.

A rare miracle.

Talon exhales through his nose, rubbing his temple.

“Look,” he says. “I don’t care about Cassian’s exhibitionist phase. I care about the fact that you, little Grim, lied to us.” His gaze sharpens as it lands on me. “So let’s start there.”

I clench my jaw, but fine. Fine. I knew this was coming. I knew they'd be pissed, I just... I thought I'd have time to handle it. To redirect it. Not have this goddamn interrogation in the car, while Cassian is still smug about his dick.

And by the look on Nathaniel’s face, this is just the warm-up.

They're going to get their revenge on me.

They’re vengeful like that.

“Alright,” I say, slapping some duct tape over the cracks in my composure. “Ask your questions.”

Talon and Nathaniel exchange a look before Nathaniel speaks.

“Did you know you’d stop being a Grim Reaper if your ex died?”

I do not answer immediately. Because technically, I didn't know know it. Like, I hadn’t personally experienced it. But also... yeah, I knew it.

“Well, yes,” I admit finally, because lying would be stupid and they’re already sharpening their metaphorical knives. “But I hoped I would be able to punish my ex-husband after you killed him. You know. A fun little post-murder bonus round. I was kind of banking on you giving me his soul afterward so I could exact my well-earned revenge.”

Talon tilts his head. “And you just conveniently left that part out?”

“Would you have still gone through with it if I told you?” I counter, arms crossed, chin up, taking the moral high ground in a situation where I definitely do not have it.

Nathaniel scoffs. Yeah. That’s a no.

Cassian, who has somehow mastered the art of looking both furious and amused at the same time, exhales a laugh. A real one. Not a snort. Not a smirk. An actual laugh. I squint at him like he’s grown a second head.

“I don’t know, little Grim,” he muses, tapping his fingers against the wheel. “Seems like you didn’t trust us much.”

First sweetheart, now Little Grim?

And… trust?

“Oh, you think?” I snap. “Pardon me for not handing over my entire afterlife to three homicidal maniacs with the combined moral compass of a black hole and a literal hit list.”

Talon looks away, jaw ticking. Nathaniel just lets out a long, slow breath like he’s counting to ten in his head. Cassian… I don't know what's up with him.

“You played us,” Nathaniel finally says. “We agreed to kill your ex because we thought it’d help you. But you knew you wouldn’t be a Grim Reaper anymore and decided that was not important enough to mention. So here’s the deal—we’re not doing anything for you anymore. Except saving your life.”

“Hey!” I protest. “That’s—”

Nathaniel holds up a hand like a teacher stopping a student mid-sentence.

“No. We’re done being your little murder dogs.”

There is a beat of silence. A horrible beat of silence. Then Cassian mutters, “Murder dogs? That’s cute.”

I inhale sharply, turning my glare on Nathaniel. “That’s so unfair. You’re acting like I manipulated you into this, but let’s be real—you wanted him dead too. He’s a murderer. I just gave you extra incentive. This was a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

Nathaniel’s grip tightens on the Skystone shards.

“That’s not the point,” he says, all frost and finality. “The point is, we don’t walk into things unprepared. And you? You made us unprepared.”

I open my mouth. Close it. Consider my options.

...Yeah. This is not looking great for me.

Alright. Fine. Maybe I should’ve mentioned that tiny, minor detail about how Grim Reapers stop being Grim Reapers once their killer croaks. Maybe if I had, the guys would’ve known what to do when the new Grim Reaper popped up like a vengeful jack-in-the-box. Maybe they would’ve just handed over Laura Collins’ soul and called it a day.

Maybe there would be no locking her in the Skystone.

Maybe we would’ve avoided releasing a fucking wraith into the world.

...Maybe.

But also, maybe not. Maybe we’d still be here, sitting in this claustrophobic, tension-choked car, replaying the shitstorm in our heads.

Look, I did keep things from them. I did play this whole thing close to my chest, because why the hell wouldn’t I? I’ve been dead long enough to know that the only person I can truly rely on is myself. Trust is a gamble, and these guys—these professional murderer hunters—aren’t exactly the type to place safe bets.

On the other hand…

They made me feel. They saved me. Cassian yanked me back from the wraith’s gaping abyss, and now, for some fucked-up reason, I feel bad that they’re pissed.

Nathaniel exhales hard, rubbing a hand over his jaw.

“This is what I mean,” he mutters. “You still don’t get it. You’re sitting there, stewing, instead of just saying what you actually think.”

I shoot him a glare. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry?”

“Are you?” Talon asks, voice deceptively soft.

I hate that it makes my stomach twist.

“Of course I’m not fucking sorry,” I bite out. “I did what I had to do.”

Cassian makes a sound in the back of his throat, low and considering. “And now look where that got you.”

I am looking. At the body crammed into the trunk like an overpacked suitcase. At the shattered Skystone in Nathaniel’s lap. At the shattered Skystone resting on Nathaniel’s lap like a bad omen. At Cassian and his shiny new Grim Reaper murder stick, which I am absolutely not thinking about, because if I do, I might genuinely start foaming at the mouth.

I am looking, and the truth is, I don’t love where I’ve ended up. But at no point did the universe hand me a choose-your-own-adventure pamphlet. I didn’t get any say in pretty much anything.

These men do what they want regardless of what I want.

I shouldn’t be blamed for that.

I press my forehead against the cool car window, watching the city smear past, and, for once, let myself be silent.

That, more than anything, seems to settle something between us. Not fix it—gods, no. But at least the tension shifts from outright fury to grudging, simmering unease.

And then, because the universe is nothing if not consistent in its refusal to let me catch a break—

The wraith appears.