Page 23 of Grim

ASmallStain

I ’m halfway through a bowl of reheated spaghetti my mother left me before she went back home.

It’s the only meal she knows how to make and a skill—or lack thereof—that she’s passed down to me.

In Chez Chamberlain, it’s the microwave or delivery.

Looking around the quiet living room, I wonder briefly if Kane has decided to take his dark brooding elsewhere when the air suddenly feels thicker.

A chill races down my spine, dragging tiny claws over my skin. I freeze, fork halfway to my mouth as an eerie, almost-electric tension hums through the room.

“Fuck.” Kane’s voice sends icicles shooting through the humid air.

I jump when I spot him. He’s standing by the window, stiff as a statue, jaw clenched tight enough to shatter marble. His cemetery-inspired phone glows dimly in his hand.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, lowering my fork into my bowl.

“Nothing that concerns you,” he dismisses in a clipped voice walking toward me at the table.

Rude.

“Okay, Grim, I was trying to be nice since we had a moment earlier with the ice cream. Never mind. ”

“That was dessert, not destiny, Rue. Don’t start seeing things that aren’t there.”

Kane stares at me, eyes wide as I run my hand under his suit jacket, grab the peak of his left nipple, and twist. Hard. He releases a sound somewhere between a cry and a moan as he winces slightly, though I admit he manages to maintain more composure than I expected.

He stares daggers at me before peeling his jacket open and looking down at his rumpled shirt. We both eye the small red stain above his pectoral.

“Don’t patronize me with your presence. Got it, Grim?” I say with steely conviction .

“Did you just get spaghetti sauce on my white Brunello Cucinelli dress shirt?” he asks with deliberate slowness.

“Maybe it was destiny. How about that?”

“How about you learn to make proper pasta? Some All Purpose flour, some water, an egg.” He begins to mime the process of kneading the dough like a culinary conductor.

“How about you eat me?” I blurt out petulantly.

He ends his spaghetti symphony and stares into my eyes. “Now, that is a meal I would ki—”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Kane!” I cut him off. That does not stop an alluring image from forming in my mind, which I physically attempt to shake loose with a twist of my neck.

The headstone phone chimes again, pulling him away from whatever this moment is. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But I can see it—the barely contained storm swirling in those dark green eyes. His fingers twitch around the phone, knuckles white as bone.

“It’s a Code CAT,” he mutters, lost in his device.

I’ve never seen this look on his face before. He looks troubled, and it does not instill confidence in me. I knit my brows.

“Code CAT? What’s that? I thought you hated cats.”

He doesn’t look at me as he continues, “Code CAT is short for catastrophe—from the Greek word kata, meaning down, and strophē , meaning turn. It’s a mass casualty event.

” Any emotion has been sucked out of his voice, but does nothing to lessen the impact of his words.

“Bus accident. No survivors,” he concludes somberly.

My heart stumbles, skipping like a broken record. The weight of those words sinks into my bones, pressing down, making it hard to breathe.

“How bad?” I ask softly, my snark evaporating.

“Bad enough that Big D is sending me as backup.” Kane’s jaw tics, his voice dripping with disdain.

“Backup?”

“Yes, Asher”—the way he says the name makes me blink; he practically spits it out, like it tastes rancid on his tongue—“is apparently unable to handle the large influx alone.”

“Asher?” I echo. “Friend of yours?”

“Hardly.” Kane’s lips press into a tight line, his posture somehow going even more rigid. “He’s another reaper. Smug and insufferable.”

“Wow. He sounds terrible.” I smirk. “Why don’t you like him? He steal your scythe or something?”

Kane’s jaw tightens so hard that I swear I hear it crack before he turns around and glares at me.

“Some folks just don’t get along, Mayday. Not meant to be. Asher and I are like oil and water—as in I’d love to burn him in oil and drown him in water.”

The look on Kane’s face is enough to halt this line of questioning. If he wants to tell me more, he can, but I’m not going to pry. I shake my head while eyeing his shirt, which he keeps glancing down and picking at.

“I might have one of my dad’s shirts upstairs if you want it.”

“This is a custom-tailored—”

“Shirt with a stain. Wouldn’t matter if it was Versace at this point.

Better to have something that’s at least one uniform color.

Now come on. Let me help,” I say, stepping closer to him and grabbing the shirt by the collar and beginning to open it at the neck.

I notice briefly what looks to be scar tissue just above his collarbone before Kane swats my hands away like they are a pair of houseflies.

“What is that?” I ask of his discolored and raised skin.

He ignores me and attempts a joke. “Mayday, while I can understand your primal urges, I must insist you control yourself.”

I stare at him, mouth agape. “Excuse me?”

He looks me over before nodding. “You’re excused. Now, if you don’t mind, I have thirty-some-odd souls that need to be cleaved unwillingly from their mortal sacks to begin the journey to the OtherWorld. I believe the phrase you use is brB ,” he says, condescension oozing off each letter.

“Fine,” I huff, letting the subject go for now. “But I’m coming with you.”

He scoffs while walking out the door toward my cemetery. “Absolutely not.”

“Absolutely, yes.” I stomp after him as he exits the house at breakneck speed, refusing to lose this battle.

“We’ve been over this, Kane. I’m not sitting around while the clock’s ticking on my final days.

I want them full. And if that means tagging along while you reap a bunch of unfortunate souls, so be it. ”

We stop at the first headstone, and he looks back at me, his lips pursed in irritation.

“You have no idea what you’re asking for, Rue.” His voice is low and dangerous, but I see it. The flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

“I don’t care,” I whisper, my voice softer now. “I’m not wasting another second. Please, Kane.”

He closes his eyes like he’s fighting an internal war. When they snap open again, they’re darker. Sharper.

“Fine.” He exhales like he’s regretting this already. “But you stay out of the way. No talking to the souls. No touching anything. No—”

“Got it, Grim. I’ll be a good little shadow.”

His eyes narrow. “Somehow, I doubt that,” he mutters while holding his hand out for me to grab.

“What? No hugs this time?” I tease before releasing a squeak as he tugs me flush with his body. My hand hits his hard chest, and it takes me by surprise, not feeling a heartbeat.

“Hold on,” he breathes in my ear, causing goose bumps to erupt all over my body.

“I’m obviously already— ”

And before I can finish the sentence, the world swirls.

I swear, transporting gets worse every damn time. I feel like I’ve been stuffed into a blender set to liquefy and then spit out into a new dimension. My stomach flips violently, threatening to stage a full-scale rebellion.

Kane’s arm is the only thing keeping me from face-planting into the pavement as we appear by a road marker with ribbons wrapped around it.

“We need to work on your landings, Grim,” I mutter, blinking away the dizziness. “Ugh, I’m going to hurl that spaghetti.”

“Stop talking.”

“Charming as ever,” I mutter, just loud enough to be heard as I shift my focus forward—and immediately wish I hadn’t.

The scene before me is something out of a nightmare.

Twisted metal, scorched rubber, and the skeletal remains of a bus lying in a tangled heap off the highway.

The sky is choked with smoke that rises in thick tar-black plumes.

Emergency vehicles swarm the site, their flashing red and blue lights strobing across the broken landscape.

Sirens continue to scream, the sound shrill and endless, but even still, they’re not enough to drown out the other sounds, the ones that come from the wreckage itself.

The cries, the ragged sobs and wails of the dying.

I blink hard. My brain is trying to shield me, to soften the edges of what I’m witnessing, but it can’t.

There are too many bodies. Too much blood.

Too many limbs bent in ways they shouldn’t.

Old, young, male, and female. There’s no discrimination, no mercy.

Just absolute devastation. My lungs seize in my chest, and for a moment, I am unable to draw in a breath.

“Rue?” Kane’s voice is different now. It’s not curt or clipped, but softer. Hesitant and almost concerned.

“I’m fine,” I say, though I’m anything but.

The weight of this place is clinging to me in the most suffocating way. The grief, pain, and confusion are not just being witnessed. They are consuming me. “Their cries are just haunting. Can’t you save them?”

“Rue, there are no survivors. What you hear are the caterwauls of souls not prepared to cross.” I tear my eyes away from a delicate, lifeless hand tangled in a seatbelt and look toward the side of the road. I need something—anything—less unbearable.

My gaze lands on a male figure, casually leaning against the crumpled guardrail.

He’s tall with long, thick limbs and powerful muscles under a rich black suit that somehow manages to look both expensive and recklessly undone.

His dark hair is slicked back, his tie is perfectly loosened with the dress shirt’s top button left open.

He’s not trying too hard, but he doesn’t have to. And his smile? Holy shit.

“Well,” he murmurs, his voice low, “hello there, gorgeous.”