Page 14 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

14

MAREENA

Present Day

I nstinct had me resisting everything about Kieran and this little midday field trip, but I pushed all of my energy into ignoring it. If this was the only way to stop being haunted by his presence, it was best to just get on with it.

And, honestly, a nice cool dip might be just the thing to keep my slutty little thoughts about our hook up last week from overheating.

After letting Sora know that I was heading out and that we’d catch up after dinner, Kieran and I found ourselves at one of the many boat launch points in Wallingford.

It wasn’t my favorite part of the lake, but I did my best these days to avoid the dock I always used to frequent. Sometimes it was impossible to divorce a memory from a place.

I set my paddleboard in the water and climbed on, watching Kieran expectantly. “You okay?”

He squinted up at the sun. “Yeah, it’s just so . . . bright. I’m not usually out in the sun this long.”

“Still hungover then?” I asked.

He nodded.

“Weird to think that angels get hangovers.”

With a grunt masking as a response, he climbed onto the board.

It hardly even responded to his weight. I pretended to accidentally brush my knee against him, just to convince myself that he was, in fact, corporeal. At least sometimes. Sort of.

My brain latched onto the impossibility of it all, but I reigned it back in. “So, you can sit on solid objects, but you can also go through them?”

He nodded, then swiped his hand through the board and into the water to illustrate the point. “I can interact with the world, in a limited way, but I can’t touch any living thing except for my charge. Unless I want to waste whatever meager energy stores I’ve saved up trying to shove some random guy down the street or something.”

“Why?”

A couple with two kids passed by us in their kayak, all four of their faces bright with the exertion and excitement that came with the activity. It was a beautiful day, and the lake was more crowded than I’d anticipated.

For some reason, I’d unconsciously assumed the rest of the world would have abandoned their old hobbies after The Undoing. Like I had for the most part. That the world would be irrevocably split between Before and After, like it had been for me.

But that wasn’t the case. People were more resilient than I gave them credit for.

Maybe they were better for it. There was a strange kind of peace in existing as I did before. Out here, it was almost easy to pretend the chaos of the last six years had never happened. The world changed, sure, but it didn’t feel like it here. Everything was just the way that it was in the Before.

Then again, that could have been a family of vampires for all I knew, so maybe not. From what I’d gathered, they weren’t affected by sunlight like Hollywood had led me to believe. Didn’t sparkle either.

“Giving us limited range in this world gives us something to work towards,” he said, his hand lingering in the water. “Right now, I can’t really feel this. Not in the way that you can, that is. The sun, the water, the board, they all feel like the same thing. They’re just . . . there.”

“The sun is annoying you though.”

“In my world, the bad things come more easily than the good.”

“But when you get your vacations,” I stood up, adjusted the paddle, and started guiding us out along our path, “you can feel things more intensely then?”

It’d certainly seemed so anyway, unless he’d been faking his desire last week.

He nodded, studying me while he leaned back on the board, settling in.

It took a few minutes to get my stroke into the cadence, but once I found that groove, it was like no time had passed at all since the last time I’d been out here. Of course, I’d certainly be feeling it tomorrow, discovering aches and pains in muscles I’d long neglected.

We didn’t speak for a few minutes, and I slowly let the familiar ease that always settled over me out here seep into my bones. The world was quieter, made more sense than it did on land, during all the daily turmoil of survival.

And while I didn’t exactly enjoy the forceful delivery of the message, Kieran was right—it had been too long since I’d let myself indulge in the things I loved.

After a while, when we were away from some of the roots and debris closer to the shoreline, I set my paddle down and jumped into the water, letting the icy chill lick and bite along my skin.

Since The Undoing, there were hardly any commercial ships to worry about. None of the boats that came through this way these days had a motor, which meant there was more space to spread out and enjoy the water. No constant worry that some rich tool’s yacht was going to come speeding through, cut too close, upend the board, and chop me up into ceviche with its propeller.

When I broke the surface, my focus was drawn immediately to Kieran.

Even with his demanding personality, and the whole dead guy thing, I couldn’t deny that he was still just as stunning as he’d been at Incendiary. Hell, I’d been fixated on the memory of his features for years. In that sense only, did the whole angelic thing seem plausible. Why else would he so fucking beautiful? Or feature so frequently in my thoughts?

The sun highlighted all the angular perfection of his face, the strange, almost iridescent ink of his tattoos, the mesmerizing flecks of gold, amber, and green in his eyes.

He watched me with such yearning, but it was different from the yearning at Incendiary. This wasn’t motivated by sex or lust. This was different.

He looked almost sad.

I found myself wondering what his life was like, about the plane or realm or world that he spent most of his time in. But not for the same reasons as before—not to satisfy my own curiosity.

I was curious about his life for his sake.

“What does it . . . feel like?” he asked, his voice so low and quiet that I almost didn’t catch his question. “What do you like about it out here?”

“It’s cold.” I closed my eyes, focusing on the specific sensations. It had been so long since I’d taken the time to really notice them. “But not in a bad way, not freezing or anything. It’s the kind of cold that shocks you, wakes you up, like a livewire running through your body.” I pulled my arms through the water, focusing on the feel of it. “Like even though I know this lake is probably filled with hundreds of dead fish and other gross things, there’s something remarkably refreshing about it, something that feels so rejuvenating and pure.”

“And,” I continued, “I can feel the temperature shift and change as I move through it. The water on the surface is a few degrees warmer because of the sun. But I almost can’t feel the bottom half of my legs from the cold. And I think I’m more aware of my senses and my body in the water than I am on land. Not sure why. There’s something really cool about going below the surface, and even with my eyes closed, I can sense my way back up. And it’s quiet, isolated. Even when people swim or pass by, most of them tend to preserve the peace of it out here. Sometimes it feels like I’m watching the city from the outside, part of it but also not, between two worlds, almost, or in another one entirely.”

Which was maybe how I felt most of the time—caught between two worlds—but out here that didn’t scare me in the same way it did when I was surrounded by people.

I shifted onto my back, floating as I used my arms to move me parallel to the board, Kieran just above me. I closed my eyes again, letting the sun kiss my skin.

“But more than the way the water feels, I think I just really love how I feel when I’m in it. The way it makes me feel weightless. It’s freeing, how little effort it takes to move through it, to float. How it squeezes and forms to me, like that feeling of pressure from a really good hug. And I guess it’s a little terrifying, too, how vast and powerful it is; how small or irrelevant it can make you feel to be a person floating in this giant, connected ecosystem. But those are the same things that make it exciting.” I opened one eye, squinting against the sun. “I don’t know, does that make sense?”

He leaned over, studying me, until his face was hovering just above mine, blocking the worst of the sun from my eyes. “Yes, Agony, that makes sense.”

“Good.” I started to smile, but it wavered. My stomach tightened as our eyes locked, his unreadable as always, but also unexplainably tender, and I found myself strangely wishing that I could reach up and kiss him.

But then I remembered that this was not last week, and the circumstances of our nearness now were entirely different. So, instead of leaning into the impulse, I took a deep breath and went back under water, not surfacing again until the tightness in my stomach loosened.

I swam for a while, never going more than twenty feet away from Kieran and the paddleboard. Each time I let myself glance back, I found him watching me, the lines of his body oddly tense, and when I swam a bit further out, he called me back, his voice strained with traces of concern.

It reminded me a bit of when Amto Amani used to do the same.

If you’re not careful, habibti, that current will steal you away from me far sooner than you’re meant to go.

Which was maybe the biggest reason I liked it out here. I felt closer to her, closer to who I was before I lost her.

Only when I pulled myself back onto the board, soaking it in icy dregs, did Kieran finally relax.

He worked a muscle in his jaw, his focus suddenly on everything but me.

“You okay?” I asked.

He nodded, the dark expression slipping back into his more familiar mask. He’d been guarded last week, but he was so much more so now. He was stiff. Unreachable. “Great.”

I paddled us back to the launch site in silence, my body looser and lighter than it had been before making this trip.

“Thank you,” I said, finally breaking the quiet.

“For what?”

“I think I needed this.” I shot him a look. “I mean, don’t get all cocky or anything, but maybe you’re not the worst guardian angel in the world.”

Something shifted in his eyes, until the gentle teasing that had been slowly making its way back to the surface, slipped back under, like it had been taken down by an invisible anchor.

He watched like a silent sentinel, while I deflated and packed up my board, and exchanged pleasantries with some other people heading out into the water.

For a moment, I’d almost forgotten that Kieran was invisible to them and there’d been several times where I had to swallow my use of “we” back at the last second.

It was only just before we made it back to Frank’s that we spoke again.

“Thank you,” he said.

I glanced up at him from the corner of my eyes. “For what?”

“For letting me hang out with you today. It’s not often that I get to really interact with my charges or their world. It was,” he paused, as if surprised by the word when he found it, “nice.”

“Yeah,” I smirked, “you’re not terrible company for a dead guy.”

“This is so weird.” Sora cupped her face in her hands, her elbows leaning against the kitchen table while she stared at where she imagined Kieran to be. She was about a foot off. “What does he look like?”

I’d explained the situation to her—leaving out the part about him being the guy I hooked up with last week—when we got back, just before the dinner rush. Which meant that I’d had to field her questions for a few hours, while we served our guests and Kieran looked on with amusement.

At first, he didn’t understand why I chose to return to work. Didn’t see how it could be, in a lot of ways, just as fulfilling as the afternoon off had been. But as I moved through my shift, greeting our usuals and feeding them the recipes I’d spent months perfecting, I realized that working here was more thrilling than I’d noticed before. Fulfilling in a way that was different from my time spent on the water. As burnt out as I sometimes got, I genuinely liked helping the people in this community. Liked making their day better, giving them a safe space to relax for an hour or so.

In some ways, it helped ease some of the guilt I carried about the curse—and let me interact with people without getting too close, without risking their lives.

After a few minutes of watching Sora and I juggle the dinner rush, Kieran’s confusion started to fade, until he seemed genuinely interested in everything—asking me questions about the food, the people, the taste of things.

It had been difficult, not cracking a smile when he started making observations about our customers, trying to guess their illicit pasts or construct entire stories of their lives from one cursory glance.

I turned back to Sora and shrugged. “He looks . . . I don’t know, like a regular guy.”

Kieran grunted. “Liar. Tell her I’m a smoke show.”

“Ask him what it’s like to die,” she demanded, her eyes wide with excitement.

“He won’t answer. Very illusive and uptight about the whole thing.”

He shot me a glare, but I just grinned.

“Do all people become guardian angels? Or ghosts?” Sora fiddled with the pendant around her neck. Since Menace had stolen it, she’d taken to wearing it daily to ward of his thievery. I was pretty sure she even slept and showered with it on now. “Is there, like, a network of dead people that he can reach?”

My stomach dipped. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Could we reach Rina or Amto Amani through Kieran?

When I turned to him, he shook his head. “Ghosts as you probably conceive of them don’t really exist. Only phantoms or echoes, like you saw with Claudine and Greta. But humans can’t become one of the dead or phantoms. Occasionally those who absorbed a lot of power during The Undoing can, but that’s very rare. And as for my kind—only those with supernatural blood can be reborn in the Between.”

The shot of adrenaline ebbed from my system as I translated for Sora.

She narrowed her eyes, considering. “What about bringing someone back though? I’ve heard rumors that the Sect of Azrael has found a way to commune with or even bring back the dead.”

I sat up in surprise. Sora had never mentioned this to me. We always did everything in our power to stay away from the compounds. They were all infiltrated with greed and manipulation.

After The Undoing, people went feral trying to find meaning and explanation amongst the chaos. Most of the old human governing bodies and religions fractured into cults. Only six of them seemed to survive beyond the initial surge of splits.

There were five main arms named for the followers of Azrael, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Lucifer.

Each of them crafted their own ethos around what was known about their archangels through the various Abrahamic religions, all of them determined to find a way to either manipulate, eradicate, or obtain the power pouring into our world. I couldn’t keep up with their belief systems or rules, or who hated who this month. It all seemed so . . . arbitrary.

But in the last few years, Lucifer’s followers split into The Seven Sons—each sect radicalized and named for one of the seven deadly sins, all in competition with each other for their prophet’s blessing and power.

The sixth arm was founded around a supposed new prophet: Rob. He was just some random guy before The Undoing—a college student studying philosophy or sociology or something. But his following has grown surprisingly large in the last few years.

All of them were bullshit, as far as I could tell. Which is why I was so thrown that Sora mentioned them with legitimate interest. We’d always done our best to steer clear of the religious zealots. They were just as dangerous as the local militia groups and the worst parts of the old governments.

Whatever expression was on my face softened her own. “My friend from the market, Rex? He mentioned it to me recently. He spent quite a bit of time with Azrael’s followers a while back, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up if it was just bullshit.”

I offered her a smile that felt too stiff as I waited for Kieran’s answer.

“Those ridiculous little cults?” He snorted. “Total Bullshit. I mean,” he ran his hand through his hair, considering, “like, Azrael was a real person—so I’m told anyway. Probably the others, too, though I’ve never met them or known anyone who has. I can promise you that if they're alive, they’re not wasting their time around power-hungry humans. And they aren’t all powerful. They live and die just as every demon does.”

“So they might be alive? They aren’t angels in the way you are?” I asked.

Kieran stiffened. “No, they’re not like me.”

“What do you mean Azrael was a real person? Did he die?” I asked, after conveying his words to Sora.

“No one knows. We were told that he used to be the primary conduit between my world and yours. Heard he was a total dick—most with that kind of power are. But he disappeared decades ago. Even still,” he added, “the mythologies that humans hold are so deeply fractured and contorted, they’re all but meaningless. It would be like,” he narrowed his eyes, “like trying to understand Ireland’s entire history, everything the country embodies and has ever embodied, through nothing more than taking a bite of cereal, the kind inside the leprechaun box, the one with those wee marshmallows. It’s completely fanciful. Reductive to the point of absurdity.”

Sora’s shoulders sank when I finished translating. “So there’s no reaching the dead then?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “I’m here, aren’t I? I know Azrael used to commune with the departed, even those who weren’t awakened into a death of service like me. My kind are very rare.” He shot me a smug grin. “Most of the dead immediately move on to whatever comes next. I haven’t any idea what that is though. I’m in the dark like the lot of you, I suppose. Though I have my theories.” His expression grew more serious. “I’ve heard of human witches fiddling around with spells—parlor tricks more like—but some might be able to speak to the dead. It would be rare, of course. Better chance with a phantom or an echo; by their nature they hold onto a small flash of themselves. Otherwise, the dead don’t hold their living memories.”

“You don’t remember your life before you died?” I asked, surprised by how much he was willing to share now, after an afternoon of refusing me any of the answers I wanted.

“No, not really.” The corners of his eyes pinched. “When I woke up, I was me. I had my personality, general likes and dislikes—but the people in my life, the specific experiences I had when I lived in this realm? All gone. It’s better that way though.”

“How so?” I couldn’t imagine all of that being erased, everything that made me . . . me.

“Better if we aren’t tethered to this world, to the connections we used to have. It would make everything harder. Some things come back over time. But I’ve never chased after my memories. I prefer to exist in the now—not want anything I can’t have. Makes my job easier; makes the occasional vacation less devastating when it’s over.” His expression shut down, like he’d said too much. “Anyway, that’s as far as I’ll go with your answers. Tell your friend that those cults want what cults and religions have always wanted—power and control. They won’t help her, not without a price she won’t be willing to pay. Her time is better spent on the living; the dead have moved on. For their sake and for hers.”

Sora’s expression was uncharacteristically closed off to me as I relayed Kieran’s thoughts.

She sat, silent, drumming her fingers noiselessly on the table as she processed.

But then, just as I stood to get ready for bed, she said, “Wait.” Her eyes darted to mine; her brows lifted in excitement. “The curse!”

“What?”

“Ask him about your curse. If there’s such a thing as a death curse. Or omen or whatever.” My breath hitched, but she went on, turning towards where she imagined Kieran to be sitting—though he was now across the room, studying Menace’s picked- over dinner with curiosity, as if it were a museum exhibit and not some abandoned nut shells and homemade kibble. “Ask if he’s ever heard about someone who’s been cursed to lose everyone they love to some tragic, early death.”

Again, I was shocked by her question. Partially because I hadn’t thought to ask it first myself, and partially because I was terrified to hear the answer.

There were two options, as far as I could see.

Either way, I’d lose.

I’d find out that everyone I lost was, indeed, dead because of me, or that I’d spent a lifetime pushing people away for no legitimate reason.

Neither option filled me with anything less harrowing than dread or regret.

Kieran’s brows furrowed as he considered her demand, his gaze darting between the two of us as he stitched together an answer. Then, as if realizing something, he shook his head. When his eyes locked on mine, I saw something flit behind them, pity maybe, or something close to it that I couldn’t quite parse. “I’ve never heard of a curse or omen like that, no.”

After saying goodnight to Sora, I got ready for bed, surprised when I found Kieran lurking in my bedroom, an ever-present shadow that not even Peter Pan could shake.

My neck heated when his eyes fell on my vibrator.

“Well,” I cleared my throat. “Goodnight, I guess. Will you—er—be back tomorrow? I’m not really sure how long this whole guardian-angel-life-audit thing is supposed to last.”

“Back?” His brow arched in question. “Oh, I’m not leaving tonight.”

“Don’t you have more important,” I waved my arms like wings, “angel-y things to do than watch me sleep?”

His eyes glittered with amusement. “Not in the least.”

“How long will you be stalking me then?”

“Until my job is done.”

“And you’re not going to give me any more hints as to what that job is or requires from me to speed along?” I asked. His face remained as impassive as always. “Right. Of course not. Why be helpful when obstinance is an option.”

He smirked, his eyes snagging on the vibrator again.

I shoved it into a drawer.

“Well, you’re not sleeping in here,” I said, my words rushed and flustered as I tried to shove away the very small part of me that almost wanted him to stay. “Do the dead even sleep?”

“Not well,” he tilted his head, studying my pile of books now, as if he were trying to commit the titles to memory, “but yes.”

“Well, where do you usually sleep when you’re on assignment?”

He froze, then straightened his posture. “Like I said, this is an unusual case.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I could tell from the narrowed line of his mouth that he wouldn’t offer any more details than he already had tonight. “We have a couch. You’re welcome to it, I guess.”

“If that’s what you’d prefer,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving into a small, soft hook again that had my stomach tightening. “Do try to exert some self-control though, yes? No crawling out in the middle of the night wearing nothing but bedroom eyes and lace, begging to cuddle. I won’t be tempted.” His stare dipped, lingering on my mouth for a beat, before scanning the rest of me as if envisioning the sight. He clicked his tongue and shrugged. “Like I said, I’m off limits. So you’ll have to make do with your fantasies.”

I shot him a glare.

He chuckled, the sound raspy and deep. “Goodnight, Agony. Sleep well.”

I did not, in fact, sleep well.

At least not at first.

I spent a solid hour replaying the absolute chaos of the day.

Then another hyper-fixating on the fact that the guy I slept with was not only dead, but sleeping on the other side of the wall. And that awareness, unfortunately, led to a never-ending loop of the night we’d spent together at Incendiary on repeat in my mind.

After doing everything I could to push the memory from my thoughts, my body refused to unclench the desire that had been slowly building all day—with every touch, every teasing smirk.

With a frustrated sigh, I opened my drawer and grabbed my vibrator.

I let that night replay in my mind, properly this time—uninterrupted and without shame.

And when I finally approached the release I’d been chasing all week, I pressed my face into my pillow and bit down, silencing his name on my lips.