Page 16 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)
16
MAREENA
Present Day
I choked on the smoke, the back of my throat raw and burning as I tried to suck in a proper breath of air.
“I can’t believe you like this stuff.” My voice cracked on another cough. “This is seriously the thing you miss most about being alive?”
“One of them.” Kieran shrugged, his eyes alight with amusement. “You don’t exactly make it look as desirable as I recall it being. They should really consider trotting you around as a walking advertisement for kids.”
“Too bad there isn't any after school programming in the After. Sounds like I’d have the potential for stardom.” I took another puff, wondering if maybe it got better the more you partook, but it only heightened the burn.
He watched the tip flare, a small smile tugging at his lips as the smoke curled in front of his face.
It reminded me of Claudine and her mint tea—the way she would sit for half an hour, sniffing at the steam, like that was how she consumed it.
Honestly, it was a bit ridiculous that I hadn’t immediately realized she was dead.
Was I really that oblivious? That caught up in my own bullshit that I completely missed the fact that one of my customers wasn’t even amongst the living?
“What’s it like?” I asked, flicking the ashes over the side of the hammock. We were lying out by the canal, wedged between two trees that provided some protection against the scorching rays of the sun. “For you now, I mean. Can you smell it?” I reached over so that he could take the cigarette if he wanted. “Could you smoke it? In your current state?”
“My current state being dead, you mean?” he asked. For a moment, it looked like he might grab it, like he might try, but then his hands stiffened at his side, one resting against my calf. He was sitting in the hammock with me, both of us facing each other. There wasn’t a lot of room to move, and it was impossible not to touch. Still, it was strange, the unexpected chill of his body against mine, so different from how he’d felt against me last week. “I could smoke it, but it’s not the same in this world as it was when I was among the living.”
“How so?”
“Unless I’m on one of my rare, embodied vacations, everything in this world is watered down to the point of being almost worse than not having it at all.” His nose curled in disgust. “Sort of like if you were to take whiskey and then mix it with so much water that all of the effects you might like from the alcohol—the buzz, the burn, the taste—were gone, and you were just left with a glass of water that tasted a bit rank. At that point, I’d rather just have a glass of water, you know? The drop of whiskey only serves to make it fouler.”
I put the cigarette out against the tree.
Well, one more thing to cross off the bucket list anyway. I tried it, hated it, and wouldn’t be forcing the rest of it on my lungs.
My tongue slid over my teeth as I tried to swallow away the taste. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be going anywhere until I got hold of my toothbrush later.
I set the dead butt on the ground, next to our things, and sent myself a mental reminder to take it with us when we left and dispose of it properly. “Can’t believe smoking is one of the things you miss most. I can’t imagine even tolerating it, let alone loving it. Not that I enjoy whiskey either. So maybe the analogy was always going to be lost on me.”
He shrugged. “It’s an acquired taste.”
My nose wrinkled at the scent that still lingered in the air. I should’ve tried this while we were on the trail, now we’d be stuck with this stale, almost rotten smell, until the wind chose to disperse it.
“Is this how you died? From lung cancer?” I immediately regretted the question as soon as it left my mouth. “Sorry, that was probably a deeply rude question, feel free to ignore it.”
“No.” He flexed his hand, the one that was dressed in a set of silver rings, as if he had a cramp. “That’s not what killed me.”
There was an air of finality to the sentence, and I knew he wouldn’t be providing more information. “What did you like about it?”
“I don’t really know.” He closed his eyes, considering. “That’s one of the cruelties of my kind’s condition. We wake up as ourselves, but also not. My likes and dislikes are divorced from the contexts that created them. The specific memories they’re tied to are gone.”
“I don’t know that I fully understand—how could you still like the thing, but not know why?”
“Yesterday,” he said, “when you were swimming in the lake. You got this kind of far off look at one point, and I could tell you were thinking about something. Something that made you happy—you were smiling.”
Was I? I thought back to yesterday afternoon, trying to remember all of the things we spoke about, but also what I hadn’t said aloud.
“Probably my Amto Amani,” I said. “She’s one of the reasons I love to be near the water. So much of my childhood was spent on the shoreline near our house.”
“Good,” he said, nodding, “so it would be like that. Imagine that you know you love being near the water, that it’s an essential part of you, but you wouldn’t fully understand why. You’d have no recollection of your . . .” he paused, as if trying to remember the name, “Amto Amani?”
I nodded.
“You’d have no memory of her, of the time you spent together near the water, you’d just know that every time you saw the shoreline, that it was important to you in some fundamental way. And there’d be this ever-present ache, drawing you to it, but you’d never truly discover why. You’d get close, every now and then, but it would slip away, the core of it forever elusive. All that’s left is the yearning.”
“That sounds fucking awful.”
He shrugged again, but I got the sense that he was more bothered than he let on. “That’s just the way of my kind.”
“But those memories can come back? Eventually?”
Something shut off in his expression, the breeziness of the afternoon eclipsing for a moment. “In part. They can come back—slowly, and over many years—but only if you want them to. You have to work for it, chase them. And that kind of relentless pursuit brings its own kind of danger. I’ve seen it spell doom for many.”
“Do you? Let them come back I mean?” Going years without understanding yourself sounded miserable. “How long have you been in your line of work, anyway?”
His mouth tightened into a stiff smile, and he tapped the book resting on my stomach. “No more questions about me. Like I said before, we’re not really supposed to interact. We’re here to do one of the things you enjoy.” He leaned back again, his eyes closed. “Read your book now, Agony.”
I studied him for a moment, trying to parse the blank expression on his face, the half-answers he’d given me. Then I sighed, knowing that I wouldn’t get anywhere by pressing for more information. Kieran seemed in a constant battle—desperate for companionship, but cagey about engaging in it all the same.
After the breakfast rush and lunch prep earlier, Sora kicked us out, told me to take the rest of the day off—tomorrow, too.
“It’s not every day you get a hot guardian angel,” she’d said.
“How do you know he’s hot?” I’d asked, thankful at the time, that Kieran hadn’t been within earshot. He’d been sitting next to a pair of our regulars, unbeknownst to them of course, watching with a bored sort of enthusiasm as they argued about whether vampires could turn humans if they chose.
A devilish smirk had crossed her features, and she poked between my eyes. “Because you get this look on your face whenever you stare at him.”
“How do you know when I’m staring at him,” I’d shot back, swallowing my embarrassment and hoping like hell Kieran couldn’t decipher my expressions as well as Sora could. “You can’t even tell where he is.”
“Well,” she’d said, a wicked gleam in her eyes as she followed my gaze, “he’s either over near the Fitzes, or you’re suddenly very attracted to our eighty-year-old regulars.”
“I—” I swallowed. “You’re sure that you’re good for the shift tonight? And breakfast tomorrow?”
“Yep,” she said with a knowing look, “no more clients today and I can call in backup if need be.” We often hired some of the teens in the area to pick up extra shifts when we were slammed and could afford it. They were always glad for the work, but mostly I think they just liked to feel like they were part of something. The ritual of doing something so mundane was comforting in a world split with chaos. “Did he say how long he’ll be around?”
I shook my head. “He’s not exactly forthcoming with how this whole guardian angel thing works.”
“Mysterious.” She winked. “Exactly your type.”
And that was how Kieran and I had come to be here, along the canal, listening to the slow rush of water as I thumbed through my book—because it was the only thing that came to mind when he’d asked how I liked to spend my time when Sora wasn’t around.
It took me a few minutes—to ignore his proximity and the strangeness of the whole scenario—but, eventually, I fell into the steady lull of the story, getting swooped up in the whirlwind romance and heart-pumping mystery of the book.
“I never understood the appeal of reading books,” Kieran said, after an hour or so of silence.
I set the book down, which required serious restraint. I’d just gotten to a particularly unexpected twist. “You don’t read?”
He shook his head. “Don’t think I liked it much when I was alive either. Think I preferred real-life experiences, not the kind that exist in books.”
Several of my favorite dark romances and horror novels came to mind, and I bit down on my smile. While I loved to read about certain . . . adventures, I was more than happy that they stayed between the pages of a book—a contract between me and the characters in which I got to experience the highlights of their lives without accumulating the wagon of trauma that came with all the rest.
“It’s the same as watching a film,” I said. “You wouldn’t want to live in a slasher movie, would you? But the adrenaline you get from watching the events transpire is exciting. Especially since you know that you’re experiencing it from the safety of your couch.”
“I suppose.”
“And with books, I feel closer to the characters. Like I’m reading about the adventures and experiences of a friend. I just feel like I’m a part of their lives, I guess?”
“Wouldn’t you rather just talk to your friends?”
“I—” I closed my lips, not entirely sure how to structure my response to the directness of that question.
This was something I hadn’t unpacked before, that books had sort of been my stand-ins for connections when I kept myself from having them. With books, the dangers of getting close to someone were blissfully absent.
“I don’t have many friends,” I said, after a few seconds of silence, “other than Sora, I mean.”
“Seems to me you have an entire restaurant of them,” he said. “Your customers all seem to know and adore you.”
“Know me, yes,” I said, “but it’s a different kind of knowing. They’re acquaintances. Some are closer than others, and we help each other out when we can. Especially since The Undoing. But Sora’s the only person I’ve really let in.”
“Why?” He shifted slightly as he studied me, until my leg lay over his. When I started to move away, to give him more room, he set his arm down on top of my calf, preventing me. “Friends and family—that’s what people love most about being alive, isn’t it? The comfort of connection? Isn’t that what people spend most of their lives chasing?” A look of amusement passed over his expression. “Suppose, even in death, many chase after it still.”
Perhaps this was ultimately why he was here, why I’d been handed a guardian angel in the guise of a broody stalker. Perhaps this was the path he’d been sent to guide me on, to show me the ways that I’d been wasting my life, living it incorrectly, guided by fear.
How very Dickensian.
“When you get close to people,” I said, searching for the right way to put it, “it makes losing them more difficult.” I shrugged, hoping I pulled off my feigned nonchalance better than he did. “And I have a habit of losing the people I get close to.”
He considered me for a moment. “The curse that your friend brought up last night—you really believe it, don’t you? That getting close to someone will edge them closer to death?”
“Well,” I took a deep breath, “it’s been true, historically.” After reciting the list of people I’d lost over the years, the number only increasing in the years since The Undoing—though the more recent losses had been mostly surface-level acquaintances—I closed my book, no longer in the mood to continue with my vicarious adventure. “Aside from Sora, Frank is the person I’m closest with.”
“And where is this Frank?”
“In the medical center. Very sick,” I said, as if that alone proved my point, “though we don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“I don’t know, Agony,” Kieran ran his thumb over my calf, though I wasn’t sure he was doing it consciously, “sounds like bad luck and coincidence to me. Nothing more than that.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that a lot. Sora’s been trying to convince me of as much since I confessed the fear to her.” I shrugged. “But whether it’s bad luck or something else, I’d rather not risk it.”
“If it helps,” he said, his eyes narrowed as they focused on mine, “I was honest last night. I’ve never heard of someone having a death curse. And death is sort of my industry.” He winked. “Some might even call me an expert, in fact.”
“You’ve said yourself that after The Undoing, you’ve hardly kept up with how much the world has been changed by magic,” I said. “So how could you know? Maybe curses and omens appeared in the epilogue of your life, not the meat of it.”
“But this supposed curse has chased you long before The Undoing, hasn’t it?”
True. There was something about having undeniable evidence though—magic was real—that just solidified the thereness of the curse. “Yes, but magic existed before The Undoing. The Undoing simply revealed what was always there. Made it incontrovertible.”
“Sure.” He dropped his hand over the rim of the hammock, letting his fingers trail over—and through—the blades of grass. “Sounds a bit like you want to believe in the curse though. That you want it to be true.”
I sat up straighter. “Why would I ever want that?”
“Gives you an excuse to keep people at arm’s length, doesn’t it?”
I blinked, breaking the hold of his stare.
“It’s strange though,” he continued. “You speak of death as if it’s a person. As if it’s alive.”
I narrowed my eyes and nodded, though I couldn’t bring myself to expand on that. To put into words that I knew I was right. That I’d met Death, seen him with my own eyes—caught between a dream and reality, in the cracks and crevices where a memory started to blur. That I knew him to have dark hair and amber eyes, and a crooked mouth built for taunting.
I’d just never been able to say the words out loud, as if giving them voice would make them irrefutable.
Until then, Death could exist in some liminal space, where he was perhaps less powerful.
“So,” Kieran continued, his eyes sparkling with so much life that it was hard to remember that he was dead, “if we assume Death is a person—and, you know, also real,” he tipped his chin down playfully, “don’t you think it would be a bit below their pay grade to spend their time haunting some girl, cutting off her connections, one by one, until she’s left all alone? For the sake of what—cruelty? Boredom? It’s just—and don’t take this the wrong way, Agony,” he squeezed my calf, “but this theory of yours seems a bit self-involved, don’t you think? To assume someone with that kind of power over the world would use it to torment a young girl before she’s even born.”
He was teasing me, that much was clear. But there was also something in the way he spoke so plainly about the absurdity of the curse that eased something inside of me I’d never been able to ease on my own.
Not since the days when Amto Amani would hush my fears and couch them in what she always assumed them to be—manifestations of grief, a pain so amorphous that I couldn’t contain it. And so, I let it bloom and blossom—into a being so unwieldy I could never shake myself loose of it.
Maybe it was because Kieran was dead. If anyone could speak of death, could slash through the truth of it all, it would be him.
Whatever the case, I leaned back in the hammock, watching the web of leaves high above us, as a small sliver of a life-long tension started to unknot and unfurl itself, before it slowly seeped from my body.