Page 17 of Veil of Death and Shadow (Order of Reapers #1)

17

MAREENA

Present Day

“ Y ou’re not seriously going to follow me tonight, are you?” I whisper-yelled from the corner of my mouth, trying not to attract too much attention to the fact that I was talking to myself. Luckily, the street was mostly empty.

“Like I said,” Kieran’s lips twisted into a dark grin, “you’re my charge. I’m tethered to you until my work is done. Even if you’re on a date.”

“It’s not a date,” I said, patting the invisible wrinkles from my skirt as a couple across the street shot me an odd look. “It’s dinner with a friend.” After another quick look at the couple, I relented, no longer caring if strangers thought I was talking to myself. Odder things had happened in the last few years, and I didn’t know them. “I thought after our conversation earlier that this might be a good idea—that maybe this would fix the,” I gestured abstractly in his direction, “you know, situation.”

“Situation being,” he arched his brow, “that you’re being tailed by a devastatingly good-looking guardian, you mean?”

“I didn’t say that.”

He smirked. “Didn’t have to.”

“You’re insufferable.” I shook my head. “Maybe I should cancel. Reschedule for another time.” Sora hadn’t been at the apartment when we’d returned. Other than a hastily scrawled note taped to the front door of Frank’s alerting our customers that we’d be closed for the evening, but that breakfast service would start as usual, she hadn’t left word of where she was. “It’s not too late to get something together for the dinner service.”

“Not a chance,” Kieran said. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed people-watching at your restaurant last night, but I can’t handle another evening cooped up with everyone ignoring me.”

“They couldn’t see you. And it wasn’t like I could talk to you in front of them.”

He shrugged. “Well, still, I want to see this Aidan guy you’re so fond of. See what kind of a night out you can get up to when amongst the living.”

My neck heated at the memory of the kind of night I’d gotten up to amongst the dead just last week. “You do realize that I’ll still have to ignore you? I’ll just be ignoring you in a different restaurant than my own.”

He shot me a rakish grin. “We’ll see how long you can resist my conversation.”

I exhaled, ignoring the teasing look in his eyes—and the way that look made my stomach tighten into knots. “So you think this will work? Going through with tonight, I mean?”

He furrowed his brows. “Work?”

“If I go tonight, if I put myself out there, chase after connections like we talked about—do you think that’ll fix the whole,” I sniffed, “you know, life-audit-dead-stalker thing.”

“Do I think fucking someone is going to spark joy? Only one way to find out, Agony.” He rolled his teeth over his bottom lip and winked. “Though if memory serves, it definitely seemed to spark something last week.”

“Yeah,” I deadpanned, “regret.”

“That would wound me,” he pressed his hands to his chest in mock pain, “truly, if I wasn’t so very confident in the fact that you’ve been pleasuring yourself to that memory all week.” His face split into a devious grin. “Pretty sure I heard the familiar rumble of a B.O.B. last night.”

“B.O.B?”

“Battery operated boyfriend.”

I glared at him, though it probably had no heat compared to the blush spreading across my cheeks. “You know, you’re a bit insufferable.”

“So I’ve been told.” He smirked. “Twice by you, in fact, just this afternoon.”

I sped up, getting a start on the evening’s most tiresome task—ignoring him.

“What are you doing?”

“Practicing for tonight. Pretending you don’t exist.”

“Oh fun,” he glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Let’s bet on how long it’ll be until you break.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “Personally, I give it thirty seconds into your date. His company will be so,” he closed the gap between his thumb and his pointer finger until they were less than an inch apart, “bland in comparison to mine that you won’t be able to stand it.” He clicked his tongue. “Bet you’ll be glad I came along then, eh Agony?”

I took a deep breath and did my best to pretend that a tall, tattooed, thoroughly infuriating angel wasn’t glued to my side.

But my thoughts immediately went to the lingering anxiety that had been rolling through me since we left Frank’s.

Ditching the diner was uncharacteristic for Sora. In the months since we’d been manning Frank’s, we hadn’t closed for a dinner service once.

Even more uncharacteristic was leaving without telling me where she was headed.

Phones didn’t really work as effectively as they used to, sure, but we’d made a habit of jotting our whereabouts down on paper, sticking them to the bathroom mirror, whenever plans came up. We kept each other in the loop. That was how we kept each other safe.

What if something was wrong? What if something happened to her?

Was this just me doing it again?

I fidgeted with my ring as I tried to confront the discomfort.

Was this just me making mountains out of mole hills as usual?

Being unduly anxious out of fear?

Imagining hypothetical what if’s until I couldn’t think straight?

Why did I always imagine the worst possible options, never the good ones?

Maybe Sora had left a note, and I just missed it.

Maybe Menace had stolen it. He had been in the habit of moving things around the house lately.

“Relax, Agony.” Kieran’s thumb pressed down gently on my lip, releasing it from where my teeth had been holding it prisoner. “I shouldn’t have teased you about your not-date or your battery-boyfriend.” He arched his brow, as if surprised by the revelation. “And I don’t think I like it when you ignore me.”

Then, as if shocked, he dropped his hand, flexing his fingers again like he was in pain.

Did angels even feel physical pain?

“What do your rings mean?” I asked, my fingers reaching out of their own accord to touch them. They were dark silver, but in certain lights there was this strange iridescence to the metal—black and blue and green, all woven together. Fluid, like an oil slick.

“No.” Kieran pulled his hand back, shoving his hand behind his back, all remnants of his earlier teasing instantly sapped. “Nothing. They’re nothing.”

“Right, sorry.” It felt as if I’d overstepped, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. He’d been overstepping all day. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

He shook his head. “You didn’t.” He glanced at his hand, his expression heavy as he flexed his fingers, then the muscles in his wrist and forearm, as if they were all stiff. “It’s just—the material is dangerous to human touch. My kind awaken with these bands. They are the catalyst for much of our power.” With a deep breath, the sudden tension in his body sank away, replaced by a shadow of the ease from before. “Suppose you could think of them like my wings.”

I nodded, struggling to tear my stare away from the strange metal, now that I let myself fully look.

As if thinking of wings drew them to us, Kieran ducked and swore.

Menace landed softly on my shoulder, his head turning slightly so that he could get a better look at the angel.

He dropped a small stone in my palm—it was swirled with blue and gray, almost like a marble with sharp edges. Pretty.

I dropped it into my pocket and fished out one of the pieces of kibble I carried around, offering it to him as a thank you. I’d be sure to add it to his collection when I got home tonight.

“What’s with the crow?” Kieran eyed him with a strained curiosity. “Is it the same bird from before? The one that tried to lob my head off in your kitchen—and last week, at that medical center of yours?”

Menace let out a deep, startling caw.

“Yeah.” I scratched the back of his neck, trying to calm him. “He’s usually pretty chill. Maybe he senses you?”

“He can more than sense me.” Kieran narrowed his eyes, studying the bird. “He can see me. And touch me.” He tilted his head, revealing a series of shallow scrapes. “Maimed me, actually. Possibly even tried to take my life before your eyes. Yet you’re just . . . petting him as if he were nothing more than a harmless house pet.”

I snorted. “He barely touched you.”

“Little does he know,” Kieren smirked, “that I don’t have a life to take.”

“Can animals normally see and touch you?” I asked.

“The occasional critter will sense that something’s near when I’m around. Animals are often more in tune with the dead than humans. But, generally,” he shook his head. He studied the crow with renewed focus. “And they can certainly never touch me.”

“Oh, um—” I held my hand up, waiting for the soft pinch of his talons to grip my fingers as I maneuvered him between us, “Menace is kind of . . . dead, too. Or at least he died and then came back to life. Sora sometimes calls him Frankenstein, but that never fits right because she really means Frankenstein’s monster . Victor Frankenstein himself never came back from the dead—plus, he was an asshole.” I ran my fingers over the side of his neck. “I prefer to think of Menace more as a crombie.”

“Crombie,” Kieran deadpanned. “Am I supposed to know what that is?”

“A crow zombie,” I said, before adding a quieter, “Seems obvious enough to me.

He ignored the barb. “And this crow of yours came back from the dead?”

“The Undoing.” I shrugged. “He was dead, and then,” I mimed an explosion with my free hand, “after everything settled, he was . . . not dead.”

“Must have one foot in both worlds then.” Kieran pursed his lips, his chin resting on his fist as his stare shifted between us. Then he reached forward and ran his fingers over a patch of my hair, where the black bled to gray. “Perhaps you both do. Curious. The Undoing has certainly made for a more interesting mortal world.”

“No more curious than talking to a dead guy in the middle of the street,” I said, lifting my hand in the air as Menace took flight.

“You grow more intriguing by the hour, Agony.”

Menace landed on a nearby tree, close enough to watch us from safety. It usually took him a while to warm up to new people. Though something told me he was just as intrigued by Kieran as Kieran was of him.

Maybe Menace was the reason I was . . . the way that I was. Why the world sometimes blurred into two; why I could see Kieran and Claudine. I’d been touching him when magic poured into this world. Maybe his crombie-ness infected me, too?

I studied him for a moment, considering the possibility. If he could see Kieran, did that mean that he’d be able to see and interact with Claudine or Greta?

Then again, they might not come back after Kieran shooed them away.

As we approached the medical center, my thoughts clouded with another memory. “Mrs. Pederson.” I turned towards Kieran. “You were here. The day that she died.”

Something flickered in his expression, but it was gone before I could decipher the reaction. “I was.”

“Why? Do you know what happened to her?”

His lips flattened into a tight grin. “Just paying respects to a former charge was all. I was in the area.”

When I tried to ask the series of questions tangled on my tongue—why then, when was she his charge, why hadn’t he been there in the weeks she’d been catatonic—Kieran shook his head, stopping me before I could voice a single one.

“We won’t discuss my other charges. I’m a gentleman. And everyone deserves their privacy, Agony.”

Before I could push back, the door to the center swung open.

“Mareena,” Aidan’s expression softened into a smile, “good, you’re here. I was afraid you might have changed your mind.”

“ This is your date?” Kieran eyed him head-to-toe, nose curled. “First impression?” No one had asked, but that clearly wasn’t stopping him. “You can do better. You have done better. Quite recently, too.”

This was not a date.

This was two friends grabbing dinner and a few drinks.

And it was looking more and more like a ridiculous idea.

I shot a discreet, warning look at him—apparently not everyone deserved their privacy—then returned Aidan’s smile. “Nope, I’m here.”

Aidan had chosen a small restaurant, just a twenty-minute walk from the med center, and I’d spent nearly the entire time with my attention divided between making conversation with him, while trying to ignore the guardian angel stalking us.

Kieran refused to give us more than twenty-feet of space, and I could practically hear his running commentary about Aidan, even though every time I glanced back his lips were sealed—nothing but the dregs of mirth in his eyes.

Menace seemed to be tailing Kieran just as discreetly as Kieran was tailing us.

Every few minutes his loud caw would ricochet through the mostly-empty street, and he’d occasionally hover just above the angel’s head, as if he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he was real.

“The crows in this city grow bolder every day it seems.” Aidan ducked as Menace flew between us. He landed on a crooked post above the restaurant, the chains holding the sign attached fluttering under his weight. He let out another loud caw that cracked in the wind. “Pretty soon they’ll be running it.”

I offered him a small smile, widening my eyes at the crow to behave himself. “Better them than the compounds, I suppose.”

Aidan opened the door for me, ushering us both across the threshold, and when it slammed closed behind him, I took that as a hopeful sign that Kieran might back off for an hour or two and go do . . . whatever it was that dead guys did when they weren’t haunting someone.

But of course, not to be deterred by such an obvious signal that his presence wasn’t wanted, he simply walked through the door, a cocky smirk plastered on his face.

Ten minutes into the meal, Kieran seemed to understand that I wouldn’t respond to his running commentary; and only after draining my second glass of wine was I able to semi-ignore his presence long enough to properly engage in conversation with Aidan.

Kieran sat at the empty table beside us, his head propped up by his hand, as he watched us the way that people passively watch a dull play.

Aidan pressed his napkin to the corner of his mouth. “Jo tells me Frank was awake for a bit this afternoon.”

My fork, which was halfway to my mouth with a scoop of rice and curry, fell back to my plate. I winced at the soft, metallic clang of the metal. “When? What happened?” I stood up, ready to go see him, but then the past tense of his words sank into me like lead, so I sat back down. The one day I wasn’t around would of course be the day that Frank was awake. I’d missed him. “Did Sora get to speak to him?”

The corners of Aidan’s eyes pinched. “No. Jo ran by the diner, hoping to catch one of you, but it was closed.” He must’ve seen the guilt etched across my expression because he added, “He was only awake for a few minutes from what I understand, so even if Jo was able to reach you guys, I think you still would have missed him. By the time I went to check on him, he was asleep. Vitals were good though, and Jo told me he was in good spirits.”

A wave of guilt rolled over me. “Still no idea what’s wrong? How The Undoing transformed his illness?”

Aidan shook his head. “I’m sorry. I did hear word from a small clinic across town that they’ve heard of a couple of similar cases. They’ve promised to reach out if they have any more information.” He reached across the table and placed his hand over mine, squeezing gently. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, Mareena. I’m sure of it. Jo’s got an in with the compounds—they might have something for us soon. We’re not giving up hope. Until then, he doesn’t seem to be in pain and his numbers are stable, which are good signs.”

My eyes glazed over with the threat of tears. Blinking them back, I nodded.

“Thank you,” I said, offering his hand a soft squeeze in return. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much Sora and I appreciate everything you’ve done for him. For all of us.”

He threaded his fingers through mine and smiled. “Least I can do. You two help us keep the place running. You know,” he grunted, then shook his head, “before everything happened, I considered dropping out of med school. Going a new path altogether.”

“Really?” He was so good with the patients, with everyone, I couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. Aidan was one of those people who seemed to thrive in this new world. Every day that I saw him, he was alive with purpose, like it flooded him.

“Yeah, I thought about going into tech or accounting or something else. I don’t know, there was just so much more bureaucracy in the medical field than I imagined there being when I was younger, you know? Took away some of the magic of the whole idea. It was only a passing thought at the time.” He grinned, his eyes darting to mine, almost shy. “Obviously now, I love what I do, and the people I get to work with, so I’m very happy I stuck it out.”

“So am I,” I said. I caught sight of Kieran from the corner of my eyes and jumped.

He’d been so uncharacteristically silent that I’d almost forgotten he was here.

“You okay?” Aidan asked, his thumb gently stroking the back of my hand.

“Like I said before, Dr. Mediocre wants to fuck you,” Kieran said, his tone laced half with teasing, half with a dark edge. “Surely, you can see that now, Agony? But I can’t fathom why you’d let him.”

I choked out a cough and tried to cover my shock with another large gulp of wine.

“I mean, it’s not that I care or anything.” Kieran scrunched his nose in disgust. “It’s not my job to pass judgment on the lives of the living. But it’s just that you can do so much better.”

That sounded like the definition of passing judgment to me.

At some point during the conversation, Kieran had abandoned his irreverent posture from before.

More notable perhaps was the fact that he’d abandoned his passive spot in the audience entirely—and was sitting instead in the chair to my left.

At our table.

He was also clearly no longer bored, though his expression was otherwise unreadable.

A muscle ticked in his jaw as his stare snagged on the spot where Aidan’s hand touched mine.

“Yeah.” I pulled my hand back, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. We hadn’t done anything wrong. We were two friends offering each other comfort. And if it became more than that, was that so bad?

Aidan was a good guy. Kind. Thoughtful. Smart.

Alive.

Aidan’s kind smile dipped for a fraction of a second, and I grabbed my fork, as if I’d only meant to scarf down another bite of my dinner and not recoil from his touch.

Wasn’t this what Kieran had been on about earlier? That I needed to make connections, stop shielding myself? Wasn’t that exactly what I was doing? But then why did I suddenly feel flushed and guilty, like I’d just been busted for something unseemly. And why did Kieran now look even less like a guardian angel than usual, and more like someone who very much wanted to remove Aidan’s head from his spine?

More importantly, why the fuck did one look at Kieran tie my stomach into more knots than Aidan’s lingering touch had.

Fucking traitorous brain. The bitch was never on my side.

“Mareena?” Aidan’s brows pinched with concern.

“Yeah,” I cleared my throat and noticed that my forkful of food was chilling somewhere between the plate and my mouth, as if my brain had forgotten the performance midway through the task. Setting it back down, I tore my focus away from my stalker and back to my date. No. Not date. My friend. But maybe it should be a date? Maybe this was how I could prove that my life was on track, how I could get rid of my stalker for good? But did I really want to get rid of him? I shoved the thought away before I had the chance to dissect it any further and offered Aidan a tight smile. “Sorry. I’m fine. It’s just been a bit of an off week. Must be catching up with me.”

The rest of the meal went as smoothly as the first half of the evening.

Kieran went back to his sullen silence, only occasionally grunting like a moody teenager when he found Aidan’s conversation boring or when he choked back his snarky commentary.

Though when Aidan insisted on walking me back to the apartment, Kieran couldn’t resist responding with, “The woman’s only got her own literal guardian here, but yeah sure—walk her home. I’m sure you’ll ensure her safety.”

“Well, this is me,” I said, when we reached the diner, wincing at the cheesiness of the line, as if Aiden didn’t walk by the place almost every day. When did I get so fucking awful at this?

“So it is,” he said, his eyes roving over the diner and then up to the apartment windows. When his gaze fell back to meet mine, there was a wistful smile on his face. “This was fun. I really needed a night out. Away from,” he made a vague gesture, “you know . . .”

“Everything?” I finished.

Nodding, he let out a soft laugh. “Exactly.”

“Me, too.”

“So,” he said, face scrunching in question, “does that mean you’ll consider having dinner with me again? Sometime soon?”

Kieran sighed, then kicked a rock into the street.

Aidan turned around, searching for the culprit of the soft echo.

“Yeah, that’d be good,” I rushed out, an attempt to distract him. “Maybe next week?”

And maybe next week, we wouldn’t have a third wheel.

Though the thought of that sent a sharp pang through my chest.

Apparently, I’d grown reluctantly accustomed to the grumpy guardian.

Bad habits were so much easier to pick up than good ones, it seemed.

“Next week is great. Have a good night, Mareena.” Aidan smiled and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek.

I held my breath, hoping like hell that I might feel some kind of flutter or desire at his nearness, but all that I felt was his warmth, and the gentle scratch of his five-o-clock shadow.

And then, when he left, all that I saw was Kieran.

His forehead was pressed against the wall of the diner, and he rolled it over the surface, like he was trying to scrub the tedium of the night from his memory.

Uncharacteristically quiet, he followed me up to the apartment, a silent shadow as I locked the place up and replaced Menace’s water dish.

Sora still wasn’t back. Another anxious search of the place turned up no note, but I choked back my anxiety and fiddled with my ring while I got ready for bed.

My brain was swimming with a million ‘what if’s’ and possibilities of where she could be or of what could have happened to her, when I found Kieran lying on my bed, the book I’d been reading earlier opened on his chest.

“What are you doing?” I asked. I pulled back the covers to nudge him off, but he didn’t budge. After two more tugs, I gave up with a huff and slid myself beneath them. “You’re not sleeping in here.”

“Your friend is okay, Agony.” He put one arm behind his head and stared at the ceiling with so much focused attention, it was like he was trying to memorize every imperfection in the plaster.

“What,” I turned on my side and studied him, “is that your angel Spidey-sense tingling or something? Do you actually know where she is?”

He shook his head, and a small crease formed between his brows. “No, I don’t know for sure. And she’s not my charge, so I don’t have a read on where she is.”

“Then why would you say that?”

“I don’t—” the muscle in his jaw ticked as he searched for the words. “I don’t think that I like it when you feel worried.” His lips pursed in surprise at the admission. “And I thought it might help to have another voice weigh in on the matter—one to combat the voice catastrophizing in there.” He pressed his thumb between my brows, and I felt his touch sink into my bones and carve a crater inside of my chest. When his eyes met mine, there was nothing of the teasing or snark from earlier in the night. Only a steady clarity. “So no, I don’t know for sure that your friend is okay, but it seems far more likely that she is than she isn’t.” He smoothed the worry lines with his thumb, and though it shouldn’t have worked, it did. “Perhaps you inspired her to take the day off to find her own joy. Perhaps she’s out chasing it.”

Nodding, I swallowed back the sudden tightness in my throat. “Okay.”

“And if, in the morning, you’re still concerned, we can look into it.”

“Okay.” I hated how small and broken my voice sounded in the space between us.

“Okay,” he said. He opened the book back up and pointed. “I think you were here?”

When I nodded, he started to read.

And though I fought the tug of sleep for as long as I could, and though my mind occasionally drifted away from the story and started to spiral, the lull of his voice always brought me back —until his smooth lilt finally pulled me under into one of the deepest sleeps I’d had in years.