Monster in My Closet (20 page)

Riley was standing on my doorstep, holding a bouquet of flowers.

I was stunned for a moment and stood there like an idiot, my jaw slack.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

I looked out over his shoulder at the darkness behind him. Iris was out in the yard, leaning against a tree. He shrugged at me and held his furry palms up, as if to show his inability to stop this particular intruder.

“How the hell did you get in?” I said.

Riley smiled and shoved the flowers in my hands. “Doesn’t matter how good your security is. Nobody can stop Death.”

Chapter Twenty-One

I could feel connections in my brain banging against each other, misfiring and refusing to coalesce. Without being conscious of having moved, I stepped aside and let him in.

I needed a moment to pull myself together. Stalling, I dipped my nose into the flowers and inhaled. They were pretty, white and yellow roses with purple sprigs of something dried mixed through. They smelled lovely, but I wasn’t paying close attention. They could have smelled like floor wax, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.

I was, however, acutely aware of Riley’s fingers on my elbow, guiding me to the couch. Angry as I was, afraid of whatever he might be, the heat and electricity of his touch shot up my arm and warmed my cookie-dough-filled belly.

I felt a little queasy.

He settled me onto the sofa. Maurice appeared out of nowhere with two glasses of lemonade, gave Riley a polite nod, took the flowers and disappeared. He was no help whatsoever—wouldn’t even meet my eyes on his way through. Traitor.

“I have to explain, Zoey,” Riley said. He took hold of my arms and pulled me around to face him. “I know it looked bad.”

I focused on a spot on his jaw, a spot he’d missed while he was shaving. It was probably easy to do. I did it all the time when I was shaving my legs. Not tonight, of course. I’d inspected every part of my legs to make sure, you know, just in case. The bristles on that tiny spot on his face looked soft and touchable.
Focus, Zoey.
He was staring at me.

“You’re supposed to save people,” I said. “It’s what you do.”

“No, it’s really not. At least not in the way you think.”

Something in my head clicked. I grasped at it. “Maurice isn’t afraid of showing himself to you.”

“No.”

“You came through the fairy ring.”

“Yes.”

“Iris didn’t stop you.”

“No.”

It came together in a short, three-word sentence. “You’re not human.”

“Not exactly, no.”

“What the hell does that mean, ‘not exactly’? Either you are, or you aren’t.”

“I was. And I will be again. Right now—I’m not.”

I dropped my eyes from scrutinizing his jaw to analyzing the lines on my hands in my lap. I was afraid to ask. I had to ask, but the potential answer scared the hell out of me. I took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly. “What are you?”

He lifted my chin with his fingertips, forcing me to look him in the eye. “I’m a reaper, Zoey.”

I swallowed. “Like the Grim Reaper? Scythe and skull, collecting the souls of the damned?”

He smiled and pulled his fingers away. I missed the feel of them on my skin. That was a bad sign.
Pull it together, Zoey. You are not falling in love with Death. That is not cool.

“It’s not like that.”

“No? Then tell me.”

“First of all, I wouldn’t know which end to hold if somebody handed me a scythe. I get a text message with when and where if I’m the closest reaper to the scene. I can’t interfere. I wait, then take the soul if somebody dies and gets stuck.”

“Stuck.” This was weird, even for my bizarre life.

“Sure. Sometimes when death comes suddenly, a soul is too surprised to leave.”

“Like a car accident or a heart attack.”

“Or an incubus murder.”

I nodded my head, beginning to understand. “Let me see your ring.”

He held his hand out for me to examine the clunky metal wrapped around his right-hand ring finger. It was a smooth, silver band with a large, multifaceted garnet. It didn’t look like anything special, except for the size of the stone being near the edge of ostentatious. I peered into the gem, hoping to catch a glimpse of something ethereal. It was flawless and dark. I was a little disappointed.

“Why the EMT disguise if you’re not there to help? It seems more than a little dishonest.”

“I don’t spend all day collecting souls, Zoey. Sometimes I do get to help the living. Besides, a guy’s gotta eat.”

“So being a Grim Reaper’s a side job.”

“No, it’s what I am. And ‘reaper’ will do. I don’t feel very grim, most of the time. I’m a pretty cheerful guy, on the whole.”

I thought about the setup for soul collecting. There were a lot of missing parts to the process I didn’t understand. I had questions. They tumbled over each other and spilled out in a barrage.

“Who texts you with the assignments? Where do the souls go after you do the sucky thing with your ring? How long have you been doing this? If you were human once, what are you now and how did that happen?”

He laughed. “I can’t answer all of that. I have bosses, and the souls I collect are collected from me, that’s all I can say. I’m not supposed to be telling you any of this, but I’ve already broken one major rule when I pulled you away from the demon. What’s one more infraction?”

“I was supposed to die that day, wasn’t I.” I sat up straighter and sucked in my breath. On some level, I knew I was lucky to be alive, but the idea that it had been my time to go and Death had been on standby to pick me up—that was frightening.

“It’s never a sure thing, Zoey. I get sent to where there’s a likelihood I’ll be needed. There are plenty of times I get there and Fate intercedes, or a Good Samaritan pushes my target out of the way of a bus. I’m there in case.”

“Handy to have a day job that puts you close to dead bodies, I guess.”

“It does help, yes.”

I understood that he couldn’t tell me everything. It’s the afterlife. Knowing what comes next is a universal quest for humans. Nobody gets to know until they get there—at least not for normal people like me. Normal. That was sort of comforting. With everything that had been happening around me, this put me in league with the average Joe on the street.
Welcome back, Zoey. How’s it feel to be like everybody else again?

There was still one thing I had to know. I felt like it was my right, considering he seemed to be set on pursuing me.

“How did this happen? You said you used to be human.”

His eyes went dark and he looked away, focused on something far off. “I was recruited, you might say.”

I reached out and cradled his hand. “Doesn’t sound like it was at a job fair.”

He shook his head. “No. It was at a hospital. There was an accident. A train derailed after a bunch of kids drove around the crossing gate at the last minute. A lot of people died. A lot. My mother and sister were on that train.”

My chest tightened, and I could feel his sorrow throbbing up my arm, dull like an old toothache. “I’m so sorry. You don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”

He squeezed my hand. “It’s okay. My mom died instantly, but my little sister hung in there. The hospital was packed with injured people from the accident. They didn’t have room for them all. They did what they could for Izzy and parked her in the hallway with some of the other patients. She looked so tiny with all those tubes in her. She was only fourteen.” He stopped and closed his eyes for a moment before he could continue. “I was sitting with her, watching all the activity around us, holding her hand, and hoping she’d wake up. Three men came down the hall toward me. They stopped from time to time over the patients in the worst shape. Nobody else noticed the men. I saw them taking souls. I didn’t know at the time exactly what they were doing, but I knew it wasn’t good for Izzy if they came to her.

“Did they?”

He nodded. “Yeah. They tried.” His smile was weak. “I punched one of them.”

I smiled back at him. “Good for you.”

“They tried to convince me to let them take her, that it was a mercy.”

“I thought you guys only took people who were already dead? Izzy wasn’t dead, right?”

“No, she wasn’t. But sometimes, we take the souls before death. Sometimes it’s kinder than letting someone suffer.”

I stifled my shudder. No wonder my Hidden family feared him. He could take any one of us on a whim. If his eyes had been a little less compelling and his smell had been a little less intoxicating, I might’ve reconsidered dating His Grim Hotness. Who was I kidding? I was already too far gone.

My voice was as gentle as I could make it. “Did they take her?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I won that fight, three against one. But not without a price. They brought in a healer, a necrofoil with the power to heal people near death—enough power to get people out of danger, anyway. In exchange, here I am. I’m on their payroll, so to speak, until I’ve paid off my debt.” Sadness flickered across his face. “They didn’t specify how long that would be, but the board reviews me every so often.”

I frowned and eyed him with suspicion. “How old are you, really?” It would be just my luck to have a three-hundred-year-old Grim Reaper trying to date me. He looked to be around my age, maybe a little older. But there was a deep-seated ickiness to dating somebody who, regardless of appearances, could be my great-great-great-grandfather. If the words
pilgrim, Civil War
or
pioneer
came out of his mouth, I was done. Thank you, have a nice evening, your secret is safe with me, there’s the door. I didn’t care how dreamy he smelled.

He took my hand from my lap and squeezed it, smiling. “In human years, I am thirty-two. In dog years, I think that’s, what? About six?”

I fixed him with my angry schoolmarm look for evading the question and making fun of me. “And in reaper years?”

He rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, appearing to think about it. “Let’s see, if you subtract my upcoming birthday, since it’s not here yet, add the years I’ve been alive, take away the life sucked out of me by this long conversation, that would make me…”

Here it comes. 287, I just know it.

“Thirty-two,” he finished. “Yes, that sounds right. Thirty-two.”

I tried to recover my dignity. His lips twitched a little with suppressed laughter. “That’s pretty old,” I said. “Ever so much older than I am.” I looked away at the abstract painting above my mantel. My attempt to appear nonchalant didn’t impress him in the slightest.

“True. At least a good year or two on you.”

My eyes flashed to his face. “Hey, I’m only twenty-eight!”

He grinned at me. “I know. I looked up your DMV records.”

I made a face. “I look awful in that picture.”

He shrugged. “They have special filters on the cameras to make everyone look their worst. It’s the law.”

“Stalker.”

“I had to get your address. You wouldn’t talk to me.”

“Can you blame me?”

“I suppose not. At least I didn’t have any ex-wives banging on the window.”

I palmed my face with the hand he wasn’t holding. “I am so humiliated.”

“I figure it makes us even. We’ll start fresh next time and have a second first date. Deal?”

“I think I can do that.” I could feel my face getting hot. Maybe the worst date ever wasn’t turning out so bad after all.

“Good. Now I have some questions for you.”

“Oh? Like what?”

“For instance, was that a closet monster serving us lemonade?”

* * *

We talked for hours. Once I explained what had been going on with me, he was a little offended by my reaction to his oddness.

“You have to understand,” I said, “up until a few weeks ago, déjà vu was about the most supernatural thing I’d ever experienced. I may look like I’m taking it all in stride, but inside I’m patting myself on the head and expecting a doctor to bring me meds. I can either drown in the unbelievable, or swan-dive into it.”

It was a little after one a.m. when I walked him out to his car. Through a stand of trees off to the side, Iris’s face poked out through the leaves. He winked at me and withdrew. Riley looked startled.

“No wonder you didn’t want me to pick you up,” he said.

I gave him a wry grin. “Takes a special guy to see past a girl’s skunk-ape, especially on the first date.”

“Takes a special girl to fight with Death and win.”

“Did I win, then?” My stomach fluttered. He’d taken a step closer and was staring at me in that indecisive way guys have while they decide whether to kiss you or bolt.

“I think we both win. Let’s call it a draw.”

“Seems fair.”

His eyes flicked to the brush where Iris had disappeared, then at the house. He took a step back. I tried not to look disappointed. He pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked his car.

Do it, Zoey. For once in your life, take what you want instead of backing down and waiting. Two steps. Kiss him.
I ignored my inner voice. If he didn’t want to kiss me, I sure as hell wasn’t going to beg for it.

“Thanks for, you know, explaining everything,” I said. It came out stuttered and weak. “And for the flowers. They were really pretty.”

He covered the two steps to me in one long stride. It happened so fast, I had no time to react. He stooped, kissed me on the cheek, and was back to his car door.

“Thank you for letting me in,” he said, sliding into his seat. “I’ll call you, and we’ll try it again, if that’s all right.”

My cheek was hot where his lips had burned their imprint on my skin. I wanted to touch my face, to see if it was as hot as I imagined it to be, but I kept my arm down. “Sure. No ex-husband stalkers and no dead bodies.”

He waved at me out his window, and pulled out of the driveway.

After his taillights disappeared, I turned and sprinted up the porch steps—not an easy trick in three-and-a-half-inch heels. I blew through the door and hugged a wide-eyed Maurice.

“I think that went very well,” I said, once I caught my breath.

Maurice was less enthusiastic. “I can’t believe you’re still going to see him.”

My giddy high was instantly slapped down. “Why wouldn’t I see him?”

“Because he’s a
reaper
.”

“So? He explained it. It’s a job.”

“He’s a reaper, Zoey. He collects souls. He’s the guy monster moms threaten their kids with to get them to stay under the bed at night.”

“For a supernatural creature, you sure are superstitious.”

He took a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a long whoosh. “If I’d known what he was, I wouldn’t have let you out in the first place. I guess it’s too late now.” He ran his hand over the sparse hair on his head, making it stand up. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I want you to be happy. Maybe having a reaper around where I can’t protect you will keep you safer. I don’t know.”