Reaper (15 page)

Using the door was out of the question. A
curtain fluttered above him, in an open window big enough to crawl
through.

The building’s awning was old school, made
with heavy steel and thick canvas. An awning meant to support a
good amount of weight. Finally, his luck was turning.

Oz pulled himself onto the first floor window
box, gripping the side of the awning to gain his balance. He
crouched, then jumped with as much force as he could muster and
managed to half-pull his upper body onto the awning. His hips and
legs dangled over the side. Slowly, he pulled himself up and swung
his legs over the support bar. He hesitated a moment, not moving,
waiting for the thing to crash to the ground with his weight. The
hinges bolting the awning to the bricks squealed softly, but
held.

Oz stood carefully. The canvas gave and he
clawed the brick wall, propelling himself forward. Three unsteady
steps took him to the end of the awning. Oz jumped just as the old
metal brackets gave and barely caught the window ledge. He dangled
from the window frame for a moment then kicked and tugged himself
inside the window, tumbling forward and landing with a crash on the
floor of a dark storage room.

The fall knocked the wind out of him. A
grungy smell assaulted his nose, making him think of his Russian
grandmother’s closet—moth balls, mold and garlic. Oz coughed and
examined the room. Columns of books framed the door which led to a
hallway lit by strings of multicolored Christmas lights. Another
door sat open just a crack at the other end of the hallway. Through
the narrow opening, a shadow moved.

He stood, brushed the dust from his jeans,
and tiptoed down the hallway. To his right, a narrow stairwell led
to the main floor of the store.

Part bookstore, part antique shop, part
weird-occult-stuff-store. Its contents displayed in a mishmash of
junk that resembled a garage sale of the crazy neighbor mothers
would warn children to avoid.

Oz felt an unexpected swell of admiration.
Jamie had been trying to get at this stuff. It was weird, but it
was interesting. Intellectual interesting. The subject of children
wasn’t something Oz had dwelled on much when he was alive. He
hadn’t managed to hold together a relationship long enough to
consider moving in together, let alone children. But during those
few and far between moments that he did fantasize about having a
son—it was always a son—he’d hoped that his kid wouldn’t be the
kind that zoned-out, drooling and panting in front of a brain-suck
of a computer game, or agonized over sport statistics. He wanted
his hypothetical son to have an original thought.

The hypothetical son would never be, but with
Mark gone, Jamie came close. Whether Jamie wanted to talk to him or
not, Oz knew as he wandered into the book stacks that he
would
look out for the kid. His role in Mark’s death aside,
he’d promised.

The shop was empty, so Oz could move through
the aisles freely. When he did finally get the chance to see Jamie,
he ought to bring something with him. A peace offering. If only he
could remember the name of the book Jamie had been after.

He studied the shelves of the first stack,
but none of them sounded familiar.
Wiccan Rituals, Are You
Haunted?, Common Glyphs and Their Meaning, Worlds Beyond
Worlds...

Oz remembered Jamie said something about it
being rare. The titles on the shelves looked like modern
paperbacks, some fairly new, maybe published in the last few years.
It wouldn’t be there. Rare meant valuable. Valuable books, first
editions, whatever, were usually locked away in glass cases. This
shop only had one glass case and it housed a collection of metal
talismans and stone tools—knives, a mortar and pestle, a small,
pointed hammer.

There was a loud, staccato pounding on the
stairs and Oz’s heart to skipped a beat. The man who’d thrown Jamie
out the other day ran from the bottom of the stairs to the entrance
and threw the lock. His arm circled with the momentum. Oz couldn’t
be sure, but he thought he saw a shadow follow him, a shadow that
wasn’t person-shaped.

The man disappeared behind the desk that held
the register. A jingling of keys was followed by a strained
harrumph
. When he reappeared, he held a wide, metal case
which he dropped onto the desk and unlocked with a key from his
janitor’s ring. He pulled out a book, larger than any book Oz had
ever seen, the cover a faded red leather, embossed with gold
writing. The man laid the book on top of the case and Oz read the
title along the spine:
The Three Books
.

Oz slapped the side of the stack he stood
next to. “That’s what it was!”

The man looked up.

Weird
.

Oz sank a little deeper into the stacks. Had
the man heard him, or had he heard something Oz didn’t? It was an
old building—all creaks and groans.

The man muttered and opened the book.

For several minutes, the man thumbed through
the pages, stopping for a moment or two to skim and mutter,
flipping through others without even reading, until he came to what
he seemed to be looking for. His finger traced the text over and
over, as though he tried to memorize it with his flesh. He slammed
the book closed, clutched it to his chest, and turned off the main
lights before stomping back up the stairs.

Chapter
Sixteen

That night, Oz didn’t sleep. When the dim
morning light peeked through the window, he expected to hear the
stomp of Bard’s boots through the apartment, but all he heard were
the steps of his neighbors upstairs, squealing through the ceiling.
Below his window a pair of voices argued. It was impossible to tell
what they were fighting about with all the shouting and
wall-slapping.

Oz covered his head with the blanket and
considered staying in bed for the day; maybe try to sleep a bit.
He’d spent the majority of the night waiting for the shop owner to
leave
The Three Books
unattended, but around midnight, the
man left with the book tucked safely inside a belted satchel.

The clock on the floor next to his bed read
6:30 am. A sharp needling sensation stabbed the back of his brain
forcing him to get up.

As he climbed into the shower, Oz’s stomach
rumbled. He hoped someone would be dying in an IHOP.

* * *

A yellow cab idled quietly by the curb in
front of Oz’s apartment building. The driver was a middle-aged man
with a thick, brownish mustache and a baseball cap tipped back at
an awkward angle. The glow of the small device in his hand
illuminated his face. His eyes were slack and vacant.

The door behind Oz wheezed open and a thick
woman dragged a bored toddler behind her as she bounced down the
stairs. Without waiting for confirmation that the cab was actually
for her, she stuffed the little boy inside and scooted in next to
him. Without knowing why, Oz jumped the last steps of the stoop and
slid in the other side. It beat walking wherever it was The Powers
That Be were leading him.

“The Wyndsong Shopping Center, please. It’s
on Stark and 32
^nd
,” the woman said. “And there’s an
extra ten in it for you if you can do it without talking.”

The driver tapped his meter, put the cab into
gear, and pulled into the sparse traffic.

Oz silently applauded his patience. Or
indifference.

The toddler squirmed in his dinosaur t-shirt
and Osh-Kosh B’gosh overalls. There was a distinctive bulge in the
crotch and a sour stench permeated the recycled backseat air. His
mother scrunched her nose and kept her eyes forward.

The boy whined a high pitched kicked-dog
whine as they pulled in front of a nail salon at the tail end of
the shopping center. Oz waited for her to pay the fare and wedge
herself out of the back before opening the opposite door as
discreetly as possible. He barely had his leg out when the cab
pulled away, door still dangling open.

Caddy-corner to the auto repair shop where
the woman and her toddler had made a beeline, a yellow and green
Denny’s sign blinked happily.

Oz didn’t feel compelled to follow the woman
and her leaky toddler. In fact, he wanted to stay as far away from
full diapers as possible. She didn’t carry a diaper bag with her,
so there was no telling how long that poor kid would sit in his own
stink.

The Denny’s beckoned from the opposite end of
the shopping center. As Oz passed a Big & Tall, a small,
independent book store, a Chinese take-out place, and a Big Lots,
he paused outside each entrance to see if he felt that stabbing
sensation that made him feel like he
had
to go inside. He
wiggled a happy dance after he passed each without incident. He
wanted food. He wanted pancakes. He wanted greasy, borderline
inedible sausage and bacon. He wanted fried potatoes that tasted
like a mouthful of margarine.

As he crossed into the parking lot, the
entrance tickled that deep, unreachable part in the back of his
brain. His stomach sang.

* * *

It was busier than he’d expected considering
the hour, but most of the booths were filled with gray-haired
couples. Never underestimate the draw of an early bird special.

One of the longer tables toward the back,
next to the restrooms, was occupied by a group of seven or so
twenty-somethings, gape-mouthed with hair and make-up mussed. The
dizzy, funny part of being drunk had run its course, and now they
just wanted to eat and sober up enough to get home and collapse
into bed.

Oz breezed past the hostess and maneuvered
through tables to the window where meals grew cold while waiting to
be served. Omelets, Canadian bacon, Eggs Benedict... aha! A cook
slid a long oval plate into the window with a short stack, three
links, slightly burnt hash-browns, and an island of scrambled eggs.
Oz snatched it from the window and seated himself beside the
soon-to-be-hung-overs. A waitress examined the window for the
missing plate. Rather than bother trying to figure it out, she
yelled back to the cooks for a reorder.

Oz ate torturously slow—savoring each bite,
letting the syrup seep into every crevice between every tooth
before finally swallowing and inserting another sugary bite.

Next to him, a guy who’d overdone it on the
guy-liner (and arguably the most drunk of the group), broke into a
loud and off-key chorus of “Hallelujah” when the waitress arrived
with a full tray of various breakfasts and one turkey club with
onion rings.

Was there such a thing as being too pretty to
be a waitress? If there was, then this woman was it. Her Irish-red
hair was pulled back into one of those messy pony-tails that women
spent so much time on. A smattering of freckles dotted her nose and
cheekbones. She wasn’t as young as the kids she was auctioning food
to, but she couldn’t have been older than thirty. Oz noticed the
glittering wedding ring on her finger.

Why did he even look? It’s not like he was
interested, and even if he was, it’d be a pretty one-sided
relationship. His drunken, awful, didn’t want to think about
attempt at something with Cora turned out horribly. He knew that
regardless of whatever... urgings... he felt, he wasn’t going to
get his rocks off any time soon. Definitely not with a living,
breathing woman. Yet, he couldn’t help but watch the muscles in her
thighs as she leaned over the table to deliver the final plate to
an unfortunate looking girl in the corner.

And then he knew it was her, but at the same
time not her. He was ninety-eight percent sure she wasn’t the one
he’d been called for, but it had to do with her.

Six hours and two more plates of food later
(a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a slice of apple pie), Red
emerged from the kitchen with her apron folded over her left
shoulder and her purse slung over her right.

“See you tomorrow, Beth!” another waitress
called.

Red—Beth—didn’t answer her. She was
distracted. Her mouth set in a tight, pink line, eyes shining
bright with purpose.

Carrying a fistful of fries, Oz followed Beth
out the front door to a compact, dark blue sedan. The bumper
sticker read, “Bitch,” in elegant script.

Beth climbed into the driver’s seat but
didn’t immediately start the car. Oz slid into the back just as she
opened the glove compartment and pulled a small paper bag from
beneath a stack of paper. She folded the top of the bag twice and
placed it gently into the front pocket of her purse. Her right hand
rested on the pocket and didn’t move for the entire duration of the
drive, like she was afraid that if she didn’t, it would
disappear.

The neighborhood that Beth pulled into was a
typical middle class suburban area, similar to where Mark lived. In
fact, Oz couldn’t be certain it wasn’t the same neighborhood. They
drove past a sign in the shape of a child that read, “Caution,
children at play.” She pulled into an empty driveway in front of a
modest house—one car garage, small porch, pristine white siding
with a maroon trim. After she turned the key, Beth was out of the
car and marching up the path to the front door. Oz nearly tripped
over himself trying to keep up with her.

Once inside, she disappeared into the
bedroom, and then reemerged in a mid-thigh length, emerald summer
dress. He followed her into the kitchen. It was nothing special,
except for the island. Oz had always wanted an island for his
kitchen when he was alive. Not that he cooked or anything, but he’d
wanted it to look like he did.

Beth zipped around the kitchen with precise
movements. Several gadgets appeared on the counter and a slow
cooker emerged from the corner. Steam puffed from it when she
removed the lid, bringing with it the salty, dense aroma of beef
stew. Even with a full stomach, Oz salivated. It smelled amazing.
After dishing a small portion into a second pot, Beth disappeared
into the bedroom once again where she retrieved the small, brown
paper bag. She glanced over her shoulder to be sure that
someone—her husband, probably—hadn’t silently crept in to sneak up
on her. Oz moved beside her to get a better view of its contents;
two bean-shaped buds covered in bright pink spines.