Reaper eternally reaper.., p.1
Reaper Eternally: Reaper Fairytale Book 3, page 1
Reaper Eternally
Qatarina Wanders
Wandering Words Media
Copyright © 2023 by Qatarina Wanders, Wandering Words Media
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. Chapter One
2. Chapter Two
3. Chapter Three
4. Chapter Four
5. Chapter Five
6. Chapter Six
7. Chapter Seven
8. Chapter Eight
9. Chapter Nine
10. Chapter Ten
11. Chapter Eleven
12. Chapter Twelve
13. Chapter Thirteen
14. Chapter Fourteen
15. Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Angelica
The park has become one of my favorite places in the city.
During the day, it’s delightful, but at night, there’s a certain charm in the way it contorts. The shadows deepen, becoming more pronounced, while the starlight above transforms into a refined spectacle. And the reflection of the stars in the lake? That's truly the pinnacle of its allure.
Well, maybe it’s not the silver specks being reflected in the lake that has caught my eye. I’m far more interested in the fact that Grim is standing at the edge of the water, boots in the thick mud of the bank, with one skeletal hand stretched out in front of him.
At this time of the night, it’s easy to see why so many humans have turned Reapers into horror icons. He wears the black robe that you always see Reapers wearing in movies and on posters, though his shimmers with a faint rainbow of colors when the fabric shifts and the moonlight hits it just right.
It’s always reminded me of an oil-filled puddle in a gas station parking lot—rainbow in a different sense of the word.
“What are we doing again?” I ask, stepping over to him. The mud suctions at the bottom of my own boots, each step noisier than the last. He has no reflection, but mine comes into focus beside him, star-studded and murky.
That’s something I’ll never fully get used to, I don’t think. Grim seems so real and solid to me. Unless he’s purposefully trying to hide himself, I can almost always see him, and I can touch him, hold him, kiss him, love him. But to the rest of the mortal world, the creature doesn’t even exist.
The Reaper is nothing to most humans. He has no reflection, and though he can interact with the mortal world, it takes a lot of energy and is something that he’s only supposed to do if Destiny and Fate tell him such. Otherwise, he’s meant to pass seamlessly through walls and exist soundlessly; part of the mortal function, but not in contact with them.
I forget about that a lot, actually. I’m sure people have seen me talking to him and assumed I was talking to myself. It doesn’t bother me too much, just because the city has never really been that fond of me. Even my mother thinks I should have buttoned down, gotten an office job, and ‘grown out of’ my current sense of fashion.
“You wanted to know more about what a Reaper can do.” Grim is talking to me about a complaint I made two weeks back, when he managed to move a knife from one counter to another with just a snap of his fingers.
I had been affronted by the fact I didn’t realize he could do something like that, and demanded to start learning more about Reapers as a whole. Of course, my ability to do such is pretty much reliant totally on him.
I did check out a few books on Reapers, but they’re just distorted human myths. None of the facts in those books match up with the reality of the situation, which is that Reapers are their own society, with their own structure, their own hierarchy, and their own laws and rules. They certainly didn’t mention Omens, and most of them cited Reapers as a cause of death, not as a result of it.
“I do,” I tell him with an eager nod. “I’ve been wanting to know more about you for a while. But… that doesn’t actually tell me anything. You see that, right?” I make a gesture with one hand. “I’ve got no clue why we’re out here.”
Grim chuckles. He’s got a great laugh—and a great smile, and pretty eye lights. I think that most of him is just amazing, honestly. He has this way about him that managed to pull me in from the start. Handsome as a skeleton, handsome in his human guise; funny and honest and so utterly in love with me, it’s almost like something from a fairy tale.
You know the sort, where the prince falls for the princess and sees everything that the rest of the world has been missing? Yeah, just like that. Grim sees something in me that no one else ever has. He doesn’t need anything from me, doesn’t want me to change, doesn’t expect me to be a different person than the one I already am.
Our love might be a little unconventional, but that doesn’t make it any less real. If anything, it makes it feel that much more special.
“I have something I can show you.” He reaches out, phalanges brushing briefly over my cheek. “I think you’re going to like it. This is one of the spells that every Reaper just… Knows. We don’t need to learn it. It’s just there, with us from the start.”
“Something other than making me invisible?” I say, amused. We’ve discovered that a human medium like myself can only be invisible for so long. Too much exposure to his magic makes me weak-kneed and dizzy.
That being said, small exposures to it? Those are totally fine, and are a good way for me to go with him when he Collects souls. We haven’t been doing too much of that lately, but there was a time when it seemed like every date we went on ended in a Collection of someone’s life force.
A little morbid, sure, but it works for us. And I’ve come to learn that death is just another part of someone’s life. It’s not really scary if you understand how the other side of our reality works.
Grim doesn’t smile back. “Yes, something other than that.”
“It’s a joke, Grim.” I reach out and give his shoulder a pat. “You don’t need to get all serious about it. I like that you can turn me invisible.”
Grim doesn’t seem keen on letting me brush the situation away, though. His voice is rather monotone when he says, “It isn’t a joke. I did not mean to hurt you. I’ve done that too many times since we met.”
“You did it once,” I counter, leaning against his side. “And it was an accident. We didn’t know your magic would do that. Long as we keep it to one Reaping a night, we should be good.”
The only reason it had happened was because we had two back-to-back Reapings. It was right after Grim went missing for a week, and I was desperate to spend time with him. That whole month was sort of a hot mess. We were trying to figure out how we felt about each other, and how the rest of our two worlds would react to us being together.
“That isn’t what I meant,” he mutters.
I know that. He’s absolutely talking about how he took off to parts unknown for a week, and then came back with the announcement that he was in love with me rattling off from the insides of his teeth. Well, we already dealt with that mess.
As in, it’s over and done with. No need to rehash the past when it doesn’t matter. It had a happy ending, anyway. We’re together, and we’re happy. Bottom line, right there, at least as far as I’m concerned.
Especially for tonight. There’s no reason to ruin our date night with talks about an issue we’ve already resolved and moved past. This is supposed to be a light-hearted evening where we get to spend time together. Not where we dwell on previous upsets and ruin the mood before it can even really start.
I tell him, “Yeah, well. Maybe you should just show me your magic trick and we’ll call it a night.”
I make the comment light on purpose, brushing away all of his concerns. I’m just not going to let tonight fall apart because Grim’s got some kind of a guilt complex going on.
Grim lets out a heavy exhale but turns back to the water. He holds out one hand. “Sometimes, if a city is big enough, or the fields are far enough apart, I cannot see the person I’m meant to Collect right away. When that happens, I use this. It’s called a water window.”
Oh! I’ve heard them mention this before, Grim and Wil. My interest piqued, I turn back to the water.
“A water window, huh?” I say softly. “That sounds fun.”
“Fun might not be the best way to describe it,” says Grim, “But I thought that it was something you would like to see anyway.”
Magic begins to coalesce in his hand. It’s the same shade of blue as his eye lights, and the magic that occasionally flares to life between the connection points of his bones. It sparks and shudders, twisting, and then pulls downward, forming an almost tacky-looking tear drop that splashes into the water below.
The light spreads out, spilling over the surface of the water. It turns the water a bright shade of blue, and then the light seems to stretch out, almost solidifying the water into a glass surface.
Captivated by the sight, I lean forward, staring into the strange, flat surface of the water. Slowly, images take shape. They’re foggy and blurred at first, but they come into view quickly enough. The images become the city I live in. I recognize some of the buildings.
Then it seems to shudder and zoom in, showing the outside of one house specifically. It’s a pleasant-looking place, with a spider plant in an old red pot sitting on the front steps, and wrought-iron rails on either side of the stairs.
“Is that her?” I doubt it would show us anyone other than the mark Grim is supposed to be Collecting next, but I don’t totally know how the water windows work. Besides that, I’ve found that it’s best to clarify everything that has to do with Reaping. Some of it seems like it should be obvious but—like the signs and omens that fill the world—they can be a bit more complicated than originally thought.
Not this time, though. This time, I’ve got it on my first guess.
The image doesn’t shift again. Grim nods. “Wanda Delruse.”
Wanda is a middle-aged woman with dirty blonde hair pulled into a messy bun at the top of her head. A few long pieces hang down at the front, framing her face. Over the time I’ve been with Grim, I’ve come to learn that most of the souls he Collects don’t look like anyone special.
They’re just people. Humans always have to pass on. That’s just how life works; our entire reality functions on one circular path. We’re born, we live, and then we die. Once we die, the cycle continues, and we are reborn again – as another human, as a soul that grants something else with life, as an Omen or a Reaper.
Death really isn’t the end of the road that most people make it out to be.
“You know, that’s a little funny.” That’s when I realize that this is a great opening to another question. My gaze shifts to the side, towards Grim. “It’s been a while since you let me go with you on a Reaping.”
I can see Grim go stiff. He twists his hand, breaking the connection. The image of Wanda vanishes, just like that, and the water window is gone. A light that’s been snapped out. It just vanishes, no haze left behind, no ripple on the water. It’s like it had never existed in the first place; just like most of the things that Grim, and the other Reapers, touch.
He turns to face me, and his brow bones are furrowed. I can practically see the defensive energy coming off of him in waves. “And?”
“And I don’t think you’ve been out on them, either,” I say, trying to keep my voice light so the whole conversation isn’t shut down before it even starts.
“Just because you’re with me an awful lot, Grim. Is something going on?” Before he can answer, I hold up a hand, finger extended. “No lying, either. We already did that song and dance when the Council called you in.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” says Grim, lightly. He reaches out, catching hold of my wrist and tugging my hand forward and up. The flats of his teeth press against the curves of my knuckles. His eye lights flare bright, the way they always do when we’re close like this. “You don’t need to worry about everything.”
“Right, maybe I don’t need to worry about everything, but I am worried about this. Come on, Grim. Tell me what’s been slowing things down. Wanda’s the first person you’ve so much as mentioned Collecting in nearly three weeks.”
“Do you keep track?” He clearly means to poke a bit of fun at me.
I tilt my chin up and meet his gaze head on. “As a matter of fact, I do keep track. I’ve got a journal about it at home.”
Grim lets out a startled laugh, dropping my hand and moving away from the lake, back up toward the pavement that runs through the park as a form of jogging path. “Why would you do something like that?”
“Because this is a strange world” I turn and follow him. “And I need some way to write it all down and make sense of it. And it’s a good thing I’m doing it that way, too, because I wouldn’t have noticed anything was going on.”
Grim insists, “Nothing’s going on.”
“Literally,” I respond with a cluck of my tongue.
The park is lovely. It’s a massive stretch of well-tended grass, with flower-lined sidewalks that wrap through it. The lake at the center is man made, but that doesn’t affect the fact that night time and dawn both turn it into magical things; and during the day time, a family of ducks gives it something that’s still worth looking at.
Several large oak trees and stone benches are scattered around. This is one of those places I used to come on occasion to take pictures for my photography business, and that I’ve since started coming more frequently because it’s where Grim and I always meet up.
Grim glances at me and lets out another heavy exhale, bordering on being a sigh. “You aren’t going to stop asking about it, are you?”
“We’ve got a no-secrets policy,” I say. “So maybe you should just tell me, instead of making me try to dig and badger it out.”
Grim tilts his head to the side for a moment, and then relents, with a slight nod of the skull. “I have been avoiding some of my duties.”
“Why?” I scrunch my brow. “Are you in trouble again?”
“It’s the opposite, actually. I’m trying to prevent myself from getting into trouble,” Grim says cautiously. “I told you about Satania, the Head Reaper.”
“She sounds like a real piece of work.” I sweep my brightly dyed green and purple hair away from my face. “Did she say something about our relationship again?”
“No.” His voice lowers. “But I want to make sure it stays that way. I thought that simply removing myself from her radar was the way to go. There is a surprisingly large amount of paperwork that goes into Reaping.”
“I know, you told me about the mistake that Wil made,” I say, starting to follow him along the path, towards the fence that wraps around the park.
We’re seemingly the only two around. I’ve noticed the streets have been practically empty at night the last few days.
Grim goes on, “Exactly. Every time I Collect a soul, paperwork must be submitted. And at this point, she’s going to look at everything that’s submitted under my name with an incredible amount of scrutiny. I won’t be able to get anything done privately, or away from her gaze.”
“Okay?”
“So I have decided that for now at least, I will just… Avoid the Reapings, and see about getting off of her radar,” explains Grim. We step out of the park and into the city beyond.
Just like the park, the sidewalks are empty. There aren’t even any cars around. A prickle rises up at the back of my neck; as a medium, I can sense changes in the world around me. It’s how I’m able to see the Reapers when most of the world cannot.
And right now, I’m sensing that something in the city has changed.
Could it be related to the lack of soul-collecting?
My lips purse. “That’s not going to get you in trouble?”
“Everything I do will get me in trouble right now.” He rolls his eye lights, and starts to guide me through the darkened city, back to my apartment building. “Satania is childish, and she’s bored. It doesn’t matter how closely I follow the rules, she’s still going to find fault in what I do. At least this way, she might grow so bored with my lack of interesting action that she moves on.”
“I mean, I get where you’re coming from,” I agree. “It just sounds… Strange.”
Grim points out, “There are other Reapers. Do you remember the woman that was hit by a car?”
A shudder runs through me. “How could I forget?”
“That woman was supposed to be Collected by someone else,” says Grim. “But she was occupied. It wasn’t Satania that was alerted of that, but my Omen. The other Omens will simply pick up on the signs that Fate leaves behind, and they will guide their Reapers into cleaning things up.”
“I suppose that makes sense. I just don’t want to see you get in trouble over something.” My apartment building rises up before us and we come to a stop in front of it.
Grim wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me close to him. My hands settle on his chest, fingers curling slightly in the fabric of his robes. I tilt my head up, closing the distance between us. My lips press to the flats of his teeth, but only for a moment.
Then his magic shimmers, and a human guise settles into place so that Grim can kiss me right and proper. It’s tongue and tooth, and the spark of magic in my mouth, the taste of something other. I lean into the kiss, letting him tangle his phalanges in my hair.
