LITMIR.BIZ

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understand that you don’t work off the master list, but you’ve seen it, right? You said there are murder victims on it every week …?”

      “Yeah, I see it every now and then.” Tod shrugged. “It’s all digital now, and my boss keeps it running on his computer all the time, in case he has to adjust anything. I glance at it when I go in his office.”

      “Okay, that’s good.” I couldn’t resist a small smile. “We don’t need to see it. We just need you to look at it and tell us whether or not these three names were there.”

      Tod leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, cradling his head in his hands. He rubbed his forehead, then took a deep, resigned breath and finally looked up at me. “Where did they die?”

      “The first one was in the West End, at Taboo. Heidi.?” Nash glanced at me with his brows arched.

      “Anderson,” I supplied. “The second was Alyson Baker, at the Cinemark in Arlington, and the third was at East Lake High School, just this afternoon.”

      “Wait, those are all in different zones.” Tod frowned, and the well-defined muscles of his arms tensed as he leaned against the table. “If you really think none of them were supposed to die, you’re talking about three different reapers involved in this little conspiracy. Which is starting to sound pretty complicated, by the way.”

      “Hmm.” I didn’t know enough about reapers to know how far-fetched a theory we were talking about, but I did know that the more people who were in on a secret, the harder it was to keep quiet. Tod was right. So … maybe we were only looking for one reaper, after all. “Is there anything keeping one of you guys from operating in someone else’s zone?”

      “Other than integrity and fear of being caught? No.”

       Grim reaper integrity….?

      “So if a reaper has neither integrity nor fear, there’s nothing to stop him from taking out half the state of Texas next time he gets road rage in rush hour traffic?” I heard my pitch rising, and made myself lower my voice as I screwed the lid off my Coke. “Don’t you guys have to turn in your…um…death ray, or whatever, when you’re off the clock?”

      Tod’s perfect lips quirked up in a quick smile. “Um, no. There’s no death ray, though that would be really cool. Reapers don’t use any equipment. All we have is an ability to extinguish life and take possession of the soul. But trust me, that’s more than enough.”

      With that, his expression darkened. “In theory, you should never find a reaper without integrity. It’s not like we apply for this job to satisfy some kind of massive power hunger. We’re recruited, and screened for every psychological condition known to man. No one capable of something like you’re talking about should ever find work as a reaper.”

      “You sound less than confident in the system,” I said, watching his face carefully.

      He shrugged. “You said it yourself. People aren’t infallible, and the system is run by people.”

      “So can you get a look at the lists?” Nash said, watching Tod almost as closely as I did.

      Tod bit his lower lip in thought. “You’re talking about three different zones, for three different days—and none of them on the current master list.”

      “So can you do it?” I repeated, leaning forward in anticipation.

      Tod nodded slowly. “It won’t be easy, but I like a challenge. So long as it pays off.” His blue-eyed gaze zeroed in on me, and something told me he was no longer talking about poking around in his boss’s office. “I’ll get you what you want to know—in exchange for your name.”

      “No.” Nash didn’t even hesitate. “You’ll do it because if you don’t, we’ll hang out here and she’ll suspend every soul you try to take until you’re so far behind schedule your boss sends you back to the nursing home. If you’re lucky.”

      “Right.” Tod smirked now as his gaze shifted from me to Nash. “She’s so green her roots are showing. I bet she’s never even seen a soul.”

      “He’s right,” I said. Nash snatched my hand from the table and squeezed it hard, begging me silently not to give Tod what he wanted. But I saw no reason not to. My name would be easy to figure out, which made it a cheap price for the information we needed. “My first name is Kaylee. You can have my last name when you give us what we want.”

      “Deal.” Tod stood, beaming as if his face gave off its own glow. “I’ll let you know what I find out, but I can’t promise it’ll be tonight. I’m already late for that aneurism.”

      I nodded, disappointed but not really surprised.

      “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some poor woman a widow.” And with that, he disappeared.

      There was no chiming of bells, no twinkling of light. No signal at all that he was about to vanish. He was simply there one moment, and gone the next, with no special—or sound—effects of any kind.

      “You didn’t tell me he could do that!” I glanced at Nash to find him frowning at the table. “What’s wrong?”

      “Nothing.” He stood and picked up the paper plate still holding his last bite of cake. “Let’s go.” We threw our trash away on our way out of the cafeteria, and I followed him across the hospital and through the parking garage in silence. Guess he really didn’t want Tod to know my name…

      When we reached the car, Nash followed me to the passenger’s side door, where he unlocked and opened it for me. But instead of getting in, I turned to face him and put one hand flat on his chest. “You’re mad at me.” My heart beat so hard my chest ached. I could feel his heart thumping beneath my palm, and for one horrifying moment, I was sure I’d never get to feel it again. That he would simply drive me home, then vanish from my life like Tod had vanished from the cafeteria.

      But Nash shook his head slowly. He was backlit by an overhead light near the entrance, and his dark hair seemed to glow around the edges. “I’m mad at him. I should have come by myself, but I didn’t think he’d be interested in you.”

      My eyebrows shot up and I stepped to the side to see him better. “Because I’m a shrieking hag?”

      Nash pulled me close again and pressed me into the car, then kissed me so deeply I wasn’t sure if I was actually breathing. “You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he said. “But Tod’s been hung up on someone else for a long time, so I thought you’d be safe. I should have known better.”

      “Why didn’t you want him to know my name?”

      Nash leaned back to see me better, and the line of his jaw went hard. “Because he’s Death, Kaylee. No matter how innocent he looks, or how desperately he clings to the notion that he’s some kind of afterlife hero, carting helpless souls from point A to point B, he’s still a reaper. One day he might find your name on his list. And while I know that keeping your name a secret won’t save you if that happens, I’m not just going to hand over your identity to one of Death’s gophers.”

      “He knows your name.” I let my hand trail from his chest down his arm until my fingers curled around his.

      “I knew him before he was a reaper.”

      “You did?” It hadn’t occurred to me until then that Tod might have had a normal life once. What were reapers like before they surrounded themselves with death and the dying?

      Nash nodded, and I opened my mouth to ask another question, but he laid one finger against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about Tod anymore.”

      “Fair enough,” I mumbled against his finger. Then I removed his hand and stepped up on my toes. “I don’t want to talk about him either.” I kissed him, and my pulse went crazy when he responded. His tongue met mine briefly, then his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck.

      “Mmm.”

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