LITMIR.BIZ

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angrily. “Leave her alone.”

      Tod grinned, like we’d shared a private joke. “I’m not even touching her.”

      Nash ground his teeth together, but I rolled my eyes and spoke up before he could say something we’d all regret. “This is ridicutous. Nash, be nice. Tod, show yourself. Or I’m leaving you both here.”

      Nash remained silent but did manage to unclench his jaws. And I knew the moment Tod appeared to him, because his focus narrowed on the reaper’s face. “What are you doing here?”

      “I work here.” Tod let go of the IV stand and ambled forward, holding the steaming cup out for me. I took it without thinking—my throat did hurt, and something hot would feel good going down. I sipped from a tiny slit in the lid and was surprised to taste sweet, rich hot chocolate, with just a bit of cinnamon.

      I gave him a grateful smile. “I love cocoa.”

      Tod shrugged and slid his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans, but a momentary flash in his eyes gave away his satisfaction. “I wasn’t sure you’d like coffee, but I figured chocolate was a sure thing.”

      A soft gnashing sound met my ears as Nash tried to grind his teeth into stubs, and his hand tightened around mine. “Let’s go, Kaylee.”

      I nodded, then shrugged apologetically at Tod. “Yeah, I should get home.”

      “To see your dad?” The reaper grinned slyly, and whatever points he’d gained with the hot chocofate he lost instantly for invading my privacy.

      “You were spying on me?”

      A door opened on the right side of the hallway and an orderly emerged, pushing an elderly man in a wheelchair. They both glanced our way briefly before continuing down the hall in the opposite direction. But just in case, Tod lowered his voice and stepped closer. “Not spying. Listening. I’m stuck here twelve hours a day, and it’s ridicutous for me to pretend I don’t hear stuff.”

      “What did you hear?” I demanded.

      Tod looked from me to Nash, then glanced at the nurses’ station at the end of the hall, at the juncture of two other corridors. Then he nodded toward a closed, unnumbered door on the left and motioned for me and Nash to join him.

      I went, and Nash followed me reluctantly. Tod made an “after you” gesture at the door, but when I tried to open it, the knob wouldn’t turn. “It’s locked.”

      “Oops.” Tod disappeared, and a moment later the door opened from the inside. The reaper stood in a small, dark storage closet lined with shelves stacked with medication, syringes, and assorted medical supplies.

      I hesitated, afraid someone might walk in and catch us. A reaper could blink himself out of trouble, but bean sidhes could not. But then light footsteps squeaked toward us from one of the other hallways, and Nash suddenly shoved me inside and closed the door behind us.

      There was a second of darkness, then something clicked and light bathed us from a bare bulb overhead. Nash had found the switch. “Okay, spit it out,” he snapped. “I do not want to explain to Kaylee’s father why we were caught in a locked hospital storage room full of controlled substances.”

      “Fair enough.” Tod leaned with one shoulder against a shelf along the back wall, giving me and Nash as much room as possible—which was about a square foot apiece. “I was waiting on a guy with a knife wound to the chest. Should have been short and simple, but I stepped out to take a call from my boss, and by the time I got back inside, the doc had brought him back three times. You know, with those shock paddle things?”

      “So you let him live?” Nash sounded nearly as surprised as I was.

      “Um.no.” Tod frowned, blond curls gleaming in the unfiltered light. “He was on my list. Anyway, when I finished with the stab victim, I came out to the lobby for a cup of coffee and heard you talking.” He was looking at me now, and completely ignoring Nash. “So I followed you into your friend’s room. She’s hot.”

      “Stay away from… her,” I finished lamely, remembering at the last minute that it wasn’t wise to give out my friends’ names to the agents of death. Not that the reaper couldn’t find it on his own anyway. And not that Death didn’t already have Emma’s name on file, after that afternoon.

      Tod rolled his eyes. “What kind of reaper do you think I am? And anyway, what fun would killing her be?”

      “Leave her alone,” Nash snapped. “Let’s go.” He turned and grabbed the handle, then threw the door open fast enough that if anyone from the nurses’ station had been looking, we’d have been caught for sure. Surprised, I hurried after him and barely heard the storage closet close behind me. We were nearly to the double doors when Tod spoke again.

      “Don’t you want to know about the phone call?” He only whispered, but somehow his voice carried as if he’d spoken from an inch away.

      I stopped, pulling Nash to a sudden halt. He glanced at me in confusion, then in mounting irritation, and I realized with a jolt of shock that once again he hadn’t heard Tod—and that I shouldn’t have either. The reaper was at least twenty feet away, still in front of the closet.

      “The call from your boss?” I whispered experimentally, to see if Tod could hear me.

      The reaper nodded, smiling smugly.

      “What did he say?” Nash growled softly, angrily.

      “Come on.” After a quick look to make sure none of the nurses were watching, I nearly dragged him down the hall and back into the closet behind Tod. “Why should we care about your communication issues with your boss?” I asked aloud, to catch Nash up on the discussion.

      “Because he has a theory about the off-list reaping.” Tod’s grin grew as he leaned against the left-hand shelf, and a small dimple appeared in his right cheek, highlighted by the stark light from overhead. How could I not have noticed that before?

      “What theory?” Nash asked. Apparently he could hear Tod again.

      “Everything costs something. You should know that by now.”

      “Fine.” I huffed in frustration and ignored Nash when his hand tightened around mine. “Tell us what you know, and we’ll tell you what we know.”

      Tod laughed and pulled a plastic bedpan from the shelf, peering into it as if he expected a magician’s rabbit to hop out. “You’re bluffing. You don’t know anything about this.”

      “We saw the reaper when Emma died,” I said, and his smile faded instantly. He dropped the bedpan back onto the shelf and I knew I had his attention. “Start talking.”

      “You better be telling the truth.” Tod’s gaze shifted between me and Nash repeatedly.

      “I told you, Kaylee doesn’t lie,” Nash said, and I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t include himself in that statement.

      Tod hesitated for a moment, as if considering. Then he nodded. “My boss is this really old reaper named Levi. He’s been around for a while. Like, a hundred fifty years.” He crossed his arms over his chest, getting comfortable against the back wall of shelves. “Levi said something like this happened when he first became a reaper. Everything was a lot less organized back then, and by the time they figured out someone was taking people not on the list—

      they wrote the whole thing by hand back then, can you

      imagine?—they’d already lost six souls from his region.”

      “You’re serious?” Nash wrapped one arm around my waist, and I let him pull me close. “Or are you just making all this up to impress Kaylee?”

      Tod shot him a dark scowl, but I thought it was a totally valid question. “Every word of this came straight from Levi. If you don’t believe me, you can ask him yourself.”

      Nash stiffened, and muttered something about that not

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