“Selene?” I turned, hearing the voice behind me.
My blood-covered fingers went to my mouth to cover my gasp, the tang of copper slipping past my lips. He was there, shimmering like a ghost. “You’re dead!” I cried against my hand, trying not to be too loud but also not believing what I was seeing. I’d seen people like this since turning sixteen, but I thought it was all in my head . . . the madness driving me every day toward a mental hospital.
Only there he floated like a ghost and not a trick of the brain. This was real.
“You have to take me on, Selene.”
I shook my head, wanting no part of this.
“It’s your job. Death calls to you, and you are Death.”
Death was calling to me. The feeling was so strong that I wanted to join him, to feel the coldness start in my fingers, then move across my skin, consuming my mind . . . the sweet surrender to the darkness.
“No, baby. Not your time.” He shook his iridescent head but I panicked. I needed a way out. This was too much for me to live with. I reached into Travis’s pocket that I knew housed a small knife. No more faking I was OK. No more trying to smile when all I wanted to do was waste away. No more separation of soul and mind. I was going to become one in death.
The pain was nothing. Blood pooled into the carpet, and soon I would be free. Death called to me like a siren’s song, a final kiss of darkness, and I was allured to its depths forever.
Chapter One
Present Day
Selene
“I don’t wanna be here,” I grumbled to my animated friend Emily, who could not sit still at the sight before her.
“You just wait and see. That story you’ve been dying to write for the paper is here.” Her eyes never left the circular circus stage before us. Emily was a five-foot-seven ball of energy, with pink hair and freckles on top of her nose. Her smile was my favorite part of her physic. Emily’s smile could instantly make you feel better about life, like a cup of hot chocolate with whipped cream on top.
She’d used that cozy grin on me many times after the incident with Travis’s pocketknife. I’d killed myself in my insanity, but it wasn’t my time to go. Doctors fixed me up, pumped me full of blood, and put me on twenty-four-hour suicide watch. After that my parents had me committed until I was better. Emily was one of the nurses who took care of me. She made sure I ate food and kept me company. The worst place someone who has mental issues can be is in their own head. Over the few months of being in the psych ward, we’d become friends, bonding over the desire of death but grew strong enough to resist.
Emily had been a cutter growing up. Thankfully I hadn’t found an interest in that act. She had worked through her issues and wanted to help others. She didn’t have any friends because she was too much for people to understand . . . like me.
Sometimes my long dirty-blond waves looked nice, like I put effort into my appearance. My normal black eyeliner was on point. Then there were times where I looked like I’d slept under a bridge. Mental health was no joke, and in reality, everyone battles some form of insanity. I’ve found the best thing you can do while feeling like you’re stuck in the mud is make mud angels.
This week was a good week. Hell, I’ve actually been having a good few weeks. My desire to flirt with death was manageable, thanks to the Hero Society. After they’d come out to the world, explaining that people with powers came from the ancient Greek gods and goddesses, who in their final breaths cast their powers into the genes of mankind, hoping the powers would protect us mere humans. The powers came to the host the genes deemed worthy of them on a person’s sixteenth birthday. If a person didn’t use the powers, he or she would go mad.
Like me.
A man named Phillip Griffin and his friend Draco came to my home a year ago on a business visit. They were the leaders of the Hero Society. Draco had been immortal until he helped two others from the society change time for the better of mankind and their crew. His immortality was a price he paid gladly for saving his woman and the world. He’d known every power that could come forth in the human genes of the gods.
I thought I had been going crazy for years. Turns out my power made me a reaper. I couldn’t kill someone like most would assume but I could feel when death was coming for someone’s life. Once they died, I was to take their soul on. Of course, I found out there was an afterlife for us once we die. It had been working without me bringing souls up or down. I just happened to have the gift, and if I was around the soul, then I would take it where it was supposed to go. If I wasn’t around there were other spirits that did the job. So while I wasn’t needed per se, I still helped.
Since I was able to speak to those who recently passed, as well as a journalist who wanted the truth in everything, I helped settle unresolved cases with the Seahill Police Department. It was either use my gifts for the greater good or slip into madness again. I’d chosen to be a superhero and use those powers to help those who couldn’t help themselves.
Most of the time the dead wanted to move on, but there were a few that refused. I’d try to help them so that they could move on peacefully. Forcing them to leave never worked in my favor. They tended to avoid me and disappear before I could grab them.
“Oh, it’s about to start!” Emily’s hands shook my arm, bringing me back to the present.
The lights dimmed on the plain black stage, signaling something was about to happen. Her fingers reached over and intertwined with mine. Sound started through hidden speakers all around us.
“Caw!” A screeching black crow flew past my head. My hair whirled from the bird’s movement to the stage. A man appeared as if out of thin air, and the crow landed on his shoulder.
“That’s him!” Emily whispered, squeezing my hand tighter.
What was it about this guy that intrigued her so? His head was tilted down, and an old top hat sat on his head. Fog crept onto the circle-like stage in front of us. My skin tingled and I hoped someone wasn’t about to die on stage.
“As reality slips from your mind, your eyes widen with wonder, and your soul leaps onto the wind of a dream.”
That voice. My spine straightened, and I stared at the man dressed in black with a ringleader’s red coat. The timbre in his words demanded attention without yelling. A stomping sound shuddered throughout the small arena, just as his head popped up, and he looked into the crowd. At me.
