“How about a compromise?” he drawls. “I’ll tell you what we want you to do so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about it anymore, and in exchange, you tell me all about the person you’re so obsessed with that you spent your afterlife stalking them like a particularly judgmental ghost.”
Ugh. This bastard.
I know I don't have any secrets. The dead don’t have the luxury of keeping them. But I also don’t feel like sharing my personal history with a man who just spent the last hour casually incinerating body parts.
“That's hardly fair,” I argue.
“I agree,” he replies. “Too bad for you. Clearly, I'm not a very fair man. Not in terms of general justice, at least.”
He stretches, one arm lazily draping behind his back.
“You realize you'll have to tell me what you want from me in order for me to—oh, I don’t know—actually do that thing, right? I’m going to figure it out sooner or later anyway.”
“And yet you're still asking,” he counters, unbothered. “So, what's it gonna be, Little Grim? We can play this little game, or you can test your patience the hard way.”
I don’t want to play along.
But I do want answers.
I take a slow breath and exhale, rolling my shoulders back.
“Fine,” I say. “Tell me what you want from me.”
His grin spreads.
“Now we're talking.”
I half expect him to drag this out, to circle around the truth just to keep me on edge, but to my surprise, he doesn't.
“You're not just any Grim Reaper, Skye,” he says. “You're special.”
I snort. “Yeah? In what way? Because so far, the only thing special about me is that I have the misfortune of being stuck with you.”
“You're different,” he continues, ignoring my sarcasm. “Unlike any other Grim Reaper we have seen, you can be tethered down. And that’s not normal for your kind.”
I frown, crossing my arms. “What are you talking about?”
Nathaniel said something similar earlier—that I wasn’t like a ghost, that I wasn’t exactly a spirit. But I’d never questioned my nature before. I’ve been dead for years. This existence is all I’ve known since my murder.
But… now that Talon says it… I realize Iamdifferent from other Reapers. I never could just wait in the nothingness for souls to appear. I could never fully separate my job from my old life.
I always thought it was just… a personality flaw. Ameproblem.
Talon must see something shift in my expression because he nods, like he was waiting for me to piece it together.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “We've seen the others. They were all much more…soullessthan you.”
I glare at him.
“So what is it about? Why am I so different?”
His smile shifts. It’s not one of those cocky, teasing smirks that would make any other woman’s knees weak. No, this one is different. Softer. Sadder.
And that’s why I suddenly dread his answer.
“You’re different, Skye,” he says, watching me carefully. “Because you never had a funeral.”
I go still.
