And looks directly at me.
Oh, hell no.
I stiffen. My soul tries to evacuate my body.
And then she speaks. Tome.
“Fuck, please don’t tell me…” I mutter under my breath, praying she’s just oxygen-deprived and hallucinating.
But no. She turns back to the guys and smiles, all teary-eyed and grateful.
“I don’t know why the hell you four were here or how you knew I was drowning, but…” Her voice wobbles. “Thank you for saving my life.”
The world tilts beneath me.
Four.
Four?
“Four?” Talon echoes my thoughts. He glances at me, then back at her, smirking. “She didn’t do anything, believe me. It was only us three.”
He’s testing her. Seeing if she just misspoke or if she’s still dazed from nearly drowning.
But the girl’s gaze flicks right back to me, and my entire existence glitches.
She sees me.
I know it before she even opens her mouth. Her pupils aren’t blank and glazed over like every other living person who usually just walks past me. They lock. They focus. They hold.
She's the fourth person to be able to see me.
Fuck.
“You…” She breathes out slowly. “You were standing by the water when I woke up.”
I can practically feel the shift in the air—the way the guys go from mildly intrigued to intensely alert. Talon straightens, his smirk slipping like he just realized the joke’s on him. Cassian’s fingers twitch, like he’s about to pull a weapon on a confused, half-conscious girl—very normal, very casual behavior. Nathaniel, of course, remains disturbingly still, probably already calculating ten different ways this could end in a tragedy.
“You saw her?” Nathaniel asks, his voice eerily calm.
The girl blinks at him, then back at me, her face scrunched up like she’s realizing that she might be, in fact, the only sane person in this whole place at the moment.
“…Yes?” she says, cautiously. Then, as if remembering her manners, she adds, “Thank you all. Really.”
Dead silence.
The sirens outside are getting louder.
We should all be leaving—especially the three very wanted men standing next to me who, ideally, should be avoiding any and all run-ins with law enforcement. But instead of moving, they stay rooted in place.
Like we’re all thinking the exact same thing:
What the fuck is going on?
I know I do.
There are various types of souls to reap.
The first is the most common—a soul whose time has simply run out. Natural deaths. The body fails, the soul lets go, and I guide it where it needs to go. These are easy. Smooth. No resistance. The moment the light fades from their eyes, they slip free, weightless, and the job is done.
