“You mean other Grims?” I say, my voice low. “The ones you said wouldn’t lose a chance to strike?”
He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “The same ones. They sent the crows onto you. Someone wants to monitor where you go, and stop you from leaving.”
Around us, the guys shift. Talon’s face goes slack with disbelief, like the universe just dumped another complication on his doorstep. Cassian’s hand tightens around the folder of fakescans until the paper creases. Nathaniel’s jaw ticks sideways. He’s probably already thinking ten steps ahead.
“We haven’t seen any Grim Reapers around,” Talon says, hopeful but skeptical. “If they were here, we’d notice.”
Pain looks at him like he’s just said something adorable.
“Not if they already know you can see the supernatural.”
That stopsallof us.
“What?” I say.
“How would they know that?” Cassian asks.
Pain’s gaze slides to him and then to me.
“You haven’t been to the afterlife properly for a while,” he says at last. “But things have…” His eyes flick toward the ceiling, like language itself is failing him. “Changed.”
“Changed how?”
Afterlife was never a place I saw. I only ever carried souls there. I guided them into the shapeless abstract where concepts spoke louder than matter. I always remembered the dead, not the terrain.
While alive I thought in flesh, so the abstract blurred behind me like a dream dissolving on wake.
“Before, the afterlife was pure abstraction. You only brushed against the edge of it when guiding souls. No translation. Just passing through. But when the system broke, the barrier thinned.”
Now, that’s even more confusing.
“What do you mean by that?” Nathaniel prods.
“Too much happened too fast,” Pain says. “A wraith was born. A human who should’ve died stayed. A Grim Reaper disappeared ahead of her time. Jurisdictions collapsed. Others overlapped. And once the system broke, the others learned it could break. Meaning: Grim Reapers began finding ways to cease existing ahead of their murderer’s death, while still getting revenge anyway.”
That makes my mouth dry. “How?”
“For starters,” Pain says, voice cooling, “when that Grim woman evaporated, someone had to take her post. But because everything was chaotic, two Grims were assigned to the same jurisdiction. They met. Compared experience. One recognized the wraith’s origin. Realized there had to be someone in the human world who messed things up. Didn’t take long for them to start looking for you.”
I lift both hands. “Wait, no. Grims don’t talk. They don’t compare notes orcompare experiences. That’s absurd.”
“These did.”
“And the crows?” I press. “They stalked me long before the wraith ever appeared.”
“Right,” he nods. “Because they congregate where the fabric thins. Back then they weren’t coordinated. Just circling the rip. Now they’re being directed.”
“Directed by those same Grim Reapers that realized I fucked up?”
“Exactly. They’ve mastered their powers. Now they’re using them against you.”
I taste metal. The crows hiss and shuffle along the glass.
“Their agenda…” I whisper.
“I don’t know what they want,” Pain says, mild as poison. “But whatever it is, giving in means signaling weakness. If one arrives, more will follow. We cannot give in.”
“But if they want something from us,” I say slowly, tasting each syllable, “what if we use it? We could bargain. They could help us.”
