I couldn’t even try to be cool as I shut off my car’s engine and got out. I pocketed my keys before making my way to the back of the restaurant, where Elliot had said he’d be.
I sighed with relief when I saw him laughing with another man. The other man looked about the same age, perhaps slightly older, maybe in his early thirties. He had long dishwater blond hair, half-lidded eyes, and an unshaven face.
Elliot nearly rolled off the black milk crate he sat on, his laughter exuberant. He didn’t have the red visor on anymore. His dark hair was a cute mess on top of his head. He had a crease where the visor had been. I wanted to run my hand through his hair, just to see if it was as soft as it looked.
I cleared my throat and scraped my feet across the asphalt so they would hear me without scaring them.
Elliot was the first to notice me. His dark eyes were enormous, and he drew in a breath. He smiled. “You really came.”
“I’m glad you’re safe.” I shoved my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t touch him. It felt too soon for that. It was already weird that I had mentioned his safety so much. He still didn’t remember me. He certainly didn’t know he was my beloved.
Elliot shrugged. “No one comes back here but us.”
I smiled and nodded as if I agreed with what his statement implied, but I knew we were on borrowed time. We didn’t have long—a couple of days at best. The Bureau would send demons first.
He waved me over, gesturing to the milk crate he’d been sitting on. “Have a seat.” Then he seemed nervous. He wrung his hands. “I mean, if you want to join us.”
“Sure.” I sat and held out my hand to his friend. “I’m Grym.”
The friend took it. “Joel.”
Joel was a beloved. There was a knowing deep in my gut. He was family.
He offered me a cigarette. It smelled of marijuana.
I shook my head. “I’ll have to drive home later.”
I didn’t smoke or drink, just on principle. It wouldn’t do to be called into work while drunk or high. Emergency casessometimes came up, and I had to escort someone into the afterlife. Imagine doing so while reeking of alcohol or marijuana. Despite Ossy’s opinion that no one cared because they’d just died, and that was a lot for a newly dead person to deal with, I wanted to help people as best I could.
Or I did. I was pretty sure that once HR reviewed my work and found it lacking, I’d be dead in the water. Literally.
Of the two, Elliot seemed much more sober, although his eyes were still red.
Elliot pulled a crate next to mine and sat on it. He was so close that our shoulders touched.
And then he did something I didn’t expect. He leaned into me, resting his head on my shoulder. He sighed. “Long night.”
I wrapped my arm around his waist and held him. He didn’t seem to mind, so I kept it there. He must have felt the connection. Maybe he remembered after all. Maybe it was just fragments.
Our souls recognized each other. I could feel mine, separate from my body, yet more me than my body. After the day I drowned in the river trying to save the prince, when my soul returned, I had always felt as though my body were more of an exoskeleton. I had my hand on the controls. I drove it, but it didn’t fit the same way it had before. Like a shirt stretched during washing.
It didn’t surprise me when my soul reached out to him. My soul wanted to reconnect with his, as if they were two halves of the same whole, severed long ago yet so close to reuniting.
Elliot was young and able-bodied. His youth made him throw caution to the wind when it came to me. A part of me wondered what he would do when he remembered. Would he still let me hold him? Would he be angry with me for being the one to ferry his mom? Would he be angry with me for giving him a choice without telling him the full consequences?
“I think he’s gonna go to sleep on you, man.” Joel smiled the way inebriated people do. He couldn’t quite control what his body was doing.
Elliot made a noise of protest. “Probably ought to go home.”
“Would you like me to drive you?” I offered.
He sighed. “Nah, that’s okay.”
“Are you tired?”
Elliot lifted his head from my shoulder. “Are you worried I might crash my car and that you’ll have to use your sickle, Mr. Reaper?”
I wasn’t, because he was already immortal. Murder at the hands of the Bureau was the only way to take him from the living world now. He wouldn’t get a pleasant afterlife. Donn would make sure of that. He would likely die a thousand times over, each more brutal than the last, in Tech Duinn. Donn created everything in that realm. It was his to manipulate as he saw fit.
