It’s strange though, I notice a moment when we show people Wren’s picture. They pause and get this gleam in their eye but the look fades just as fast as it appears.
“Isn’t that one of Maxim’s girls?” one guy in the pub says, nudging the guy next to him.
“Nah, look at her. She’s a kid. He’s into buxom blondes, man. Stick a bag on your head, sweetheart, unless you want to attract a minotaur’s attention.” He aims this latter comment at Echo, causing Brogan to growl low in his throat, and the guy throws up his hands, laughing.
“Kidding, sweetheart. I’m just kidding.”
“The woman we’re looking for is called Wren. She doesn’t smile much and she could drink anybody under the table. That ring any bells?”
The minotaur shakes his massive head. “Nah, but it sounds like she’d fit in well around here.” He laughs and his words make my chest hurt.
We head out onto the street again, and Echo links her arm with mine, sighing heavily. “I kind of wish she had found her way back here. Or that she’d stayed after the tour and not headed back to yours,” she says. “Despite what I said earlier about how much it would suck for people not to remember you, it sounds like she had a home here. She could have had that again.”
As much as it gives me a pang in my chest to think that she wasn’t happy with us and I had no idea. She’s right.
“I’m gonna do a quick loop around the village and leave my number in the pub, in case she shows up at some point in the future,” Brogan says.
I nod, distracted as I stare around, trying to see if I can detect whether these people are, in fact, dead. You’d think if anyone could detect it, it would be a reaper.
Brogan jogs off, leaving me alone with my mate’s arm in mine and her head resting on my shoulder. We fall into companionable silence for a few minutes.
“Let me know when you’ve finished testing your x-ray eyes out on everybody,” Echo says softly and I blush. I didn’t realize I was being so obvious about it.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
She shakes her head vigorously. “Don’t be. Is it bad that I really, really want to ask someone if they remember their past life and if this is their afterlife? Might freak them out a little, but I’m so curious.”
We wander along the street a little further. And I don’t know if it’s because I was trying to stretch my reaper senses further than normal, or something completely different, but I feel a strange tug in my gut, pulling me forward. I blink and experience the same feeling once again, like someone’s got a fish-hook in my gut and it’s pulling me along the street. Echo follows beside me, glancing at me curiously every so often, but she doesn’t say anything. We keep going until we’re climbing the tor that looms over the south side of the village. I glance up at it. The feeling in my gut wants me to keep climbing, but I meet Echo’s eyes before we go any further, a question in my eyes.
“Keep going,” she says.
I don’t know what force is driving me on, pulling me higher and higher, over boulders and up the hill until my legs are burning and sweat is beading on my forehead, but I can’t ignore the feeling, I’m just trusting my gut.
I don’t voice the hope that’s growing as I keep going, letting the feeling guide my feet until we’re close to the crest of the hill. What else could lead me on like this, if not Wren? She has to be somewhere along the path. Somewhere higher up. We just have to keep climbing.
We stop at the very top, panting and staring around. There’s nothing up here. Just a bunch of boulders and scrubby grass.
The feeling of hope in my chest deflates like a sad balloon.
And then, a sound is just audible over the whistling wind. We both twist in unison at the sound of a whimper close by, behind a boulder.
I hold out an arm to Echo, hoping like hell that I’ve not brought her into a dangerous situation. There could be anything up here. The rocks could crumble and we could fall to our deaths.
Fuck, what was I thinking? I should have made her stay down on the ground with Brogan while I followed my gut on this wild goose chase up into the clouds. She nods, face flushed from the exertion of getting up here and mouths, ‘be careful’.
Approaching the boulder like it’s a venomous snake, I drop to my knees as soon as I see a head of dark hair and the woman’s body. She’s been crushed, the boulder covering almost her entire torso, and she’s pale and sweating, barely breathing.
Echo’s voice is strained as she calls out to me, “Is it…?”
“Not Wren,” I say, my throat hoarse. “I don’t know if she’ll survive me shifting this off her, let alone make it down the hill.”
I can sense the stranger’s soul fluttering inside of her, barely tethered to her body. Sometimes when I reap a soul, it’s a struggle. The soul and their mortal cage don’t want to separate from one another, but this woman is barely clinging on. It’s like the soul is desperate to be set free.
But I’m not supposed to be here. I haven’t been ordered to complete this reaping. In fact, there should be another reaper here by now, ready to take her away.
“Do you think you were drawn here to reap her soul?” Echo asks quietly. Clearly, her mind is thinking along the same lines as mine.
I honestly don’t know. All I know is that I can’t leave her here like this and hope that another reaper swings by soon. If I don’t take the soul now, there’s every chance that its connection with the woman’s body will sever and then she’ll be trapped here as a ghost, or worse.
