“That’s actually a good idea,” I say. Though if there is a demon out there, Cass would be like an appetizer before the main course.
“I’ll be right back,” Cass says, and glides off my bed. She tucks me in and floats right through the door, coming back just a few seconds later. “Coast is clear.”
“Thanks, Cass.” Kaia gets out of bed, impatiently waiting for Gertrude to put on her cloak so they can go to the bathroom together. A chill works its way through me.
Cass goes to reach for my blankets again but her hand passes right through. “Darn it.”
“You need to recharge too,” I tell her. “Having you be temporarily corporeal might come in handy if a demon really did slip through the cracks.”
“I know. But I’m not leaving you tonight.”
“In the morning then. I’ll be in the common room with every single other student in this house. You can stay up here and rest. Because if there is a demon…”
“I know.” She shudders. “I’m still freaked out by that last one. I wish you didn’t have to go out and fight them,” she adds ruefully. “It’s selfish of me to want you to skip serving in the army and go straight to retirement so I don’t have to worry about you getting killed.”
I smile, but something about her words strikes me as familiar. It’s the second time it’s happened tonight, but I can’t place it. Though it’s almost as if that same voice, the one that told me how to put the sigil together, is screaming at me, but it’s too far away and the words are lost in the distance.
“Most reapers are good at what they do,” I reassure her. “And when I travel to the human realm, maybe you can come with me a time or two and check out your old haunts. Ohh, wouldn’t it be weird to reap a soul of someone I knew in the human world?”
Cass lets out a snort of laughter. “Maybe Becca Stevens’s lip injections will explode or something.”
“Can you imagine her face when she sees me?”
“Before or after her lips explode?”
I laugh and wrap the blankets tightly around my shoulders. “There’s no surprise where she’s going. I can’t imagine someone that nasty would end up anywhere but down in the fiery abyss of Hell.”
“Way to be dramatic.” Cass snickers. The door opens and Kaia and Gertrude briskly step inside, closing it behind them.
“Are you still up?” Kaia asks me.
“I am.”
“When we were in the stands today, you said there was another student who went missing. Who are you talking about?”
“Terrence.”
“But he ran away,” Gertrude says. “He cracked under pressure and went to the brothel to blow off steam—in more ways than one.” She snickers at her own joke. “He’s not missing.”
“He is,” I say gravely. “Cass was doing what she does best and lurking through the halls. She overhead Professor Messor talking with some of the other professors. Terrence was never seen in town. There’s no evidence at all that he ran away.”
A few seconds of silence tick by, and the air grows tense. “You think whatever happened to Blaze happened to Terrence.”
“I’m sure of it,” I press. “I just…I don’t know what it could be.”
“We have all of tomorrow to obsess over it,” Gertrude only half-jokes. “I’m sure we’ll be stuck in here again.”
“For good reason,” Kaia says, looking tense. “If something is really out there killing reapers, who knows who could be next.”
“It won’t be any of us,” I promise, and sit up. “I know I just got here, but this is my home now and you are my family.” Guilt that something could have snuck in with me eats away at my stomach. But then a new thought enters my head.
I was born a human and died to become a reaper. Maybe it was all for a reason. Maybe I was meant to come here at this exact time, so I can stop whatever is lurking in the halls of Reaper Academy.
* * *
Like the human world,tragedies in the reaper realm are eagerly forgotten. No one wants to live in fear. No one wants to walk around with grief in their hearts. It took three days—only three days—for students to start complaining about the buddy system and having to go straight to our houses after class.
Never mind that Blaze is missing and presumed dead. That there is still no sign of Terrence. And that soldiers from the Reaper Army patrolled the school for the last twenty-four hours, searching every nook and cranny of this place.
