“Okay…” I wave my hand. “Hi. Hello. Grim Reaper convention. Great. Love this for us. Is there, uh, a sign-in sheet, or did you skip that part and go straight to verbal assault?”
The one with braids looks at me. Her raven shifts on the pipe, claws rasping metal. Her gaze moves down my body and back up again, lingering on my flushed cheeks, Cassian’s hand on me, and my lack of shoes.
“You’re Skye, right?” she says. “The Grim Reaper Talon passes around to his friends.”
I drop my head and plant my hands on my hips. I think I just got dizzy again from that. Then I lift my head and look at Talon.
“I don’t fucking know,” he mouths, shaking his head.
Alright. So it seems like Rhea’s friends could be Pain’s age-mates—if they all teleported here from a parallel universe. Not only are they just as hateful, they have even fewer brakes on those sharp tongues, and clapping back would be… unclassy.
Out of the four of us, Talon, Nathaniel, and I seem to grasp that immediately. But there’s one particular person who clearly needs to learn the hard way.
“That’s enough,” Cassian says, walking toward them.
He looks the way he always does when he gets serious: chest puffed, body tight and military-straight, face set into that grim, no-nonsense mask.
Too bad three sets of eyes slice toward him without a hint of fear.
“Oh, the handler speaks,” Buzz Cut snarls.
“Be careful, Cassian,” the braided one says. “We have a thousand little claws at our command. Be nice, or we’ll tell the crows to attack your precious human Grim.”
“You wouldn’t like that,” the last one says, and the other two echo her like a chorus.
Cassian shifts just enough to put himself in front of me, blocking their view. It says:I’ll break you in half before I let you lay a hand on her.
Buzz Cut smirks. “Touchy.”
“You don’t want to find out how touchy,” Cassian replies.
And in my mind, I can already see it: him taking two steps back, procuring the scythe-forged dagger, and throwing the thing into one of their throats.
There’s nothing,nothing, stopping Cassian from slashing all three of them for insulting me, except Rhea’s threat.
And in my head, it’s fifty-fifty whether he decides that threat is worth respecting.
“Okay,” I say, swallowing down my nerves. “Does someone want to tell me what exactly is going on? Who are you three?”
All three pairs of eyes swing to me.
I really miss the needle.
“Rhea sent us to help,” one of them says. “Either that, or to torment you four if you don’t listen.”
Cassian tenses up all over again. I reach for him, tug him by the clothes, and half-force him to fall back into our line instead of standing there like an angry tree. Half, because it wouldn’t work if he didn’t want to comply. He’s too damn strong for that.
“Oh, we’ll listen.” I smile.
None of the girls smile back.
“One of your boy toys doesn’t seem too eager,” she comments.
I shoot Cassian a look.
“He’ll come around,” I say.
Cassian answers with a huff, crossing his arms over his chest and, most likely, plotting how the hell we could collapse the entire afterlife in the next five minutes.
