Call Me Grim (27 page)

“No. I’m not.” He shakes his head slowly. “But I wasn’t talking about my sister, Libbi. I was talking about you. What I did to you. I should have let you die when you were supposed to, but instead I dragged you into all of this. I made you choose for my own selfish reasons. I used you.”

“Is that what you think?” I step closer to him and he doesn’t back away. “I would have done the same thing, if I was in your position and Max was marked.” Our chests touch and I trace the remnants of the bruise on his chin with my fingertips. “But since you’re so concerned, I’ll show you exactly what you did to me, Aaron.”

My fingers lace behind his neck as I get up on tiptoe and pull him down to me.

Our lips touch and I don’t waste time with tenderness. I kiss him hard, furiously, my fingers twine in his hair and twist into his shirt. He needs to know I’m serious.

It doesn’t matter what he thinks he did to me. I understand why he did it. And I still want him. I don’t care if I have to take over for him in a few days and he has to die. It’s a sacrifice I understand. I want him now. I’ll want him tomorrow and I will always want him, even when we’re apart.

But why does it have to be this way? Why does he have to die? Sadness settles over me, squeezing my lungs and wrenching my heart. I’ve waited my whole life to feel this for someone, and now that I do, it’ll be ripped away. I understand why he has to do it, but the rules still suck.

Our lips part as Aaron pulls away. He touches my cheek and tears wet his fingertips.

“Don’t cry, Libbi.”

“I can’t help it.” I choke back a sob. “I don’t want you to—”

Aaron stops me with a kiss. Slow and deep. His hands settle on my hips, pulling our bodies closer, igniting a fire I never knew existed. One hand slips under my shirt and glides up my back as he leans in and kisses me deeper still.

Some kid yells in the distance, but I don’t care. All I hear is Aaron’s breathing. All I taste are Aaron’s lips. All I see, smell, and feel is Aaron.

“Hey, asshole!” The kid yells again. But it’s not a kid. I recognize that voice.

I pull back and look up at Aaron. His face registers surprise, but not the surprise of a guy being called an asshole by a stranger. It’s the surprise of a guy who’s just kissed a girl he didn’t realize he cared about as much as he does. I know the feeling.

I peek around Aaron and he glances over his shoulder. The porch becomes unsteady and my knees wobble as I focus on the guy calling Aaron an asshole. A guy I told a great big lie to today.

Kyle stands at the bottom of the stairs. His eyes burn a hole in me. He holds both of his drumsticks in one hand and beats them furiously against his thigh. His face twists into a grimace of anger and hurt. But mostly hurt.

“You must be Aaron.” Kyle sneers. “Nice to meet you.”

“Kyle, I can explain,” I say when Aaron doesn’t say anything.

“Oh, I bet you can, Libbi.” His free hand curls into a fist at his side. “But can you explain it to Aaron here?” His brown eyes look black in this light as they settle on Aaron. “Did you know your girlfriend has been playing you, Aaron? Actually, she’s been playing both of us. She kissed me today too. Did you know that? She told me she loves me.”

Aaron locks eyes on me. A different kind of surprise registers on his face now, the kind that makes me wish I could shrivel up and disappear.

“Is that true?” he says.

“Yes. I kissed Kyle today and”—I twist the hem of my shirt—“I told him I love him.”

Aaron staggers back. I’ve seen pain in his eyes before, but not this kind of pain. This is the pain of a broken heart, and it’s devastating because I caused it. I caused two broken hearts today.

“I guess it makes sense.” Aaron’s voice sounds detached, empty. “Your winning painting, it’s of him. And you’ve been so worried. You obviously care about him.”

“I do. But not how you think.” I touch his elbow. “I only said I love him because I thought it would heal his mark. I didn’t really mean it. Not like that.”

Kyle yells, “Screw you, Libbi!” and grunts. I hear a whoosh. One of his drumsticks sails through the air, end over end, as Kyle storms off down the street. The drumstick punches through the back of Aaron’s skull like he’s a ghost and whizzes over my shoulder. It strikes the porch light behind me.

The antique globe covering the light shatters with the impact. Broken glass rains over my back and I lurch forward in surprise. The toe of my shoe catches on a loose floorboard and I trip as glass tinkles to the porch. Aaron tries to catch me, but his hand reaches out a nanosecond too late. Pain sears through my shoulder as I hit the ground and one of the larger shards of glass slices into me. I cry out. Tears spring to my eyes.

“Are you all right?” Aaron grabs my hand and pulls me up. His face turns gray as he touches my shoulder. “Shit! You’re bleeding.” He shows me my blood on his fingers.

The front door creaks.

“What happened?” Max says as he pushes the screen door open. His shoes crunch in the shattered glass.

Aaron crouches down and his fingers wrap around Kyle’s drumstick. “Did he throw this?”

“Libbi!” Miss Lena pushes by Max and grabs my arm. “What happened to you? You’re bleeding!”

“It’s nothing.” I flick my hand dismissively. “I have to go after Kyle.”

“He’s gone,” Aaron says. “And it’s probably better if you let him cool off a bit.”

“Come in here and let me clean you up.” Miss Lena leads me into the kitchen and sits me on one of the chairs. Aaron waits at the front door and Miss Lena waves him in. “You can come too,” she says.

It feels weird for Miss Lena to invite Aaron into our house, but at least I know Mom can’t get mad at me. But what’s even weirder is when she says, “Max, it’s time for your bath,” and he actually listens to her. He moans and stomps up the stairs like he’s trying to crack the wood with each step, but he goes.

“It’s pretty deep.” Miss Lena presses a wet paper towel to my shoulder. “Do you have a first aid kit?” I tell her where the kit is. She hands the wet, bloody towel to Aaron and says, “Hold this. I’ll be right back.”

“Are you okay?” Aaron kneels next to me and gingerly swipes the blood from my arm, like he could make it worse by dabbing too hard.

“Yeah. What about you?” I take the towel from him. The wound is so close to my armpit I worry Aaron’s feather-light cleansing technique will cause me to break into fits of ticklish laughter.

“I’m fine. Nothing hit me,” he says.

“Really? Nothing at all?” I say, pressing the paper towel into my shoulder. “He aimed that drumstick right at your head.”

“I let it go through me.” Aaron shrugs.

“But you couldn’t have. You weren’t prepared for it. Your back was to him. You didn’t even know what happened until you saw the drumstick on the floor.” I glance over my shoulder at the cut and wince. “I thought you could get hurt if you were surprised, like when I punched you.”

“Well, you were wrong about that.” Aaron stands and walks over to the sink. He rips another paper towel off the roll and wets it. “I can’t get hurt.”

“Yes, you can.” A nervous chuckle passes my lips. “What about all of those scars? And you still have the bruise I gave you on your chin. And when you taught me to run, you totally flipped out when I bumped into you and almost sent you over the edge of the cliff. If you can’t die and you can’t get hurt, why did you even care if you fell off the cliff?”

“Because you can hurt me. All right? Only you and Abaddon.” He spins around, red-faced and wide-eyed. “Nobody else can hurt me. Not Kyle, not Max. Nobody. I can’t even hurt myself. Only you. I chose you to take my job.”

“What?” I say; the paper towel slips from my fingers. “What are you saying, Aaron?”

He sinks into the chair next to me and stares at the half-wet towel in his hand. “You asked me once how I was going to commit suicide and I wouldn’t tell you. Remember?”

It takes all of my strength to nod. I remember.

“I can’t commit suicide, Libbi.” He runs a hand down his tired face. “I need to be murdered, and only you can do it. I killed Charlotte when I took over for her and you’ll have to kill me.”

I shake my head and pain shoots through my shoulder but I ignore it. “No. I can’t do that. I can’t kill you. It’s impossible.”

“Yes, you can. You have to. If you don’t, it’s the same as refusing the job after you made the commitment.” He grabs my limp hands and squeezes them hard. “Abaddon doesn’t like it when we break our commitments. If you don’t change your mind back before 3:12 tomorrow, the rest of your week of training will be forfeited. You won’t have until Saturday anymore. You’ll have to face Abaddon tomorrow, and you’ll die.” He lifts my hand to his lips and softly kisses the palm. “Please, Libbi. Please, don’t make me take you to him. I don’t think I could bear it.”

“Okay, I’ve got it.” Miss Lena hurries in clutching the first aid kit. “I had a devil of a time finding it. I had to interrupt Max’s bath to ask him.”

“It looks like you don’t need me anymore.” Aaron gently places my hands in my lap and stands. “I should go. It’s getting late. Think about what I said, Libbi. Please?”

“I’m going with you.” I try to stand but Miss Lena drops a deceptively strong mitt onto my uninjured shoulder and holds me in my seat.

“I don’t think so, Little Miss.” She drags a chair in front of me and sits, replacing the paper towel with gauze from the kit. “I think you need stitches.”

“No, I don’t. It’s fine.” I shrug her hand off my shoulder. A tiny stream of blood rolls down my arm when the gauze falls away.

“No, it’s not, Libbi.” She presses the gauze against the gash and I wince. “I called your mother. She’s on her way.”

I hate to admit it, but Miss Lena was right. I needed stitches. Seven, to be exact. Damn you, Kyle.

Not that I don’t deserve it. After all I’ve done to him, I deserve much more than a two-inch cut on the shoulder and seven stitches. But a trip to the emergency room with my mother in panic mode, firing questions at me like a CSI detective on Ritalin, doesn’t help the situation.

“I don’t care if Kyle’s one of your best friends,” Mom says while we wait for the nurse to come back with my discharge papers. She’s much calmer now that the gash is stitched and covered with a bandage. “The boy threw a drumstick at you. He could have really hurt you. If he had hit you the wrong way, he could have killed you. I should call the police.”

“Don’t do that. He didn’t cut me. The glass did.” I twist the plastic hospital bracelet around my wrist. “He was just upset.”

“That doesn’t make it okay.” She gives me an ominous stare.

“All you have to do is sign this and you’re free to go,” the nurse says as she yanks back the curtain of the little cubicle and hands my mother a clipboard and a pen. I’m old enough to escort souls through the Gateway, but I’m too much of a kid to sign my own discharge paperwork.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. His actions sent you to the hospital, Libs,” Mom says after she signs the papers and the nurse leaves. “I don’t want you seeing him anymore. Not even if he only wants to apologize. I mean it.” She shakes her head and mumbles as she gathers our things. “It’s always the quiet ones.”

I could argue with her, but I don’t. It’s pointless. She will never understand how much I hurt Kyle today. I shouldn’t have pretended I was in love with him. I shouldn’t have kissed him, no matter what my reasons for doing so were. It didn’t make any difference, anyway. His mark didn’t shrink at all. If anything, it grew.

Just like Aaron failed his stepfather, I’ve failed Kyle. I’m the one who owes him an apology, not the other way around.

Kyle deserves to know the truth. All of it. He might even need it. If the truth healed Sara’s mark, maybe it can heal Kyle’s too. Mom doesn’t want me to see him anymore, but I don’t care. She can’t stop me. I have to fix this, if I can.

The only problem is Aaron and the fact that I have to kill him to take over as Grim Reaper. He shouldn’t have kept that from me.

At first, the thought of watching powerlessly as my family and friends died convinced me not to take his horrible job. It was the appearance of Kyle’s mark and the slim chance I could help him that changed my mind. If Aaron had told me from the beginning that I had to kill him, I probably still would have taken the job. For Kyle. And I would have kept Aaron at a distance. But now that I’ve allowed myself to get close, I know as surely as I know my eyes are green that I can’t do it. I can’t become the next Reaper if it means I have to kill Aaron, no matter what the consequences. He doesn’t really want to die and I can’t do it.

I’ve changed my mind halfway through training. That means I have until 3:12 p.m. tomorrow to change it back, or my training ends early and I’ll die. But I won’t change it back. Aaron may not want to, but he’ll have to escort my soul through the Gateway. I’ll have to confront the Blackness and Abaddon because I refuse to kill him.

And so, the countdown begins. Aaron is nowhere near as Mom and I drive through town, but I can still almost see the glowing red numbers of the digital clock in my head, counting off the milliseconds. I have seventeen hours to heal Kyle’s mark before I die, for good. I just hope the truth is enough.

***

Mom unlocks and opens the front door, and the warm light of home spills onto the porch floorboards. Max sits at the top of the stairs with his chin in his hands. His face lifts when he sees me.

“You’re home!” Max bounds down the steps.

“Did you think they’d keep me overnight or something? It was just a cut,” I say as Miss Lena drifts in from the kitchen, a paperback novel in one hand.

“Max, it’s almost midnight. I thought I told you to go to bed.” Miss Lena glares at Max and then shrugs. “I’m sorry, Dina. I tried.”

“He’s fine.” Mom hangs her keys on a hook next to the door. “He’s just worried.”

“Did you get stitches?” Max says it like getting stitches is some sacred rite of passage he can only dream of achieving. He bends forward and examines my bandaged shoulder with saucer eyes.

“Yeah,” I say, matching his awed voice. “Seven.”

“Wow! Can I see?” If Max’s eyes get any wider, I’ll have to scoop them up off the floor. God, I’m going to miss this kid.