The Revolt (The Reapers: Book Two) (5 page)

As I was packing, a ring, with a red stone as
long as my pinky, fell out of the pocket of my favorite jeans. It
was a ring Angelica had lent me when we were still close. Back when
she’d taken me out dancing to help me get over Landon’s death. I
missed going out with her. I wished I had one more night in town,
so we could go out, but that was stupid. I’d had plenty of nights
in town and I hadn’t called her once to suggest we get together.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one to blame for us growing apart. I
considered giving the ring back to her, but I knew she hadn’t paid
much for it and it reminded me of a happier time, before my life
had gone all night of the living dead.

Packed and ready to go, I walked out and
found Jed on the couch. I watched long enough to see that he was
playing Left 4 Dead and headed to the kitchen for something to
eat.

“I left you a few pancakes on the table, but
you’ll have to re-heat them. I didn’t realize you’d take so long,”
he said without looking away from his game.

“I didn’t realize you knew how to cook.”

“I’d starve to death if I didn’t.” He took
one hand off the controller and patted his belly. He may have
slimmed down, but he was still a big guy, and I imagined he
required a lot of food. He went back to his game, and hunched over
the controller, intent on the screen, his bulk did nothing to help
him look less like a kid playing with his toys. I was still furious
with him, but I couldn’t help smiling at the sight.

The pancakes on the kitchen table were
studded with blueberries and looked like something out of a food
magazine. The sight of them made me realize how hungry I was. I
popped the plate in the microwave and poured myself a glass of
orange juice while the turntable spun and the pancakes warmed.

I sat down at the table with my plate and
poured on organic maple syrup until the pancakes were completely
covered and excess syrup was starting to pool up around the edges.
Cat would have rolled her eyes and made some comment about my
excessive intake of the syrup outweighing any health benefits I
might have gained by choosing the organic variety. I smiled to
myself at the memory.

I took a bite and it melted in my mouth like
sweet butter. The pancake was so good I forgot all about being mad.
“Oh, my god,” I said.

Jed walked into the kitchen and smiled. “You
should have tasted them before you drowned them in syrup.”

I shrugged. “Syrup is the best part of
pancakes.”

He sat down across from me and let me finish
the pancakes in silence. I wasn’t going to take a break to make
polite conversation. He watched me eat with a slight smile on his
face, as though he were going to start laughing any moment. I
studied him, when he wasn’t watching me, and wondered what he was
thinking. The circles under his eyes were a bit lighter and some of
the tension had left his face.

“Did you get some good news while I was
packing?” I asked as I swirled my last bite of pancake around in
the syrup. The sugar hit me in a rush and I felt a bit giddy.

He frowned. “No. Why?”

“You just look happier than you did last
night.”

“Huh.” He stood and took my plate to the
sink.

“So, now that I’m being dragged out of town,
you going to fill me in on how things work at Varius? Tell me the
game plan for fighting the reapers?”

He snorted. “You’re not fighting anyone.
You’ll be on lockdown at headquarters.”

“I’m supposed to be some super fighter,
right? So why lock me up? You might as well let me stay here.”

“Our usual teams can handle this.”

“You say that like what happened to Cat is
nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Deletions committed by non-corporate reapers
are unusual, but they happen.”

My heart pounded as Cat’s death replayed in
my mind like a mini movie. “A deletion? Is that what you call it?
They destroyed her completely. It was awful and…” I shivered, not
sure how to express my disgust and my fear.

He turned from the sink and frowned, his
shoulders tight. “Monstrous? It’s an everyday occurrence in my
world, Kelsey. Corporate authorized deletions happen all the time
and I’m the one they call to carry them out.”

“So what you’re saying is…” I didn’t know
what to say next. I guess I didn’t really understand what he was
saying. Or maybe I didn’t want to.

“If a reaper makes an unauthorized reaping,
by which I mean a reaper permanently detaches the host’s soul from
a body and moves in, we, as in me, destroy the host body.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time the host’s soul has
already crossed over and, even if it hasn’t, there’s no way to keep
a soulless body alive while we chase down the right soul. Once the
reaper is back where he or she should be, a member of our team who
is of the ghostly persuasion destroys the reaper.”

“Pretty heinous punishment,” I said without
really thinking it through. “I can’t imagine you killing
anyone.

“You don’t know me.” He didn’t meet my eyes.
“If Landon had succeeded in reaping you, would you really want us
to let him exist long enough to do it to someone else?”

I had destroyed Landon’s soul, because he
would have destroyed me if I hadn’t. I’m not sure I would have been
okay asking anyone else to do it, even for peace of mind. “It seems
like there should be a better way.”

“There isn’t,” he said, his voice gruff.

“How do you know the reaper who takes over
the body won’t cure cancer or something?”

He turned away from me quickly, but I caught
a glimpse of pain twisting his face. “Reapers don’t stick around to
cure cancer. They stay here because they’re afraid of crossing over
and facing punishment for their sins.”

“What about Alice? What about Tucker? What
about Cat? What sins did they commit?”

He chuckled, but there was no joy in the
sound. “Cat was a con artist, Kelsey. When she was alive the first
time, she married men and took them for every cent they had. She’d
been married and divorced fourteen times before one of her husbands
got wise and took her out.”

I was stunned speechless for a minute. I’d
never known Cat to be eager to help anyone, but I wouldn’t have
thought her capable of pretending to love a man and then tearing
his life apart. “What about Tucker? Alice?” My voice was thin, my
anger weak. I didn’t really want to know.

I couldn’t read his expression, but his mouth
was a hard, unhappy line. “You’ll have to ask them.”

“How do you find them? The reapers who’ve
made an unauthorized reaping?”

He squinted at me. “We have an extensive
network of spies and allies. There are plenty of reapers looking to
make good with the corporations. We keep files on every known
reaper with any power. But our most effective tool is our drug,
Hipnotast. You’ve seen the commercials, right? ‘If someone you know
has a sudden change in interests, attitude, or behavior, they may
be suffering from a rare neurological condition that is a likely
precursor to a brain clot.’”

“Oh, my god, that’s you? When you said your
front was a pharmaceutical company, I had no idea you made
Hipnotast.”

“It’s really all we do. Well, that and a lot
of research.” He grinned like Hipnotast had been his creation. “Any
time someone is prescribed the drug we send a team in to study them
and find out if they’ve been reaped, like we did with you. Caleb
was great at getting people to tell him all of their secrets.” He
frowned when he spoke of his brother. “It’s perfect, too, because
if there really has been a reaping we can make the death look like
a neurological disorder. If we prevent a reaping, we can say the
drug worked.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty amazing… except
for the part where you kill people and destroy their souls.”

His smile froze. “You’ve got about fifteen
minutes and then we need to head to the airport.”

I might have felt bad about what I’d said, if
he hadn’t reminded me what the future held for me. “What happens
when we get to Varius? I don’t want to be anywhere near Caleb.”

“He won’t have any reason to go near you.
Hero or not, no one’s going to want you two working together.”

“He told me everyone would want us to get
together.”

Confusion wrinkled his brow. “You’ll be in
protective custody, Kelsey, and, even if you decide to work for
Varius, I can’t see you being partnered with him.”

“No, he said that everyone would want us
together as a couple.”

“He lied. You’re way too powerful to be mated
to someone like him.”

“Mated to? What does that mean?”

“Now isn’t the time for this.”

“Now you have to tell me.”

He grimaced and sat down at the table.
“People who work for Varius don’t get married… well, sometimes they
do, but they…” He sighed and dropped his head into his hands. “I’m
not the right person for this.”

“Yes, you are. I’d rather hear it from you
then some stranger.” Before I stepped into Varius, I needed to know
exactly what kind of place I’d be entering.

“Okay. Varius matches people who they think
will make the most powerful children. Those matched people don’t
have to like each other or marry each other, but they do have to
make a real effort to have children together.”

“And what if someone doesn’t want to do
that?”

“People don’t usually say no.”

“They just go along with it?”

“People at Varius want what’s best for their
children and the corporate pairing works.”

I could never imagine myself in a situation
where I’d be okay with something like that, but I was willing to
try to understand that others might. “It didn’t work for
Caleb.”

“Caleb was an… indiscretion of my mother’s.
She always felt guilty, like it was her fault he only had one weak
skill. She spoiled him to make up for it.”

“Oh,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “So
who would I be paired with?”

He hesitated and then shook his head.
“Corporate makes those decisions.”

“You know it wouldn’t be Caleb. So make an
educated guess, Jed. Who would it be?”

His expression was hard and empty. “They
usually pair strong mediums with people who are strong in other
ways, like telekinesis. Their goal is a medium with super psychic
abilities.” He sighed. “I’m the strongest supernatural there, so
we’d probably be… you know.”

My breath left in a whoosh and I suddenly
felt very small. I realized Jed was right, I didn’t know anything
about him and the idea of creating children with him, with a man
who killed people for a living, terrified me. “So will you… you
know, let them mate you to me so that our children will have
superpowers?”

He hesitated, then opened his mouth to
answer, when a loud knock on the door stopped him. He checked the
peephole and opened the door. I could see the top of a blonde head
dart around his shoulder, like she was trying to see past him, but
Jed stood his ground.

“Hey, Jed. Is Kelsey here?” said
Angelica.

“She might be. Before I let you in, I want to
make sure you understand that this residence is warded and if a
reaper is inhabiting your body in anything other than a permanent
manner, that reaper will be violently ejected from the body.”

“Um, what? It’s me, Angelica. There’s no one
else here.”

Jed stepped aside and waved her in without a
word. He watched her as she crossed the threshold and closed the
door behind her only after looking her carefully up and down. I
figured he was checking her aura, but whatever he was doing it was
annoying.

She walked into the living room and stopped
behind the armchair closest to the door.

“I would ask her a couple of questions that
only she would know the answers to,” Jed said, as he started back
to his room. “I’m going to pack the car. We have to go in five
minutes.”

“I thought you checked her out.” I smiled at
Angelica in a lame attempt to reassure her. She looked like she was
ready to bolt at any moment.

“Yeah, for a borrowing, but if she’s been
reaped…” He shrugged as he walked into his room.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” I said, mostly to
myself. I wasn’t ready to believe I’d lost Cat and Angelica in the
same week.

She shifted from foot to foot, twisting her
hands together. “I was hoping you could talk to someone for
me.”

It was a simple question, but my stomach
dropped with fear and sadness. “We’re about to leave, but I can
call someone once we get to Varius if you want.”

She looked over my left shoulder, like she
was studying something behind me. “I can’t bring her here. I think
you might be able to, though. Kelsey…”

“Please tell me you’re talking about a person
who’s alive. You promised you would never ask me to talk to any
other kind of person.” The anger that coursed through me surprised
me, but she had made a promise and she was supposed to be my
friend. The first real friend I’d ever had. The first person who’d
liked me for me, and not for what my ability could do for her. If
she asked me to perform for her, she fell into an entirely
different category and I didn’t have enough friends to lose any of
them.

“It’s for Bruce. I
know
he’s cursed
and the only person who can help him…”

“You should leave.” Anger pushed those words
out of my mouth. Anger and hurt. Maybe my emotions were amplified
by what I’d seen happen to Cat or maybe I was just sick and tired
of getting pushed two steps back for every step I made forward.

Her face crumpled and her sky blue eyes
watered. “I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. You know I
wouldn’t. I love him, Kelsey.”

I almost gave in. Angelica wasn’t the kind of
girl who cried easily and she certainly didn’t turn on the
waterworks to get what she wanted. Jed walked over to grab my bags
from the living room floor, and spoke up before I could waver.
“Kelsey’s right, she can’t help you. You should leave.”