“Is this really necessary? I’m positive a document won’t prevent me from ripping your throat out if I should get so hungry.” Layla ran her tongue over her enlarged canines while Elise set a contract in front of her. She glared at Layla, who only rolled her eyes. “I’m kidding. God, learn a joke, or two. You’ve always been so uptight.”
Elise’s jaw ticked as she pointed to a paragraph on the contract. “If you do such a thing, my father will remove the Hotel Clarice from Valeriya’s possession and we will make sure there is no room for any reapers in Harlem. Kill me and you will have no home, no family, nothing left. And you will be locked up for the rest of your long, miserable life, claimed as free property for scientists to test on you as they please. Until the torment of your reaperhood should destroy you,” Elise snapped.
Darkness passed over Layla’s face, but her cold smile remained. “So personal. I admire the effort, Saint, I truly do. But I have no family. Your father made sure of that years ago,” Layla mumbled. She pushed her handcuffs back on her wrists and leaned over to take a pen to the paper in front of her.
“You blame me and my father, but we are not the reapers who took your parents’ lives and turned you,” Elise hissed.
Layla’s jaw clenched. Her hands went flat on the table while her body tensed and for a moment, Elise thought she might pounce on her. “No. But you told your father about my parents’ plans to desegregate the east side of Harlem and you encouraged him to stop them. By whatever means necessary. You might as well have sent the reapers on us yourself. Some saint you are. A bystander to carnage does not a saint make,” Layla seethed. “You killed me. You’re a killer.”
Elise’s breath shook as she watched Layla draw out her neat signature on the dotted lines. She leaned in close enough to whisper directly into the reaper’s ear. “I’d be careful how you behave around me.” Elise swore she saw Layla’s entire demeanor shift at her words. She felt heat roll off Layla’s neck, her own body tensing as the reaper turned toward her so they were face-to-face.
Layla watched Elise, eyes glowing. “I don’t know how to behave around you,” she hissed. Her fangs were still out, their points digging into her lips. Blood beaded on the soft pink of her mouth. They were so close, Elise could smell the blood, feel Layla’s breath.
It was as if a wicked spell had been cast, preventing her from looking away. Heat twisted in Elise’s stomach and she exhaled sharply. “Layla…”
“You sound afraid, Saint. Is it because of what happened five years ago?” Leaning closer, Layla’s mouth twisted into a smug curve and Elise felt something twinge in her chest. The reaper’s eyes dropped first to her lips, then her throat, where Elise’s pulse beat rapidly against her delicate flesh. “I will have you know, that was not personal. It was pure reaper instinct that is impossible to control when you are first turned. But…” The light in Layla’s eyes flickered, and Elise’s breath stilled at the cruel longing in her gaze. “Your blood has always been my favorite. Even after all these years—”
“I don’t care.” Elise snatched the contract up and backed away.
“Damn. Shouldn’t you listen to what your partner has to say? We’re in this together, are we not?” Layla leaned against the interrogation room table and held out her cuffed wrists, frowning. “These are annoying.”
Elise’s glare deepened. “I will listen to everything regarding the case and information surrounding this investigation. You do not need to bring up our past. We are not friends.” She gave Layla the coldest look she could muster up, but Layla didn’t even flinch. Elise turned and nodded to the window, where officers awaited her cue. Soon after, two men walked into the room and uncuffed Layla.
The young reaper snatched her hands back as soon as they were off. Bright red rings circled her wrists, burnt from the specialized metal meant to withstand reaper strength. The whole interrogation, Layla must have been in immense pain, yet she said nothing. Layla turned to Elise. “Well, seeing as I am a free woman and the workday is over, I will be going.” She threw Elise a mocking smile on her way out of the station.
Elise swallowed a scream. Only an hour into their arrangement, and already, Layla was getting under her skin, digging up scars of their past. Already, regret plagued the decision to work together. The Saint and the damned. Elise feared the contract she held was no more than a litany of lies.
After nearly twenty-four hours in the interrogation chair, at the worst, Layla expected intrusive questions from her clan members. But instead, she got cold stares and snubbed attempts at conversation. The only beings who did not side-eye her were the four police officers and Saint guards standing watch outside the lair. Even Mei had a new distrust in her eyes when Layla ran into her in the hotel lobby.
The older reaper didn’t even look up from the set of cards she shuffled as Layla sat in the chair across from her. “Mei—”
“I’m busy,” Mei said flatly.
Layla cocked her head to one side. “Unless you’re playing solitaire, which I guess is a valid excuse to be busy with, I’m sure you can speak to me. Are you playing solitaire?” Layla asked.
Mei dropped the cards and glared at Layla. “What do you want? In case you haven’t noticed, everyone has been talking about you, wondering why you would do such a stupid thing to put the Harlem reapers under police scrutiny.”
“Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” Layla spat. “You just took down an entire gang. And even worse, you ruined my bed while doing it. I didn’t tell anyone about that, yet here you are, trying to make my business into a bigger problem than it actually is—”
“I’m not targeting you. I’m prioritizing my safety because the police and the Saints—the Saints, Layla, who regularly wipe out our kind—are watching us even closer. It’s beyond just unspoken rules and mutual agreements now. They’ve threatened to destroy our lair.” There was truth to Mei’s words, but Layla had difficulty processing them. She couldn’t say she wasn’t at fault because she had been at the crime scene and she could not remember any of it. There was no way to extract truth from a story she didn’t have.
Layla scoffed, venom spilling into her veins. “You’re really freezing me out after I covered for your mess with the Diamond Dealers?”
“You were a part of that too,” Mei said. Her eyes, already dark and distant, looked away.
A bitter hiss left Layla as she nodded slowly. “So you think I just snapped one night and said to hell with every moral code we have here?”
“You’re a reaper. Just because you hate it does not make you any better than the things you do because of it.” Mei’s voice was cold and absolute. Just like the half-life full of blood and damnation Layla had been forced into since becoming a reaper.
Rage suddenly bubbled to the surface and spilled over, shaking her hands and hardening her voice. “Fuck you,” Layla hissed.
“You need to get over your strange complex, Quinn,” Mei said.
But Layla was already gone. She stormed out of the hotel lobby and into her bedroom.
More than anything now, Layla wanted the burden of her reaperhood gone. She was sick of having a reputation follow her just because of what she was, rather than who she was.
The envy she’d felt looking at Theo’s body, somehow turned human, strained her senses now. It was all she wanted, her human life back. When times were simpler, when she still had people to love and who loved her back, when she loved her life. To be human again, in death or in life, Layla was scared she would damn every shade of morality to return to that state.
And there was only one person she knew who had a path to that end.
Shadows shrouded the sitting room when Elise walked in. Her father stood, leaning against the fireplace mantel, unmoving even when Elise muttered a goodbye to Sterling at the door.
“Hey.” Sterling grabbed her hand before she could turn away from him. “Don’t be nervous. He trusts you. You are the future of this empire, and he knows it,” he said softly.
Elise chewed her lip. “Right.” She didn’t believe him, but the words felt good to hear. She squeezed his hand as he left the room, then turned to her father, exhaling heavily. “Father.”
Mr. Saint did not face her. “Yes, Elise.”
“Layla signed the agreement. I’m not sure how much the police have told you, but there seem to be discrepancies—”
“Any news?” Mr. Saint interjected.
Elise blinked. “Well. Layla is certain it’s not just a reaper problem—”
“I implore you, Elise, to focus on our mission as an empire. You cannot forget what reapers have done to our family. To this world.” Mr. Saint finally turned away from the mantel and in his hands he had the box with Charlotte’s gun. His voice went hard, “Don’t tell me a few years in France has made you forget.”
Tears filled Elise’s eyes and she swallowed hard, but could not breathe past the lump in her throat. “Of course not—”
“Look at me,” her father said sharply. Elise complied. The stark pain in his dark eyes pierced her heart and she had to look away again, settling right on the gun, the last thing she had to remember her older sister by. “You’ve only just stepped into this role, yet you’ve already become sidetracked, tempted by the reapers’ contagious allure for sin…”
The memories came rushing back to her. In an instant, she was back at the 148th Street brownstone, fingers clamped around her older sister’s wrist so hard, she was sure her skin would bruise. There was so much blood, Elise couldn’t even see the natural color of the wood floor beneath Charlotte’s body. Her slick fingers slipped over the syringe as she positioned the needle containing Mrs. Gray’s antidote over her sister’s limp arm.
The only thing Elise could see through her tears was the glint of Charlotte’s revolver in the faint moonlight streaming through the window. Even when she stabbed the needle into her sister’s flesh and prayed for a miracle, all Elise could focus on was the blood.
A gentle hand touched her cheek, and Elise jerked, trembling with fear. She blinked and stared up at her father. Satisfaction had replaced the pain in his eyes, but Elise could not stamp out the memory of her sister’s screams, no matter how hard she tried to ground herself in the present. Her fingers curled around her father’s hand and he held her back, thumb stroking over the pounding pulse in her wrist. “No reaper, not even ones we used to be close to, are to be trusted. Ever. Am I understood?” Mr. Saint asked gently.
Elise nodded.
“Speak up, Elise,” he grated out.
“Yes, Father.”
Mr. Saint released her hand, stepping back. He closed the gun case and nodded to the door. “Go now. I will see you for dinner later.”
“I wish I could help you,” Sterling murmured into Elise’s hair. His arms tightened around her, and Elise buried her face in his chest.
“I don’t trust myself with this role. I wish we could have taken it on together,” Elise whispered as she pulled away.
Sterling brushed her hair back and smirked. “You give me too much credit.”
Elise scoffed. “You’re my father’s favorite. I think he likes you more than he likes me and Josi.”
“Elise, your fears are speaking nonsense again,” he muttered. Sterling reached into his holster and pulled out one of his guns. “Here.” He held it out to Elise.
She gave him a confused look. “No. It’s a gift from my father, you can’t—” Elise remembered reading his excitement in a letter a few months ago while in her bed after collapsing from an especially long orchestra rehearsal. “You can’t give it up.”
“Your safety is more important, Elise. I’ll take it back once this is all over,” Sterling insisted. He offered her a tight smile as he pressed the revolver into her hand.
Elise nodded. She gave him a teary smile. “I’m sorry for everything, Sterling.”
Sterling shook his head. “None of this is your fault.”
“Layla attacked because I came back. Thalia is dead because I suggested going out that night. Now your favorite Saint sister is going to France—”
“You know Josi is my favorite? Do I really make it that obvious?” Sterling feigned shock. Elise slapped his shoulder, but she finally cracked a smile. He grabbed her hand, grinning back. “How do you think I survived without my best friend for all those years? I told myself you were safer there. And I know it will be the same for Josi. Thalia is not your fault either.” His jaw tightened and he swallowed hard. “These damn reapers ruin everything. But the empire’s new plans with Stephen Wayne are going to fix things, make us stronger. And you will be at the forefront of it all.”
Elise knew he meant well, but his words only added pressure. He patted her arm and backed away.
“As long as I have this family, I have nothing to worry about. I believe in you, Lise,” he said gently.
He might as well have shown her his heart. Elise smiled. This time it felt real.