Chapter 2

 

“Darria, are you okay?”

Concern-filled, blue-gray eyes stared down at her. Sunlight caught the silver strands woven through her harvester’s unfettered, brown hair. His energy announced that he was dead, and yet, something animated him. His soul. Oliver’s furrowed brow and the tense line of his mouth showed his worry. Darria had feelings for him, but she hadn’t acted upon them. They had kept their distance unless it was related to work.

“Can you hear me?” His fingers trailed along her face. His touch left cool traces on her cheek. She blinked and realized that she wasn’t dreaming.

“I hear you.” Oliver helped her sit up.

“Mr. Letum, is she going to be okay?”

Darria glanced over to the small group of people gathered around her front lawn. She recognized her neighbors from their comings and goings. They barely spoke except for the occasional hello and goodbye. A teenage boy talked to Oliver. He lived directly across the street from the funeral home. Mulligan was the family name.

“Yes, Rory. Ms. Savege is fine. Thank you for coming to get me and telling me she’s out here.” Oliver lifted Darria to her feet and pressed his palm against her back.

Darria eyed the boy. Blond hair stuck out everywhere around his head. Freckles covered his entire cheeks. His hazel eyes were too big for his face. His face was round, but his chin was pointy. Rory was in the awkward stage, tripping over his limbs. She smiled back and leaned against Oliver. Being against him felt right.

“How long have I been out here?” she asked.

“Omar started shouting for me a few hours ago when he couldn’t find you. I would’ve been here sooner, but I was helping some other reapers catch up on their lists. Flitting between dimensions makes it tricky to hear sometimes. Rory came into the graveyard, and I came right over when I heard him.”

“Thank you for finding me, Rory. I must’ve been sleepwalking and hit my head. How did you know to get Mr.—” She glanced at Oliver and struggled to recall the name the boy called him. “Letum?”

The gaggle of neighbors went back to their houses when nothing else happened. Rory remained looking on with a mixture of awe and terror. His cheeks turned a dark scarlet when he realized that Darria caught him looking at them. He immediately studied the untied laces of his blue sneakers. He muttered something.

“Sorry. I didn’t hear you,” Darria said to him. She figured he was somewhere around seventeen or eighteen. He was wearing a ragged T-shirt sporting a logo of some comic book hero she vaguely recognized. His jeans were ratty, and his sneakers had more holes in them than she could count.

He met her eyes. “I know what you and Mr. Letum are. I know what goes on around here.”

No one in town knew much about her or her job save that she lived in a private funeral home. If anyone questioned her about doing funerals for the public, she declined. Oliver never interacted with the community. Humans could walk through his graveyard during the day, but at night, no one could enter.

“I’m not sure what you mean. I run an exclusive funeral home with a few select clients.” Darria had her undertaker’s license even though she had no formal training. If it came down to it, she could embalm a human corpse. The knowledge came with the memories of the undertakers who came before her. It was part of the cover that came with her position.

“Your aura is a mixture of death and life. You have a dismembered left hand that runs around the property and some animal. It’s kind of like a giant lion creature with wings. It sits on the roof at night, protecting the house. Sometimes, she bays at the moon.”

Darria had gotten used to Gabbie howling at night. It troubled her that Rory identified her.

“Rory’s psychic. He sees through the veils obscuring this house, you, and me,” Oliver informed her.

She nodded, accepting the explanation. “Okay. Thank you for fetching Oliver, but please don’t tell anyone. Most people don’t know what goes on here.”

“Don’t worry. I think it’s cool. Mr. Letum said you’d show me around some time.” Rory glanced at her with a hopeful glint in his eyes.

“Yeah. I can do that. Not today, though.” Darria felt the world spin and grabbed onto Oliver.

“Cool! Well, I have to go. My mom wants me back.” Rory glanced back toward his house. Darria looked over. His mother stood on the porch. She raised her hand and waited, but the mother did not return the gesture. Rory bounced across the street and slipped into the house. His mother followed him inside, and the door slammed shut.

“Great. Now I have to deal with the neighbor’s kid watching me all the time.” Darria ran her fingers through her hair. She winced when she hit the lump from where she had hit her head.

“You don’t have to worry about Rory. I caught him snooping around the graveyard while the undead carnival was setting up. He could see past the death’s head. I explained to him what I was and warned him against the traveling sideshow. He asked me about you because he mentioned he noticed the weird visitors you had at all hours. I told him if ever thought you were in trouble to come to the cemetery.” Oliver trailed his finger down her cheek, which made her insides quiver. “Are you okay?”

She pulled her mind away from his touch. “I’ll be fine.”

“What happened? Omar said you were sleepwalking. He was quite worried about you.”

Darria stepped away from Oliver to calm her swirling emotions. The scent of jasmine and cloves with the earthy aroma of lilies overtook her senses. She needed to be clearheaded to focus on what she remembered of her dream. The details hadn’t retreated. A light breeze wound over her arms. When she rubbed them, she realized the safety pin was no longer embedded in her skin. Oh shit! She scoured the front yard and found it a few inches from where she had fallen. She held it out to Oliver.

“The other undertakers came back with their assistants trapped in their rotting flesh. The leader told me that the conclave assigned me. They want me to put them to rest. Do you know anything about that?” Darria placed the pin back along her left arm. It took a moment before it sunk into her skin.

“Sorry. It must be an undertaker thing. Even I have a few secrets I can’t tell you, although I want to show you a few things.” He touched her arm. A crackle of purple passed between her skin and his hand. Oliver closed his eyes. His nostrils flared, and a small smile curled up the corners of his lips. He opened his eyes and gazed into hers. “I miss you, Darria.”

“You see me a few days a week.” She poked his bicep before turning to walk back into the house. Oliver grabbed her wrist and spun her around.

“You know what I mean,” he whispered.

“We agreed to give me time to figure out things between us.”

“I know. I don’t mind giving you space, but I can’t help how I feel.” The dark angel placed a hand on her cheek. The coolness of his power interacted with hers on all levels. The tension building between them for the past three months since he revealed his feelings for her seemed about ready to explode.

“I know. But ... I–I can’t deal with them right now. All the hunters are slamming me with work; they must have changed their minds and decided they need undertakers after all. I process two or three bodies a day. It doesn’t sound like much, but when you do it for three months without much of a break, it puts our relationship on the back burner. Besides, I thought you had reservations about me being a necromancer.”

“I do. Being around you drives me crazy. I can’t heal you if you get hurt. It goes against the pact I have with your undertaker line. Yes. It’s true about you being a necromancer after the power that you showed over me. But ... fuck it.” Oliver pressed his lips to hers.

The kiss murdered her, slaying her until she wished she could die in his arms. Her insides melted. She wrapped her arms around him. His frigid power penetrated her insides until she felt like she was in the center of a cold fire. Solid ground liquefied underneath her feet. Ink-stained wings wrapped around them, shimmering with cobalt blue and violet rainbows. Oliver’s lips felt like silk running against hers. Her heart ceased to beat for a fraction of a second. The landscape lost all color and bled into gray. For an infinite moment, even that winked out of existence. The steady beat of wings filled her ears, and their feathery ends caressed her until the world came back into view. He brought her into the kitchen. Oliver released Darria, leaving her with an echo of his presence.

“I can wait for you to make your decision, but I know you care about me.”

“Oh, thank God! Darria, Mistress of My Heart and Left Hand, I didn’t know what happened to you.” Omar skittered across the linoleum floor, took one of his notorious flying leaps, and landed on her shoulder. His mummified fingers had a strong grip as he clutched the side of her neck. His thumb dug into her windpipe. It was his version of hugging her, but she could barely breathe.

Darria grabbed the protruding wrist bone and pulled him off of her. She drew in huge gulps of air to think clearly. His fingers wiggled as he tried to get back to her. The strength behind his determination nearly made it impossible to hold him. “Omar, thank you for your concern. I’m fine.”

Gabbie charged in. Her talons clicked on the tile floor. Her four-foot, spade-tipped tail hit the walls as she ran. Her short, gray fur glistened in the light. She jumped up and landed on Darria’s shoulders. The gargoyle’s purple tongue left a wet trail along her face. She hugged the creature and scratched behind her ears. Gabbie’s wings fluttered as she petted her. The gargoyle resembled a cross between a lion, a large bat, and a demon with twisted horns on the top of her head that curled backward to a sharp point.

“It’s good to see you, too. I’m okay,” Darria reassured Gabbie.

The gargoyle yipped and locked her gaze with Omar.

“She wants to know what happened. She was on the roof when the fog rolled in. Even she couldn’t see through it,” Omar translated.

Darria recounted what had happened the night before. She glanced at Oliver, but he didn’t add anything. “Omar, can you get me the list of undertakers you wrote out a few months ago?” she asked her familiar.

Gabbie rested against her leg until Darria had to lean against the counter so she wouldn’t topple over. Omar yanked the list from underneath the yellow magnet on the fridge that sported the saying, “You kill ‘em; we chill ‘em.” She had the same sticker on her laptop. Omar handed her the record. She ran her finger over the paper and stopped at the third one down.

“This one,” she pointed out. “Augustus Hooker. He came to me last night.”

“How do you know?” Oliver asked.

She shrugged. “A feeling. I don’t know. The rest don’t seem to be the one. Where do I start looking for the one who gets the pin?”

“I’m sure it will all come together.” Oliver pulled the hood over his face. His scythe appeared in his right hand. Cold power radiated off him and stirred hers.

She pushed the idea of penetrating his mind away. It was a tempting thought, but having that much power over a harvester could lead to trouble. Darria folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. Charging off to the address could be worse. She needed to assess the situation first. “Yeah, it does. Okay, so now that the whole neighborhood is looking at me, I’m going to take a shower.”

Oliver bowed his head and disappeared in a rush of frigid air. Omar started to go after her, but Gabbie scooped up the hand in her mouth and held him.

“Thanks, Gabbie. You mind holding him down until I get out?”

The gargoyle nodded.

“Darria, come on. I promise I won’t touch anything.”

“Not a chance. I don’t need to be ogled by a perverted left hand.”