Chapter Three

I gave Alex a noncommittal stare. Too many people used the Gatekeeper’s title as a way to impress others. At this point, her only duty was to fill out the death form and send it to the Gateway attendants either by courier or by computer transmission. “Speak your mind.”

The scuffling sounded in the yard again. I avoided glancing that way. If Sing was the stalker, maybe she could create a distraction and get this meddling death officer out of here.

Alex touched my cloak. “I have seen many reapings, so I know Molly’s soul was a particularly stubborn case. Yet you collected her in mere moments. Your reputation is well deserved.”

I kept my face slack. “Alex, I’ve been doing this too long to be influenced by flattery. Just tell me what you want.”

“Very well.” Alex sidled closer and whispered into my ear. “If you will do what I ask, I will process this poor family’s tragic loss and forget that I saw their contraband.”

I drew back and looked into her eyes. Her sparkling gray irises seemed unearthly, as if they had been dipped in ashes and still carried the fire’s glowing embers. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I need your expertise, the same prowess I witnessed here.” She withdrew the sonic gun from its holster and held it casually at her thigh. “We are expecting, shall we say, a rash of deaths at a centralized location, so we will need a couple of proficient Reapers there to collect the souls. If you cooperate, you will be promoted to Cardinal status with all the benefits.” She withdrew a shiny gold key from her pants pocket and set it close to my eyes. “After your stint at the scheduled reaping, you will move into your own furnished condo. No more rundown apartment. No more midnight death alarms. Your reapings will be scheduled for you without quota. A roommate of your choice, if you so desire.” She gave me a knowing smile. “Aren’t you tired of being alone all the time?”

I nodded. I couldn’t deny that being alone was the worst part of a district hound’s lifestyle. Yet, how could I leave my district? The citizens needed me. Another Reaper would just collect the souls of the dead without bothering to take care of the living. “Can you give me time to think about it?”

“You need time?” She smiled, though her lips quivered at one corner. “How much?”

“A couple of days, maybe?” I looked toward Colm. I had to get back to protocol. “Colm, I can collect my fee later, so don’t worry about—”

Alex grabbed my arm. Her tight fingers trembled as she spoke through clenched teeth. “It is not considered polite to interrupt a conversation.”

I spiced my reply with a growl. “It is also impolite to interrupt reaping protocol with your personal requests for my services.”

“Oh. I see how it is.” With sparks of red blazing in her eyes, she aimed the gun at Colm. “You asked for time to make your decision. You have exactly three seconds.… One… Two…”

“Wait! Let me—”

A metal ball sailed in through the window. Attached to a thin line, it wrapped around the gun barrel in swishing arcs. The gun jerked from Alex’s grip and flew outside.

Alex balled her fists. “Who would dare disarm me?”

“I’ll check it out.” I stalked toward the window. “They might be dangerous.”

“No! Wait!”

I tucked my body and leaped through the opening. When I landed on my feet in the yard, something rustled above. A figure sat high in the branches of a willow tree. As the tree bent in the breeze, the stalker’s feminine face appeared in the glow of a nearby streetlamp. Sing raised a finger to her lips, then scampered up into the darkness.

Alex leaned out the window. “Do you see anyone?”

“Not down here.” I laid a hand on the tree trunk. “I’ll take a look around.” I leaped for a branch, swung up, and climbed high into the shadows.

When I drew even with the top of the building, Sing reached across from the roof, grabbed my arm, and pulled me over the parapet. Once I steadied myself on the roof’s flat expanse, she whispered, “You okay?”

“For now.” I peeked over the edge at the window below. Alex was nowhere in sight. “I just hope the family’s safe. Alex isn’t exactly the merciful sort.”

A tall streetlamp buzzed like an annoying alarm clock and cast its light over the rooftop. Sing crouched next to the parapet, her cloak open, revealing her weapons belt with Alex’s sonic gun in a harness. “I’ve seen her,” Sing said. “She’s a DEO, isn’t she?”

I nodded. “But her real reason for coming was to recruit me.”

Sing shifted her sparkling dark eyes toward me. “Recruit you for what?”

“To take part in a big reaping. You interrupted her before she spilled the details.” I gestured with my head. “We’d better make ourselves scarce. It’s too bright up here.”

I turned to run, but Crandyke’s voice made me pause. “I know Alex. She’s an Owl, so you’d better watch your step. She’s the specter of death with curves instead of a cloak, and she can draw life out of a lamppost. Some say she can even read minds, so if she’s on your tail you’ll soon be in big trouble.”

“I’m already in big trouble.” I glanced at Sing. She squinted at me but said nothing. “I’ll just lay low for a while.”

“You’ll be a mouse in her talons in short order,” Crandyke said. “You might as well do as she asks. You’ll be a lot better off.”

“I know, but I can’t. It’s not that simple.”

“Is a soul talking to you?” Sing asked.

“You couldn’t hear him?” I gave her a sideways look. “He’s pretty loud.”

Sing shook her head. “The buzz from that light’s too noisy.”

“His name’s Crandyke. I don’t get many souls as talkative as he is. Most are too scared.” I refocused on my cloak. “Got any more information on this Owl?”

“Not really, but I’m sure she’ll tighten the screws, if you know what I mean.”

“You mean punish Molly’s family.” I crept to the front of Colm’s house, Sing following, and leaned over the edge of the roof. At the entry steps, the door opened, and Alex’s voice rose from below.

“Pack one small suitcase for each member of your family. The bus will come for you soon, so get ready quickly. And don’t try to escape. I already have someone watching your house.”

“Bus?” Sing whispered.

“A camp bus. She’s sending them to corrections.” I heaved a sigh. “I guess I don’t have any choice. I shouldn’t have left them alone with her in the first place.” I snapped the spool from my belt and handed Sing the weighted end of the line. “If you’ll anchor this to your belt, I’ll drop down and—”

“No.” Sing grabbed my arm. “You can’t.”

I looked again at the steps below. Alex appeared, slowly descending.

“Colm and Fiona are too old for the camp,” I hissed. “They’d never survive.”

“I know.” Her whisper took on an imploring tone. “You can’t give in to threats. They’ll just keep threatening you every time they want you to do something. You’ll end up like a robot who’ll do whatever the Gatekeeper asks. As long as you stay a district hound, you’ll have freedom.”

“Freedom?” I looked at the dark sky. “The only freedom is beyond the Gateway.”

“Those are the Gatekeeper’s words. You already sound like a robot. Hypnotized to the max.”

I arched my brow. “And you sound like one of those Gateway deniers. Conspiracy nuts.”

“I’m not one of them. I’m a Reaper, for crying out loud.” She tightened her grip on my arm. “Listen. The family is her leverage against you. She’s not going to hurt them, at least not for a while. Don’t make a rash decision. You have some time to figure out what to do.”

As Alex walked toward a motorcycle parked at the curb, I caught a glimpse of the gold key in her hand. Sing was right. I couldn’t let them control me with bribes and blackmail. “Every option kind of stinks, doesn’t it?”

Sing nodded. “Like rotten eggs.”

“Or maybe…” I snatched the gun from Sing’s belt. She lurched for it, but I jerked it out of reach. “This might work.”

“What are you going to do?” Her face blazed with alarm. “You can’t kill her. You know what happens to a Reaper if—”

“Don’t lecture me on Reaper laws.” I gestured toward the center of the roof. “You’d better get out of sight.”

Sing backpedaled slowly, worry lines in her brow. Apparently she had never seen a sonic gun before, not having attended the executions. She didn’t know I couldn’t do any harm from this distance.

When Sing moved safely away, I slid to the roof’s edge. Alex straddled the motorcycle and shook her hair back, getting ready to put her helmet on. I held the gun high and shouted, “Alex! I found it!”

When she looked up, I tossed the gun to the sidewalk. With a loud clatter, it settled close to her boots. “I think I’ll stay up here awhile, you know, go for a relaxing stroll across the rooftops.”

Alex stared at me long and hard. “And what of my proposition?”

“I told you I need more time. Three seconds isn’t enough. Give me twenty-four hours.”

She put the helmet on. Blonde locks flowed around the edges. “Molly’s family members were charged with medicine trafficking, and they are going to the corrections camp. They will be safe there for twenty-four hours. After that, there are no guarantees.”

“If I decide to accept your offer, how will I find you?”

“No need. I will find you before your time runs out.”

I pushed back my cloak and set my hands on my weapons belt. “Just remember, I could have stopped you from reporting this family.”

“You have more confidence in your abilities than you should.” Alex picked up the gun and slid it into her holster. “Still, I will keep your restraint in mind. Just stay away from the family for now, and when we meet again, we can discuss their future.” She steered the motorcycle into the street and zoomed away with barely a sound.

I followed her progress until she disappeared around a corner. An electric motorcycle. That explained her quiet arrival.

As I backed toward Sing, I mentally repeated Alex’s words. She would keep my restraint in mind, and it seemed like Colm and family would be safe for now. “At least maybe we bought some time.”

“I wouldn’t trust a word she says.” Sing shuddered. “She’s as morbid as death.”

“I know what you mean.” I studied Sing’s disgusted expression. She had saved Molly’s family and had given me an excuse to vanish, but she had a lot of questions to answer. “So what brought you to Colm’s window?”

“While I was out hunting down a death alarm, a DEO stopped me and told me he found a body, some guy named Brennan.”

I winced. Molly’s death messenger. “Bandits?”

“Looks like it. They stripped everything but his shorts and his photo stick.” She shrugged. “I guess even bandits aren’t cruel enough to take his passage key.”

“Did you reap his soul?”

Sing nodded. “An easy one. His age, I suppose. He’s the oldest I’ve ever reaped.”

“Where was he? I didn’t feel two alarms.”

“A little ways inside my district. That’s probably why I got the alarm instead of you.” She lifted the hem of her shimmering cloak. “Anyway, his soul put me close to quota, so I was hoping to go to the executions and then to the Gateway with you. I knew you were at Molly’s house. I didn’t want to interrupt your reaping, so I waited outside.”

“The DEO who stopped you. Was it Alex?”

Sing shook her head. “It was Judas. Why?”

“I was wondering how Alex knew to come to Molly’s house.” I looked toward the street again. “Maybe Judas followed you here and contacted Alex.”

“Impossible. He recorded Brennan’s death and left to get a corpse unit. Then he was going off duty. If he had followed me, we would’ve heard his bike.”

“That’s true.” I looked down at the roof, imagining the family weeping as they packed their suitcases. They lost Molly, and now they faced extermination, all because of a coughed-up pill I neglected to recover. If only Alex had caught me with the bottle instead of Colm.

I kept my stare locked downward. What had Sing witnessed? Did she see me with the bottle before Colm took it? If she knew I was a medicine dealer, what would she do with that information? “I suppose you saw what got Molly’s family in trouble, didn’t you?”

“The pill bottle?” She nodded. “Sure. I saw it.”

I looked her in the eye. “Do you know the penalty if a Reaper uses medicine to keep someone from dying?”

“Death, of course.” She tilted her head. “Why do you ask?”

“To make sure you understand how important this family is to me.”

“Don’t worry. I get it. I saw you try to take the blame. You risked a lot.”

I hid a sigh of relief. She must have shown up at the window too late to see me with the meds. “I guess I’d better get these souls to the Gateway. That’ll give me time to think.”

“How long is the train ride?”

“A couple of hours if I catch the high-speed. I can be back by noon.”

Sing grasped my forearm. “Take me with you. We’ll brainstorm. And I can help you rescue Colm’s family. I know some people.”

“What people?”

“Just…” She averted her eyes. “Just some people who can help Colm.”

“And you’ll call for their help if I take you to the Gateway.” I nodded. “I get it. A little leverage of your own. I scratch your back, and you’ll scratch mine.”

“If that’s what it takes.” She pressed her fingernails into my back and scratched through the layers until a delicious shiver ran up my spine. “Phoenix…” Her voice lowered to a sultry purr. “Have you been alone so long that you can’t… well… make a new friend? Haven’t I already proven that I want to help you?”

The shiver transformed into heat prickles. I gazed into her sincere eyes. I couldn’t deny the truth in her words. “You’re right.” I stepped away from her massage. “But I can’t take you to the Gateway while you’re still short of quota. You’ll get demoted to roamer.”

“Like I said, let’s go to the executions together. I need to learn.” She closed the gap and began scratching my back again. “Friends teach friends, right?”

I twisted away from her touch. “Friends don’t seduce friends.”

“Seduce? I was just—”

“Never mind.” I pulled out my watch and flipped open the lid—quarter past eleven. We would have to hurry. Sing gave my watch a curious glance but stayed quiet.

“We’ll go to the executions,” I said, “but I have one stop to make first. I promised to help Mex reap a level two.”

“Mex?” She blinked at me. “I don’t think I’ve met him.”

“Best to stay away from him. He’s a roamer.”

“I’m not scared of roamers.” Sing looked past me. “Where’s the level two?”

I gestured with my head. “Back at our alley. You ran right past her when you left your apartment.”

“Oh. Her.” Sing ran her shoe over a tar-covered pebble. “She looked way too entrenched for me to reap.”

“I guessed that. With the umbrella and suitcase, she was probably so confused—”

“We have a lot to do”—Sing pulled my sleeve—“we’d better hustle.”

“Okay, okay.”

She jerked me into a quick jog parallel to the street. We ran from house to house, leaping over the gaps between the low parapets dividing the dwellings. As the light behind us diminished, the obstacles became harder to see, forcing us to slow our pace. Yet, it was better traveling without help from the flashlight. No use signaling our presence with a beacon.

As we continued, heat rose from the roof’s tacky surface, making the air even more stifling on this sultry night. Wearing a cloak with a long-sleeved tunic underneath added to the discomfort, but at least Crandyke wasn’t complaining.

A half moon veiled by hazy vapor hovered over the skyline and provided a new frame of light around Sing—a flowing silhouette of cloak and curls running at my side. The daring rescue and her willingness to accept an unorthodox Reaper like me meant a lot. We would probably get along fine.

Yet, not everything made sense. Showing up at exactly the right time seemed too coincidental. And that speech about freedom and being a robot? Rehearsed. Her acting skills nearly glossed it over but not enough to quell suspicion. It would be best to keep her in sight, at least until after she called for help from her people, whoever they were.

Still, she could get in a lot of trouble hanging around me—a medical black-market trader who was trying to, as the Gatekeeper’s Council often put it, “Interrupt the natural order of death and reaping.” If she stuck around, she would eventually learn the truth and maybe get entangled in the danger.

I focused straight ahead. I would probably learn soon enough. The road to the Gateway might very well prove Sing’s alliances.