CHAPTER 11. “This is about the exchange rate?” the reaper asked, drawing me out of my own head, where shock over the events of the past couple of hours was finally

“ This is about the exchange rate?” the reaper asked, drawing me out of my own head, where shock over the events of the past couple of hours was finally catching up with me.

When I didn’t answer, Nash nodded.

The reaper shrugged and slouched back into his chair. “You know as much as I do about that. A life for a life.”

Nash glanced at me with both brows raised, to ask if I was okay. I nodded, drawing my thoughts back into focus, and he leaned forward with his arms crossed on the table. “But that’s the penalty for saving someone on your list, right? Someone who’s supposed to die.”

“You’re not ‘saving’ anyone.” Tod scowled—we’d obviously found his hot button. “You’re stealing souls, which only delays the inevitable. And throws my whole shift off schedule. And hurls my boss into all new realms of pissed-off. And you don’t even want to know about the paperwork involved in even a simple, equal exchange.”

“I’m not—” Nash started, but Tod cut him off.

“But beyond all that, it’s illegal. Thus the penalty.”

I screwed the lid back onto my bottle and pushed it toward the middle of the table. “But does the penalty still apply if we save someone who wasn’t supposed to die?”

Tod’s forehead wrinkled in confusion, then his expression went suddenly blank, leaving a cold comprehension shining in his eyes. “Shit like that doesn’t happen here—”

“Come off it, Tod.” Nash eyed the reaper intently, old pain etched into the lines of his frown. “You owe me the truth.”

But Tod went on as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “—and even if it did, you’d never know it, because no reaper could afford to admit he accidently took the wrong soul.”

“We’re not talking about an accident.” I glanced up when the cafeteria doors flew open and a woman entered with three kids in tow, reminding me for the first time since Tod had joined us that we were discussing very odd things in a very public place.

“What about the list? Wouldn’t that prove it if someone wasn’t supposed to die?” Nash whispered now in concession to our new company.

Tod scrubbed his face with both hands, clearly frustrated and losing patience with our questions. “Probably, but you’d never get your hands on the list. And even if you could, it’d be too late. The penalty would already have been applied.”

“Are you seriously saying a reaper would take an innocent life in exchange for a soul he shouldn’t have claimed in the first place?” Indignation burned hot in my veins. If any process in the world was free from corruption, it should have been death. After all, wasn’t death the great equalizer?

Or was that taxes?

“No, you’re right.” Tod gave me a halfhearted nod. “In theory, the penalty shouldn’t apply in a case like that. But theory and reality don’t always coexist where death is concerned. So even if you could get your hands on the right list, and even if you were right about the reaper’s…mistake, chances are that an innocent soul would already have been taken. Or one of your own.”

I couldn’t help noticing he didn’t put us in the “innocent” category.

“So we’re screwed either way.” Exasperated, I tossed my hands into the air and leaned back in my chair, closing my eyes.

“What’s this about, anyway?” Tod asked, and I opened my eyes to find him watching me in…was that interest? “Who are you trying to save?”

“We don’t know. Probably no one.” Nash poked at the last bite of cake with his fork, smearing chocolate frosting across the paper plate. “Several girls have died in our area recently, and Ka—” He stopped, omitting my name from the sentence at the last second. “She—” he nodded in my direction “—thinks their deaths are suspicious.”

“‘She’ does, huh?” A grin tugged at the corner of the young reaper’s mouth, and I could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “What’s suspicious about them?”

“They were all teenagers. They were all very pretty. They all died the same way. They were all in good health. They each died a day apart.” I ticked the facts off on my fingers as I spoke, and when I’d used up one hand, I showed it to him. “Take your pick. But either way, that’s too many coincidences. There’s no way all three of them were supposed to die, and I don’t care whose list they were on.”

The gleam of interest in Tod’s eyes told me I’d recaptured his attention. “You think they were killed?”

I tapped one foot on the sticky floor, trying to sort out my thoughts. “I don’t know. Maybe, but if so, I have no idea how. All but the first one died in front of witnesses, who saw nothing suspicious. Other than a beautiful girl keeling over with no warning.”

“There are ways to make that happen, of course.” Tod half stood and walked his chair closer to the table, then sank back into it. “But even if they were killed, that doesn’t change anything. Murder victims are on the master list every day. I’ve only had one in two years, but the senior reapers get them on a weekly basis.”

I felt my eyes go wide, and a heavy, tight feeling gripped my chest. “You mean people are supposed to be killed?” For a moment, true horror eclipsed the determination and fear already warring inside me. How could murder be a part of the natural order?

Tod shook his head. “People are supposed to die, and the specifics vary widely. Including murder.”

I turned on Nash, blinking back the angry tears burning my eyes. “So what’s the point of all this? If I can’t change it, why do I have to know about it?”

Nash took my hand. “She’s having trouble letting them go,” he said, and Tod nodded as if he understood.

“What do you know about it?” I snapped, beyond caring that none of this was the reaper’s fault. Or that I probably should have been scared of him. “You take lives for a living.” As ironic as that sounded…“Death is an everyday occurrence for you.”

Nash huffed, and a satisfied look hovered on the edge of his expression. “Yeah, and you’d never know from listening to him now that he had so much trouble with it at first.”

“Watch it, Hudson,” Tod growled, bright blue eyes going icy.

A new look flitted across Nash’s features—some combination of amusement and mischief. “Tell her about the little girl.”

“Do you have some kind of disorder? Some synapse misfiring up there—” he gestured vaguely toward Nash’s head “—that makes you incapable of keeping your mouth shut? Or are you just a garden-variety fool?”

“What girl?” I ignored both the reaper’s outburst and the bean sidhe’ s satisfied half smile.

“It’ll help her understand,” Nash said when it became clear that Tod wasn’t going to respond.

“Understand what?” I demanded, glancing from one to the other. And finally Tod sighed, still glaring at Nash.

“He’s just trying to make me look like an idiot,” the reaper snapped. “But I have stories that make him look even worse, so keep that in mind, soul snatcher, next time you go shooting off your mouth.”

Nash shrugged, obviously unbothered by the threat, and Tod twisted in his chair to face me fully. “At first, I wasn’t too fond of my job. The whole thing seemed pointless and sad, and just plain wrong at times. Once I actually refused an assignment and nearly got myself terminated. I’m guessing that’s what he wants you to hear.”

Nash nodded on the edge of my vision, but I kept my focus on the reaper. “Why would you refuse an assignment?”

Tod exhaled in frustration. Or maybe embarrassment. “I was working at the nursing home, and this little girl came with her parents to visit her grandmother. She choked on a peppermint her grandma’s roommate gave her, and she was supposed to die. She was on the list—all official. But when the time came, I couldn’t do it. She was only three. So when a nurse showed up and gave her the Heimlich, I let her live.”

“What happened?” My heart ached for the little girl, and for Tod, whose job conflicted with every ounce of compassion in my body. And in his, evidently.

“My boss got pissed when I came back without her soul. He took her grandmother’s instead, and when a shift opened up at the hospital, he passed me over and gave it to someone else.” Anger darkened his eyes. “I was stuck at the nursing home for nearly three more years before he finally moved me over here. And there’s no telling how long it’ll be before I move up again.”

“But don’t you think it was worth it?” I couldn’t help asking. “The grandmother had already lived her life, but the little girl was just starting. You saved her life!”

The reaper shook his head slowly, blond curls glimmering in the light overhead. “It wasn’t an even exchange. From the moment she was supposed to die, that little girl was living on borrowed time. Her grandmother’s time. When you make an exchange, what you’re really doing is trading one person’s death date for another’s. That little girl died six months later, on the day her grandmother was originally scheduled to go.”

That time I couldn’t stop the tears. “How can you stand it?” I wiped at my eyes angrily with the napkin Nash handed me, glad I wasn’t wearing much mascara.

Tod glanced at Nash, then his expression softened when he turned back to me. “It’s easier now that I’m used to it. But at the time, I had to learn to trust the list. The master list is like the script from a play—it shows every word spoken by every actor, and the show keeps going so long as no one deviates from it.”

“But that does happen, right?” I wadded the napkin into a tight ball. “Even if the list is infallible, the people aren’t. A reaper could deviate from the list, like you did with the little girl, right?”

Nash shifted in his seat, drawing our attention before Tod could answer. “You think those girls died in place of people who were actually on the list? That they were exchanges?”

I shook my head. “Three in three days? It’s still too much of a coincidence. But if Tod can deviate by not taking a soul, couldn’t another reaper deviate by taking an extra one? Or three?”

“No.” Tod shook his head firmly. “No way. The boss would notice if someone turned in three extra souls.”

I arched one brow at him. “What makes you think he turned them in?”

The reaper’s scowl deepened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s impossible.”

“There’s a way to find out.” Nash eyed me somberly before turning his penetrating gaze on Tod. “You’re right—we can’t get our hands on the list. But you can.”

“No.” Tod shoved his chair back and stood. Across the cafeteria, the mother and children looked up, one little boy smeared from ear to ear with chocolate ice cream.

“Sit down!” Nash hissed, glaring up at him.

Tod shook his head and started to turn away from us, so I grabbed his hand. He froze the minute my flesh touched his and turned back to me gradually, as if every movement hurt. “Please.” I begged him with my eyes. “Just hear him out.”

The reaper slowly pulled his fingers from my grasp, until my hand hung in the air, empty and abandoned. He looked both angry and terrified when he sank back into his seat, now more than a foot from the table.

“We don’t need to see the whole thing,” Nash began. “Just the part from this weekend. Saturday, Sunday, and today.”

“I can’t do it.” He shook his head again, blond curls bouncing. “You don’t understand what you’re asking for.”

“So tell us.” I folded my hands on the table, making it clear that I had time for a long story. Even if I didn’t.

Tod exhaled heavily and aimed his answer at me, pointedly ignoring Nash. “You’re not talking about just one list. ‘Master list’ is a misnomer. It’s actually lots of lists. There’s a new master for every day, and my boss splits that up into zone, then shift. I only see the part for this hospital, from noon to midnight. There’s another reaper who works here the other half of the day, and I never see anything on his lists, much less the lists for other zones. It’s not like I can just walk up to a coworker and ask to see his old lists. Especially if he’s actually reaping ‘independently.’”

“He’s right. That’s too complicated.” Nash sighed, closing his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked at me resolutely. “We need the master list.”

Tod groaned and opened his mouth to argue, but I beat him to it. “No, we don’t. We don’t even need to see it.”

“What?” Nash frowned, and I raised one finger, asking him silently to wait as I turned back to the reaper.

“I understand that you don’t work off the master list, but you’ve seen it, right? You said there are murder victims on it every week…?”

“Yeah, I see it every now and then.” Tod shrugged. “It’s all digital now, and my boss keeps it running on his computer all the time, in case he has to adjust anything. I glance at it when I go in his office.”

“Okay, that’s good.” I couldn’t resist a small smile. “We don’t need to see it. We just need you to look at it and tell us whether or not these three names were there.”

Tod leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, cradling his head in his hands. He rubbed his forehead, then took a deep, resigned breath and finally looked up at me. “Where did they die?”

“The first one was in the West End, at Taboo. Heidi…?” Nash glanced at me with his brows arched.

“Anderson,” I supplied. “The second was Alyson Baker, at the Cinemark in Arlington, and the third was at East Lake High School, just this afternoon.”

“Wait, those are all in different zones.” Tod frowned, and the well-defined muscles of his arms tensed as he leaned against the table. “If you really think none of them were supposed to die, you’re talking about three different reapers involved in this little conspiracy. Which is starting to sound pretty complicated, by the way.”

“Hmm…” I didn’t know enough about reapers to know how far-fetched a theory we were talking about, but I did know that the more people who were in on a secret, the harder it was to keep quiet. Tod was right. So…maybe we were only looking for one reaper, after all. “Is there anything keeping one of you guys from operating in someone else’s zone?”

“Other than integrity and fear of being caught? No.”

Grim reaper integrity…?

“So if a reaper has neither integrity nor fear, there’s nothing to stop him from taking out half the state of Texas next time he gets road rage in rush hour traffic?” I heard my pitch rising, and made myself lower my voice as I screwed the lid off my Coke. “Don’t you guys have to turn in your…um…death ray, or whatever, when you’re off the clock?”

Tod’s perfect lips quirked up in a quick smile. “Um, no. There’s no death ray, though that would be really cool. Reapers don’t use any equipment. All we have is an ability to extinguish life and take possession of the soul. But trust me, that’s more than enough.”

With that, his expression darkened. “In theory, you should never find a reaper without integrity. It’s not like we apply for this job to satisfy some kind of massive power hunger. We’re recruited, and screened for every psychological condition known to man. No one capable of something like you’re talking about should ever find work as a reaper.”

“You sound less than confident in the system,” I said, watching his face carefully.

He shrugged. “You said it yourself. People aren’t infallible, and the system is run by people.”

“So can you get a look at the lists?” Nash said, watching Tod almost as closely as I did.

Tod bit his lower lip in thought. “You’re talking about three different zones, for three different days—and none of them on the current master list.”

“So can you do it?” I repeated, leaning forward in anticipation.

Tod nodded slowly. “It won’t be easy, but I like a challenge. So long as it pays off.” His blue-eyed gaze zeroed in on me, and something told me he was no longer talking about poking around in his boss’s office. “I’ll get you what you want to know—in exchange for your name.”

“No.” Nash didn’t even hesitate. “You’ll do it because if you don’t, we’ll hang out here and she’ll suspend every soul you try to take until you’re so far behind schedule your boss sends you back to the nursing home. If you’re lucky.”

“Right.” Tod smirked now as his gaze shifted from me to Nash. “She’s so green her roots are showing. I bet she’s never even seen a soul.”

“He’s right,” I said. Nash snatched my hand from the table and squeezed it hard, begging me silently not to give Tod what he wanted. But I saw no reason not to. My name would be easy to figure out, which made it a cheap price for the information we needed. “My first name is Kaylee. You can have my last name when you give us what we want.”

“Deal.” Tod stood, beaming as if his face gave off its own glow. “I’ll let you know what I find out, but I can’t promise it’ll be tonight. I’m already late for that aneurism.”

I nodded, disappointed but not really surprised.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go make some poor woman a widow.” And with that, he disappeared.

There was no chiming of bells, no twinkling of light. No signal at all that he was about to vanish. He was simply there one moment, and gone the next, with no special—or sound—effects of any kind.

“You didn’t tell me he could do that!” I glanced at Nash to find him frowning at the table. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” He stood and picked up the paper plate still holding his last bite of cake. “Let’s go.” We threw our trash away on our way out of the cafeteria, and I followed him across the hospital and through the parking garage in silence. Guess he really didn’t want Tod to know my name…

When we reached the car, Nash followed me to the passenger’s side door, where he unlocked and opened it for me. But instead of getting in, I turned to face him and put one hand flat on his chest. “You’re mad at me.” My heart beat so hard my chest ached. I could feel his heart thumping beneath my palm, and for one horrifying moment, I was sure I’d never get to feel it again. That he would simply drive me home, then vanish from my life like Tod had vanished from the cafeteria.

But Nash shook his head slowly. He was backlit by an overhead light near the entrance, and his dark hair seemed to glow around the edges. “I’m mad at him. I should have come by myself, but I didn’t think he’d be interested in you.”

My eyebrows shot up and I stepped to the side to see him better. “Because I’m a shrieking hag?”

Nash pulled me close again and pressed me into the car, then kissed me so deeply I wasn’t sure if I was actually breathing. “You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he said. “But Tod’s been hung up on someone else for a long time, so I thought you’d be safe. I should have known better.”

“Why didn’t you want him to know my name?”

Nash leaned back to see me better, and the line of his jaw went hard. “Because he’s Death, Kaylee. No matter how innocent he looks, or how desperately he clings to the notion that he’s some kind of afterlife hero, carting helpless souls from point A to point B, he’s still a reaper. One day he might find your name on his list. And while I know that keeping your name a secret won’t save you if that happens, I’m not just going to hand over your identity to one of Death’s gophers.”

“He knows your name.” I let my hand trail from his chest down his arm until my fingers curled around his.

“I knew him before he was a reaper.”

“You did?” It hadn’t occurred to me until then that Tod might have had a normal life once. What were reapers like before they surrounded themselves with death and the dying?

Nash nodded, and I opened my mouth to ask another question, but he laid one finger against my lips. “I don’t want to talk about Tod anymore.”

“Fair enough,” I mumbled against his finger. Then I removed his hand and stepped up on my toes. “I don’t want to talk about him either.” I kissed him, and my pulse went crazy when he responded. His tongue met mine briefly, then his lips trailed over my chin and down my neck.

“Mmm…” I murmured into his hair, as his tongue flicked in the hollow of my collarbone. Chill bumps popped up on my arms, and my hands went around his back. My fingers splayed over the material of his shirt. “That feels good.”

“You taste good,” he whispered against my skin. But before I could respond, an engine growled to life a row away, and light washed over us both, momentarily blinding me. Nash straightened, moaning in frustration as the car across the aisle pulled toward us before turning toward the exit. “I guess I should take you home,” he said, shading his face with one hand while the other remained on my arm.

I blinked, trying to clear floating circles of light from my eyes. “I don’t want to go home. My entire family has been lying to me my whole life. I don’t have anything to say to them.”

“Don’t you want to know why they’ve been lying to you?”

I blinked at him, taken by surprise for a moment. I hadn’t considered simply confronting them with the truth. They’d never see that coming.

A slow smile spread across my face, and I saw it reflected in Nash’s. “Let’s go.”