Reap & Repent Page 2

  She’d never been good with people, but she had always loved words. Her father had been the same way, and he’d spent hours reading aloud to her while her mother worked nights as an RN in Meridian. He’d even penned a few short stories for her himself, filling her in as the heroine every time. She had so many good memories of her father.

  Ruth smiled as she surveyed her piles and piles of books stacked in tall vertical columns along the walls like a Verizon cell signal because she lacked the appropriate handyman skills to construct even a makeshift bookshelf.

  She felt a strong pull of nostalgia for her early childhood, back when she and her father and mother had been a real family, and before she even realized it, she was packing. What she needed now was to be close to those few good memories. They were all she had left. She loaded what she could into her father’s old Lincoln Continental, from floor to roof to trunk, and headed south into the growing darkness.

  She was going home, and she wasn’t coming back.

  *

  Later on that night, she pulled down the long tree-lined driveway to her childhood home. It was small and cozy and…small.

  A bungalow, she supposed.

  Realtors would undoubtedly use words like charming and quaint to describe it. It was actually a turn-of-the-century rock-sided house. Ruth always thought of it as a giraffe house because the large, flat sandstones that were mortared to its frame on every side made it look like a prehistoric giraffe.

  This house had once represented the hopes and dreams of her parents. Now it was much like her mother had become: functional but barely. It boasted all the basic trappings of a home—plumbing, electricity, furniture—but it lacked any sort of warmth or personality because her mother had ceased to exude either of those qualities after her father’s death. Still, there were good memories here, as well—they were what had drawn her home.

  Parking her car in the open-fronted double garage behind the house, she grabbed the first of several armloads of belongings and carried it inside. She retrieved her things one trip after another, leaving them in a heap in the living room until she could decide what to do with them. A crushing heaviness settled into her chest as she surveyed the house. It had been quite a long time since she’d been home, preferring to avoid her mother’s disdain.

  Her heart lurched as she looked around the living room. All of the little touches and reminders of her father were gone: the gilded painting of the Last Supper he’d always loved and made up stories about, his collection of leather-bound classics, and the framed and autographed photo of Harper Lee. After his death, her mother hadn’t been able to bear looking at his things anymore, and she’d stowed them all away. It had been heartbreaking for Ruth.

  Her motivation waned and exhaustion took her over as she sank down into the overstuffed chocolate-colored sofa, feeling foolish for thinking home would fill the empty hole she felt growing inside her. Everything caught up to her and brought her to a halt.

  Both of her parents were dead, and she had no living relatives.

  She was truly alone.

  Rolling into a tight ball, she rested her head on the arm of the couch for a pillow.

  The cicadas in the trees outside buzzed loudly, their calls penetrating through the rock walls. The noise became a din in her head. The rhythmic buzz lulled her into a dreamless sleep: a welcome break from her emotional and physical exhaustion.

  *

  Deacon flashed into the small rural cemetery and waited for his eyes to adjust to the moonlight. It was dark in the countryside. He’d decided to try the Scott house tonight. In case he could get that lucky.

  After the week he’d finished, he was pretty confident luck was not on his side. He was not a patient man, and this was an inconvenient trip. The address was in the middle of nowhere, nearly thirty miles from his regular hunting grounds. Plus it was two miles from the nearest cemetery. He could have chosen a more conventional mode of travel than the consecrated subway reapers used to get around, but nothing was faster. Even with the walk.

  He really didn’t want to make this trip very many times. If she didn’t show up, he’d have to track her down another way, but that would take even more time. Time he couldn’t afford to waste. Souls piled up if you weren’t diligent. And while the souls of the newly dead pulled at him, that feeling began to fade after a day, or sometimes even a few hours, making them more difficult to track down. If too much time went by, it was all but impossible to find them unless you practically stumbled upon them. The lost and lingering souls were called sleepers. He’d found a few in his day, but it was like picking a needle out of a haystack.

  Even one day off would create an uncomfortable backlog. Most territories the size of Deacon’s were serviced by a team of reapers, but he was single-minded in his work. He didn’t take vacations. He didn’t socialize. He worked.

  As a result, he drew attention—good and bad—but all of it unwanted. What he really wanted was to be left alone to do his job. His profession was not necessarily enjoyable, but the intense and pressing nature of the work didn’t leave him with much time to ruminate on things. He spent zero time in his head because it was almost constantly occupied with detecting, locating and transporting souls. The rest of the time was devoted to sleep even if it was an hour or two at a time.

  Because he’d been on the job for a long time, his body didn’t require as much nourishment as it once had—a benefit of being a seasoned reaper. But all this demon hunting was wearing him out, and it was taking a lot more energy than usual to fuel his body.

  Seasoned, he scoffed, as he exited through the wrought-iron gate of the cemetery.

  Disgruntled, he stalked down the secluded driveway, his steps crunching against the gravel. At least it would be quiet here—maybe he could get a few hours of sleep while he waited for her to show. As he reached the house, he stopped. There was a car in the garage and a light on in the house.

  Looks like this might be my lucky night after all.

  *

  The unpleasant sensation of being watched jerked Ruth awake. Her fear was confirmed by the presence of “No-Light Black-Scrub Man” in the chair opposite her.

  What the hell?

  She scrambled up and over the couch, landing hard on the wood floor behind it. Without taking the time to regroup, she raced toward the back door.

  Her legs operated solely on instructions from her adrenal glands as she clambered forward in slow motion.

  She was reaching for the knob when Scrub Man suddenly appeared in front of her. She crashed into him. Again. The man was built like a concrete dam, and the air rushed out of her lungs on the impact.

  He grabbed her shoulders to steady her, his hands growing warm around her upper arms. The heat flowed down her arms and up her neck, relaxation pouring over her like a hot bath as her legs turned squishy.

  Ruth tried to fight the growing heaviness of her eyelids, which clearly had no natural cause. Conflicted by the urge to run and the calming effect he was imposing on her, she slumped forward toward the floor. Toward him. Scrub Man scooped her up and carried her to the couch.

  After easing her down onto the cushions, he backed away to the hearth. Her body immediately mourned the loss of contact as the warmth of his touch faded. Sitting across from her, he leaned forward, alert and coiled.

  “Ruth, I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

  Uh-huh.

  The warm fuzzies lingered, tingling up and down her nerve ends. Shaking her head to clear the fog, she considered her options, gauging the distance to the front door.

  Fight or flight?

  “Ruth, look at me. Please.”

  Against her good judgment, she peered up at him, studying him for the first time. His dark black hair, a little too long on top, drooped into a wave across one eye as he leaned forward, his intentions unclear. Dark stubble covered his sharp, angled jawline, accenting high cheekbones. The hot glare of his bright blue-green eyes pierced through her, making her more self-conscious than afrai
d. She guessed that he was in his late twenties, perhaps early thirties. The sleeves of his scrubs cut into his chiseled biceps.

  He must have been just over six feet tall because her head had barely reached under his chin when he’d held her. A silver chain disappeared down the front of his shirt. She couldn’t see what dangled from it, if anything. With slow caution, she pulled herself together.

  “Thank you.” He smiled, and her heart betrayed her by doing a little clinch in her chest. “I want to ask you a few questions and explain why I’m here,” he said. “But I can’t do that if you’re going to sit over there plotting ways to kill me or escape. Do you think you can sit there, nice and calm, for a few minutes?”

  She nodded unenthusiastically. She didn’t trust her voice not to break if she said it out loud. There was no use in screaming. The nearest neighbor was a good mile away; the next was farther.

  “Ruth, my name is Deacon. You might have noticed that I have some rather unusual abilities. For one, I’m very fast when I want to be. For another, I can affect your mood by touch, which I did just now to calm you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I do need to know a few things. What are you?”

  What am I? Uh, a girl would be a good start. What the hell?

  She shook her head side to side, indicating “No.”

  “No, you don’t understand? Or no, you don’t know what you are?” he asked, obviously growing frustrated.

  She shook her head again.

  “Okay, this isn’t going to work unless you speak. I don’t read minds, you know.”

  Good to know, she thought. What came out was, “I don’t understand.”

  “When we ran into each other at the hospital, you had no aura. What are you? Are you a reaper? An angel? Christ on a crutch, you aren’t a valkyrie, are you?” he asked, running a hand through his hair, pushing it away from his face. “I’m betting no on the angel front because the Reiki energy doesn’t seem to work on angels. So what are you?”

  “A student. Or, I was a student. Now I’m just… I don’t know what you’re talking about—angels and reapers and valkyries. I’m…human?”

  “You are more than human.”

  “I’m not. What do you want with me?”

  “I want answers. In the hospital, I sensed something about you when we met… Your mother was Mary Scott. Correct? She died in that hospital room while you were there?”

  “I didn’t do that. It wasn’t my fault,” she blurted out.

  “Okaaay,” he proceeded cautiously. “Did you touch her before you left?”

  She considered him, her mouth going dry. She had touched her. She’d given her that final kiss on the forehead.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  Ruth couldn’t look at him as she began to realize what all of this might mean. Had her bizarre handicap really killed her father, and now her mother, too?

  She was a killer.

  “You’re not a killer,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  “I thought you couldn’t read minds!” She sobbed, tears choking her throat closed.

  It’s my fault. I AM a killer.

  “You’re not,” he insisted. “I think you’re a reaper, like me.”

  Her heart started beating faster and her vision started to go blurry around the edges. The whole room sped down a black chute into darkness. She was going to pass out. She was going to pass out with a strange supernatural man in her house.

  God help me.

  Chapter Three

  Ruth woke slowly, taking an internal inventory before she opened her eyes. It felt as if all of her clothes were still on, and there were no apparent missing or bloody bits.

  That’s a plus.

  Sitting across from her, now somewhat less patiently, was Scrub Man, or Deacon, if that was really his name. The gravity of her situation crashed down on her.

  “Do you think we could try this again?” he asked, sighing. “I came to reap your mother’s soul. When I ran into you in the hallway and saw that you had no aura, I assumed that you were a reaper like me. But when I got into the room, and her soul was detached but unreaped, I was confused. I collected her soul and took it for processing. And then I came here to figure out what you are… Ruth, you’re more than human. Only reapers have no auras. Have you experienced anything out of the ordinary before now? Any sign that you might have special abilities?”

  Ruth was flat-out dumbfounded.

  He thinks I’m a reaper?

  She was torn over how much to tell him. She wanted to talk about her gifts with someone who might actually understand. Maybe “reaper” was as good an explanation as any for what she could do, but how could she trust a man who’d stalked her and broken into her house? Of course, if he had planned on hurting her or doing more than chitchatting, he’d already had ample opportunity. She closed her eyes and dove in.

  “I’m just a girl…but I can see people’s auras. And I know that the light around someone turns white when they’re close to death.” She shifted, uncomfortable now that she’d gushed her crazy all over him.

  “What else do you know about the colors?”

  “Yellow is happy, green is peaceful, mustard is angry, brown is unhappy, and red is I-want-to-get-down-your-pants-then-steal-all-your-cookies. But that’s all. I’m not anything. I can only guess at everything else,” she lied. She knew a lot about auras and their colors. Too much maybe. Trying to decode the colors and their meanings had been one of her first research projects. It was what had set her on her nonexistent career path.

  “Ruth, if you can see auras, you already know that you’re more than just a girl. And if you touched anyone else with a white aura, you might have hindered their passing by detaching their souls prematurely, making them difficult to retrieve. If that happened, their souls are likely still near their bodies. I reaped your mother’s soul. Have you ever knowingly touched anyone else who has a white aura?”

  She hesitated. “My father maybe? When he died, it was the first time I realized what the white aura meant.”

  Deacon sighed. “Anyone else?”

  Ruth picked nervously at her fingernails. “No, I don’t think so. Ever since then I’ve tried to stay away from people. I keep to myself. I don’t like knowing every little thing about how strangers are feeling, or worse, people I know. I feel compelled to tell them things because of what I see. Like that they should probably get their crap in order and make up with their loved ones because they’re about to die. Stuff that I’m smart enough to know will land me right in the nut house if I don’t shut up about it.”

  Deacon sat quietly for several long minutes, probing her with his sharp eyes. Ruth squirmed under his scrutiny. She didn’t like being looked at, period, let alone this intensely. She felt as if he was counting her pores or wondering if her size-eight skin might fit well into his collection.

  “Where is your father buried?”

  “Why? You aren’t thinking of digging him up, are you?” She tried not to scream the words at him.

  “I’m not going to dig him up…not exactly.” Deacon rose to pace the floor in front of her. “We need to go see if his soul is still hanging around. If it is, he’ll be stuck haunting his grave until he’s collected. I assume he’s been dead for quite some time now? He’s not going to be too happy about that. They never are.”

  Ruth tried to process this random new development in her overstuffed brain. It wasn’t computing. Up until twenty minutes ago, she’d managed to keep her secret in a nice tight box in the back of her mind. Now that box was opening like Pandora herself had peeled back the lid.

  Maybe I am going crazy.

  She tried to keep it together, but the effort strained against her throat, threatening to come out in a nice loud scream at any second. Deacon approached her cautiously and held out his hand.

  “Take my hand, Ruth.”

  “Why?”

  “I can help calm you.”

  She took it. God help her, but she did. His hand was warm and comfortable. Familiar even. She
didn’t know how else to explain it, but holding his hand seemed like a perfectly sane and acceptable antidote to the insanity that was building inside her.

  Her brain was in conflict with her body. His touch made her feel better: warm, but not fuzzy this time. Clear. Sure. Content. Yet, her adrenaline refused to entirely release its grip.

  Be afraid, it warned.

  He pulled her to her feet and into his chest in an embrace. She let him.

  She curled into him like a kitten, and he felt so good against her that she wanted to purr. The longer he lingered, the better he began to smell, too. Like cedar trees and fresh earth. Ruth closed her eyes and breathed him in. She hadn’t been this close to a man in a long, long, long time.

  Dangerous.

  She relaxed so much that her inhibitions were in danger of failing. That was what pulled her out of her stupor, and she jerked back.

  “What are you doing to me?” she whispered.

  “I’m calming you. I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, Ruth. Let me help you relax.”

  He led her back to the couch, and they both sat. He pulled her snug against his chest, and they sat there for a long moment, him pumping the happy juice through her until a pale orange glow surrounded both of them. It occurred to her that she should be asking more questions, like how come he had suddenly become a human glow stick for starters. Instead she relaxed into him. It was nice in that scary “what the hell am I doing with this strange man” sort of way. She was letting go, and he was holding her.

  And damn if it didn’t feel good.

  *

  Deacon had no idea what he was doing here, on a couch with his arms wrapped around the girl he’d suspected of being a poacher up until twenty minutes ago.

  This is wrong.

  One thing was for damn sure, she wasn’t a poacher. He knew all too well that poachers could possess anyone—no matter how nice or normal or sane—if they found the right in, but Ruth showed no signs of possession.