Page 40 of Reaper's Quest

Chace huffed. “What did you expect? Veritas’s citizens are a hundred years out of practice when it comes to social skills and making friendly with new acquaintances.”

I hummed my agreement. Because, after a century of being trapped in a city with all the same individuals, no strangers likely dwelled among them. Not. A. Single. One. And anyone unknown would be considered suspicious.

The locals didn’t look back as they continued putting distance between us and them. The woman in the café gasped at us through the window set in the center of the door, then she pulled down the shade, blocking herself from view.

Mr. Aldine flinched and tugged back his sleeve. A scrawled name glowed on the skin of his arm. The name indicated a nearby target—a soul in need of reaping. Intended subjects often appeared and disappeared based on one’s proximity.

Hard to lose a note, task, or assignment when it’s written on your flesh.

“It’s not her.” He nodded toward the café before redirecting his attention to the two men and one woman hustling up the street. “Must be one of them.”

Chace took large strides forward. “Then onward we go.”

I hurried to keep pace, refusing to be out-reaped on our first day. Even though the collection wasn’t a contest, the competitive nature between the Gunn and Badden families had always existed, and I needed to hold my own in front of Chace.

One of the fleeing men sprinted into a tailor’s shop. Mr. Aldine ignored him, keeping the other two in his sights. Those two citizens quickened their speed and headed for the angled building dividing the path. A church, by all appearances.

Our mentor continued to lead the chase. “It must be one of those two.”

Must be? Doesn’t he know?

Was Mr. Aldine getting too old for a task of this caliber? Chace had suggested the elder’s capabilities were basically on par with plant life duty. A nonexistent, lay-down, do-nothing job.

Being familiar with the target came with the inking of their name upon our skin. I had always justknown. And, according to my mom, the feeling functioned the same for every reaper. The mark supposedly worked like a real-time navigation map to the target’s soul.

The locator ability?just one of three tools, or gifts, that came naturally to reaper-kind. The soul locator or navigation map tugged from the core, the reaper’s grip radiated from the palm, and the collector’s eye activated in the reaper’s actual eye. The grip temporarily tethered a departing soul to the reaper’s direction, and the eye cut through the soul’s defenses and opened them to the truth?the bliss of the hereafter.

In addition to those three natural tools, every reaper received a company issued scythe that, with one easy swipe through the air, opened the gateway to the beyond.

Over the centuries, a few cases of other unique reaper gifts in a varied range of types and strengths had been documented. But those added tools were rare enough that they didn’t even warrant a chapter in the reaper’s handbook. More like a paragraph, maybe two.

Mr. Aldine winced. A second name flickered to life on his skin. “It’s both ofthem.”

My pace increased to a jog.

Searing pain etched across my arm, causing me to flinch. Slowing, I yanked back my sleeve. A name glowed on my forearm. Chace sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, and if his ogle of his arm meant anything, he too had a target. Each reaper had an official task assignment.

Four names between the three of us.

White-hot stinging, and another name materialized on my arm.

Five names now, and only two people in sight.

The task assignment sent my mind on a tangent. Why had none of us received a reaping task when in the presence of Aoes’s zombified boss, Earl?

Something I’d definitely needed to ponder…later.

I stopped dead in my tracks. Nothing but closed doors and covered windows surrounded the area. No one wandered the street or hid in the shadows, except…

Not a precise tug as I expected, but my internal navigation tilted my head down and to the side. A tiny face peered at me from between a set of propped-open cellar doors.

My heart squeezed. I wanted to tell the child everything would be all right, but I didn’t know that it would.

The cellar doors closed, and the face vanished.

A scraping drew my gaze to the second-story window, where someone else had pulled back the drapes to peer down at me. Our gazes met. The individual gasped and jumped out of sight, the drapes dropping back into place.

Everyone appeared afraid of me, even without knowing me, my origin, my truth. Their reactions served to fuel my theory regarding strangers.