Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet

“And four whatever is left on the blue one that looks like a camel died on it.” She went to take it from me, and after snatching it back, I leaned in and said, “If it’s not too much trouble.”

She gritted her teeth and said, “Not at all,” before jerking it out of my hand. Then she mouthed the word loser as she swiped it and punched in numbers. Oh, yeah, this girl was going down. She had no idea who she was messing with. And, sadly, she didn’t seem to care.

I hoped her drawer came up short at the end of her shift. Karma’s a bitch.

She pushed the sales key on the register, and an alarm went off. Damn it. Did my card not go through? Maybe I mixed them up. But why would an alarm go off? Didn’t the little machine just decline the card and go on its merry way?

The manager, a twenty-something guy who would forever look like he’d just gotten his braces off and was late for a chemistry exam, ran over with a humongous smile on his face.

“You won!” he said, his enthusiasm more than I could bear at the momen—

Wait. I’d won?

“It’s our anniversary, and your order has been randomly chosen as today’s lucky winner,” he said, squealing like a kid on a roller coaster. He clapped his hands together, his excitement suddenly infectious.

The surly girl’s mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t help the smug expression I offered her. Oh, the agony of it all. The anguish. The torture! In your face, girlfriend.

No. No, I had to be the bigger person. It wasn’t her fault she was born a loser. I mouthed the word. It was infantile, but I did it anyway. She rolled her eyes again.

I turned to the manager with an expectant smile. Maybe I’d won a cruise. Or a yacht. Or a small island. “I won?”

“You won,” he said. Everyone around me started clapping. Except for Iggy, the homeless guy in the corner. He didn’t seem to care. But everyone else was super-excited for me. “You won a year’s supply of our famous sweet rolls.”

I stilled. This … this couldn’t be real. A year’s supply? “No way!” I shouted. This was so much better than a yacht. Especially since I lived in a desert.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He hurried to the back, then reappeared with a booklet of some kind and a camera. After the surly girl took pictures in which I was fairly certain she cut off my head, I walked to the back room again to wait for my burrito and was congratulated by a few customers as they passed by my table. I felt like a celebrity. Like I’d won the lottery. Or an Academy Award.

Since Pari was busy being seduced by an Egyptian goddess, I decided to give them some alone time. And to let my nerves calm down a bit. That little adrenaline rush was more taxing than I thought it would be. I strolled back one room and sat in a center booth.

As I sat waiting for my number to pop up on the marquee, my mouth watering as I imagined the red chili in the burrito and the butter dripping off the sweet roll, I decided I had to get out more. Two months without the sugary goodness of a sweet roll was entirely too long to wait. What the hell had I been thinking?

I hadn’t been thinking. I’d gone crazy. Gemma was right. I had a disorder. I’d have to see if there was an OTC I could use. Like a salve. Or a medicated powder.

I was so into my musings that it took me a while to sense the darkness sitting nearby. So close, I could taste it on my tongue. The raw acidity of rotten eggs filled my mouth and nostrils until my stomach heaved in reflex. I fought the feeling and looked to the side toward a man staring at me in a tweed suit and tan fedora. He had his legs and hands crossed and looked like he could have been a professor at the university.

“This is quite an honor,” he said, nodding an acknowledgment.

He had a smooth English accent, the tenor to his voice pleasant but not very deep. His smile was kind and affectionate, but I didn’t miss the darkness lurking just behind his eyes. Still, if this was a demon, why wasn’t he scrambling toward me with drool dripping off his chin? Wasn’t that what they did?

“To be close enough to you to taste the sweetness of fear wafting off your flesh.” He tilted his face up and drew a deep ration of air in through his nostrils. Then he closed his eyes as though savoring what he found there.

And he was right. I was afraid. I couldn’t move, I was so afraid. What if he came after me? What if he pounced? I’d be dead before I could say, Um, Reyes?

He refocused on me with a sheepish expression. “Forgive me. I’ve heard stories of the girl with no fear, so please excuse my surprise.”

“Surprise of what?”

“You’re afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” I said, lying through my chattering teeth.

“Of course you are.”

“Those stories were exaggerated anyway.”

The next expression he offered held more wolf than sheep. “I doubt it. Something happened. Your aura has been damaged. So it would be horridly unfair of me, but I’m finding it difficult to hold back. I seem to want nothing more than to rip out your jugular with my teeth and smell the copper in your blood.”

“I have a guardian.”

“But I’m here on a mission,” he said, ignoring me. “I have a message.”

“Have you tried texting?”

“If the boy will stop hunting us, we will leave you alone to live your life and die naturally, though I have to warn you, traditionally reapers don’t live long in corporeal form. Still, you shan’t die by our hands. We will not interfere in your life in any way. We’ll only—” He turned up a careless palm. “—watch from afar.”