The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (19 page)

“She is unusual. But I am certain she cannot see us. No living person is that powerful. If such a person existed, we would destroy her.”

I quelled a shiver and forced myself not to look in their direction again. After several moments of hearing nothing from them, I glanced at the shower and they were gone. I was glad that Landon had seen my swollen eye, making the punch worth the pain, but I would have to be even more careful about acknowledging ghosts. Apparently, there were ghosts with the power to kill me if they felt I threatened them. Or at least, they claimed to have that power. I’d never known a ghost to hurt anyone until I met dead Landon.

I did the best I could with the make-up—which wasn’t great considering I usually only wore chap stick—hurried into my room, dressed quickly, and rushed to the kitchen, where Angelica sat at the table finishing a bowl of cereal. She whistled when she saw me. “I thought you weren’t into Bruce.”

“I’m not.”

“Then why are you wearing makeup to go skiing?”

Dammit, why hadn’t I prepared for this question? “Um, I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I don’t want to scare any little kids on the slope.” There, that was a convincing answer. Unfortunately, Angelica didn’t look convinced. She stared at me for a full minute before shrugging.

“Whatever.”

I knew that tone. It was one she’d never used on me before, but I’d heard it often enough to know it meant she was really fed up with me. “You ready to go?”

She picked up her bowl and got up from the table. She paused there for a minute and then turned to face me. “Kelsey, are you still my friend?”

“I hope so.” Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.

She must have seen something in my face, because hers softened a bit. “Then please tell me what’s going on. What happened between you and Caleb last night? Why are you wearing ten layers of makeup and looking like a dog that’s been kicked this morning? Why are we going skiing with Bruce?”

“Bruce likes you.” I probably shouldn’t have told her that, but I had to give her something, and that one was the easiest.

She sat back down. “No, he can’t like me. He likes you, remember. He took you out and he kissed you. Plus, last night, he was hanging around you like you were his new best friend.”

I sat down across from her, no longer concerned that we’d be late. Bruce would wait for us, or he’d come up and knock on the door. “I’m pretty sure he just kissed me to be nice. Since he’d taken me out and bought me dinner, he figured he at least ought to kiss me and see if there was anything there.”

“That’s weird,” she said.

“I think we bring that out in each other, somehow. I felt bad for him when he kissed me, and so I kissed him back to see if I felt anything for him. But I didn’t. Angelica, I didn’t feel anything for him. And he didn’t feel anything for me. He was only hanging out with me last night because he didn’t know anyone else. I really think he’s a good guy, and you could use that… You deserve that.”

She studied me for a minute. “I haven’t been picking any winners lately, that’s for sure.”

“I’m pretty sure I know Bruce well enough to know that he’s a good guy, a loyal friend. He stood by Landon and that’s saying a lot.”

“He could also be an idiot,” she said, but she was smiling. “I’ll give him a chance. He
is
cute. But you’re avoiding the real issue. What’s going on?”

I fidgeted in my chair, pulled a strand of hair into my mouth, and tried to think of a good answer.

“Oh, my god,” she gasped. “Landon’s still bothering you, isn’t he?”

“How do you know?”

“Because you always chewed on your hair when you talked about Landon or worried about Landon. It’s what you do generally when you are stressed, and Landon was your biggest stress.”

“Yeah, he’s still hanging around. I’m sorry I lied to you, Angelica, I just…”

She sighed. “Why Kelsey? I want to help you. This is all super scary and…”

“I don’t want you to be scared. I can handle this on my own.”

“No, you aren’t going to handle this on your own. You’re going to let me help you.”

I glanced at the clock. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything, but right now, we should probably go. We’re already twenty minutes late.”

“He can wait five more minutes.”

I shook my head. “He’ll be up here banging on the door in three.” A loud knock at the door proved me right.

She gaped at me. “Dude, I thought you just met him. How did you know he would do that?”

I shrugged as I walked to the door. “I don’t know. Maybe he’s a lost twin or something?”

My smile faded when I opened the door and saw Caleb standing there. He frowned back at me. “Hi,” I said. I hadn’t decided how to feel about him, except that the anger I’d felt toward him last night had faded only slightly, and I definitely didn’t want him to get close enough to see the new bruises on my face. Even so, I couldn’t help noticing how good he looked. Apparently, he hadn’t lost any sleep over our spat. “Angelica and I were just about to leave.”

He nodded. “Yeah, Bruce is waiting for you downstairs. He asked me to tell you to hurry up.”

“We’re going skiing, Caleb. You wanna go with us?” Angelica called from the living room where she was pulling on tennis shoes. I must have flinched at the suggestion, because Caleb’s frown deepened.

“No, thanks,” he said. He looked at me for a long moment, and I worried that he could see through my slap-dash make-up job. “I was just checking on you. I called you and texted you like six times.”

“Oh, I turned my phone off before the party in case my mom called.”

He nodded as though turning off one’s phone to avoid one’s mother was completely ordinary. “I wanted to apologize. You were right. I was out of line.”

I smiled despite my anger, and he smiled back, slightly. “So was I. You were just worried about me. I get it.”

“I should have believed you. You wouldn’t lie about something like that.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. I looked at his chest, which was covered by a ski jacket, goggles around his neck. “You hitting the mountain today?”

He looked down at himself, like he’d forgotten what he was wearing. “Maybe. I was going to get breakfast first. Wanna join me?”

“Go ahead, Kelsey. You haven’t eaten, yet, and Bruce and I will be fine on our own for a little while.”

I looked back at Angelica ready to accept her offer. She looked so cute in her ski pants, with her hair in two messy ponytails on either side of her head. I remembered that Landon could hurt her just like he’d hurt me if I didn’t talk to Bruce. I needed to avoid Caleb until my bruises faded, and I needed to talk to Bruce before Landon got any ideas. First, though, I needed a reasonable excuse. I returned my attention to Caleb and the smile on his face completely destroyed my ability to think. Instead, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “I’m not hungry, and I really want to ski.” His smile vanished, and I wondered if it were possible for me to have been any ruder.

“Wow, you really know how to reel them in,” a male voice behind me said with a chuckle. I turned to find Doug in my living room next to Angelica.

“Some other time, then. Maybe I’ll see you on the mountain,” he said over his shoulder as he walked down the stairs and back outside.

“Wow, Kelsey, what happened? I thought you and Caleb were friends,” Angelica said when I closed the door after him.

“We are.” I walked past her to grab my shoes and coat.

“Really? Because I wasn’t getting that vibe from you.”

I sat down on the couch next to her and dropped my head in my hands. “Was it that bad?”

“Pretty much. You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I want to tell you everything. Tonight. Right now, Bruce is waiting for us. Why don’t you go ahead? I’ll be right behind you.”

“Okay. But I’m sure he wouldn’t mind waiting if you wanted to talk now.”

She was the most amazing friend. “Thanks, but we should go. This story is going to take a long time to tell.”

“Well, I’ll see you down there, then,” she said with a smile, leaving me alone with Doug.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” I said to him as soon as she’d gone.

He looked rather sad. “This is because of us, isn’t it?”

“Us?”

“Me. Ghosts like me. The problems you’re having with this guy Caleb and the distance between you and Angelica is because you can see ghosts.”

“How did you get all of that from two short conversations?”

“I’m not a complete idiot, you know. When there’s something to do with ghosts that you can’t tell them about, you get this look on your face, like you want to run away from yourself.”

I nodded and sighed. “I’m that obvious?”

He shrugged. “Only to me. I’m pretty sure Caleb just thinks you can’t stand him.”

A slow throbbing pulse began in my temples. “Why would he think that?”

“You said everything short of ‘stay away from me’.”

“I just said I didn’t want to go to breakfast with him.”

Doug shook his head. “It wasn’t the words, Kelsey. I’ve been rejected often enough to recognize the tone and, from the look on Caleb’s face, so did he.”

I pulled on my sneakers and tried not to vomit. My drunk was wearing off, and nausea was starting to kick in. “I don’t want to reject him. It’s more like I’m expecting him to reject me and…”

“You want to beat him to the punch? What makes you think he’s going to dump you?”

“Why do you think? No guy is going to stick around after he finds out I can see ghosts, and one of those ghosts is trying to take over my body.”

“Yeah, especially if you don’t give him the chance.”

Doug was starting to make me mad. “I’ve got to get going here, Doug, so if you wouldn’t mind getting to the point of your little visit, that would be great.”

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, closed it, then opened it again. “I came to tell you that I have nothing to tell you. Your Landon, ghosts who can hurt the living, no one over here knows anything about it.”

“Nothing?” My heart sank. I was so screwed.

“Oh, I’m pretty sure they know something, but no one is sharing. Some people have even warned me off talking about such things. Apparently, it can be dangerous.”

“Look, Doug, I don’t want you getting hurt on my account. Maybe you should just stay away from me.”

“Rejecting me, too? Lucky for you I’m not as easy to get rid of as Caleb. I was an atheist all my adult life, so any extra time I get is pure icing on the cake. What can they really do to me? I like you, and I’d like to help you, if you’ll let me.”

“I like you, too, and I will blame myself if anything happens to you, whether you’re okay with it or not.”

“It’s my choice, Kelsey. I’ll keep digging, but you should go join your friends.” And he was gone, end of discussion.

I pulled on my coat and left, locking the door behind me. Before I headed outside, I stopped at our small storage locker at the bottom of the steps and grabbed my boots and poles. Bruce and Angelica were already seated in his Explorer, deep in conversation. I had to knock on the window before they noticed me. Bruce smiled and motioned for me to get in. I didn’t bother to throw my stuff in the back; I just dropped my boots on the floorboard and leaned my poles against the seat.

“Sorry I kept you waiting,” I said as Bruce started the engine and pulled out onto the street.

“No problem,” he said. “It’s not like we’re missing a powder morning or anything. They’ve only got twenty runs open.”

“That’s enough for me,” Angelica said in her super-chipper, I-like-this-guy voice.

I tried to feel as cheerful as they both sounded, but all I could think about was how badly I had screwed things up with Caleb, and how there was no way for me to fix it. All the make-up in the world would only hide my problem from him for so long and, even if I waited for the current bruises to fade, new ones would shortly take their place,
if
I survived Landon’s attempts to take my body. Before I knew it, Bruce was parking his car in a VIP lot about ten yards from the gondola.

“Wow,” I said. “You’ve got a lot more nerve than I credited you with.”

He winked at me in the rearview mirror before pulling a parking pass from the center console and attaching it to the mirror. “One of the perks of being the grandson of the guy who built this place.”

“No shit,” Angelica said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Bruce shrugged. “I don’t tell anyone that. Most people around here already know.”

“Guess I don’t get out much.” Angelica giggled.

“I can help you with that if you’d like.”

I couldn’t help the warm glow that filled me at the easy way Bruce and Angelica flirted. I got out of the car, hoping to give them a few moments alone, but they followed me out. Bruce walked straight to the back of his Explorer and started pulling out gear. He handed me a pair of skis that was worth about five months of my income. I almost dropped them. “Bruce, no way am I using these skis. If anything happened to them, I could never replace them.”

He was already closing the back gate and starting toward the mountain. “I’m lending you those skis because I don’t like them. They were a gift, and I almost never use them.”

I couldn’t really argue with that, but I cradled the skis across the front of my body and did my best not to allow them to rub or slide or hit anything.

Bruce looked back as we approached the gondola. “Good grief, Kelsey, relax. You can throw them off the side of the mountain and I’d be relieved to be rid of them.”

I didn’t believe him. He was just trying to be nice or he was trying to impress Angelica. Either way, I wasn’t taking any chances.

Angelica and Bruce both had season passes, but I didn’t. I couldn’t afford it. When they queued up for the gondola, I told them I’d see them on the mountain after I’d gotten my ticket. Bruce fished around in his pocket and handed me a guest pass. “Don’t ever pay for tickets, Kelsey. Just come see me. I can always get you a pass.”

“Um, okay, thanks.” I probably should have refused and paid my own way onto the mountain, but tickets were expensive and I was damn near broke.