The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) (3 page)

A familiar laugh behind me made me spin around and I saw Landon, walking my way slowly. There was something different about him and, as he neared, I could see that his eyes were clear, his walk steady. For the first time since I had known him, Landon was completely sober. He smiled at me and I found myself smiling back.

“Hello, Kelsey,” he said as he gripped my shoulders and kissed my cheek. I took an impulsive step back, but he had already released me and moved away. “Look, Kelsey, something has happened to me…and I wanted you to understand that I’m sorry about the way I treated you.”

“I…Okay.”

He shrugged. “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I needed to tell you that before… The thing is, I’m not too happy about my current situation and they say the only way I can change it is to… Kelsey, you’ve always been a sad, pathetic, wimp of a girl and they say I am more deserving of what you have than you are.”

“What? Who?”

“None of that matters now, Kelsey. I guess nothing really matters now that I’m dead.”

“Dead?” I studied him, but he seemed to be composed of flesh and blood.

He threw his hands up. “Shit. I’m doing this all wrong. I am the definition of fuck-up, Kelsey. Look, I’m going to have to destroy everything you care about, make you wish you were dead, and then take over your body, but I don’t want there to be any hard feelings, okay?”

I took a few steps back as I realized that either I had been wrong about Landon and he wasn’t sober, or sobriety made Landon completely insane. I bumped into something and spun around to find a crowd of people behind me, all dressed for a day on the slopes and all staring at me.

“The thing is that I can be anyone.” He reached out and pulled a man out of the crowd, a stocky, uniformed police officer, who didn’t look much older than me. Slowly, Landon slid his own body into the other man’s, as though he were putting on a full-body costume. “But only for a short time. To live again, I need your body and I won’t leave you alone until I get what I want.” The police officer spoke to me in a rough baritone that was nothing like Landon’s high, almost feminine, voice. “The point I’m trying to make is that there is no sense fighting me, Kelsey. You might as well give me what I want now.”

My wrist felt ice cold. I looked down, but there was nothing there. Slowly, the chill crawled up my arm to my shoulder and I began to find it hard to breathe.

I sat up and opened my eyes, gasping for air. I was in bed, in my own apartment, and there was a small, pale hand on my arm. Attached to the hand was a little girl, one who shimmered in the light from the ceiling fixture and who looked oddly familiar.

“Alice?” I asked, sure I was still dreaming. Alice had been one of my ghost friends in childhood and I hadn’t seen her for more than fifteen years. This little girl was different than my old friend. Her left cheek sported a bruise and her blonde hair lay tangled and knotted.

Alice nodded. “Don’t be afraid, Kelsey. He will not leave you alone, but I will be watching. I have always been watching. I will help you.”

“What…” I started, but Alice was gone. I pulled myself out of bed, tiptoed to Angelica’s room, and climbed into bed with her.

Angelica smiled sleepily at me and opened her eyes wide. “What’s wrong? You are so pale.”

I must have looked awful if Angelica could see the change in me in the darkened room. Only the light from a streetlamp illuminated the area.

“I just had a nightmare. It’s nothing.”

“Yeah, what happened?” Angelica asked.

“Landon was dead and…”

“Our boss, Landon? Doesn’t sound like a nightmare to me.” She grinned and closed her eyes again.

“Yeah, well, it was.”

The next morning, I walked the three blocks from my apartment to the bookstore in a sleepy daze. I couldn’t help remembering my dream about Landon and a part of me wished he was gone. I didn’t really want him dead, but my life would be a bit happier if I had a new boss who actually managed the store as he should.

I almost didn’t notice the three police cruisers parked on the street outside Mountain Books. My heart skipped a beat, but I shook it off. The police were probably having breakfast at the café next door. I continued toward the bookstore, determined that everything would be just as I’d left it the night before.

“I wouldn’t go in there,” a deep voice said and stopped me, and I turned to find a man leaning against a tree and smiling at me, revealing dimples and white, straight teeth. “You’ll just piss them off if you step into their crime scene.”

I walked over to the man, my heart racing, sure the store had been robbed or that Landon had finally gotten in trouble with the police. He couldn’t possibly be dead. “I’m sorry, did you say crime scene?”

The man frowned at me and shook his head. “I’m not—”

“I work here and I was just wondering if you could tell me what’s going on and when I’ll be able to open the store.” For all I knew, he was just some local guy who was trying to find out what was going on, but he looked pretty comfortable against the tree, so I figured he must know more than I did.

He glanced at the storefront and hesitated for a long moment before he returned his attention to me. He shrugged, accentuating broad, toned shoulders. “I’m pretty sure the store is going to be closed all day today.”

“Really? Do you know if the manager, Landon, is here? Is he inside?”

The man paled. “Landon? You really should talk to the police.” He looked around, like he was trying to find someone I could talk to, but he sighed and shrugged when he couldn’t find anyone. “I’m sorry, but Landon is dead. He died of a drug overdose in the store. One of his buddies found him.”

My vision went black around the edges and I couldn’t get my breath. “Dead?”

His forehead wrinkled with concern. “Whoa, are you okay? You don’t look so good. Do you want to sit down?”

He took me by the elbow and led me a few feet down the street. He eased me onto a bench and sat next to me. “Look, I’m probably not the person you should be talking to—”

“He died in the store?” I asked, forcing the words out around the lump in my throat.

“They’re concerned that he may have been dealing drugs out of the store and—”

“Bruce?”

I followed my informant’s gaze up the street to see a uniformed police officer identical to the one from my dream, the man whose body Landon had entered. The cop walked toward us, his face contorted and angry until he noticed me. Then he smiled, but it was the kind of smile that made my skin crawl. The kind of smile that always accompanied the wrong sort of attention from a man who was drunk or lascivious. He could have been cute, if it weren’t for that smile.

The officer stopped in front of me and looked at Bruce. “We need you inside.”

Bruce gave me a quick half smile before he stood. “Sorry, Reid, the place was just… I’ll get back there right now.” And he walked away without another look at me.

I watched him head up the street and into the store. I didn’t want to look at the policeman standing over me. I didn’t want him to be the man from my dream.

“Kelsey, Kelsey, Kelsey. You’re looking a little rough this morning. No time to put on makeup?”

I looked up at Reid. “Do I know you?”

My dream had just been a dream
, I told myself, and Reid probably got my name from something in the store.

He leaned down close to me and whispered in my ear, his hot breath tickling my neck. “Stop acting like an idiot. It’s Landon, your old boss. I don’t like being dead, Kelsey. I’m going to have a lot of fun with your body. Without you in it, of course.”

“I don’t know—”

But Reid was already walking away. He headed toward two other officers who were leaving the store. As I watched, he pointed me out to the other men and they all laughed loudly. I closed my eyes tight and popped them open, hoping to discover that I was still at home and dreaming. Unfortunately, the scene before me hadn’t changed.

“What’s going on?” Isabella asked as she plopped down on the bench next to me.

Isabella worked with me at Mountain Books and she was a horrible snob who only watched independent films, only read literature, and only listened to classical music. At the moment, she was frowning seriously at me.

“Landon’s dead. He overdosed, I guess. They think he was dealing drugs out of the store, so they’re searching it,” I said.

Her frown deepened but her eyes remained dry. “Wow. I can’t say I’m surprised he’s dead, but I can’t imagine a stoner like him had the brains to deal drugs out of the store without any of us noticing.”

I nodded. “I can’t imagine him having the brains to deal drugs without blowing through the entire supply himself.” I realized how insensitive my words sounded after I had spoken them, and I changed the subject. “It looks like the store will be closed today.”

“He’s really dead, huh? Freaky. I wonder who will be manager now?”

“Do you know if the owner has any other out-of-work relatives?”

“Let’s hope not.” Isabella smiled. “You know, you would make an awesome manager. Technically, you’ve been the manager since Landon started.”

It wasn’t the first time one of my co-workers had suggested I be manager, but I had never taken them seriously. “I couldn’t…I’ll be going to college…eventually…and…”

“Right. Well, I’m gonna hit the gym if I don’t have to work today. Might go for a hike this afternoon. You interested?”

“I can’t today.” Isabella annoyed me. When I was forced to spend time with her, I enjoyed ‘shocking’ her by telling her about the latest action movie I’d seen or how great the new Stephen King novel was.

She shrugged. “See you later.” Then she hopped up from the bench and hurried down the street, hips swaying.

I knew I should do the same. I could use the extra free time to clean the apartment, go for a run, or try that new white bean risotto recipe I’d been wanting to test, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the store front and the movement of the officers. I wanted more answers. I needed some sort of evidence to believe Landon was really dead.

After a few moments, Bruce emerged from the store. He smiled and waved at me. I waited where I sat, hoping he would join me and tell me more about Landon’s death, but he hurried up the street with Reid. I sighed and stood, accepting that I would have to read the story on the Internet the next day like everyone else.

I wandered around town for a while after I left the store. People hurried past me in both directions, all of them talking on cell phones or listening to music, and none of them looked at me. None of them knew me intimately and, if they knew me casually, they took little interest in me. I preferred it that way. Even though I found myself lonely sometimes, I liked being considered so ordinary no one bothered to look at me twice. I honestly didn’t make much effort to make friends. Once people got to know me, they started asking questions I didn’t want to have to answer. Even the casual ‘what does your father do’ gave me the option of lying or dealing with looks of pity from my new friend. I had decided long ago that I didn’t need anyone, not really. I had a comfortable friendship with Angelica; I had the company of my co-workers; I had the occasional date that never got too serious; I had my hobbies. I didn’t need any more than that.

I walked the sidewalks of the small town as though I were a ghost myself. The store and restaurant fronts were mostly modern and ugly, all corners and grey cement, but the grass was green, the aspen trees bare of leaves, their spotted, white and grey trunks visible and beautiful. The evergreens outnumbered the aspens about four to one, but I only preferred evergreens to Aspens in the dead of winter, with a thick layer of snow weighing down their green, prickly branches. From any location in town, I had a view of the resort mountain and of the Rocky Mountains extending beyond and that view, along with the crisp, light air, relaxed me a bit and put my fears in perspective. Those eternal mountains didn’t bow to the whims of nightmares and an overactive imagination.

“Hey, baby-hater,” a male voice called gaily.

I stopped and turned to see Jed a few feet behind me.

“I mean, Kelsey. Your name is Kelsey, right?” Jed loped up.

I couldn’t help smiling at him. He wore a Widespread Panic T-shirt and a huge, goofy grin. In the bright sunlight, his eyes sparkled and I noticed they were a blue so deep they looked purple. “Hi, how are you settling in?”

Next to Jed, I noticed a guy in a button-down shirt and khakis. He smiled at me and I lost my breath for a moment. He had brilliant green eyes, the bone structure of a male model, and a smile that would melt the heart in the frozen corpse of a Neanderthal.

Jed nodded. “All unpacked and ready to party. This ugly fellow here is my brother, Caleb.”

Caleb nodded and shook my hand. “How long have you been here?”

“About three years,” I said, wondering if the day could possibly get any stranger.

“Where you headed?”

“I was just going home and then back out for a run.” If it were later in the year, I would have gone up the mountain and spent a day on the slopes to ground myself and find my calm center again. Instead, I would settle for the next-best therapy I knew—running. My feet pounding the pavement, my heart thumping solidly in my chest, made me feel strong and whole.

“Well, I won’t keep you from it,” Jed said as he started off again. “I’m sure we’ll see you around.”

Caleb smiled. “It was very nice to meet you.”

“You, too,” I said, relieved neither of them asked me where I worked. I didn’t feel like getting into Landon’s death with strangers. I headed back to my apartment feeling guilty for being happy to see Jed and Caleb when I should have been sad about Landon’s death.

When I opened the door to the apartment and stepped inside, I wished I had stayed away. Angelica sat at our second-hand, Ikea kitchen table, lit candles in front of her and a worried look on her face. I took a deep breath, closed the door behind me, and crossed the room. “I guess you’ve already heard.”

She didn’t meet my eyes. “How did you know?”

All the fear and tension I had worked to overcome returned to my body. “I didn’t know, Ang. It’s just a coincidence.”