When she unexpectedly dies, Mackenzie Bowen lacks the paperwork she needs to pass into The Beyond. To avoid sitting in a waiting room for centuries, Mack is paired with Leon, a miserable Reaper, and hopes to either undo her death or earn her spot be...
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Tobias might have been flippant about Leon's condition, but I couldn't feel the same way. The guilt weighed heavily on me, and after I'd washed my hands and cleaned out the sink Tobias had used, I settled myself into an uncomfortable wooden chair and listened to him sleep for who knew how long.
I could understand why Reapers wanted to be on Earth working instead of being stuck in the afterlife. They could gain a sense of the passing of time over on the other side, walking at the same pace as the humans they were there to take care of, pretending as if they were alive again. Languishing in the dark, long corridors of death didn't have quite the same appeal. Every passing moment might have been an hour. Every time I reached the end of a page of the registry an entire day might have moved on for us. No matter how much time it took, no one came to interrupt us. Leon and I were utterly alone throughout his early stages of recovery.
I was face down on the pages of a particularly dull tome when I heard his voice again. I'd been snoring softly, my nose pressed into the spine, an unattractive pool of drool sticking the paper to my face.
"Aren't you meant to be nursing me back to health?" Leon asked.
I sat bolt upright as if I'd been electrocuted, suddenly alert, my eyes wide to force them to stay open. Leon had hauled himself into a sitting position on the sofa, his feet flat on the floor, and leaned back into the leather as if he was simply reclining on a day off instead of coming back from the brink of his second death. Perhaps that was dramatic to say. After all, Tobias had said that he was whining too much and it wasn't his first extraction. It made it seem as though getting shot was par for the course when it came to being a Reaper.
I drew in a deep breath through my nose and stretched my arms above my head. "I can't go anywhere without you. Literally. I'm not down with the whole door-opening swishy thing."
"Would a comforting lie have been too much for you to manage?" he asked. "Would it have killed you to say that you were worried about my health?"
"Yes."
"Try. You did almost get me killed, after all." Leon must have noticed the way the blood drained from my face so swiftly that I was left ashen and lightheaded. In a bid to alleviate my guilt he added, "You also helped to save me. Sort of."
"I dug a bullet out of you with my bare hands."
"One hand, if I remember correctly."
"Toh-may-to, toh-mah-toh."
Leon patted the seat beside him. "Sit."
"Why?" I asked warily.
"Because I'm your boss and I told you to. It's not a trick. I'm not going to punish you."
"No? Did Tobias give you some weird drugs or are you all – you know – because of blood loss?" I gestured at him with a wave of my hand.
