Chapter 15

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

Despite that one uneasy moment, Ramona slept more deeply than she’d done in some time. Not surprising, after such extraordinary sexual exertions with a virile Reaper.

When she woke, it was because something was amiss. Silas was fully awake, tense beneath her body still draped over him in peaceful pleasure. His arm tightened around her back. He was listening.

“How strange,” she noted sleepily. “I don’t get burglars.”

The lack of concern in her tone drew Silas’s curious gaze. Like her, he could detect the intruders were human, not a magical threat, so she expected that was why he didn’t leap from the bed to turn that threat into ash before it could cause her a moment’s distress. But he still didn’t look pleased.

“They could have come up here while you were asleep,” he said. “Surprised you before you could raise a defense.”

“Not necessary,” she assured him. “Chaos magic is absolutely outstanding at defense.”

Something downstairs fell with a crash, and she made a See? face at him.

She slid from the bed, went searching for something to put on. The small pile of lavender lace made her smile before she tucked it into her laundry basket and found a T-shirt, cotton underwear, pajama bottoms and her sneakers. She stretched, dimpling at how it drew Silas’s gaze to her, even as she could tell he was still tracking the muffled movements downstairs. Another crash, a curse loud enough to filter up to them. Then a curious repetitive thumping.

“Shall we see what they’re up to?”

A tiny shriek. She shot him an impish smile. “You remember the sleeping concrete lion by the hallway? It wakes up sometimes, grabs your leg as you go by. It’s a cat, after all.”

She headed for the door, but he beat her there. The scythe had disappeared, so she knew he was carrying it, in whatever magical sheath he utilized for that, but he didn’t look like he needed any weapon other than his intimidating expression. He put a hand on her lower back. “There may be nothing down there you can’t handle,” he told her, “but…”

“You’re male, so no way in hell I’m going down the stairs first. I’m okay with that. I’ll be your backup if you get into more trouble than you can handle.”

His eyes narrowed. “I think that happened the day I walked into your shop.” As he headed silently down the steps, she let her touch graze his back, her thumb hooking the back pocket of his jeans for a playful tug that had him sending her a mildly exasperated look, but he reached back, squeezed her fingers.

Since Silas had been portaling her here and there since he’d arrived, her car was still at her shop. The house had looked unoccupied. But it was more than that which had brought her uninvited guests here.

Chaos magic acted like an arcane security system, discouraging wrong doers from targeting her home. But she’d woven two additional layers of spellcraft into it.

She considered her closest neighbors her chicks to protect. There were four sets of them; two widows, one family with small children, and a newlywed couple. The first layer of spellcraft gave her a mental 911 if they found trouble. Thanks to that, she’d known the day one of the toddlers had wandered out the back door to the pond and dug up a bundle of surprised baby copperheads. Ramona had been there in time to distract and calm them, retrieve the curious child and return him to his parents. She’d also called an ambulance within five minutes of Mrs. Ruiz falling off the ladder to her attic and breaking a hip.

The second layer of spellcraft rerouted trouble that tried to find them. Like burglars. They would be lured to her home instead of theirs.

As she and Silas descended, that rhythmic thumping had stopped, replaced by an anxious call for help. “M, bro, where the fuck are you?” A youngish voice. Old enough to drive, but that was about the extent of his milestones.

As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Silas glanced back at her. “Stay here.” Since his partner in crime was obviously stuck, Silas slipped down the hallway to stalk “M.”

But Ramona found him first. Or so she thought.

“Right here, B-man.” A gruffer voice came from her left. “Hold on. I found something good.”

A big twenty-something male with a thin beard stood up from behind her kitchen counter. Bloodshot grey eyes, lank dirty blond hair. Body odor mixed with pizza and beer.

Those flat eyes locked on her where she stood at the bottom of the stairs. His vibes weren’t like the teen’s calling for his help. This male was a different kind of trouble. He was ready to escalate into felonies far more serious than simple breaking and entering, though she doubted he’d ever had the opportunity he imagined he had right now. But he’d fantasized about it. A sick creature, who would never not be sick. Never not be tormented by the demons inside him, wanting him to do and be something feared.

She felt no fear. Just pity. Then worry, because he’d drawn a gun.

"Oh, don’t do that," Ramona said urgently. "That’s…"

As he waved the gun at her, his finger, resting on the trigger, twitched. Ramona never ducked or flinched. The bullet hit a rafter, ricocheted, and then he was hopping around, holding his leg, banging into her kitchen table and sending chairs tumbling. "Shit, shit, shit."

She hurried forward, secured the weapon he’d dropped. "Sit down," she instructed him. "We’ll call an ambulance."

"Bitch, get away from me."

"She’s trying to help. Best to be courteous."

Silas was behind M, having approached through the second kitchen entrance. And now something far more dangerous than M was in her kitchen.

As they’d descended from her bedroom, she’d sensed Silas had probed the shape of her magic and accepted what she’d told him, that these humans were not an active threat to her. But M had proved he intended her harm, and that changed the landscape for her Reaper. His voice, the energy that rippled off him, contained a killing frost.

When M twisted around, he knew he was looking at Death. Trying to backpedal, he tripped over his own feet and landed on the linoleum, hard. The house vibrated from the impact.

He held up both hands. The wind had been knocked out of him, so his words came out as a wheeze.

“Hey, man, we were just checking out the place, seeing what we could grab. Didn’t know you were here.”

“M, what’s going on? Help me, damn it. I’m fucking stuck here.” At the rumble through the house, B-Man’s voice morphed to full-fledged panic.

Ramona shifted into the doorway to her den and home office space. The kid was sprawled over the wide top of her horseshoe-shaped desk. His arm was caught behind it.

Poignant proof of his age, she saw he’d wanted one of the solar powered jiggle toys she kept there. The sunflower clicked along like a ticking clock, thanks to the sun that routinely spilled through the window on that side.

It had slipped from his grasp, falling behind the desk. When he tried to retrieve it, he’d leaned against the desk, making the heavy furniture move the necessary inch to pin his arm back there. The pressure on the artery had probably made his arm numb enough he’d scrambled up on the desktop to relieve the pressure. But he still couldn’t free himself.

Since he had his head craned awkwardly to look toward the door, he saw her. When his eyes widened, a whispered fuck slipping from his lips, he renewed his struggles.

She held up both hands. Her tone was kinder to him than it would have been to his companion, though it remained firm, no nonsense. “Calm down and don’t yank on it. It’s probably already swollen, and you could give yourself a brachial nerve injury. We’ll get you free in a minute.”

“Oh shit…what the fu—”

A foreboding raised the hairs on her neck. Raising a finger to him, a silent direction to stay calm and wait, she pivoted and returned to the tableau in her kitchen.

She’d immediately known why the dangerous M was here, and the brief interaction with B-Man gave her the reason he’d crossed her path. But more was happening, and she hadn’t been looking in the right direction to prevent it.

Silas was still crouched next to M. He pointed toward where B-Man was trapped. “He was here to rob things. You wanted to cause harm.”

“She wasn’t even supposed to be here. Thinking ain’t doing. When the cops—”

M stopped mid-sentence. Stared up at Silas. Lips parted on the confession revealed through the lie, the denial.

That waft of coldness she’d felt had expanded. It contained a dark power signature, but it didn’t belong to the Dark Soul magic embedded in Silas. As frightening as that energy could be, mostly because of her fear of what it could do to him, this was different.

This energy belonged entirely to Silas.

She hadn’t completely understood why a Reaper would be considered on par with a Guardian, because whereas Derek and Mikhael unconsciously projected their lethal power, Silas didn’t. She’d been given flashes of it, but she’d seen far more of his gentleness and humor. She’d spun all of that into the belief that he was…well, harmless wasn’t the right word, not with the dangerous edge that came off his sexual Dominance. But she hadn’t thought of him like this.

What vibrated off him was the energy every living thing feared most. The unknown. Complete loss of control.

Death.

Startled, heart in her throat, she shifted her gaze back to M. Eyes that had been alive with fear, resentment, calculation, held…nothing. They were filming over, the drawn curtain at the end of a stage play.

He was dead.

Like he’d told her, during a far different kind of moment, Silas had taken the man’s life without touching him, as easily as… She wasn’t sure anything she’d ever done in her life had looked as horrifyingly easy as that. So quick, it took her a moment to understand. She gripped the doorframe. “Silas,” she whispered.

“What’s going on?” The boy called out again. He kept his voice lower, maybe in deference to her suggestion that he remain quiet, but fear made the tone shrill. “M, are you okay? Bro?”

Oh Goddess. Please don’t let him be his actual brother.

Silas had his scythe out, haft clasped near the blade so he could control its dip toward M’s forehead. He rested the tip there, drawing blood with the lightest of touches. It reminded her of when she’d tended him, and the bare touch of the blade had drawn a bloody line across her throat. And of how he’d admonished her to be so careful last night, when they’d been doing the antithesis of this.

Another brief flash, Silas’s coldness banded around a quaking pebble of heat. The life energy the male had contained, his soul. Then it was gone. So was the body, pulled into that scythe, gone in a blink as if it had never been.

Silas rose, turned toward her. She stiffened. Silas’s gaze flickered in reaction, and he stayed where he was.

“Tell the boy he got away,” he said, low. “In a few weeks, he’ll hear M died in a car crash.”

She stared at the scythe. The gold among the blue had grown and deepened to crimson. It wavered, as if what was trapped inside it was screaming. This was wrong. It was Silas, but it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.

“They are not brothers, Ramona. They barely know one another.”

“How…how do you know that?”

“It is in the connection between them. Call the police to get the other one. I will go when I know you are safe.”

She blinked. “Why? Why would you go?”

He gave her an odd look. “Because you want me to.”

“I don’t know what I want,” she snapped. “Don’t assume because you can get in my head that you know what my thoughts mean. Why did you do that?”

He inclined his head, acknowledging her desire for him to remain, though it didn’t ease the tense set of his shoulders. “He came with the intent to hurt you. It was mapped all in him, and you are not the first he has harmed, or would harm, with his cruelty. It was a sickness too widespread to fix in this life. Now he can start over.”

“That’s not why you did it.”

“No.” The look in his green eyes made her shiver, a slap-in-the-face reminder that Silas wasn’t human. Or maybe very human, in this particular response. “You are mine. It’s my right to act toward those who intend to do you harm.”

“Judge, jury and executioner?”

“There’s no need for a jury when you have the ability to read someone’s life, their future, and the shape of their soul. I cannot see the journey, and there is always the chance I am wrong, but in certain cases, I know I’m not.”

“Someone please, please tell me what the fuck is going on. Please. I’m sorry, I just want to go. Don’t call the cops.”

She studied Silas, his impassive expression. She repeated her words and meant them, even if they were stilted. “Don’t go. Promise me.”

“If you do not wish it, I won’t.” The formal response told her she could believe him. It also put distance between them. She might need it right now.

Pivoting, she left him. She didn’t have the physical strength to shift the heavy horseshoe desk. Even if her Chaos magic could be trusted—and her current state of mind made that dubious—she avoided doing spellcraft in front of humans not initiated into that world.

She could have asked Silas for help, but she didn’t want that blade and cold green eyes near the kid. Fortunately, this case had a mundane solution.

Going into the nearest bathroom, she retrieved a bar of soap and filled the drinking cup before re-entering the den. The kid was still on the desk, though one of his untied oversized tennis shoes had dropped off his foot to the floor. He wore a striped blue and red sock.

“I’m going to get you loose,” she told him. “But you have to be still and follow my direction. Don’t try to run away.”

He had thick black hair and saucer-sized brown eyes. Freckles across his nose. While her calm voice made him look a little less upset, when his gaze shifted he went pale again. That, plus the spike of uncertain emotions in her belly, told her Silas had appeared in the opening to the den. At least it solved her concern about the kid bolting.

She dipped the soap in the water, made it slippery, then ran it around the boy’s lean biceps, briskly spreading out the excess water so it would drain around the captured area, lube it up. The skin was red, the area swollen from his struggles as she’d expected. “He called you B-man. What does that stand for?”

He hesitated. “Buster.”

“Buster. Hmm.” She set the soap aside and rested a wet hand on his shoulder blade. “Okay, try to ease it out of there. Carefully. Don’t rush it.”

He managed to follow her direction until he realized his arm was sliding loose. Then he reacted like a wild animal escaping a trap. Anticipating it, she’d put both hands on him and forced him to slow down, easing him into a sitting position on the desk as he inevitably found himself light-headed. The boy gazed at her warily. By tomorrow, that redness would be a ring of bruises that would get progressively more colorful.

“What compelled you to try and rob a house that looks like it’s about to fall down?”

“You doing a survey, bitch?”

When she felt Silas move, she whipped around in sudden alarm, shifting in front of the boy and spreading her arms out like an angel’s protective wings.

“It’s okay,” she told him. “Please…don’t.”

Silas’s face went to granite. The fist of reaction squeezing her heart felt made of the same substance. She was hurting him, she knew it. But she wasn’t going to let him take Buster.

“I intend the boy no harm. As long as he gives me no cause. And addresses you respectfully. Understand?” One glance his way had the boy finding words he’d likely never used in his short life.

“Y-yes, sir.”

But Silas wasn’t done scaring the crap out of him. If he managed it literally, she swore she’d make the Reaper replace her carpet and desk. “Did you know what your friend intended here? If you lie, it will be the last thing you do.”

“No, man. No, sir. Swear to God.”

Ramona closed her eyes. “If you’d wanted to be convincing,” she said gently, “you would have asked ‘what do you mean?’”

If the boy got any paler, he’d surpass Twilight’s vampires. He shot a glance toward the window.

“You’ll never make it,” Silas said. “Try using your words instead of running.”

The boy swallowed. When he spoke, he did so to Ramona, as if avoiding looking toward Silas would make the nightmare disappear. “I know he gets off on scaring people, and I didn’t really want him with me, but my BF bailed. I didn’t think you was here, because your ride was gone. I was gonna case things fast, do a snatch and grab, and be out of here before you got back.” Another noisy swallow. “Before he found an excuse to go into his crazy psycho fucker mode.”

Ramona held up a hand. The gesture was to Silas, not Buster. This one was hers to deal with. Fortunately, Silas respected her wishes.

“You’re living at Rooney’s old farmhouse off the main highway, aren’t you? There are about six or seven of you camped out there.” Rooney gave kids on the run or kicked out of their homes a place, in exchange for some rent and help around his neglected farm. He ignored what they did otherwise, because Rooney was a mean, lazy drunk.

“I live there sometimes. Sometimes not. I can be and do whatever the hell I want. I’m eighteen. Don’t have to tell anyone shit about my business.”

“I believe I told you to address her respectfully.” Silas’s silky voice could have been barbed wire, ripping across the boy’s most vulnerable places. He flinched.

“I weren’t saying shit about your lady, just about the way life is. Ma’am,” he added on a shrill note as Silas shifted, though it was only to lean on what was now a deceptively harmless-looking staff.

Ramona studied the kid closer. As she shifted more emotional focus from what had happened in her kitchen to this, the connecting thread strengthened, giving her more information about why the magic had drawn Buster here. “Tell me your real name.”

Since she’d figured out where he lived, he’d recognized the futility of evading. His shoulders slumped. “Curtis.”

“Curtis. Why did you target my house specifically?”

The young man scowled. She saw him look for a lie, the easy answer, but then his brow creased. “I don’t know. Just felt right. I know you run that store in town, so I guess I figured you might keep some cash here.”

“Okay.” She nodded to herself, aware of the kid’s puzzled look, as well as Silas’s bemused one. He was keeping his eye on Curtis, but the lethal death-vibe was dialing back. “What skills and goals do you have, other than the desire to see prison before you finish puberty?”

“I told you I’m eighteen,” he said hotly. “Just small for my age. I’ll grow.”

She evaluated the thin face, the hard eyes, the wiry body, and leaned forward. Surprised, he didn’t jerk back before she’d brushed a fingertip over the freckles. “Those are often a sign of interesting character. And you’re fifteen.”

She straightened. “I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors I’m a witch. They are true,” she said matter-of-factly. “My vegetable garden needs weeding. You’ll be able to leave when that’s done adequately. Until then, the gate won’t unlock, and the fence will become unscalable.”

She gave him a sharp look. “Please don’t get mad and destroy things when you find you can’t leave until you do what I’ve asked. If you like doing honest work, come to my store tomorrow. I need someone to stock shelves and clean. Do inventory. Are you good with numbers?”

He looked glum. “Not really. I mix them up.”

“You’re dyslexic? That’s excellent. Just the kind of help I need. Unless the world ends, and then an inventory count will be a moot point.”

She patted his shoulder, stepped back. “There’s a container of bean burritos in the fridge. Take them outside with you. They’ll heat up pretty quick in the sun. The spigot water is good for drinking. It comes straight from my well. If you finish the garden and decide you want to stay, I have a shed beside my greenhouse that, if cleaned up, could accommodate the backyard hammock. There are hooks in the wall for it. You’ll find a working sink and bathroom in the shed, plus a hose for showering off. If wherever you’re calling home isn’t a good place, you can give it a shot.”

She could tell she’d upended everything in his head. The reactions he was sorting weren’t all in his best interest. “Just you.” She sharpened her tone again. “No one else should be here unless you have my permission to bring them. If you try to take advantage, abuse my home and hospitality, you’ll find yourself back on the road and you won’t be able to get back through my gate.”

She leaned in close. Whatever he saw in her expression had his eyes widening. “If you try to hurt my animals, you will run to the man behind me to escape what I will do to you. Understand?”

Wary eyes, belligerent chin. “I like animals. I ain’t gonna hurt none of them. But, um, I need to know about...is M tied up or something? Where is…”

His integrity might be teetering on a slippery slope, but it was still there. “He left you on your own,” she told him, knowing it would have been the truth. “He’s no one you should call a friend. Go to the garden and make yourself useful. You’ll find tools in the greenhouse. Toss the weeds in the compost bed and turn over the earth on top of it so the heat will kill the seeds and it can break down. I’ll be out to show you the right way to do it."

“Um, you said I could get the burritos? I mean, I can wait…”

“Yes. Give Buford a bite of whatever you take. If you don’t share, he’ll take it all to punish your rudeness.”

“Who’s Buford?”

“The one who will be in your face as soon as you produce food. Look for four legs and horns. He’s your chaperone.”

He rose, grumbling under his breath like the teenager he was. Low and mostly for form’s sake, to not seem as rattled as she knew he was.

Silas had stepped into the room, leaving a clear route to the door. Curtis gave him a wary look, increasing his pace as he went past, like a puppy crossing the path of a watchful guard dog.

After he went to the fridge—a hungry boy was a hungry boy—he made quick work of leaving the house. She saw him reappear in the window, headed to her greenhouse to start the task she’d given him. At least while she was watching, and he didn’t see an obvious line of escape. Buford appeared almost instantly, both because she’d called for his help to watch the boy, and because he was every bit of a goat.

Two things were encouraging. Though she wouldn’t have begrudged him any of her food, he hadn’t taken anything but the burritos. Second, he offered Buford a generous bite of one and seemed to like it when Buford allowed his ears to be scratched.

Well, that mischief was managed. For the moment. Now to deal with the male sharing the dense, expectant energy of the room with her. As she turned to face him, she had no clue what she was going to say. But she knew what she felt.

Heartbreak. But more than that—total confusion.

* * *

What she’d seen in Silas’s eyes when he crouched beside M, yes, it was him. She’d also noted the respect Derek and Mikhael gave Silas. If Silas abused that power, he wouldn’t have their respect.

She operated in a human world, and had grown accustomed to its boundaries and laws when it came to taking human life. But she was also a Chaos witch, raised by pixies in a forested world where nature handled things. Justice had a different look there, and repercussions were more decisive.

Just ask the High Fae male who’d killed her family.

Yet when she’d done it, she’d been half out of her mind with rage and grief. Silas’s actions had been intensely controlled, but it was the ‘intensely’ that held her. She’d felt it throb off him when he’d read the male, recognized what M would have done if he’d caught her unawares.

That wouldn’t have happened, because even when she wasn’t aware, her magic was. But she realized even knowing that she was capable of defending herself, Silas would still have done what he did, because he wouldn’t tolerate someone breathing who had harmful intentions toward her.

It is my right.

He was the alpha male and Master who’d commanded her desire, who’d unleashed it in ways she’d never experienced. Who made no apologies for protecting her by snipping a lifeline like it was a thread. But it still didn’t ring true. Something was off.

“You opened your home to him.”

He didn’t approach her, as if he knew she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to be close to her. He showed no reaction to that, yet his assumption that her witnessing M’s death would end whatever had just begun between them told her what might be happening beneath the surface. But he wouldn’t make her deal with that while she was dealing with her own reaction. He was used to caring for others, not asking for nor requiring that himself. Contained, solitary. Alone.

No one wanted to be around Death.

“He was led here,” she said. “They both were. M was brought here to protect my neighbors. Curtis needs someone to count on in the world that isn’t like M.”

Silas moved to her desk, looked behind it. The staff shimmered into a crook. He dipped it behind the furniture and slid the solar toy out. When he placed it on the desk, it still had enough natural light stored that the sunflower began to rock back and forth with a languid clicking.

He lifted his eyes to her. “I should go, Ramona. Give you time to think.”

“What do you think I need to think about?” She tossed him an irritated look, covering the nervous roiling in her stomach. Was it because she wanted him to go?

No. What she wanted to banish was the in-her-face experience of what his job was. “Damn it. I don’t want—I don’t know what I want, but you leaving doesn’t make sense. I still want to get to the bottom of this, how it made me feel. Yell at you some, maybe.”

“I’m at your disposal.” Polite as a brick wall, while those green eyes reached into her soul.

How many times had people turned from her because of her Chaos magic? Something she not only couldn’t change; she wouldn’t. Because it was who she was.

Just like a Reaper was what he was, down to the very essence of his own soul. From the first, he’d expressed that life had to be lived out as the Fates, the choices of the individual, intended. He felt things for her, she knew that. But that response…

To disrupt Fate’s destiny for a soul is a far greater crime.

Silas was a strong male. He could have beaten the crap out of M. Helped her hold him until the police arrived.

“My intention isn’t to hurt you,” she began.

“I’ve been a Reaper for centuries, Ramona. I’m aware of how people react to death and the taking of life. Those reactions have little to do with me and what I do.”

She was tempted to slap him out of that monotone, but instead, she kept her voice just as even. “So what you just did, it’s part of the job?”

“I usually use it when a first-time soul will find the death process too frightening, and that fear serves no teaching purpose. I can take the soul before the fear fully overwhelms them. Between one beat of the heart and the next.”

“So you don’t typically do it to expedite things? Like an obstetrician inducing labor so he or she can make a golf outing, a high school reunion?”

His gaze flickered, a brick falling out of the wall. “You have a fascinating mind,” he said after a pause. “No, not usually. The Fates have a plan and a time period for everyone, and we do not…disrupt that lightly.”

His hand tightened on the shepherd’s crook. He’d told her that was his preferred form for it. Another brick falling. She drew closer, deliberately putting her hand over his upon the shaft. A large hand, the knuckles dusted with hair, curved fingers capable of taking her mind, holding her heart and soul. “How was he going to die?”

His gaze shifted from her touch to her face. “Morris, because that is his full first name, was going to die three million, three hundred and thirty-eight thousand, four hundred and sixty heartbeats from now. Approximately, since time continues to pass.” At her blank look, he translated. “Thirty-two days. As I said, he will lose control of the car, primarily because he is drunk, roll it down an embankment, hit his head on the windshield. Death will be instantaneous.”

“Oh.” Had that prompted his decision, seeing that the man’s timeline was short? “You’ve been a Reaper for centuries. You know there are bad people in the world, doing bad things, and you don’t collect them until it’s their time.”

She felt the shift in him. So did he, because he stepped back, away from her. A clatter drew both their gazes to the window. Curtis had stumbled over a hoe.

“Silas,” she pressed on, softly. “How do the Fates react when a Reaper does something like this?”

When he didn’t immediately respond, her pulse accelerated, knowing what his hesitation might suggest. “I suspect they would be…annoyed. It disrupts their plans, their impact on others. Some threads must be unraveled and rewoven to follow intentions.”

His green gaze flickered. “Ramona…”

“How many times have you done what you just did?”

He shook his head, and she would have given anything not to point him in the direction she was going. But she saw when he recognized it. And she ached for him.

Up until now, the mark had made itself known in blatant ways, acting against Silas’s wishes, provoking a fight with him. They’d proposed it was precisely because he was strong enough to fight it that it had saved him and those like him for last, close to the execution of the plan.

This time it had used his protectiveness of her, the violence of the situation, to integrate with his personality. A sentient magic, it was learning from his resistance, who he was, trying to get around it. And it had succeeded, by undermining one of his core beliefs.

The pressure in the room changed. For the first time in their relationship, she contained his energy as it spilled out, the scythe appearing and flaming with his rage and helplessness. Revulsion.

At the Tomb, she’d noted his love for being a Reaper, that it was a soul-deep calling for him. Learning he’d just committed an act against everything it meant was too much to bear. Particularly with that curse trying to deplete and break him down in every insidious way it could.

She brought a dome of protection down over them, shielding them from view, surrounding his reaction. She also threw out a call for help over the Link to Raina and Ruby.

Then she had both her hands on him, one on his chest, one over his white grip on the scythe. As it twisted, she ducked. The tip grazed her cheek, leaving a trickle of blood. She barely noticed.

“Silas, look at me. Focus, don’t let it take control. Don’t let it do this to you.”

Energy crackled over them. She looked up into the face of the Reaper, in cowled robe, full skeletal face, green eyes burning with fire. He shoved her from him, knocking her back ten feet, into the wall of energy that dome provided.

“I’ll be rid of it, once and for all,” he snarled. The scythe morphed into a short-handled sickle. Whatever matter existed inside that skeletal form, he was going to rip all of it out. Destroy his body before it could take all of his soul.

“No. Stop.” She shot her own energy into that wall of rage, speared it through his arm, wrenching it back before he could swing a blow toward himself. He roared, but it gave her the opening she needed. She flung herself against him, wrapped her arms around him. All that bone, strong as the timbers of a ship.

She shielded herself with everything she could grab, and it wouldn’t be enough. His power could kill her, and on top of taking M’s soul before its time, causing her death would finish him off. But it was the only thing she could do quickly enough to protect him.

Then she felt Raina and Ruby’s power join hers, reinforcing that shielding over her body. Silas’s wash of power rammed it, made her gasp, the pressure like being hit in the chest with a cannon. But she had her sisters’ Kevlar to absorb the blow, repel it.

No second blow came. Her act, the presence of the other witches’ magic, had recalled him to himself. He was pulling back, trying to defuse his reaction. She held onto him, afraid he might still try to finish the job. She’d been countering a chaotic, emotion-driven response to what he’d done. If he wanted to take his own life as a calm act of deliberation, she would be powerless to stop him.

“Please don’t.” She kept repeating it, over and over. For five long minutes. He’d define those minutes in heartbeats, wouldn’t he? She listened to his, an invisible, hollow, drumming sound inside the barrel of his rib cage.

Gradually, it started to slow. His storm of magic died back, and his fingers curled over her back. Bony, hard, but it was his sure grip. With a relieved sigh, she sent a reassurance along that Link, and a mental push of grateful thanks. She’d explain later.

“Ramona…” His voice was raw with pain.

“He’s still captured in your scythe, right? He’s still there.” She pulled back, stared up at him. “You haven’t taken him to The Gate. It wasn’t his time. Can you reverse it? Fix it?”

He blinked. Considered. “There is damage to his lifeline but…it would be less. If I act swiftly.”

“Okay, then.” She put her hands on his face. Passed her fingers over bone. It was smoother than she’d expected. She stroked his temple, gazed into his eyes, the sockets illuminated with a shadowed green glow. “So do that. It’s okay. Don’t let the bastard who set that mark win, Silas. You’re better than this.” A pause. “Was he going to cause irreparable harm to anyone before his death?”

His jaw set. “That can’t be considered, because it may serve a purpose to other lives, difficult as it is to accept.”

She let out a breath. “That’s the Reaper I know.”

He was struggling, she could see it, trying to make sense of things. But his sense of duty was resurrecting itself. “Wait here,” he said.

He was gone in a blink. Alarm filled her. Minutes ago he was considering destroying himself. And before that, he was offering to leave to give her space. He might re-consider either of those things…

He was back, standing almost where he had been. Only now he was in his human form, and the scythe blade was once again gold with a gleam of blue, rather than a full swathe of crimson staining the metal.

“Wow. That was fast.”

“I released him not far from here,” he said. “His memory of the act is wiped, but I left him with a deep foreboding of coming anywhere near this place. Or Curtis.”

“Sounds good.” She started to shake. Letting out a quiet oath, Silas picked her up and sat them down on the nearest chair, wrapping his arms around her. Sensing he needed a similar reassurance, she returned the favor, holding on to his shoulders, pressing her face to his jaw and neck.

“I could have killed you,” he said. “You are reckless, witch. And brave. I am still going to beat you within an inch of your life.”

“So you keep promising.”

“I intend to allow adequate time to make a thorough job of it.” He gave a handful of her hair a sharp tug. Tipped her face back and passed his thumb over the cut his scythe had made. His lips tightened. “How did you know?” he asked.

“Reapers can see the shape of someone’s soul, but so can someone…who loves you. Is falling in love with you.” She met his gaze, aware of how it stilled on her. “No matter how angry you’d be on my behalf,” she said unsteadily, “how protective you are, you wouldn’t have taken M’s soul like that when he wasn’t a direct threat to me.”

His hold on her increased, even as his tone contained a bitter note. “Today, I am not deserving of your love.”

She gave him a fierce look. Though the words cut her insides to say them, she could handle the pain. “I ordered one of your previous incarnations to be choked and then burned to death. Maybe I didn’t deserve your love that day, but here you are. I think love has a far bigger range and deeper reach than any of us know, mortals or immortals. Plus, it’s not you, Silas. It used your emotions and feelings, amplified them to take control. Even with that, it couldn’t hold that control for more than a few minutes.”

“This time. And mostly because of you.” Expression grim, he touched her face. “I need to reach out to Honora. The affected Reapers need to be contained somewhere until this is fixed. Perhaps in the Underworld. We cannot be used against souls.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t, either. But it is what needs to be done. Plus, you have more important matters to handle.” He nodded toward the window. “Like telling him which plants are weeds.”

She saw Curtis peer at an undersized purple carrot he’d pulled from the ground, rub his fingers over it.

“Oh, crap.” But as he helped her from his lap, she didn’t immediately go. Instead, she gripped his hands, sank to her knees between his spread thighs. As expected, the pose captured his full attention. “I know you are much older than me. More powerful. But we will figure it out. And I have a strong feeling we need you alive to do that.”

She let the emotions take her, showed them to him. “I need you. I really, really need you in the world. Understand?”

He cradled her face, bent to brush his lips over her trembling ones. “I understand, witch. I will do my best to become enough of a nuisance to make you regret it.”

“You’re already a nuisance,” she told him, and dodged his pinch. It helped her summon a smile. “I’ll go talk to Curtis, then we’ll call Raina so Mikhael can get a message to Honora.”

Rising, she pulled away and headed for the living room, wiping at her eyes. She hadn’t been aware she was crying, but it explained the quiet pain in his gaze. At the threshold to the kitchen, she came to an abrupt halt.

“Don’t you dare take off. Promise.”

“Promise.” His tender regard was there, no matter the battering his soul had just taken. She hoped she’d done enough to remind him that this wasn’t his doing. That there was only one response to someone fucking with your head.

Fight them.

Silas might be right about needing to go to the Underworld, but maybe she could go with him. Raina had been to the Underworld, after all. Ramona would reach out to Doris, the fifty-year-old widowed neighbor who cared for the animals when she was gone. Ramona would tell her about Curtis, and ask her to teach him how to help, so he could feel useful.

Knowing Silas would be feeling some urgency about getting word to Honora, she crossed her living room and pulled open the front door.

Her vocal cords locked up, her heart dropping like a stone chucked into the Grand Canyon.

As a Chaos witch, she routinely had dreams where the world rearranged itself around her. Sometimes the earth fell away beneath her feet, opening up a sink hole and plunging her into a pit of flame. Other times, she was launched into the sky, tumbled in the air currents until she put out her arms and flew. The sky dreams were good, exhilarating. The sinkhole ones were inevitably nightmarish.

This one fell in that category. In the near distance, a darkness was advancing swiftly, like a giant storm. Only it wasn’t confined to the sky. The world before it was dissolving like tempered paint, vanishing into the black. Her heart jumped into her throat, chased by fear and a profound wrongness. There was no time to stop it. No time to even think.

“Ramona.” Silas was at her side. Seeing from his expression that this was really happening, not a vision, made it even more terrifying.

Her neighbors’ houses, the telephone poles, the faded gray of the street in front of her home, all of it was vanishing, consumed by a dark beast with a maw as wide as the horizon.

Silas let out a sharp grunt, and grabbed for the doorway. In a blink, the mark on his chest burned away the shirt he’d donned, the charred edges licked with flame. She tried to bat at it with her hands, but he thrust her away from him as his body caught fire.

He transformed again, but this was like when he’d reappeared in her shop. It was not his choice. His flesh burned away as immediately as he’d taken Morris’s soul. His howl of agony pierced the flames.

“Silas.” Before she could grab him again, she was driven to her knees. Pressure pinned her down on her hands and knees. Her gaze snapped up. Curtis was in her garden, still looking at the carrot, completely unaware of the wall of darkness rolling toward him. He looked her way just as it reached him, a puzzled look on his face.

No…

He vanished, as did her barn, her garden. Buford was running toward her, bleating, ears flat. It rolled over him like an artist’s brush, painting the canvas black. That brush was coming for her. She turned her gaze back to Silas, but she couldn’t see him. She couldn’t manage a scream. Something was pulling on her, a noose that choked her, body, heart and soul.

The darkness rolled over and took her.

* * *

She was in a desolate lack of anything, populated with a loneliness beyond what it seemed the soul could bear. She’d been there before, though, so she pushed past the feeling. She couldn’t see her hands, but they were wet, she thought with blood, because they felt sliced open. She was also gripping something like rope. The two braided twists were so thin she worried they would slip free. That would be bad. Holding on seemed vitally important.

So important she started to reel them in, over her wrists, over the marks Silas had given her, over her forearms. It hurt, Goddess, it hurt. Each wrap burned itself into her arm, left her gasping as it worked its way up to her shoulder, then back down again. The left one snapped taut, making her scream. But if she opened her hand, let go, she knew it would be the worst mistake of her life.

The tension eased again, and she kept wrapping, gasping through the pain. Her mind was a whirl. What was at the end of these threads? Why couldn’t she see anything?

In what seemed like eons later, she didn’t have answers to those questions, but it was getting lighter. A circle of silver glass had appeared, and started to expand. Water, she realized, when it started to dominate her view. So still, it was like glass. If she wasn’t floating a foot above it, she thought she could walk on it. But it wasn’t the reassuring “water like silver glass,” Gandalf had talked about in the Tolkien books, a resting place after death. This water would cut, slice, break anything living into a puzzle that could never fit together the same way again.

She drifted over the threat of it, carrying her trailing ropes with her. Her body started a slow spin, wrapping them around her. They burrowed into her torso the way they had her palms, cutting more flesh. The wrap worked its way down then started moving up…toward her throat.

She tried to slow the spin. It was a physical effort alone, because her magic had no response to it. Yet it didn’t feel neutralized. Instead it seemed whatever was happening was the way it wanted to go. Having faith in it was a skill she’d learned a long time ago, but it could still test her. Like when the plan appeared to be to strangle her to death and leave her corpse floating in this land of nowhere.

She wheezed as the rope cut into her throat. The thing that wanted her to let go of the ropes was the wrong part, the enemy. When she refused again, the noose tightened. Pain pounded through her temples, her heart galloped. She was dying. So be it. She couldn’t let go. Wouldn’t let go.

“Ramona.” Her name was spoken by a familiar voice, just as bodies collided with her, a tangle of limbs, familiar scents. Senses returned, awareness of color. The silver water threw light upward, creating a sky like the backside of a rainbow, dark lit hues of metallic blues, greens, reds and golds.

She felt that Link between her, Raina and Ruby, and reached for it, the oxygen that would save her.

“Help.” It came out a wheeze. A moment later, the threads were loosening. She didn’t know why she was suddenly calling them threads instead of rope, but it stuck in her head. She understood better when they loosened and became living flesh. Raina was clasping one bloody hand. Ruby held the other.

In the hell that life had suddenly become, she wasn’t alone.