The Reaper's Mistake

Chapter Six

Work is the one place he doesn't follow me, or if he does, I've never once caught him at it, and there's a strange relief in that. Eight hours a day where I get just to be a woman ringing up groceries and restocking shelves, where the strangest thing that happens is a customer arguing about an expired coupon, where nobody I'm talking to has ever personally decided who lives and who dies.

I'm restocking the cereal aisle when Marisol corners me by the oatmeal, arms crossed, eyebrows already halfway up her forehead in the particular way that means she's been waiting all shift to ask.

"Okay, who is he?"

"Who is who?"

"Don't." She points a box of granola at me like it's evidence. "Tall, unfairly good-looking, stands outside like he's waiting for a bus that never comes. I've seen him three times this week. You've got a stalker or a boyfriend, and either way I need details."

"He's not my boyfriend." The denial comes out faster than I mean it to, and something about how fast makes my face go warm in a way I don't love. "It's complicated."

"It's always complicated with the hot ones." She goes back to her own stack of boxes, entirely unbothered, the way Marisol is unbothered by most things that aren't directly her business. "Just saying. If a man that intense is lurking outside your work, either date him or file a restraining order. There's no in between."

I don't tell her there isn't an in between because the man in question isn't technically a man, and the appropriate legal category for what he is doesn't currently exist. I laugh it off instead, and she lets it go, because Marisol's curiosity has a short attention span when there's actual work to do.

He's not outside when my shift ends, which throws me more than I expect it to. I've apparently gotten used to a certain shape at the edge of the parking lot, a certain stillness under the streetlight by the bus stop, and the absence of it sits strange in my chest the whole walk home, an itch I don't like having.

He shows up two nights later instead, and something about him is different before he says a single word.

He's standing in the kitchen when I get home, which is new, closer than the fire escape, closer than any distance he's kept before, and there's a tension in his shoulders that wasn't there the last time I saw him. His jaw is tight. His eyes, when they find mine, have lost some of their usual flat patience, replaced with something sharper, more alert, like a man listening for a sound only he can hear.

"You're different tonight," I say, setting my bag down slowly, some instinct telling me to move carefully around whatever this is.

"I was summoned." He says it like the words taste wrong in his mouth. "Briefly. Questions are being asked about where my time has gone. About patterns they've noticed."

My stomach drops in a way that has nothing to do with hunger. "What kind of questions?"

"The kind that suggest I've been paying attention to you in ways that exceed what correcting an error requires." His eyes hold mine, and for the first time since the diner, I see something in them that might actually be close to worry, carefully contained but present all the same. "I was careful. I gave them nothing they could use. But I am not the only one capable of noticing patterns, Clara, and I would prefer you understand that before it becomes a problem instead of a possibility."

"Understand what, exactly?"

"That there are others like me." He says it slowly, like he's choosing which parts of the truth are safe to hand me tonight. "Others who would very much like to see me fail permanently, rather than merely temporarily inconvenienced. My error made me visible in a way I have never been before. Visibility, in my line of work, is rarely a kindness."

The kitchen suddenly feels smaller than it did a minute ago, the ordinary hum of the refrigerator sounding too loud underneath the new weight of what he's telling me.

"Should I be scared?" I ask quietly.

He's quiet for a long moment, weighing the question with the same careful precision he weighs everything, and when he finally answers, his voice has gone low and steady in a way that's meant to be reassuring and mostly just makes the whole thing feel more real.

"I intend to make sure you don't need to be." A pause, small and deliberate. "But I would be lying to you if I said the ground under both of us was as steady as it was a week ago."

I don't have anything to say to that. I just stand there in my own kitchen, looking at a man who isn't a man, feeling the first cold edge of a threat I don't have a name for yet, and understanding, for the first time since the crash, that whatever this is between us, it was never just going to be the two of us in it.