Reaper's Hollow: The Complete Series

Chapter 4-2

Cutter had stayed at work until after Ru left, watching discretely out the window as she made her way to her car. Sadly, she wasn’t the last to leave, and Cutter began to realize he’d had some misconceptions about public school teachers, but then, he’d never gone to public school, so he hadn’t really known what was typical.

Once she was in her car and out of the parking lot, he grabbed his lunchbox and headed out as well. The light had been off in his classroom for more than two hours. He wanted everyone to think he’d gone home. Several people had stopped by that afternoon, after the final meeting of the day, and he was getting tired of pretending to be interested in their lives. They were all nice people, but he wouldn’t be staying there long enough to get to know any of them.

He noticed Ru left the door to her classroom open and the light switch on when she left, though it had extinguished itself now, thanks to the motion detectors installed to help cut back on electricity costs. He wondered why she didn’t like to touch her door or her lights, though he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew.

Rider had sent him several more texts, and he’d even gotten a couple from Lyric, but since he was headed to their location now, he thought it a waste of time to respond. He’d talk to them in person in less than a half hour.

As he climbed into his Dodge Ram, he wondered how it could be possible that the one they’d been searching for all these years could actually have been right under their noses the whole time. Hopefully, someone on the team would’ve come up with an explanation. There had to be some sort of cloaking going on because when Cutter reached out to Ru mentally, it was as if she wasn’t even there. He should at least be able to pick up on her mental vibrations, even if she wasn’t aware enough to let him in.

Once he was out of Reaper’s Hollow, the roads began to wind through the woods, and he began to relax a bit. It was growing dark, but something about being out in the open country made him feel more alive. Not that the little town he’d recently relocated to was congested by any means, but the strain of being around so many people different than him was a bit tiring. He’d always felt more at home with his own kind and was looking forward to discussing what he’d learned with like-minded individuals who would potentially help him come up with a plan for how he should approach Ru. He knew he needed to handle the situation delicately.

The turnoff that led to his destination would be hard for someone with lesser eyesight to see, but he picked it up easily and made a right hand turn onto a gravel road that wound its way back to a clearing on a rolling hill. The house loomed in the distance, set against a backdrop of forest which continued to climb into the sky. They definitely needed to do some repairs on the colossal Colonial, but for now, it would do. Some of his friends had been surprised to see it was still standing.

Cutter pulled his truck in between Ivy’s and Rider’s cars and noticed Lyric’s motorcycle over beneath one of the trees. He took a moment to breathe in the stillness of nature before he climbed from his truck and headed to the house, realizing he’d be bombarded with questions the second his foot stepped on the parquet floor.

The foyer was empty, though, as was the living room. Cutter wandered toward the back of the house and found Lyric plating mounds of spaghetti for the rest of the team. “Hey! Look who’s here, just in time,” she said.

“He’ll always make it home in time to eat,” Rider jabbed.

“You’re one to talk.” Rider Michaels was well-built but had at least thirty pounds on Cutter. He was a bit of a brute.

Ivy Uriahs offered Cutter a plate, and he took it, thanking her. She smiled and fixed the final plate for herself as Cutter made his way to the table in the corner of the kitchen. The house had been renovated in the 1950s, but that meant most of the appliances were over sixty years old when they’d decided to set up basecamp here about a month ago. Cutter and Rider had ordered all new appliances and had the electric and plumbing checked over, but there was still plenty of work that needed to be done if they would be staying there long term.

Lyric Gabriels was digging into her spaghetti next to him as Cutter waited for Rider to pass the parmesan cheese. He tossed it across the table, literally, and Cutter caught it, shaking his head. He always seemed to do things the hard way.

“So, what did you find out?” Ivy asked, sitting at the end of the table between Cutter and Rider. “Do you think it’s her?”

Cutter hadn’t even taken a bite yet and already with the questions. “I’m not sure,” he said before twirling a bit of spaghetti onto his fork and shoveling it into his mouth.

Ivy and Lyric looked like they could’ve been sisters, even though they weren’t related at all. Both were tall and muscular, with Ivy having an inch on Lyric, who was almost six-foot. Lyric wore her pale blonde hair short and tinged with pink while Ivy’s cascaded down her back in long ringlets. She often pulled it up before she did anything too dangerous. The four of them had grown up together, so when they were given this assignment, Cutter thought it would be a great group to work with. So far, they hadn’t disappointed him. Working together closely had brought them to this location, and while Cutter was still having a hard time wrapping his mind around how he came to be sitting here, he was hopeful it would all make sense one day.

“Well, I did some research, and she does have a f*******: page and a Twitter—though pretty much everything she posts has to do with school. She’s a pretty girl,” Rider said, not caring that he had food in his mouth while he was talking. “I definitely think she could be our gal.”

“But she’s here,” Lyric reminded them. “And she’s been here the whole time, right?”

“The search I did shows her graduating from Tarrytown High School in 2011 and then going to college in Buffalo before buying a house in Reaper’s Hollow four years ago, around the same time she took the job at Thomas, but I couldn’t find any other legal records.”

“That’s about all we knew going into this,” Ivy reminded them. “The information we got from Sky wasn’t that specific and it certainly didn’t have a name, let alone a picture, but how has she not been on our radar?” Sky was Lyric’s sister.

“Her name is spelled, R-U, by the way,” Rider said, eyeing him as if he’d passed on the wrong information on purpose. “She has no public record—no tickets, no fines, no credit other than the house loan,” Rider spoke up, laying his fork aside for a moment. “And then… if she really is who we think she is, there has to be something literally blocking her from us.”

“What could that be?” Lyric asked, shaking her head.

Everyone looked at Cutter, who met each set of blue eyes and raised his own eyebrows, wondering why they wanted him to be the one to answer. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “A cloaking device of some sort. Maybe a spell.”

“A spell?” Ivy repeated, looking at him like he’d gone mad.

“Why not?”

“Who would’ve cast it on her?” she asked, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “We haven’t dealt with anything like that in… centuries.”

“Like I said, I don’t know. But if she is who we think she is, then there’s only one person alive who might know the answer.”

“And… we can’t find her either,” Rider reminded them.

Cutter tried not to grow frustrated. “Look, I know this isn’t what you guys want to hear, but if you want me to do this right, you’ve got to give me time. I can’t just stroll up to the woman between meetings and say, ‘By the way, you’re not who you think you are,’ now can I? Let me get to know her a little bit better, and I’ll figure it out.”

“That sounds great in theory,” Lyric said, setting down her water glass, “but in the meantime, we have another body. And it’s not too far from here.”

Cutter’s fork clattered against his plate. “When? Where?” he asked, leaving out the additional question of, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this?”

“I sent you a text,” Lyric replied her eyes sharp. “This morning, just on the other side of Rockefeller State Park.”

“With the three in NYC and the one in Albany over the last three weeks, it seems like this part of the country is becoming a little more popular. For some reason.” Rider was staring into his eyes, and Cutter could see he was just as concerned as he was himself.

Shaking his head for clarity, he said, “It’s confirmed?”

“Yes. Uriah told me this afternoon,” Ivy said.

Once again, Cutter’s eyebrows shot up. If Uriah was contacting Ivy, this had to be important. “So he thinks…”

“He seems to think it has to do with the missing Keeper,” Ivy said, her voice steady. “And I agree. If we know, maybe they know, too.”

“We can’t let them get to her first,” Rider said, his voice punctuated with conviction.

“We can’t let them get to her at all.” Cutter meant that on more levels than he was currently able to understand. “The taking—what are the details?” Was it possible this was just a random Reaper, one passing through? Somehow, Cutter didn’t think so. The details might confirm it.

“Uriah said it appeared to be a heart attack. Jim Carpenter, forty-two, father of two who worked at an insurance office ten minutes from his home in the country, was discovered in his bed by his wife when she awoke in the morning, turned over, and saw he was unresponsive. Seems easy when it’s put that way, doesn’t it?”

Cutter nodded. It sounded simple, but he knew that wouldn’t be what Jim Carpenter remembered if he could tell his side of the story. “And no one else heard or saw anything, I’m sure.”

“Do they ever?” Rider asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

While Cutter knew it was possible for there to be a witness in some cases, there was no point in going into that now. “What time was his name inscribed in the Book of the Dead?”

“A little after 7:00 AM Jerusalem time,” Ivy replied.

“So just after midnight here?” Cutter said more to himself.

“Yep,” Lyric agreed. “He doesn’t even make sense as a target. There were three other people in the house. Why just him?”

“The most explainable,” Rider shrugged. “He could easily have had a heart attack. His kids are fourteen and sixteen. They weren’t going to die of natural causes.”

“Aneurism, blood clot, respiratory failure…” Lyric began a list of natural causes of death, grabbing each finger on her left hand with her right as she did so.

“Not as easy!” Rider said, over her.

“It doesn’t matter what it looks like anyway,” Ivy said. “I mean, sure there’s no reason to alarm people, but what would they do if they suspected something supernatural anyhow?”

“Make a bad movie,” Rider suggested. “Cast K-Stew in it.”

Cutter rolled his eyes. “If it is who we think it is, he is always cautious,” he reminded them, standing and gathering up dirty plates, no longer hungry. Half of his spaghetti would end up in the trash.

“So should we split up? While you’re working on finding out if Ru is the missing Keeper, we could investigate and see if there’s anything we can do to find out who took out Jim Carpenter.”

Cutter finished scraping food into the trash can and turned on the hot water in the sink to warm it up for the dishwasher. “It wouldn’t hurt,” he decided. “I guess there’s nothing else you can find out about Ru right now, so why not?”

“Any idea where her parents are?” Rider asked. “Maybe tracking them down would help.”

“Yes, sort of,” Cutter muttered, opening the dishwasher. “She said she doesn’t have a dad, and her mom lives in Tarrytown.” He remembered the comment Candice had made about Ru’s mom and wondered if it was important.

“No dad?” Rider repeated. “That could be important.”

“Yeah, and when she mentioned her mom, one of the other teachers said something like, ‘I’m surprised you even call her that,’ or something.”

“That makes it sound like there’s a possibility she could be adopted,” Ivy said, crossing her arms.

“I can look into adoption records in the area dating back to the nineties,” Lyric volunteered.

“And I’ll start working on Carpenter this evening. I should be able to pick up some good contacts in this kind of weather,” Ivy nodded.

Cutter finished loading the dishwasher and dropped a packet of soap in, trying not to make a face at Ivy who was a firm believer that one could contact others mentally more easily in clear weather even though he was certain it didn’t make any difference.

“In the meantime, what are we going to do about you-know-who?” Rider asked, scooting his chair back. “If it’s him, and he knows half as much as we do, he’ll be on her before we know what hit us.”

“If he knows what we know, he wouldn’t be hanging out in the woods collecting middle-aged men,” Cutter reminded him. “We can’t do much about him until we have her. Let’s take this one step at a time, unless anyone has a better idea.” No one seemed to, and even though Cutter didn’t like that answer any better than anyone else did, they’d have to accept it. “Besides, we don’t even know it’s Nat. It could be anyone.”

“How much are you willing to bet?” Rider had his head leaning against the wall, his chair balanced on the back two legs, and the new teacher in him wanted to tell his cousin to put all six feet on the floor.

Biting his tongue, Cutter didn’t respond. He was fairly certain this had to be Nat, too. It was clean and cautious, something most Reapers didn’t care about anymore. No, Rider’s bet was not one he was willing to take.