Death Becomes Me (Call Me Grim Book 2) (2 page)

“Now, here’s the true test.” He places a menu in front of me and grins. “Will a waitress wait on us?”

It only takes a few minutes before a bleach-blond woman saunters up to our table, order pad and pen in hand.

“G’mornin’. My name’s Deb.” She gives us a distracted half-smile.

“See, Libbi?” Aaron beams at me like an idiot. “It worked. She can see us.”

“Yeah,” she says slowly as her cautious eyes slide back and forth between us. “Last time I checked, I ain’t blind. What can I get for you?”

“Of course you’re not,” Aaron says a little too slowly and loudly.

“I ain’t deaf, either.” Deb the waitress crosses her arms over her chest and scowls. The people in the booth behind him turn in their seat to glare at us.

He doesn’t get it. Aaron’s been invisible for so long, he sometimes forgets how to interact with living people. I kick him under the table and shoot him a sharp glare. I hold up a hand next to my mouth so the waitress can’t see when I mouth, “Stop being weird.”

“Sorry.” His cheeks flush. He faces the waitress and says, “I don’t get out much.” The next time he speaks his voice is considerably lower. “I’d love a cup of coffee, a short stack of pancakes, bacon, hash browns, scrambled eggs and toast. How about you, Libbi?”

“Same.” My cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“That it?” The waitress eyes us skeptically, like she knows something’s off about us, but she can’t put her finger on it. It could be Aaron’s inappropriate behavior or the Grim Reaper creep-factor surrounding us that has her a little nervous. Most likely it’s a mixture of both.

“Yup,” I say and the woman nods and walks away. She sneaks one glance over her shoulder at us before she disappears behind the counter.

“So much for a low profile.” I nudge his leg playfully with the tip of my shoe. “This town is so small, we’re probably already on the front page of the Millersville Gazette just for not being from around here. And now that waitress thinks you’re an escaped mental patient.”

“Yeah, sorry about that.” A hint of a blush shades his face then melts away. “But I’m not worried about keeping a low profile from the living. So, no harm done.”

“If you say so.”

“It worked.” He touches my hand. His radiant smile is infectious. “She can see us. And we already know we can run and fly. Heck, I still know exactly what time it is. We didn’t lose anything when we left Carroll Falls, except for the Scythe. We might have a chance, Libbi.”

“That’s great.” I mean it, but a thought tickles at the back of my mind. There’s something about the clock that continues to tick in my head. Something that has the potential to not be so great.

I don’t want to think about it. Not now. Not when things are looking so good for us. I’m probably being paranoid, anyway. I push the bad feeling away, where I hope I never have to think about it again.

“So, we need a plan,” I say to distract myself.

“The plan is to keep moving.” Aaron tears the corner of his paper placemat off, being careful to make a perfect square out of the piece. “The longer we stay in one place, the harder it will be to avoid other Reapers, and the easier it will be for Abaddon to find us.” He folds the paper square in half diagonally, and then in half again.

“That’s it? That’s your plan? Just keep moving?” I don’t know what I expected him to say, but ‘keep running away’ was not it. “I’m worried Abaddon will find us whether we run or not. We need a plan, Aaron.”

“What else can we do?” His eyes shoot up from the folded paper on the tabletop and meet mine. “We’re running from Death personified, Libbi. He doesn’t exactly have the reputation of letting people get one over on him. Did you think we could fight him? Kill him? We don’t even have a weapon anymore.”

“Who said we need to fight him?” I cross my arms over my chest. “I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life running from him. I want to know we’re safe.”

“I’m sorry.” He rests his head in his hands and sighs. “But I don’t think we have that luxury anymore.”

I let those words fall over me, press my shoulders down. My head hangs with the realization that he’s right. As long as we are alive and free, we’ll never truly be safe.

“There’s got to be something …” I say, but the words sound weak. Aaron shrugs and picks up his partially folded origami figurine. I can never tell what they’ll be until he’s finished folding them.

I glance out the window at the streets of Millersville, so similar to Carroll Falls my heart aches. But then a different feeling crawls into my chest, replacing the helplessness and homesickness with excitement. I’d been stuck in Carroll Falls all of my life, and Aaron was trapped there for forty years. This is our chance to see the world.

“What about leaving the country?” I try to hide my enthusiasm as I watch his long fingers work the paper. “You said Abaddon is the big Grim Reaper boss of North America, right? Maybe we could hop on a plane to Australia, or Europe. Get out of his reach. See the world and then settle down somewhere, France maybe, and not be on the run all of the time. Have a normal life.”

“
Parlez-vous français
?” He smirks like he wouldn’t be surprised if I do.

“I could learn.”

Aaron’s fingers pleat and fold, fold and pleat the paper in his hands like he could do this with his eyes closed. “It doesn’t matter anyway. We are perpetual teenagers with a natural aura of creepiness. We’ll never have normal lives.”

“But we could try.”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he makes a few more creases in the piece of placemat he’s been sculpting and sits a coffee-stained origami crane in front of me. He pulls the head and tail and the wings flap up and down. He grins at me.

I give him a sharp look. “I’m serious, Aaron.”

“I know you are.” He frowns. “But I bet Abaddon will think of that. He’ll have spies all over the airports the moment he realizes we’re missing.”

“He has spies?”

“I don’t know. He might.” He sharpens the edges of the crane’s wings with his thumbnail. “I don’t want to risk it. And I really don’t want to go that far from home, anyway. You never know when we’ll need to get back to Carroll Falls in a hurry.”

His eyes meet mine for a moment, but it’s enough to know why he doesn’t want to pick up and head to Europe. He’s afraid. He’s worried about his sister, Sara, and Mrs. Lutz and what Abaddon might do to them if he finds out we’re gone.

His fear leaps across the table and into me.

Kyle took my place as the next Grim Reaper of Carroll Falls, a sacrifice that allowed me and Aaron to escape. Technically, Kyle and I are both Aaron’s apprentices now, though Kyle has no idea where we are. He’s alone, trapped inside Carroll Falls by the Scythe he chose to wear. And once his one-week training period is over, he’ll become a full-fledged Reaper. He’ll disappear and have zero contact with the living ever again. That means, in less than one week, neither of our families can be warned if something goes wrong.

But that’s the least of my concerns. Of everyone, Kyle is the only one Abaddon can touch. Sara, Mrs. Lutz, Max, Haley and even my mom aren’t scheduled to die anytime soon. Abaddon can’t do anything to them, yet. But he can hurt Kyle. One look at Aaron’s bare chest and back tells me he can hurt Kyle. Like me and Aaron, Kyle should be dead. He’s only alive because I grabbed his arm when he jumped from the bridge. I saved his life.

Aaron’s right. There is no way we can leave the country. If anything happens to Kyle, it will be my fault. I need to be able to get back to Carroll Falls right away. I need to be able to make things right if everything goes wrong.

We sip our coffee in silence. Aaron uses his placemat to make an origami hummingbird, a turtle, and a lily, like the one he made for me the day I met him. He lines the figurines up on the table in front of him, like a little paper army.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I gesture to his creations.

“I started reading how-to books when I was fifteen.” He flicks the beak of the hummingbird and it flips onto its back. “Sara was such a talented artist, you know, even back then. I think I was a little jealous of her. Then I started making up my own original designs. I got pretty good at it. Even won a contest once.” He turns the hummingbird upright and sighs. “I don’t do it much anymore.”

“Why not?”

I can’t imagine just giving up drawing. It would be like giving up talking. I take the last sip of my coffee and wish the caffeine would just kick in already. My eyes feel gritty and the mug’s heavier than it should be.

“What was the point?” he says, his eyes downcast and tired. “After I became a Reaper, all of my work was either left anonymous, which wasn’t so bad, or claimed by someone else, which really ticked me off.” Aaron picks the lily up off the table and holds it out to me. “Actually, that flower I made for you was the first piece I’d made in years. It felt good. I didn’t realize how much I missed it.”

Aaron tries to contain a yawn, but once it starts, it gets so big his jaw cracks. He rubs his red-rimmed eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

His yawn is contagious. I cover mine with my hand and wipe away the sleepy tears that gather in my lashes. We flew all night without a break. Even with the cup of coffee, my body longs to curl up in a soft, comfy bed.

The front door of the diner swings open with a squeal. It barely misses a table as it slams against the window with enough force to make the glass rattle. The man and woman sitting in the booth beside the door ignore the commotion. The woman laughs and leans back as the man across from her continues to talk, a pleasant smile on his lips.

A teenaged boy, about the same age as Aaron and me, barrels through the front door.

“Oh shit,” Aaron mutters.

“What?” I match his hushed tone.

He shakes his head and places one finger against his lips.

The boy’s leather saddle shoes click on the checkerboard floor as he saunters to the couple’s table. He picks the woman’s pancake up off her plate with his bare hands. The woman continues to talk like the pancake floating off of her plate by itself is the most normal thing in the world. A silver ring on the boy’s right thumb catches the sunlight as he shoves half of the woman’s pancake into his mouth and bites it in half. He slaps the uneaten half back down on the plate.

Panic surges in my chest. “He’s a Reaper.” It sounds like a shout in my ears, though I know I whispered it.

Aaron just nods.

“We should hide. Become invisible.”

“Can’t.” His lips barely move. “He’ll notice for sure if we use the Reaper powers.”

“Thank you, dear,” the boy says around the food in his mouth. He snatches the woman’s napkin off the table and wipes his hands. She shivers and pulls her sweater closer around her, but other than that, she doesn’t seem to care. She cuts into her half-eaten pancake like she’s the one who devoured most of it.

A frown creases the boy’s forehead. His eyes snap up and sweep the diner. They lock on us. My insides lurch as the cleft between the boy’s eyes deepens.

“Well, what do we have here?”  The boy keeps staring at us as he takes a slow sip of the man’s orange juice. He places the glass on the table, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and weaves his way toward us.

“Oh crap. He’s coming over,” I whisper urgently. “What should we do?”

“Don’t panic and follow my lead.”

“Right,” I say. Easier said than done.

“I’ve tried to figure it out, but I give up.” The boy parks himself at the end of our table and folds his arms over his chest. “Who the hell are you? And why are you here?”

Aaron ignores the boy and meets my eyes.

“Speaking of France, I was thinking of back-packing through Europe next summer.” He gives me a relaxed smile and leans forward, resting his elbows on the Formica table top. “What do you think? Want to come?” To anyone else, we look like we’re in the middle of a conversation, but I know Aaron enough to see the tension in his shoulders and the worried wrinkle between his eyes.

“I don’t know.” I return his smile, though I don’t think I’m as convincing as he is. “What about Australia? I’ve always wanted to see Sydney.”

“This little act of yours ain’t fooling me, kid.” The boy narrows his eyes and shakes his head slowly. “I could feel you across the room. You’re not living, but you’re also not dead. So, what are you?”

“Australia?” Aaron laughs. He keeps his eyes locked on mine. “Aren’t you afraid of the spiders?”

“I know you can hear me, pal.” The boy’s hands shoot out and grab Aaron by the shirt. “I wouldn’t be able to do this if you were a living person.” He shakes Aaron so hard his head whips back and cracks against the plastic seat. I jump to my feet.

“All right, all right. We see you. Okay?” I grab the kid’s arm and try to rip it away from Aaron. “Stop it.”

“I knew it.” The boy smirks and lets go of Aaron’s shirt. He backs up a step, hands held up to his chest, palms forward. “Who the hell are you, and why has Abaddon sent you here? I’ve been a good little Reaper for weeks now. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

Aaron meets my eyes and lifts his eyebrows so slightly I doubt the kid sees it. “We’re Reapers. Just like you.” He looks back to the guy. “Abaddon’s been…busy. He sent us to check up on you.” He gives an exaggerated wince and rubs the sore spot on the back of his head. “I doubt he’ll be happy to hear you assaulted one of his assistants.”