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  I watched as his lips twisted into the same little smirk from before, but it was his next move that startled me.

  Instead of disappearing, this time he stepped forward.

  Chapter Three

  My heart pounded forcefully against my ribcage while I sat frozen, watching him saunter toward me. In the moments that ticked away between his first and his final steps, I noticed he left no impressions on the snow-covered ground behind him. In fact, he didn’t even make a sound. The absence of crunching, which should have filled my ears but didn’t, sent a shiver along my spine.

  He stopped directly in front of me, his coy smile still clinging to his lips. I couldn’t look away; I couldn’t even breathe. My eyes drifted across his face as I noticed for a third time how striking he was.

  “Jet.”

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. It swirled in front of my face like wisps of smoke before disappearing.

  “Jet?” I questioned, puzzled.

  “You asked who I am.” He grinned. “I’m telling you—my name is Jet.”

  I swallowed hard. “Uh, hi,” I said, wondering if this were real.

  Was I really sitting inside my mother’s CRV with a dead boy holding open the door? Could he even do that—hold open a door? Was he really dead, like ghost-dead or something else entirely? Was I hallucinating?

  “Well?” He prompted me. “Aren’t you going to tell me your name, or are you just going to gawk at me all morning?”

  “R-Rowan…” I stuttered.

  Jet rolled his eyes, seemingly annoyed with my stammering. “Oh, come on. I can’t be the first you’ve seen. Haven’t you been a Link your whole life or something?”

  I shook my head, confused. “Link? I’m not a link to anything.”

  Jet looked at me with mild confusion before a shit-eating grin spread across his face. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” When I didn’t answer, his smile grew. “Wow, a newbie Link! Wonder what this is all about?” He chuckled to himself.

  I sat up straighter, making my presence seem more imposing. I didn’t enjoy being laughed at, especially not by a dead boy, or whatever Jet was.

  “How about you stop chuckling to yourself and explain exactly what it is you think I am,” I said as evenly as I could.

  Jet’s sapphire-blue eyes found mine and I fought hard to not look away from the intensity of them. I found myself wondering if they’d always been the same incredible shade of blue.

  “A Link is someone who can see the dead. A person who’s a Link between the Spiritual and Physical Realm,” he said. “Hence the term: Link.”

  I chewed my lip, knowing he’d finished speaking, but not sure how to respond. Was this what my mother had been, a Link, or had I bumped my head so hard in the car accident that it had lined up all the crazy genes in my DNA?

  I shook my head, coming to the conclusion that this was all too crazy-sounding to be believable and I must be hallucinating. I got back out of the Honda and slammed the driver’s side door shut. There was no way I was going to school freaking hallucinating.

  “Like I said, I’m not a Link.” I stomped back toward the house.

  He called after me. “If you can see me, which clearly you can, then yes, you are.”

  I didn’t respond, instead I continued toward the front door. Slamming it shut behind me, I headed straight to my room. I opened the door to discover Jet standing next to my dresser, waiting for me with a smirk.

  “What are you?” I asked, annoyed.

  “Fascinated,” Jet answered simply.

  My cheeks reddened at his words, betraying how annoyed and crazed I felt by the entire situation, and I hated myself for it.

  “Fascinated by what?” I scoffed, folding my arms across my chest.

  “You,” he said.

  His answer lightened my mood more than I’d expected and I felt my stomach do a flip-flop because of it.

  “You’re the first Breather to see me.” Jet’s eyes softened as loneliness swelled within them.

  My pulse quickened. I replayed the word Breather in my mind while I slowly realized what it was he’d meant.

  “If I’m a Breather, then you must be a non-breather—you’re dead?” I trembled. Hallucination or ghost, it didn’t matter anymore because now it was official—I’d gone crazy.

  “Dead?” Jet’s voice went flat, the loneliness long gone from his eyes. “Something like that.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and index finger while squeezing my eyes shut, fighting against an oncoming headache. “I don’t understand, you’re either dead or you’re not.” I sputtered, blinking a few times.

  “True, in most cases.” Jet paused, bringing his eyes back to mine. “I once was alive, then I died, and now… I’m merely Death.”

  I hesitated before responding, even when Jet’s eyes became intense, as though he were studying me, waiting for a reaction. I remained blank, allowing myself some time for everything to sink in—Jet’s words, his explanation, and what he’d been doing the first time I’d seen him.

  It was all real, him being Death made perfect sense in some strange way.

  All of my confusion, annoyance, anger, and fear melted away like the disappearing snow outside. The reality of what I was doing sank in. I was standing alone in my bedroom with Death… and he had the face of an angel.

  The air in the room seemed too thick, unbreathable, as a new fear broke through to the surface of my mind.

  “Death—as in the Grim Reaper?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

  “Yes. Well, one of many, not the.” He clarified his words and shrugged. “I’m actually Reaper Number 142 of the East Physical Realm.”

  “Am I supposed to die or something? Is that why the crows have been watching me?” Panic tingled through my limbs, making my chest tighten and my heart pound loudly in my ears.

  “Of course you’re going to die,” Jet said in a low voice. “Everything living does.” He dropped his eyes to the floor as a sadness swept across his features and I wondered if he’d always been a Reaper.

  “Have you always been this way?” I asked, gesturing to all of him. “A Reaper?” The word sounded just as strange to my ears as it felt coming from my lips.

  Jet’s jaw visibly tensed, but his eyes remained focused on the floor. “No.”

  “How long have you been one?”

  “How long have you been a Link?” He avoided my question completely.

  I crossed the room and sat on the edge of my bed. “Since the first time I saw you, I guess, the night of the car accident.” My eyes never left him. “Your turn—how long have you been a Reaper?”

  Jet raised his eyes to mine for a split second. His face was blank, but his eyes were filled with a dark hatred that sent a shiver up my spine.

  “I don’t know,” he finally answered. His hands balled into fists at his sides as he buried them deep into his pockets.

  Silence swelled between the walls of my room and pushed against me, crushing me with its weight while I pondered everything I’d just learned. I glanced at Jet; he stood in the same spot, unmoving, his hands hidden deep in his pockets with his eyes still fixated on the floor, lost in his own thoughts.

  I wondered if he was struggling to remember bits and pieces of his life, or trying hard to forget.

  “You forgot to answer one of my questions,” I said, slipping off my gloves and setting them on the bed beside me.

  “Oh, yeah? And which question might that be?” Jet asked, his tension releasing as quickly as the heavy silence had.

  “Does my being a Link have something to do with why the crows have been stalking me?” The word Link felt thick in my mouth, making the rest of my question sound strangled.

  “Sort of,” he shrugged. “Crows are symbolic of change.”

  I thought for a moment before speaking, contemplating his answer. “Change as in, now I see dead people—this is why they’ve been watching me?” Oddly enough, it seemed too far-fetched for me to
believe.

  “No—a change as in death,” Jet clarified.

  My throat went dry and panic squeezed my lungs tightly. “But, I thought you weren’t here for me,”

  “I’m not; it doesn’t work that way. The crows mean you’re about to transition from a Link to a Reaper.”

  “No.” I swallowed hard and shook my head. “That can’t be right. What if I don’t want to become one?”

  Jet’s sapphire-blue eyes softened. “I’m sorry, but you have no choice. Every Link becomes a Reaper.”

  I felt my eyes swell with tears and shifted my gaze from Jet to my fingers, focusing on my chipped purple nail polish. How had this happened and why had I been picked?

  “So you were a Link, too?” I asked, understanding now his reasons for seeming so sad and angry earlier, because it was all so horribly unfair.

  “No, there are other ways to become a Reaper,” he said, harshness laced within his words.

  “Oh.” I blinked my tears away, taken aback by his tone. “How does it happen… what am I supposed to do?” I asked, even though I was afraid I already knew his answer.

  “Die,” Jet whispered, and I closed my eyes.

  Chapter Four

  The word reverberated through my body, attaching itself to the pounding of my heart. My throat felt like it might close up at any moment and my chest became constricted by a squeezing sensation while I continued to hold back tears.

  “When?” I managed to choke the question out.

  “I don’t know; things didn’t exactly happen for me the way they’re about to for you,” he whispered.

  I glanced at him through blurry eyes, his shoulders were slightly hunched forward and concern had etched its way into his features.

  “How could you not know? Isn’t that part of your job description?” I asked, sounding angrier than I’d meant to.

  “I told you, that’s not how it works,” Jet said, straightening. “We don’t get some sort of list like on TV.”

  I deflated. My angry tears finally forced their way from my eyes and a sob escaped me while I crumpled into a heap on my bed. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t care who was there to witness me cry.

  “I should go,” Jet whispered, just before I felt his presence leave the room, leaving me how I always am—alone.

  I cried until my eyes felt puffy and my cheeks had become sticky with the remnants of my own salty tears. When I finally forced myself to sit up, my hair was damp and matted against my left ear. My mind instantaneously began to bounce from one thought to another while I weighed the only possibilities involving Jet and everything he’d told me. I kept finding myself back at the same two theories—either I was hallucinating hardcore or this was all real and I was about to die.

  I had to get out of this house. I crossed my room and rummaged through my closet for the puffy blue jacket my mother had bought me three years ago. I’d worn it once and then thrown it deep in the back of my closet, never to be seen again. I dug it out now and slipped it on, not caring that it made me feel like a large blue marshmallow.

  My boots crunched across the wet gravel beneath me, the only sound that filled my ears. A heavy dampness hung in the cold air—something not even the pale sun, positioned high in the sky, could erase. I walked past our mailbox and cut a left, stepping out onto the blacktopped road, and shoved my gloved hands deep in the pockets of my jacket for extra warmth.

  I walked for a while, thinking of too much, but at the same time nothing at all. The road was dead; only two cars passed me on my journey to nowhere. I decided I’d turn around once I reached the sharp corner near the end of our road… but that was when I saw her: a woman with wiry red hair dressed in denim shorts and a pale yellow tank top.

  These were the first things I noticed about her, my mind skipping over the obvious—I could see right through her.

  Panic jolted my heart and I came to a standstill. The woman stood at the edge of the road, staring off into the steep drop-off area in front of her. She appeared to be searching for something. I held my breath and took a small step backward, hoping to put some distance between myself and the ghostly apparition before breaking into a dead run.

  On my third step backward I slipped on an iced-over patch of road and landed flat on my butt, adding a sore tailbone to my long list of injuries for the month, and drawing the unwanted attention of the ghost woman.

  She’d pivoted to face me with a look of desperation clinging to her face. Staring at her, I realized she must have only been in her mid-thirties when she’d died.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” she cried out in a very southern accent. “Do you see it, honey? I’ve been searching and can’t find it! Toby must be so scared by now!”

  I didn’t reply, I didn’t even move. I was too shocked by the fact she could speak to do anything besides stare.

  “Help me look for it, please! It had to have been around here somewhere—it just had to!” The woman fretted.

  “Help you look for what?” I asked, finally finding my voice again. It sounded small and weak. I forced myself to stand and felt my legs tremble beneath me. No matter what answer she gave me, there was no way I could help her—she was dead!

  “My car,” she said, as though I were stupid. “I took the corner too fast, I know I did, and Toby is still in the backseat!”

  “I, uh…” I fumbled.

  What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to tell her? She obviously didn’t know she was dead and the vehicle she was searching for so frantically had long ago been removed.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, holding up one hand and carefully taking a small step backward. “But I can’t help you.”

  The woman’s expression shifted to pure rage at my words. “What do you mean you can’t help me? I was just in a car accident and you’re telling me you can’t help me find the car with my three-year-old baby inside it? What kind of person are you!”

  I didn’t reply; instead, I turned and bolted back in the direction of my house. I glanced back only once, afraid she had chased after me, but hoping she was confined to that specific corner, the place of her death. Even though I didn’t see her, I still didn’t slow my pace. That’s when I noticed them.

  The crows.

  There seemed to be one everywhere I looked: perched in the ice-coated branches, soaring above me in the sky, waiting for me farther down the road. I wasn’t sure if they’d been lurking around me during my entire walk to nowhere or if they had simply just appeared, drawn to my Link moment like a moth to an open flame.

  Fear filled me, forcing my legs to move faster than ever before. I raced across my snow-covered yard. I could feel the powder give way beneath my boots and the crunch it made echoed loudly in my ears. I stopped running only after I’d flung myself into the warmth of my house and securely closed its wooden door behind me.

  My entire body trembled as I sank to the cool, hardwood floor. I curled my knees into my chest, hating how terrified and alone I felt. My eyes darted across the room, searching for anything lurking in the shadows, until they settled on a silver-rimmed picture of my mother.

  A remembered sentence, spoken in Jet’s saddened tone, swam through my head, breaking the surface of my mind. Every Link becomes a Reaper. I stared at my mother’s smiling face and glittering green eyes, realizing with complete certainty that she hadn’t been crazy at all. My mother had been a Link.

  Chapter Five

  An entire week passed. The snow melted away, my bruises faded, and I’d had no choice but to return to school and act as though I were normal and not the certifiably insane person everyone would assume I was if I were to mention any of this strangeness. I knew how acceptable the label would be for everyone to place on me, considering who my mother had been. To the gossips in town, it would have been something they’d expected all along.

  It wasn’t a hard decision, choosing not to speak to anyone about my latest issue—anyone except Jet, if I were to ever see him again. Pathetically, each time I witnessed
another spirit I found myself wishing Jet would appear. Out of everything about this, he was the only part I enjoyed. Everything else seemed terrifying, and no matter which word I used in my mind—spirit, ghost, soul, dead person—none of them lessened the fear that swallowed me whole when I thought about my newly gained talent.

  Seeing them was one thing, but the part that frightened me most was that they could see me too. Once they realized this—well, that’s when they’d start talking.

  I sat at Kami Holland’s dining room table, working with her on our multicultural cuisine project for Advanced Foods and Nutrition, cringing inside and utterly unable to think clearly, feeling far beyond creeped out by the six-year-old little girl sitting across the table from me. I’d been in Kami’s house a million times before and never once noticed her, until now.

  She was dressed in clothes from the sixties, which, if I had to guess, was probably around the time Kami’s house had been built. The girl’s head rested against the table with her long, brown hair cascading over the edge and her doe-like baby-blue eyes fixated on me.

  I noticed her the second I’d walked into Kami’s house; she’d come to the front door, curious to see who was there. From the moment we’d locked eyes, she’d known that I could see her and had toyed with me since, making silly faces or repeating everything Kami said in a silly, squawking voice. If she hadn’t been dead, but instead another one of Kami’s little sisters, she might have been cute and funny. But being dead was neither cute nor funny and the fact that she was a little kid made it all the more creepy.

  There was definitely something different about this ghostly little girl, something which made her stand out in my mind against all the others I’d seen lately. The woman near the end of my road, the morbidly obese man in the grocery store parking lot, the teen boy inside the gas station on the way to Walmart—they were all bad enough. But this little girl knew she was dead and seemed fine with it.