Hereafter (A Reaper Novella) Page 4

  I watched as he moved to lean against my dresser, but missed and instead fell to the floor with a thud. I gasped and stood out of reflex before realizing there was nothing I could do. There was no way I could help him up, no way I could console him, no way for him to understand that I was here, not with the alcohol drowning his mind. He struggled to sit up and then slouched against my dresser.

  I went and sat directly beside him, the yearning to help ease his pain pulling at the strings of my soul where my beating heart used to be. I looked at him, really looked at him, and understood the grief from losing my mother and I had completely consumed him. He was like the jagged edges of the whisky bottle he’d thrown moments before, unfixable. Even if eventually he figured out how to pick up all of the pieces of himself and glue them back together again, he’d still never be the same.

  “Why?” he sobbed, looking up to the ceiling. The torment and agony that echoed within that one word was enough to make me curl into a ball at his side as sadness washed over me. “Why did you have to take my little girl away from me, too? Wasn’t losing my wife the way I did enough?” It came out as one big slur of words, but I was able to make each one out.

  “Why?” he cried again. Cradling his head in his hands, he began rocking back and forth repeating the same word.

  My soul felt as if it were weeping with him. I’d been wrong in thinking that seeing my things packed up was the hardest part about being dead. The hardest part was seeing those you loved and those who loved you slowly dying from the inside out with sorrow you couldn’t take away, the hopelessness that you felt when you couldn’t console them, when you couldn’t speak to them.

  My death had been the final pebble to bounce across the already cracked windowpane of my father’s soul. It had been the thing that shattered him completely. It was then that I thought of my mother. I shoved away all of the guilt and remorse I felt for the way my father was in this moment and placed all of the blame on her. If she hadn’t taken her own life and simply just dealt with being a Link like all of the others I’d come across in the last month, then none of this would have happened. I’d still be alive and my father, even though he wasn’t really there for me a lot while I had been alive, wouldn’t be so broken now.

  With anger fueling through me, I stood and gazed down at him. “I’m going to come back to you…” I whispered just before I left him in search of Jet once more.

  It wasn’t sunset, this I knew, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t hope for Jet to be here at our little slice of the ocean, waiting for me. Disappointment spiraled through me once I saw the empty, sandy shore. Jet wasn’t here. I stomped my foot in frustration and let out a muffled scream. When was I going to get my chance to tell him everything that I had learned? When was I going to be able to have him take me to the Purgatory Portal?

  I thought of my father and the way that I’d left him, and then I thought of my empty bedroom. Another thought pushed its way through to the surface of my mind: How long was my mother’s sentence in Purgatory? The fear that what I wanted to accomplish wouldn’t be possible if she crossed over plummeted me. I felt as if time were running out.

  As I stared out at the waves rising up and crashing toward the shore, my mind wandered, and I wondered if something could have happened to Jet. Was he an old enough Reaper to be found a replacement? This was one thing I had never discussed with him. Exactly how long had he been a Reaper?

  As I let my mind continue to wander, becoming more engrossed in my thoughts and worries, I felt the air behind me shift. I spun and there was Jet, staring at me in the same unabashed way he used to when I was still alive.

  “Finally,” he said, his lips twisting up into his coy little smirk I loved so much.

  My panic lessened and I felt the weight from my heavy thoughts evaporate. “I’m so glad to see you!”

  Jet sauntered toward me, the shimmer in his eyes letting me know he felt the same way. As soon as he was within my reach, I pulled him into me and pressed my lips to his.

  “Each time I see you, my greeting is better than the last… Maybe I should stay away more often,” he muttered.

  I chuckled. The way he spoke reminded me of the old Jet—the Jet I’d first met when I was alive, the Jet I had known when he was training me to become a Reaper during the first few weeks after my death. I’d missed this Jet. He had disappeared the moment I’d been deemed a Reaper Council member and been replaced with a slightly worried and desperate version of himself. The fact that we had seen each other two times in the span of a few days must have him feeling confident in our relationship once more. This was good. This made me smile.

  I leaned my forehead against his chest. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, you’re right. I’d miss you too much,” he whispered against my hair as his arms squeezed me tighter.

  And then, it hit me—the awareness that if I went through with trying to find my mother and it worked the way that I hoped, I would lose Jet. I would lose the way it felt to be held between his arms. I would lose the way his lips felt against mine. We would be right back to where we had started. He would still be a Reaper, but I would be alive again.

  My smile faded and I shifted in his arms as everything sunk in. His lips brushed against the top of my head in a soft kiss, and I closed my eyes, wishing it were that easy to close myself off from the heartache I felt slowly making its way to the surface of my mind the way the tide rises.

  “What’s wrong?” Jet asked, and I wondered how he’d known there was anything wrong at all. He couldn’t see my face. Had we become that in tune?

  When I didn’t answer right away, he pulled back and gazed into my eyes as though they held the answer to his question. Fixing my eyes on the rocky ledge where we had left our notes etched into the sands beneath, I felt torn to pieces, as if I were being pulled in three directions. I wanted to find my mother so that I could have her take her place and set everything right. I also wanted to stay with Jet just like this, because losing him after I’d had him—after I’d felt his touch—would be like losing a piece of myself. I also wanted my life back for my own selfish reasons, because in death, I could finally see the importance of life.

  I wasn’t sure how to word everything that needed to be said or even where to begin, so I just said it. “I think I’ve found a way to go back…” I whispered, bringing my eyes to his.

  Jet looked down at me with his brows merged, trying to make sense of the words I’d just spoken. “A way to go back to what?”

  “A way to go back to being alive,” I answered, breaking his penetrating stare as I shifted my eyes back out to the darkened ocean.

  “How? What do you mean?” He licked his lips. His eyes appeared wild in the slight sliver of moonlight.

  I untangled myself from his arms and walked past him to stand where the salty water could lap against my ankles. Even though I was too flustered to feel it, I could still take comfort in knowing it was there. Nervousness and anxiety tortured my mind as I searched for the best way to begin in explaining.

  “All I have to do is find my mother in Purgatory and ask her to take my place, and then I can have my life back once she agrees,” I said as Jet moved to step to my side.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw him stare at me. I could feel the intensity of his eyes, the intensity of his emotions, as he gazed at me, allowing what I had just said to sink in.

  “What makes you think that? Don’t you think if it were that easy I would have done it a long time ago?” His tone seemed sharp and harsh, as if he were angry at me for even thinking such a thing.

  He was right; I knew he was. Evelyn could be lying. She’d never even said for sure that what I thought was possible…just that I shouldn’t accept things as being final.

  “I know you would have,” I said, still gazing out at the rolling ocean. “And I can’t explain it… It’s just something that I know. I feel that I’m right.”

  It was true and it was also all I needed to act on.

  “You c
an’t go to Purgatory, Rowan. You could risk your very soul becoming corrupted,” he insisted, sharpness constricting his words.

  Evelyn had forgotten to mention that. Panic filled my mind as the possibilities of what that could entail surged through me. I reminded myself of the state I had left my father in, and the panic dissipated to a mere dullness that was easily forgotten.

  “If I stay…my soul will be at risk for being corrupted anyway. It’s tormenting to see my father broken and miserable because of all he has lost in just a few months. And when he moves from my house, from our home…it will be the end of me, because it means that he’s moved on. It’s bad enough seeing Kami laughing and enjoying life without me,” I whispered, willing him to understand where I was coming from.

  “So don’t visit them,” he insisted.

  “I can’t help visiting with them. If I could, it would make this all a lot easier, but I can’t. They’re the last remaining remnants of my life. Being in their presence gives me a shadowed sense of normalcy, even if it’s tiny. Don’t you do the same?”

  I didn’t know if he did. This was a conversation we had never had before, but I prayed he could relate even a tiny bit.

  “Moving on is part of death and it’s something we all do, dead or alive. Eventually we all have to move on, Rowan.”

  I hated what I was about to say next, because I knew the emptiness that it would awaken within him, but the words were true and needed to be said nonetheless. “But it wasn’t my time. This wasn’t supposed to be what my hereafter was like. If my mom wouldn’t have—” I cut myself off the second my eyes raised to his face.

  Guilt pinched at my soul, and I hated myself for the memories I knew I had dredged up in his mind, memories of his death and how he had been cheated.

  Jet shoved his hands deep into his front pockets, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he refused to meet my eyes. “It wasn’t my time either, but I’ve accepted that. Why can’t you?”

  I turned to face him completely, my eyes locking directly with his as soon as they shifted back to me. “I just can’t.”

  Jet sighed and ran his fingers through his hair before shifting to sit on the sand. Silence crafted a void between us as we continued to stare at one another. I wasn’t sure if he was angry still or if he was just thinking of the situation from all angles. I left the water’s edge to sit between his knees and rested my back firmly against his chest, enjoying the feel of him pressed against me while thinking this could be the last time.

  Jet wrapped his arms around me and pulled me closer to him. “Well, I’m not letting you go by yourself.”

  I closed my eyes and smiled at the implication of what his words meant—that he would take me. I lightly stroked my fingers across his forearm and snuggled in deeper to his chest. Dark clouds rolled through my mind as I suddenly questioned whether or not gaining my life back was worth giving up this—giving up him.

  “If it works, do you think I’ll remember you after?” I wondered out loud in a faint whisper, hopeful.

  “Probably. I’m sort of a hard one to forget,” he murmured in a cocky tone against my ear.

  I slapped against the top of his hand playfully and smiled. “I’m being serious. I won’t be a Link anymore, so I know I won’t see you, but will I remember you? Will I remember any of this?” My smile faded quickly, and I felt Jet’s thumb begin to caress my forearm gently.

  “I’m not sure,” he answered solemnly. “But I can tell you this, you will always be with me, Rowan, always—right here.” He pulled away and drew my hand up to cover his heart. There was no heart beating rapidly beneath my palm, but I knew exactly what he meant—I would always be weaved within the threads of his soul.

  I could say the same about him.

  “Good, because that’s right where I always want to be,” I whispered and then pressed my lips to his.

  We parted soon and I wondered how alive I would feel once we were no longer able to touch or communicate. Doubt crept back into my mind, and my resolve that I was making the right decision faded, until images of my father, drunk and lying broken across my bedroom floor, flashed through my mind once more.

  Sacrifice. A word I now understood the true meaning of.

  Either I remained a Reaper Council member and got to be with Jet, but left my father to suffer in his own form of hell. Or, I chose to save him by coming back, but lost everything I had with Jet.

  Could I settle for a shadowed sense of myself, because I knew that was what I would be without Jet in my life, whether I remembered him after all of this or not. My very soul would be shadowed by its loss of him forever.

  I leaned my head against his chest just as tendrils of blackness began to swirl around my ankles and I felt a familiar tug pulling at my soul. I was being summoned to another Reaper Ruling.

  “No, every time you leave it’s always forever before we can meet up again. Hold on to me and close your eyes,” Jet demanded.

  I did as I was told and felt anxiety swell within my soul. A strange sensation rippled through me, one I distinctly remembered from crossing through the veil and into the Spiritual Realm when Jet had been training me to become a Reaper. When I opened my eyes again, I found that I was standing in front of a gray stone doorway with the words Purgatory Portal harshly etched into it.

  The difference between this portal and the Crossover Portal was infinite. Instead of a cute little building with a golden sign hung above a set of double doors, green grass, flowers, and an endless blue sky above, there was nothing besides the stone doorway standing by itself in a patch of burnt, brittle grass. A cool wind blew, sending strands of long hair brushing across my face. I shivered, actually feeling the chill sweep across me.

  “I can already feel its coldness seeping into me,” I said, gazing up at the enormous door.

  “I know, but we don’t have time to stare. Either we’re going to do this or we’re not. Decide now,” Jet demanded, taking my hands in his.

  The blackness had already begun to create my cloak. I had mere seconds before I disappeared from his grasp, before I could no longer fight against the tugging of my soul.

  “I don’t know what to do… I don’t want to lose you, but at the same time, I can’t leave my father the way that he is when there’s a possibility I could change everything back to the way that it was before,” I said, my voice more of a plea than anything. I was terrified Jet would think I didn’t care for him, that I was selfish and horrible for what I was about to do.

  I watched as an emotion I could easily name clouded the blues of his eyes. It was the same emotion that had smothered me with a feeling of being isolated and cut off from everything more than once since I had become what I was—loneliness.

  “I have to do this,” I whispered before he could speak, praying that he understood. Gazing into his sapphire eyes, I saw the tiny bit of hope Jet had that I would chose to stay with him die before a wall was put up to hide it.

  “Let’s go then,” he insisted. His jaw set as he pulled me behind him toward the menacing doors of Purgatory.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Torment and sin, pain and evil floated through the air in a near suffocating haze. I could feel it surrounding me, brushing up against me, attempting to lure me in deeper and away from the door so I couldn’t escape as though it were alive. I licked my lips and tasted the bitterness of this place on my tongue. Jet’s hand tightened around mine, and I could sense his tension as he glanced at what lie before us. My eyes darted about in wonder, taking in my surroundings.

  Purgatory was eerily beautiful, in a gothic sense. It was as if stepping through the door had taken us deep underground without taking any stairs. Cold, dark dirt lay beneath my bare feet, etched with deep ruts and grooves. There was no sky, only more dirt above me, bumpy and full of ridges. I felt as if I’d stepped inside a damp cave long ago forgotten by even the smallest of creatures. White fog bubbled from a crater a few hundred feet away from where Jet and I stood, and danced across the ground hypnotically.<
br />
  Gripping my hand even tighter, Jet put one foot in front of the other, and we began making our way through the silent darkness that was Purgatory, toward the crater that dipped into the ground. After only a few steps, I noticed something at the cliff-like edge of the crater, something shinny and black that caught the small glint of light available and reflected it.

  “What is that?” I asked, pointing, just before I realized what the objects were. “How are there crows down here?”

  We’d taken a few steps before Jet shook his head and finally answered me. “Those aren’t crows; those are ravens.”

  “How can you tell?” I wondered as we cautiously continued walking. The closer we got, the more I noticed. They hid in the shadows, watching.

  “Ravens are much bigger than crows. All you have to do is look at their size,” Jet answered.

  My eyes bounced from raven to raven until I found a cluster of three staring fixedly at me. They reminded me of the crows that used to stalk me with a similar haunting gaze and made fear prickle through my mind. I gripped Jet’s arm with my free hand and squeezed his hand tighter with my other. My eyes grazed over their inky feathers and obsidian eyes as I wondered what they were doing in Purgatory. If the crows had symbolized change—mainly the transition from a Link to a Reaper—then what did the ravens symbolize, if anything?

  “Do you know why they’re here?” I whispered, afraid to spook them or anger them in any way.

  “They’re drawn to death, darkness, and destruction,” Jet said as we crept up on the ledge of the crater. “They are also a mixture of Watchers and Trackers.”

  My eyes remained fixated on them. “The Watchers of what, Purgatory?”

  “Exactly,” Jet said, his footsteps faltering. “If we’re going to find your mother, then we’re going to need a little bit of help. I need you to summon one of the Trackers.”