Page 20 of The Reaper's Vice

“I wouldn’t dream of it,Vee.” A small smile lifts my lips at the scowl my own nickname for her elicits. I pat her shoulder fondly before pushing past her into the passageway, and the door shudders closed behind us, shaking the walls of the stone walkway as we descend into the depths of the cliffside. After a few seconds, we step into a large circular foyer, the walls and floor of which are set in a deep, shimmering onyx. I blink rapidly to adjust to the light flickering from the iron sconces, breathing in the familiar scent of damp earth and stone.

“I missed this place,” I whisper, catching Vee’s eye over my shoulder.

“It’s only been a week.” She shakes her head with a low, husky chuckle as she hobbles toward the three colored doors at the end of the room, her walking cane tapping lightly against the stone floor. “I find it hard to believe you miss this old damp placethatmuch.”

“Maybe it’s not theplaceI missed, but the people living in it.” I bump her shoulder with mine playfully.

Vee tuts, shoving me away with a sneer at the contact—though, I don’t miss the way her emerald eyes soften. “There you go with that nonsense again. Save it for the twins.” She pulls open the middle door, which is cast in a glimmering silver hue.

I’m thrown backward off my feet as a thousand pounds of pure fluffy predator barrels into my chest. A scream falls from my lips, though it morphs into a full-bellied laugh a moment later as Sviato, my male tiger, drags his tongue across my cheek. His sister Savyne begins kneading my belly as I lay sprawled on my back, her great weight pushing out the last of the air in my body.

“A little help?” I choke, looking at Vee for assistance as Sviato lays his massive head across my windpipe.

Vee shakes her head with a scoff. “You made your bed, Seraphina. I warned you not to coddle them so when they were cubs.”

Savyne chuffs low in her throat as if in agreement with the cranky old woman, then plops down across my stomach, nuzzling her face against my chest with a force strong enough to leave bruises.

“Must your love be so violent?” I reach up to play with her fuzzy black-tipped ears. Sviato grumbles jealously at the contact, flicking his one good ear back against his skull as he narrows his eyes at his sister. The other stump of an ear twitches slightly, and Savyne reaches a paw up and bats it as if mocking her brother for the missing appendage.

“Hey! That’s not nice!” I bop Savyne’s nose lightly with my forefinger. She rears back with a look like I insulted her ancestors, pressing down with more of her weight on my chest.

Sviato growls unhappily, rearing up to swat his sister off. She bounds away with a flick of her fluffy white tail, looking over her shoulder with her fangs slightly bared. I give Sviato a few scratches, then he bounds after his sister, batting at the tip of her tail playfully—all earlier indiscretions forgotten.

I roll my eyes with a breath of laughter as I roll to my stomach, heaving in a breath as I push to my feet. “I thought they would never get off.”

“But did you die?” Vee grins, pulling open the green-tinted left door. I shake my head, pursing my lips as she chuckles loudly. “Then I don’t see the use in complaining. Come on, dove, let’s get some meat on those scrawny little wings.”

I follow Vee through the door and down a narrow passageway encased in the same glittering onyx as the circular foyer. We pass by two stone-colored doors on the left—a storage for canned goods and Vee’s personal alchemy chamber—before coming into the large open space we’ve dubbed as the living quarters. A small kitchenette rests in the far-right corner, taking up just as much space as the three large meat freezers adjacent to it.

A rust-orange couch lies in the center of the room, positioned a few feet back from Vee’s VCR player, which is currently blastingCasablancaon full volume. My eyes catch on the rubber duck lying on top of the TV set, a smile brushing my lips as I take in the sunglasses and pink bikini adorning its chest.

“You have a new favorite?” I turn my gaze from the duck to where Vee bustles around the kitchen. She stops what she’s doing and looks up, a chuckle shaking her chest as she realizes what I’m talking about.

“Oh, that? No, I just ran out of room on the bookshelf.” She points at the oak bookcase taking up the entirety of the left wall. It is—in fact—filled to the brim with tiny rubber ducks, their outfits ranging anywhere from a green pirate with an eyepatch to a cowboy complete with a hat and revolver. My favorite, though, is the pure black duck sitting at the center of the shelf, its beady eyes seeming to stare at me through the walls of its glass case.

I was fourteen when I learned of Vee’s obsession with the plastic fowl. When you live on the streets, it's smart to only keep possessions that assist with survival—blankets, scraps of food, sharp or pointy things for protection—yet Vee had insisted on carting around a plastic trash bag full of the rubber ducks. The way she protected them reminded me so distinctly of a mother goose with her babies. But when I brought it up to Vee, her eyes turned so sad that I decided to never speak of the plastic oddities again.

That is, until I found the onyx-colored duck on one of my evening dumpster dives. I’d been living with Vee for only a week, but something in me said she would love this little treasure. When I presented it to her, a rare smile tugged at her skin, and she wasn’t even angry that the only food I managed to salvage was a half-eaten chicken sandwich.

Since then, she’s taken extra special care of that duck, going so far as to buying the glass case that costs a hundred times more than the piece of trash could ever be worth. I asked her why once, but she just laughed, patting my knee in a rare display of affection.

“You’ll understand when you’re old and weary like me, Dove,” she said, her bloodstone eyes shimmering with emotion. “When gravity pulls unkindly at your bones and all your friends are dead, your family and pets returned to the earth… it’s then when we realize how much the little things mattered.”

I pull my gaze from the wall of trinkets and join Vee in the kitchen, finding her bent over a frying pan. “Whatcha cookin’, good lookin’?”

Vee waves me away with a disgruntled huff, expertly flipping the omelet she managed to scrounge up in the thirty seconds I was admiring the ducks. “Don’t bother me while I’m working, girl,” she huffs, sliding the fluffy half circle of egg onto a cracked porcelain plate.

I grab the plate from her hands gratefully, using my fingers to get the omelet into my mouth as Vee looks on with a mix of disgust and shock. “Who told you it was okay to eat like a starved shrew? Really now, Seraphina.” She shoves a fork at me, and I just grin, horking down the rest of the egg mixture before she has a chance to do anything about it.

“Seraphina May Valez!”

I swallow the mammoth of a bite, grinning at her cheekily. “What? I didn’t want to waste a dish.”

Vee shakes her head, shuffling toward the couch and plopping down with a sigh. “Are you staying the night?” she asks, all earlier disapproval forgotten as she nestles into the cushions and gets ready to watch her shows.

I really should be heading back into the city to my apartment so I can prepare for my meeting with Ivan tomorrow. But just as the thought passes, Savyne climbs onto the back of the couch, giving me a look like,Well? Aren’t you coming?

With a resigned sigh, I sit down on the seat at the other end of the couch, making room for Sviato to somehow position his massive body between Vee and me on the center cushion. I lie back, rubbing my eyes as a yawn threatens to take hold. Vee was right—I hadn’t been eating—and now that my belly is full and I’m relaxing with three-quarters of my family, I can’t deny how tired I am.

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