Page 17 of Death and Divination
He inhaled, and I suddenly wondered if he’d been breathing before. Maybe reapers were like vampires and only had to breathe to talk? I didn’t have long to ponder the question because he leaned down and kissed me.
I’ve been kissed before. I’ve been kissed a whole lot before. I’ve done a whole lot of things other than kissing in my life. But this was amazing. Heat shot through me and before I realized what was going on, I was pressed against him with my arms wrapped around his neck. When I came up for air, I was really regretting that I was about to be dead and I wouldn’t get the chance to drag this guy off to bed like I wanted to.
My last kiss. It really sucked that I couldn’t get more than that before my soul headed off to wherever. Purgatory? Heaven? Hell? I wondered if I went to hell if I could drop Lucien’s name and hopefully get special treatment. I better. Cassie would never forgive him if he let his father’s minions boil me in oil for all eternity.
Well, if I was going to die, then I was going to go for it. Time was stopped. I didn’t need to feel guilty about doing this reaper while my sister lay dying because I’d just bargained away my life for hers. And it wasn’t like any of my sisters or their demon mates could see me getting naked and busy with this guy—at least I didn’t think so. And if they could? Oh, well, I was going to be dead anyway. I wouldn’t be alive to endure Sylvie critiquing my technique, or Cassie teasing me about my pale ass. Condemned prisoners got a last meal. Well, I wanted a last screw.
I closed my eyes and leaned in to kiss him again, only to find myself standing in the kitchen with my arms stretched up in the air like a ballet dancer’s. Sound roared back to life—the bustle and shouts of the paramedics, Babylon’s sobs. In the midst of it all, I heard Bronwyn shout.
“She’s breathing! I’ve got a pulse and she’s breathing!”
I spun around to see Sylvie drag in a ragged breath, her eyes fluttering open. The paramedics pushed Bronwyn aside and knelt next to my twin, attaching monitors, an oxygen canula, and taking her vitals. I held back, wrapping my arms around myself as I watched. My sisters. I loved them all so much. Yes, Sylvie was my twin and we had a special bond, but every one of these women were as important to me as the very breath of life.
Was this the last time I’d see them? Would I just drop dead on the ground? Keel over as they carted Sylvie off to the hospital for observation? Would I even get a chance to say goodbye? Maybe it would be easier if Ididn’tsay goodbye. Part of me wished it would just happen now. Get it over with before I started bawling my eyes out about how I might never see my sisters again.
Where was that reaper? What was his name again? Nash, or something? This would be a whole lot easier if he were here by my side. Or kissing me.
And, yeah…that kiss. Was that some reaper, soul-stealing thing? Was I already dead and didn’t even know it?
“Oh, Ophelia!” Cassie came over and hugged me tight. “She’s going to be okay. Don’t look like that. She’s fine. She’ll be okay.”
I slowly eased the breath from my lungs and tried to relax in my sister’s arms. Guess I wasn’t astral projecting, hovering over my dead body after all. WhenwasI going to die? I’d just assumed it would be an instantaneous swap. Did I get a few extra hours to take care of things? Write a fast will? Let Cassie know where I’d stored my old spell books? Burn those journals from my teen years that I really didn’t want anyone to read?
“I thought we were going to lose her.” My voice wavered a bit. “I thought she was going to die.”
Cassie gave me another bone-crushing hug. “Well, she’s not. And I’m getting the damned electric fixed in this house. Completely rewired. I don’t think it’s been touched since 1950. Everything’s probably rotted or mouse-chewed. She’ll be fine, and I’ll fix this so it won’t ever happen again.”
That was Cassie. She was always the take-charge sister, the fix-it-all one among us. I think it came from having to take care of six younger sisters when she was only thirteen. But I knew my eldest sister enough to hear what she wasn’t saying. She blamed herself for this. It was her house. Yes, it was the family home we’d all grown up in, but she’d taken charge of it, assumed caretakership of it just as she’d done us. And in her mind, faulty wiring was a personal failing on her part.
“It was a freak accident,” I assured her. “I’ve seen a few electrocutions in my time, and they’ve always been just a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances all coming together at once. She’s alive. She’ll be okay, and that’s all that matters.”
Here I was reassuring my eldest sister that she wasn’t to blame. Would she feel guilty when I paid the price and she found me dead? I hoped not, but knowing Cassie, she’d shoulder that responsibility as she’d always done.
Cassie let go of me and the pair of us walked over to where they were loading Sylvie onto a stretcher. My twin looked up at me and her eyes met mine in a wordless exchange we’d been doing since we were still in the cradle.
“Mffr, mfrf mfrf,” she said into the oxygen mask they’d slapped over her mouth. I guess they decided the canula wasn’t as effective as they’d wanted.
“Can’t understand you,” I told her. “But if you’re wondering about the hot fudge, I hate to tell you but it’s a goner. In an incredible act of selfless sacrifice, the hot fudge took the brunt of the electrical surge, giving its life so thatyoumight live another day.”
Itwaspretty close to what had happened if one were to substitute hot fudge for me, but my joke did what I’d intended it to do. Sylvie started to laugh, fogging up the mask and earning me a stern glance from Flora, my Valkyrie co-worker.
They began to wheel Sylvie out with the rest of us trailing behind.
Cassie reached out to take my arm. “Do you want to ride in with her?”
She desperately wanted to do it, to be the one taking care of my sister and fussing over her as she’d fussed over all of us for most of our lives, but she was deferring to me as the twin. Cassie knew we had a bond that was a bit different than the rest of us had, and I appreciated that she would step aside and let me go to the hospital with Sylvie in her stead, but I had a date with a reaper and I really didn’t want to drop dead right in front of my twin who was recovering from being electrocuted. Better to let Cassie take charge and do what she did best while I hopefully died peacefully somewhere in a way that wouldn’t overly traumatize my sisters.
“You go,” I told Cassie. “I’ll stay here and clean up and take care of things, and I’ll swing by the hospital afterward.”
She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then turned to Lucien, telling him that she’d call him when she needed him to come pick her up from the hospital. The demon, evidently either used to being ordered around or so incredibly besotted with my sister that he was blind to her bossy ways, agreed.
We watched as Flora and the others loaded Sylvie into the ambulance. Cassie climbed in beside them, her hand on my twin’s shoulder. They closed the doors and drove off. We watched for a while after they’d turned the corner and vanished from view, as if we were thinking they might suddenly return. Then slowly we filed back inside where ice cream was melted to liquid in bowls on the dining room table, and the kitchen was a blackened mess of blasted microwave and exploded hot fudge. And with all the silent speed of a robot army set to slow, we all began to clean up.
