Soul Screamers Collection. Rachel Vincent

own lives, we can’t take anyone who actually volunteers for the position. The theory is that only those who don’t want power are truly qualified to wield it. So a recruit has to willingly give up his or her life for someone else, with no expectation of reward.”

      For a moment, I could only stare at him. I was being granted an afterlife—naturally, it came with strings—because I’d volunteered to die? “Is that irony intentional, or just coincidence?”

      Levi laughed. “I’m going to let you answer that for yourself, after you’ve been reaping for a few years.”

      “How did you know I’d do it?” My mind was spinning with the sudden realization. “You must have known. Why else would you have been watching me for so long?”

      “I didn’t know. I took a chance on you, and I’m really hoping it pays off. We had a position to fill, so I started weeding through the possibilities. None of those actually scheduled to die qualify, of course, but anyone willing to die for one of them might. Usually that’s the parent of a small child, but there weren’t any of those on the lists I had access to, so I moved on to siblings. Nash was one of three scheduled to die in my district, and he was the only one with a same-gender sibling close in age. Theoretically, the two of you were likely to share a closer bond than any of the others I looked at. And the fact that you’re a bean sidhe meant that you knew an exchange was possible. Which, though unusual in a recruit, worked in my favor.”

      “But that’s all just theory,” I insisted. “In reality, one sibling could be such a heartless bastard that he’d make out with his girlfriend instead of looking out for his pain-in-the-ass little brother, thus dooming the poor kid to death by head-on collision.”

      Levi frowned. “You need to remember that Nash would have died anyway. Keeping him home wouldn’t have stopped that. And since you took his place, I think your survivor’s guilt can reasonably be put to rest now.”

      “You must have been dead a long time, if you think that’s even possible.”

      Levi gave me a creepy half smile, but made no comment on his age.

      “What about the other guy? The one who hit us?” I asked. “He survived, right? Couldn’t you have traded his life for Nash’s, and left both of us alive?”

      The reaper’s smile faded into an even creepier puzzled expression. “Yes. I could have. But he didn’t volunteer. And if I’d taken the drunk driver instead of you, I’d still be looking for a new recruit, now wouldn’t I?”

      I could only stare at him, stunned in spite of my knowledge that for the reaper, filling his vacancy was the bottom line. “You let a drunk driver live and killed me instead, just to get yourself out of the nursing home?”

      Levi shrugged. “The driver was of no use to me. You are.”

      “Where are we?” I pulled my hand from Levi’s even as the world solidified around me, and I was glad to be rid of the feel of dead flesh. Not that his hand felt different than any other hand, but knowing it was attached to a dead kid kind of creeped me out.

      As did the sudden realization that my hand was now also attached to a dead kid.

      “This is where they live now,” he said stepping off the sidewalk and onto the grass, lit only by a streetlight on the corner.

      I didn’t recognize the house. I only knew the town because we’d lived there as kids, before my dad died. But this time, my mom had settled into the older section of a large development. She’d found a corner lot, but the house was too small to have three bedrooms.

      There was no room for me.

      And though I knew I wouldn’t be moving back in, even if I took the job, that fact still stung much more than I’d expected. Mom and Nash were trying to move on from my death, and my presence would only disrupt their adjustment. The last thing I wanted was to make it harder for them.

      So why had Levi brought me?

      “What is this, a bribe? I thought potential reapers were supposed to be above bribes.”

      He shrugged. “If you’re going to take the job, there’s something you need to understand first.”

      “Something beyond the fact that I’m dead and invisible, and I was evidently dressed by Edward Scissorhands?”

      Levi ignored my sarcasm. “Yes. Officially, I’m supposed to explain to you that no matter how alive you might look, and feel, and even function, you’re not alive. Not like your friends and family are. You died, and your soul was removed from your body, and even though you’ve been reanimated, you don’t truly belong here. And you never will. I’m supposed to tell you that the sooner you come to terms with that fact, the sooner you can start to accept your new state of being and your job. And the sooner your family and friends can start to accept your death.”

      I frowned, arms crossed over my chest. “That sounds like advice from the Grim Reaper website.”

      “The recruiting handbook, actually, but you obviously get the idea.”

      “Yeah. So if I’m supposed to be letting everyone move on, why did you bring me here?”

      “Because I think that steering you away from your family is just going to make you more determined to see them. You need to understand that stepping back into their lives would only be making things worse. They’ll think they have you back, but when you start becoming more reaper, and less son and brother, they’ll just have to let you go all over again. A clean break is easiest for all involved.”

      Maybe. But anyone who’s ever broken a bone knows that even a clean break hurts like hell.

      “Are you going in?” he asked at last, squinting up at me in the light from the street lamp.

      “You can walk through doors and climb through windows, but walls and floors will be barriers. And, of course, no one can see or hear you.”

      I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

      Levi shrugged. “Even visitors bow to physics, in one form or another.”

      Is that what I am? A visitor in my own family’s home? I couldn’t take my eyes off the house, a physical reminder that I didn’t belong here. Not in their home, and not in their lives—which was just what he wanted me to see.

      “When you’re a reaper, there will be fewer physical rules to follow. But that’s a perk of the job. No benefits until you sign on the dotted line.”

      “In blood?” I asked, only half kidding.

      “Don’t even joke about that,” Levi said, and a chill raced the length of my spine. “Meet me at the hospital when you’re done.” Then he disappeared before I could ask him how I was supposed to get there, or why he’d be at the hospital.

      As I walked toward the front porch, that feeling of displacement swelled within me. My shoes made no impression on the grass. I couldn’t feel the breeze rustling tree leaves over my head. I was caught somewhere between dead and living, and even my mother had moved on without me.

      As evidenced by the house I’d never seen.

      I reached for the doorknob, and my hand went right through it. I should have seen that coming. Yet each new demonstration of my physical absence was more unsettling than the last.

      I closed my eyes and stepped through the door, and when I looked again, I found myself in an unfamiliar room, surrounded by familiar furniture. And stacks of boxes. The worn couch against one wall still sported the stain where I’d spilled a can of Big Red on the center cushion. The end table was still cracked from where I’d fallen on it, goofing around with Nash.

      The sound of running water drew my focus to a swinging door on the right hand wall. The kitchen. I crossed the room and stepped through the door, which refused to even swing in acknowledgement of my passing.

      My mother stood at the sink, drying her hands on a faded dish towel