There was a soft sound across the room. Both Storm and I whipped around, thinking we were somehow caught. But we weren’t. The sound came from a secret door. A secret sliding door in the bookcase. It opened, the doorway wide enough for a man to fit through.
Excitement pounded through me. Got you, I thought.
I glanced at Storm. “I thought you searched over there.”
“Shit, you expected me to find some kind of secret door? It’s probably a booby trap that’s going to suck us into the depths of hell.”
“I’ll say hello to the devil for you,” I said, returning G.R’s chair to the exact place it had been in and going over to the entrance and peering inside.
“Well?” Storm asked from close behind.
“No trips to hell today. It’s just more closets.” Three doors all in a row.
“What could he possibly keep in there?”
I wasn’t about to wait to find out. When I stepped into the narrow hallway, I half expected an alarm to go off, but nothing happened so I took another small step and then another.
My heart was pounding in my ears, drowning out the quiet and making me more nervous. I told myself to calm down, that it was stupid to get this nervous. I mean, I didn’t even act like this when I killed people. Guess my body was more afraid of the Reaper than my brain realized.
But fear of the Reaper was why I had to keep going. Being scared of him was unacceptable. I stopped in front of the first door I came to, staring at its cherry finish.
I was surprised when I opened the door.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Something sinister and twisted.
I was a little let down when all I saw was more bodies. “It’s just bodies,” I said, irritation lining my tone.
Storm finally got over his fear this was a portal to hell and came inside. “What’s so special about these bodies?”
What, indeed?
I looked closer, having to squint a little because the lighting in here was so dim. My eyes first went to a contrast in the dark. A body with blond hair. Overly long, messy blond hair.
I grabbed the body, gripping its shoulder and yanking it out so I could see it.
Like a freight train, recognition slammed into me.
It was me.
Memories of looking in the mirror when I was alive crashed over me. Wave after wave of broken clips of memories… of me brushing my teeth, combing my hair, studying a black eye or a busted lip.
This was the body I was born in. The body that carried me through my life. The body that used to laugh and eat cookies. The body that used to hug… them.
“Uh, Charming?”
I shook myself but still kept hold of my body. Of my past. “It’s me,” I said, then cleared my throat. “This is my body.”
He let out a low whistle. “Why’s it in here?”
I shook my head and carefully put it back where it was. Then I looked at the one beside it. It was a man I’d never seen before. He had dark hair parted on the side and combed over. It was an old hairstyle from a very long time ago. There wasn’t anything remarkable or special about him so I moved on to the next body.
It was a woman.
I reached out and pulled her out for Storm to see. “Check her out.”
She was wearing a long gown made of rich woven fabric. I couldn’t tell exactly, but her hair looked like it was a shade of red and it was done up in a style of many curls all piled on her head. She had pale skin and what appeared to be freckles splattered across her cheeks. She was pretty attractive, if you liked redheads.
“When’s the last time you saw a girl in G.R.’s closet?” I asked Storm, not taking my eyes off her.
“Um, never?”
“Exactly. He doesn’t use women as Escorts. He thinks they’re too soft to kill.”
“Well, he hasn’t met my ex,” Storm quipped.
It was something I didn’t agree with the Reaper about, though I never said anything. Who he chose to make an Escort wasn’t something I cared about. I wasn’t going to make friends with them and I worked alone so it didn’t matter in terms of my job either. But if you asked me, a woman had the potential to be the perfect Escort. Because of a woman’s softness, their girly-like qualities, they were often underestimated. They were too often thought of as innocent. Many Targets wouldn’t see their death coming until it was already delivered.
“What’s in the next one?” Storm asked.
It took me a second to close the door of the closet I was standing in front of. It was surprisingly hard to shut away the body I’d just found.
But I did. Because I knew I wasn’t going to leave it there.
I pulled open the next door.
There was a single body.
I sucked in a breath.
It was her. My sister.
Sadness overcame me. Sadness for her… about a life cut way too short. A life lost that was all my fault. And now there she was, hanging in a secret, dark closet like she was someone’s shirt. Like she wasn’t once brimming with life with her own set of dreams and wants. She had been a person… a beautiful and innocent person. And now she was here. Held hostage by a man who shouldn’t even have her. I should have known she was here. I should have done something.
Her light hair was around her shoulders and she was dressed in the same clothes she was wearing the last time I saw her.
“Another woman?” Storm said. “She’s hot.”
I spun around and snarled. “Watch your mouth.”
“Whoa. I didn’t mean nothing.” He backtracked. After a short pause, he said, “I take it you know this one too?”
“Yeah,” I said, my voice hoarse. “Yeah, I do.”
But really, there wasn’t anything here to know. Yes, I recognized the body, but it was merely a shell of the person who lived inside. It was she who I missed. I didn’t think she was here. I would have known. After all these years of working for the Reaper, of butting heads with him, there was no way he could have kept the fact that my sister was still alive a secret.
Besides. I knew she was dead.
I was the one who killed her.
“I don’t mean to interrupt your… uh, reunion,” Storm said over my shoulder. “But we need to hurry.”
He was right.
There was still one more closet to look in. Gently, I closed the closet containing my sister and faced the final door.
“If there isn’t something besides bodies in that one, I’m going to be very disappointed,” Storm told me. “I mean, really, what kind of Grim Reaper doesn’t have at least one sinister thing in his secret stash?”