Far from the energetic rush of adrenaline I’d expected based on certain television hospital dramas, the actual emergency room was quiet and somber. Patients waited in thinly cushioned chairs lining the walls and grouped in the middle of the long room, their faces twisted into grimaces of pain, fear, or impatience.
One old woman languished in a wheelchair beneath a threadbare blanket, and several feverish children shivered in their mothers’ arms. Men in work clothes pressed crusted gauze bandages to wounds seeping blood, or ice packs to purple lumps on their heads. At the far end of the room near the triage desk, a teenager moaned and clutched one arm to her chest as her mother thumbed through an old tabloid, blatantly ignoring her.
Every few minutes, employees in scrubs entered through one end of the room, crossed the faded, dingy vinyl tile, and pushed through a set of double doors on the other end. Those alone read from charts or stared straight ahead, while those in pairs broke the grim near-silence with incongruous snatches of casual conversation. Regardless, the employees went out of their way to avoid eye contact with the people waiting, while the patients eyed them in hope so transparent it was uncomfortable for me to watch.
“Do you see him?” I whispered to Nash, skipping over the sick women and children to scan the faces of the men.
“No, and we won’t until he’s ready to be seen.”
I stuffed my hands in my pockets, physically resisting the urge to take his hand for comfort, just because the ER creeped me out. If I couldn’t handle the huddled masses staring into space like zombies, how could I hope to face the Grim Reaper? Or even a grim reaper? “So how are we supposed to find him?”
“The plan was for him to find us,” he whispered back. “Two bean sidhes walking around while he’s trying to work should have drawn him out pretty quickly, if for no other reason than to run us off.”
“Then I’m guessing he’s decided not to show.”
“Looks that way.” Nash’s gaze settled on a sign on the wall, which pointed the way to the gift shop, the cafeteria, and the radiology lab. “You thirsty?”
“Not really.” I’d polished off a thirty-two-ounce soda in the car, and would have to find a bathroom soon as it was.
“Then come sit with me. If we make it clear we have all night to wait, he’ll probably show up to hurry us along.”
“But we don’t have all—”
“Shh.” Smiling, he slid one arm around my waist and whispered into my ear. “Don’t tip our hand.” Pleasant chills rushed down my neck and throughout my body, originating where his breath brushed my earlobe.
We followed the signs down the hall, around the corner,and into the cafeteria, which was still serving dinner at seven-thirty in the evening. Nash bought a huge slice of chocolate cake and a school-size carton of milk. I got a Coke. Then we chose a small square table in one corner of the nearly empty room.
Nash sat with his back to the wall, eating as if nothing were wrong. As if he went looking for an agent of death every evening. But I couldn’t sit still. My gaze roamed the room, skimming over a custodian emptying a trash can and a woman in a hairnet inspecting the salad bar for wilted lettuce. My feet bounced on the floor, my knees hitting the underside of the table over and over. Nash’s milk sloshed with each impact, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He was halfway through his cake—minus the bite or two I’d found room for—when a shadow fell across our table. I looked up to find a young man standing in front of the empty chair on my right. He wore faded, baggy jeans and a short-sleeved white tee with no sign of a coat, in spite of the temperature outside. And his fierce expression did nothing to harden cherubic lips and bright blue eyes, crowned by a mop of blond curls.
Nash didn’t even look up.
I glanced at the blond guy, then followed his gaze to the disposable salt-and-pepper shakers in the center of the table. Assuming he wanted to borrow them, I was reaching for the salt when he pulled the empty chair outand dropped into it, crossing bare forearms on the table in front of him.
“What do you want?” he growled in a pitch so low and gravelly I would have sworn it could never have come from such an angelic face.
Nash took his time chewing, then finally swallowed and pushed his plate back. “Answers.”
I frowned, gaping at the blond in disbelief. “You’re the grim reaper?”
Tod glanced at me for the first time, his frown practically etched into place. “You were expecting someone older? Taller? Maybe kind of gaunt and skeletal?” Contempt dripped from his words like acid, and his focus snapped back to Nash in annoyance. “See? That’s the problem with the old title. I should start calling myself a ‘collections agent’ or something like that.”
“Then they’d just make you wear a suit and tie,” I said, amused by the mental image.
The corner of Nash’s mouth twitched.
“Who’s the sidekick?” Tod tossed his head my way, but his attention—and irritation—remained focused on Nash.
“We need to know about the exchange rate,” Nash said, cutting me off before I could introduce myself.
Tod’s brows gathered low over shadowed blue eyes, and in the gleam from the fluorescent bulbs overhead, I noticed a short, pale goatee on the end of his strong, square chin. “Do I look like the information desk to you?”
“You look …bored.” A mischievous look spread over Nash’s face as Tod’s scowl deepened, and I wondered what I was missing. “The hospital not keeping you busy? Hey, I hear there’s an opening at Colonial Manor. You liked it there, didn’t you?”
“The nursing home?” I asked, but neither of them even glanced at me; they were too busy glaring at each other. “Why would a nursing home hire someone to kill its patients? For that matter, why would a hospital?”
Nash chuckled and ran one hand through his head full of messy brown spikes, but Tod’s eyes flicked my way, and his jaw tightened. “Does she come with a mute button?”
“He doesn’t work for the hospital,” Nash said, ignoring the reaper’s hopefully rhetorical question. “He works in the hospital. And at this rate, he’ll be stuck here for the next century, at least. Right, Tod?”
The reaper didn’t answer, but I could hear his teeth grinding.
“You know, if you keep bottling up your anger like that, you’re not going to be anywhere a century from now, much less still working full-time.” Wait, was I needling an agent of death? Probably not the best idea, Kaylee…
“Reapers don’t age,” Tod snapped at me, while still glaring at Nash. “It’s one of the fringe benefits.”
“Like us, right?” I glanced at Nash just in time to see him flinch, and knew I’d said something wrong. And when I looked at Tod again, I found him staring at me in surprise, an impish grin highlighting his angelic features like light from above.
“Where’d you find her?”
“We do age,” Nash said, but the last word was clipped short, like he’d almost said my name, then left it out at the last minute. And that’s when I understood: he didn’t want Tod to know who I was.
I was fine with that. The very idea of Death knowing my name made my skin crawl. Even if this particular Death was