“What about?”
“About what’s happening. I get the impression you think I’m killing people.” He cocks a brow.
I want him to leave. “Someone is.”
“Correct. Not me.”
I step to one side as a guy passes us to get into the room. “Who?”
“Tom gave you the wrong story. Yesterday, when I saw you in ICU, were you checking up on me?”
“Tom?” I rub my head. “When did you speak to Tom?”
“Yesterday. Nice guy, invited me to a party.” Amusement sparkles in his eyes. “Are you going to the party?”
“Maybe.”
“With Crazy Boy?”
I ignore him. “What did Tom say?”
“Look, why don’t we sit down?” I eye him dubiously. “I’ll buy you another cup of tasteless coffee?”
Curiosity overrides common sense and I sit at the scratched wooden table, wiping away crumbs from the last occupants. Finn queues with the two cups in his hands, waiting to pay. Has this become our unofficial meeting room? His height is noticeable around others, but he’s not as imposing as he could be. I study people around him, as if their reactions to him were a measure of his nature. A young guy leans around him to pick up a sandwich from the display and their arms brush. No reaction. I guess it’s just me who gets frozen pain when he touches; otherwise, how else could he be a nurse? The public has more of a problem with me than with Finn.
Finn returns and drops two chocolate chip muffins onto the table next to the cups. I pick one up and tear open the plastic wrap. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
The first time we sat and chatted, he was confident and aloof. This time Finn sits stiffly, tapping his long fingers on the side of his cup.
I lean down to get my phone from my bag and he startles. I frown. “I’m not leaving.”
“How long until your shift starts?”
“Half hour.”
Finn rubs a broad palm across his face. “There’s so much more going on than I thought,” he says. “I thought this was about you, but they’ve thrown me right into the middle of shit.”
His stronger language surprises me. “So you did... come here for me?”
We’re in a corner, at a table as removed from everyone else as we can get. I sip my coffee, grimace at the lack of improvement in taste, and then look expectantly at him.
“That Tom guy, he’s deceptive-looking.”
“What do you mean?”
“He has a lot of knowledge and looks so ordinary. He threw all these questions at me about Reapers, knew things I didn’t think humans did.”
I flinch at Finn using the word human so casually, putting people in a different box to us. “He has a network.”
“He said. I’d like to get to know him better. Maybe he can help me, once he realises I’m not the bad guy here.” He studies my attempt at an impassive face. “You do believe I’m not the bad guy?”
I slump back and study him. “You don’t have a bad vibe about you but I’m not the best judge, am I? I saw you with someone; someone Tom believes is killing people in the hospital.”
“Who?”
“The doctor I saw you with in the ICU room where the patient died.” I study Finn’s reaction, hoping to gauge the truth.
“He’s nothing to do with me! He knows who I am, and I’ve been trying to counteract what he’s doing. The doctor, he’s a demon and a powerful one. He’s orchestrating the deaths and calling on the Dark to take their souls.”
“And you’re not involved? Tom thinks you might be Dark.”
“No, Rose! I’m not a Dark Reaper!”
“What are you then?”
Finn rubs his hands across his face. “Fuck it,” he mutters, and drops his hands, fixing the intense blue eyes on mine. “What do you think a Reaper is, Rose?”
“Someone who takes souls when people die?”
“It’s a little more complicated than that. People are assigned their time of death before they enter the world and follow their human lives until that moment. Then, Reapers arrive at the allotted time to take the souls into the next world. We never kill people; we go to them when they’re dying. Dark Reapers want to take the souls for themselves instead. They interrupt the natural course of someone’s life by creating an accident or event and wait for them to die. If we don’t get to those dying quickly enough, their souls are lost to the Dark. Anyone who is taken by the Dark is tortured day after day until they break and agree to become a demon.”
“The Dark Reaper came for me and Jamie?”
Finn scrunches his face in the way people do when you know they’re going to give you bad news. “Jamie’s time was due to end; yours wasn’t, so I was there to take his soul. You weren’t supposed to die, too; when I saw you dying and saw the Dark Reaper, I knew he’d come for you. I was on my own and I didn’t know what to do.”