Soul Screamers, Volume 1

The reaper’s scowl deepened. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s impossible.”


“There’s a way to find out.” Nash eyed me somberly before turning his penetrating gaze on Tod. “You’re right—we can’t get our hands on the list. But you can.”

“No.” Tod shoved his chair back and stood. Across the cafeteria, the mother and children looked up, one little boy smeared from ear to ear with chocolate ice cream.

“Sit down!” Nash hissed, glaring up at him.

Tod shook his head and started to turn away from us, so I grabbed his hand. He froze the minute my flesh touched his and turned back to me gradually, as if every movement hurt. “Please.” I begged him with my eyes. “Just hear him out.”

The reaper slowly pulled his fingers from my grasp, until my hand hung in the air, empty and abandoned. He looked both angry and terrified when he sank back into his seat, now more than a foot from the table.

“We don’t need to see the whole thing,” Nash began. “Just the part from this weekend. Saturday, Sunday, and today.”

“I can’t do it.” He shook his head again, blond curls bouncing. “You don’t understand what you’re asking for.”

“So tell us.” I folded my hands on the table, making it clear that I had time for a long story. Even if I didn’t.

Tod exhaled heavily and aimed his answer at me, pointedly ignoring Nash. “You’re not talking about just one list. ‘Master list’ is a misnomer. It’s actually lots of lists. There’s a new master for every day, and my boss splits that up into zone, then shift. I only see the part for this hospital, from noon to midnight. There’s another reaper who works here the other half of the day, and I never see anything on his lists, much less the lists for other zones. It’s not like I can just walk up to a coworker and ask to see his old lists. Especially if he’s actually reaping ‘independently.’”

“He’s right. That’s too complicated.” Nash sighed, closing his eyes. Then he opened them again and looked at me resolutely. “We need the master list.”

Tod groaned and opened his mouth to argue, but I beat him to it. “No, we don’t. We don’t even need to see it.”

“What?” Nash frowned, and I raised one finger, asking him silently to wait as I turned back to the reaper.

“I understand that you don’t work off the master list, but you’ve seen it, right? You said there are murder victims on it every week…?”

“Yeah, I see it every now and then.” Tod shrugged. “It’s all digital now, and my boss keeps it running on his computer all the time, in case he has to adjust anything. I glance at it when I go in his office.”

“Okay, that’s good.” I couldn’t resist a small smile. “We don’t need to see it. We just need you to look at it and tell us whether or not these three names were there.”

Tod leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, cradling his head in his hands. He rubbed his forehead, then took a deep, resigned breath and finally looked up at me. “Where did they die?”

“The first one was in the West End, at Taboo. Heidi…?” Nash glanced at me with his brows arched.

“Anderson,” I supplied. “The second was Alyson Baker, at the Cinemark in Arlington, and the third was at East Lake High School, just this afternoon.”

“Wait, those are all in different zones.” Tod frowned, and the well-defined muscles of his arms tensed as he leaned against the table. “If you really think none of them were supposed to die, you’re talking about three different reapers involved in this little conspiracy. Which is starting to sound pretty complicated, by the way.”

“Hmm…” I didn’t know enough about reapers to know how far-fetched a theory we were talking about, but I did know that the more people who were in on a secret, the harder it was to keep quiet. Tod was right. So…maybe we were only looking for one reaper, after all. “Is there anything keeping one of you guys from operating in someone else’s zone?”

“Other than integrity and fear of being caught? No.”

Grim reaper integrity…?

“So if a reaper has neither integrity nor fear, there’s nothing to stop him from taking out half the state of Texas next time he gets road rage in rush-hour traffic?” I heard my pitch rising, and made myself lower my voice as I screwed the lid off my Coke. “Don’t you guys have to turn in your…um…death ray, or whatever, when you’re off the clock?”

Tod’s perfect lips quirked up in a quick smile. “Um, no. There’s no death ray, though that would be really cool. Reapers don’t use any equipment. All we have is an ability to extinguish life and take possession of the soul. But trust me, that’s more than enough.”