It was Wendy Beasley.

I set down my cup with shaking hands.

"As though the poet himself were courting death... Evi?"

"Hmm?"

Mrs. Beasley closed the book, keeping the place with her finger. "Any of this helpful to you?"

She looked so innocent. So small. Incapable of hurting a fly, much less a human being. Much less her best friend.

"Um, did you major in English? I mean, when you went to college?" I had to keep my voice from shaking. I wasn't nervous. I wasn't nervous. Just kept telling myself that.

Evangeline Wild... You are surely the next to die...

She shrugged and laughed. "Yeah. I've got a Masters, too."

"And you didn't recognize this poem when I asked you about it last night."

Mrs. Beasley raised her eyebrows. She leaned in over the table, sliding the book into her lap. "There are a lot of poems out there, Evi. The world is filled with poetry."

I nodded. "Most of it bad."

She giggled again. "That's right." I could hear the darkness underlining her words.

My vision blurred as my heart thudded painfully against my ribs. I was sure my hands were trembling. I could hear the click of the mug against the saucer. Mrs. Beasley was watching me.

A smile curled at the corner of her lip.

"You put that asterisk by the poem," I said, "with the same red pen you used on Quentin's thumb. After you killed him."

She squealed with laughter and threw the book across the room. It landed with a thud in the sink. I think I heard a cup break. Gla.s.s shattered, shards fell to the floor.

"You think you're so smart. Just like your mother."

I was almost paralyzed. All I could feel was the hot tea, wrapped in my right hand. Mrs. Beasley stood up, roughly shoving her chair away.

"Not smarter than I am."

"Why did you do it?" I whispered.

Her fingers were still on the table. Weight pressed on them until the knuckles were flat and white. Bent over, she stared down me from what seemed like a great height. Outside in the gusting wind, some rusty metal was creaking. Back and forth. Back and forth.

"I am the poet. And I am courting Death."

I jumped up and hurled the hot tea in her face. She screamed, like the wretched howl of an animal, and clutched at her burning cheeks. I bolted for the door. The bra.s.s k.n.o.b slipped in my hand. I got my fist around it and...

"Clever." She was laughing again. "But you didn't think I'd let you get away that easy, did you? Evangeline Wild..."

The door was locked. It was solid, heavy wood and it barely moved in the door frame when I threw my weight against it, bashing with my shoulder until it hurt. Old-fashioned, no deadbolt, no way to get it open without a key. Or a hatchet. (Or a rocket launcher, or superpowers, or... Evi, get real.) "I can use you," said Mrs. Beasley. She no longer fought to keep the menace out of her voice. "I think you'll be my next love letter. Long, red hair. That'll get his attention."

"Whose attention?" I demanded. "Arbor's? You're leaving messages for Death with dead bodies, is that it? You think you're going to win Arbor over with these games?"

"Clever," she said again. She tapped her head. "But not smart."

I was still scrabbling at the doork.n.o.b, trying to force it open... I saw too late that she had pulled the bucket and rope down from the wall. It was old, thick. She snaked it around my neck too easily.

The stubborn k.n.o.b slipped from my fingers and I brought my hands up to my chin, struggling with the rope as she cinched it tighter and tighter. The rough fibers bit my skin.

"I love the feel of a good strangle," she said. "Nice, thick cord around a supple neck. Oh..." She pulled me halfway across the room, spilling me over the sink, closing off my trachea. My hands reached out, groping around for anything, anything.... "Even better when it's young."

Head was on fire. Spots circled my eyelids like lazy gnats.

"Shh." She rocked me like a sick, fussing child. "Hush little baby, don't say a word. Momma's gonna 'splode ya like a dream deferred."

The last thing I remember was the rope slithering off my neck. One sharp breath.

And black.

When I came to, the damp stench of mold almost overwhelmed me. My head was spinning. I felt like I was suffocating, back at home under my blanket after that nightmare.

I flirted with unconsciousness again, almost believed it was true. Home. Bed. Unreliable window.

But the knifing pain in my head wouldn't go away. And the dirt under my face was clammy, the musty bas.e.m.e.nt smell a.s.sertive. It rose in my nostrils like bubbles in sparkling water, bursting into my brain.

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go."

Her voice came from some dark corner. My eyes were barely open. Somewhere I found the strength to struggle. My hands were bound tight, and so were my ankles. I managed to right myself. Roll and hunch my back until I was in a sitting position, up against some kind of wall.

"h.e.l.lo, Evangeline."

When I tried to speak, I found my throat was sore. I could barely make myself heard. "Hi ho, b.i.t.c.h."

"Language like a sailor. Anyone ever try to give you a temper? You know, because of your hair?" I felt her fingertips rake my scalp.

"Just a stereotype," she said. "I bet people think you eat a lot, too. Gorge like a little hoggy all the time on cake and candy." She made snorting noises. And she laughed. "People used to call me mouse girl."

Her thumb brushed over my forehead.

"Nothing in stereotypes. They can be useful, though. n.o.body thinks mice are dangerous animals... But I contain mult.i.tudes."

She grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked my head up. I cried out. The sound was hoa.r.s.e and painful. Tears ran down my cheeks as she flicked on a flashlight and shined it into my eyes until they went temporarily blind.

"I was going to kill you right away," she said. "But I've decided to make this one special. After all, he hasn't responded to my others."

Others. Ernest, Quentin... my mother?

"My other love letters," she said. She set down the flashlight in the center of the room. I blinked away the afterimage and slowly came to see that we were in a close, cement-walled cell, crowded with junk around the corners. Bare where I sat.

Her face broke out into a smile. "I remember the first time I saw him, Evi. He was like an angel. My husband was in hospice, and the doctors said he wouldn't live through the night." She pulled up a rusty fold-out chair and sat down opposite me. There was something in her hands.

"I was half-asleep in the rocker beside my husband's bed. His breathing was labored and it kept me awake. There was a bright light. All of a sudden my world condensed, like a collapsing telescope. It was as though the ceiling opened up, and the night sky came into the room. All the stars, planets, and aliens from other worlds. All the wonder of creation.

"And out of the center of the galaxy stepped a man. He was pale, with glowing skin and dark eyes. He came lightly up to my husband's bed and bent over him. Studying his pulse and his wheezing, hard-fought breath. There was a depth of compa.s.sion in this man's face that I had never seen before. And I asked, 'Who are you?'

"He was startled. He jumped up, and I began to see past the luminous fingers and black hole eyes.

"'Wendy,' he said. 'Do you recognize me? I've come for your husband.'

"'What are you going to do with him?' And I did see his features, now. The uniform he was wearing. I knew who he was.

"'I am going to be his guide on a long journey,' he explained. He indicated the cosmos, terror and wonder hanging over our heads like ripe fruit. 'Don't fear me.'

"I didn't. Then he leaned down and kissed my husband on the mouth, my big sweet John, drawing his soul out of his body as he came free with his final breath. I heard the death rattle. Then they stood there, the two of them. John a shining star. I waved goodbye and watched them leave, flying up into the sky. The telescope expanded, and each second they were light years gone. Until the ceiling closed over me again. And I was left with the corpse."

I squinted at her hands, straining my overloaded retinas. A blue bottle. Some sort of metal stem sticking out one end. She pa.s.sed it back and forth, back and forth. Her face was almost peaceful.

"I was never happier than the day of my husband's funeral. He came, you know. That wonderfully compa.s.sionate man sat in a pew beside me, and sang hymns to the dead. Oh, he said he was supposed to make me forget about seeing him. That's what usually happens. But he didn't. He said he felt so sorry for me; he wanted me to remember that my husband had gone to a better place."

"That was nice of him," I rasped.

"And it hurt him so to tell me."

I came even further out of my helpless stupor, shifting my weight a little in the darkness. "Hurt him? In what way? Did he cough up blood?"

She glanced down at me, moving the blue bottle with the metal stem from her right hand to her left. "What a stupid question," she said. "Of course not. He just got a little queasy, that's all. He's strong."

Stronger than Arbor.

"He told me that he had recently come to an important decision. He's a reaper; that's what he calls himself. There are hundreds of thousands of reapers, all over the world. One in every community. A trusted, well-known face to calm the souls of the dead and carry them beyond. But his years of service had worn him down. G.o.d, Evi! Think about it. Think about having to be present at every single death in the history of Stevens Peak. What would that do to you?"

I remembered the fire in Oldtown. The limp arm of the baby, the father's face as he realized his children were gone forever.

"He had so much suffering inside him. He'd absorbed so much grief. So finally he made a plan."

I moved my weight over my knees, came to a sitting position and grimaced as pain spiked up the sides of my arms. Felt like they were being wrenched out of their sockets, bound tight at my back. "And what sort of plan did Tobias Collier make?" I asked.

She giggled. "I'm so obvious, aren't I? He took me home after the funeral. We made love every day for a week..."

"Sick."

But she didn't hear me. "Thousands of kisses. Never on the mouth of course." Her face became morose. Then angry. "He stopped coming by. He said to go on with my life. I'd been given a great gift, the knowledge of what comes next. He left me..."

I heard something click. A blaze of flame and a running hiss hurt my eyes. The blue bottle was a blow torch. "Burn me, Evi?" she said. "I'm gonna burn you."

Beasley laughed, face illuminated by the unsteady flame. Then she reached behind her chair and pulled out a fire iron. It was a long, thin poker with a beveled edge.

"He keeps ignoring my love letters. Your mother was the first, as I'm sure you've guessed by now."

She held the evil-looking instrument to her blowtorch, showering sparks. The tip began to turn a dull red.

"He said he only meant to comfort me. Didn't have time for more than a fling, not with his plan set in motion. Reapers and humans can't have real relationships anyway... He refused to believe I could love the man who would kill me someday. Well! I'm a mature woman; I think I know what and whom I want for myself. So I tried to show him that he was wrong. I called his house, his office. I sent him gifts. I followed him to and from the police station. But he picked up a knack for avoiding me."

The poker was now incandescent, glowing like tungsten in an old light bulb. She turned the torch off, held the poker with both hands and gazed up at it lovingly. "I know what the other ones have lacked," she whispered. "Your heat..."

She knelt beside me, and I could feel scorching waves off the brand hit my cheek even as my lower body shivered in the cold bas.e.m.e.nt. My hands were so tightly bound that my fingers were numb. "And he knows you," she continued, in a low voice. "He thinks your sister is strong. A worthy ally for him. His plan is all he cares about."

Beasley's eyes were gleaming. Wide, white, and full of cold zeal as she tipped the poker toward my bruised neck.

"Remember that time I got sick?" I whispered. My whole body was shaking with fear. Desperately, I tried to appeal to the woman I knew. The Wendy Beasley who had saved books for me at the library. The Wendy Beasley who had been my mom's best friend. "Remember, Mrs. B.? I was in third grade, and Mom couldn't come pick me up from school to take me home. I had the flu real bad, and I didn't think anyone would come. I was in the nurse's office, lying on the couch. I felt like I was dying."

"And I brought you home with me." Beasley shrugged. "I made you soup. Big deal."

"Please don't do this."

I don't know if she heard. She pressed the hot poker into the side of my neck. At first I didn't feel anything. Just pressure and warmth.

And a split second later, the bite of the burn as it seared through my skin. I screamed. I felt like I was ripping my throat apart. Tears coursed down my cheeks; one hissed as it ran off my jaw and dropped onto the iron. Mrs. Beasley leaned into it, getting her weight behind the brand. I tried to swallow. Couldn't. My chest ached, and the cord cut deeper into my wrists as my muscles contracted in response to the pain. Something shifted.

"Beautiful." She took the iron off and blew on my neck, as though she were blowing on her fingernails to dry some wet polish. "You can't see it," she said. "But it's nice and straight. The first strike."

"What are you doing?" My nose was stuffy and I wept freely now. "Just tell me what you're doing. G.o.d, please, I just want to know." I sounded pathetic.

"My last invitation was too subtle," said Mrs. Beasley. The blowtorch flared to life again. She was heating up for another strike. "At first, I just wanted to see him. The calls, the stalking... Nothing worked. So one day I decided to force him to see me. I killed your mother. I wanted to watch him take her in all his glory, like the night he took my sweet John up to the stars. But he never came. He let her die uneasy, just to snub me." She laughed, turning the iron in the flame. "I guess that means she never made it to the other side. Oh well."

Another sob escaped my ravaged throat. So my mother's life had been thrown away on a whim? I never even got to say goodbye... never got to tell her how much I love her. My head swam with sickness, my gut churned fury that had nowhere to go.

"I hate you," I cried. The words sounded so weak.

"Join the club."

The iron was getting hot again. She spoke quickly. "I did a little research. I wanted to find out more about this grand plan of his that he was so obsessed with. You know, shared interests and all that c.r.a.p? Anyway, it turns out there's quite a body of information on reapers, if you know where to look. It wasn't easy to track down. Takes asking the right people."

"But you're resourceful." My voice was nothing more than a whispery scratch. But my hands were working now. The cord around my wrists had slipped as she was branding me. I could almost reach into the side pocket of the skirt I was wearing.

"True." She set the blowtorch aside and laid the poker across the seat of her rusty chair, searching for something on the ground. A pair of scissors, which she used to cut into Britta's shirt and bare both my shoulders. "Turns out that when someone like Toby chooses to reap people before their time, he gains power. And brings violence to his community. Happens a lot in the bigger cities."

"I thought you said Toby was compa.s.sionate. Caring."

"And farsighted." She had the poker in her hands again. As she pressed it to my skin, near the site of the other burn, I gritted my teeth and willed myself not to scream. I barely heard her words as they floated serenely over the sound of my sizzling flesh.

"You know, reapers are pretty low on the cosmic pay grade. They're grunts, and they have the worst job in the world. Thankless. Endless. But Toby wants to put a stop to all that. A few hundred souls sacrificed to build up his occult powers, and he can join the crusade to end death. Forever."

She lifted the iron and I slumped back against the wall. My nerves were on fire.

"Can you imagine it, Evi? All that suffering, just gone? There's a group of reapers out there who have turned rogue. The rebellion. They're fighting every day for us, for our right to live! In Los Angeles, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, New York..."