Reaper (Lightbringer) Read online

It was still alive.

  “Oh, poor baby,” she whispered, handing the light to Jon and slumping down the side of the shed to bury her hot face against her knees. Don't cry, Wendy, she thought fiercely, don't you dare cry. “What happened?”

  “Dog? I don't know.” Chel's voice quivered. “It doesn't have three days to wait for help, Wendy.”

  “At this rate it doesn't even have three hours,” Jon said. “Not in this cold.” He twisted the flashlight until the LEDs flicked off. “What do we do?”

  “I can call the 24-hour vet,” Chel suggested, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. “Mom's rolodex is still in the cabinet, right?”

  “I don't think they take wild animals,” Wendy said, wracking her brains for the right course of action. Why did Dad have to be out of town? Why now, when they needed him?

  “Then what do we do, Wendy?” Chel knelt beside Wendy and pushed a hank of Wendy's hair off her face. “Because we're out of ideas over here.”

  Now, up close to the shed, Wendy marveled that she hadn't heard the raccoon before. Its pain was whisper-bright, like silvery bells chiming in the Never, audible in an unexpected way, like slivers of ice against the back of her neck.

  Wendy remembered her mother's cat Jabberwocky, how he'd hung around after his death and kept Wendy company in the lonely months after her mother had been hospitalized. Jabber'd been spying on her for the White Lady but Wendy hadn't known that at the time; she'd been grateful for his ghostly presence, no matter how touchy he could get at times, and even if it was weird to hang out with a dead cat. According to Piotr, animals could communicate in the Never, she remembered. Hopefully this one wouldn't be the exception to the rule.

  “Go see what Google has to say,” Wendy told Jon, holding her hand out for the flashlight. “See if there's any other company we can call.” She pushed off the wall to stand and looked at Chel. “You phone the vet. See if they're willing to take him. It. Whatever. I'll stay here for a minute, see if I can figure something out.” She waved her hands at her siblings. “Go. Shoo.”

  Silently they followed orders, slipping inside the house like ghosts themselves. Wendy waited until she saw Chel's shadow moving around in her bedroom upstairs to call upon the Light and slip through the thinnest side of the shed in the Never rather than waking the neighbors by risking the noisy, rusted squeal the shed door usually made. Once inside she coalesced back into her living shape, eyes open to the spiritual realm.

  The spirit of the raccoon huddled in the same corner as its body. Thankfully its incorporeal body was in much better shape than its physical one. The physical shell hardly twitched at her approach; up close Wendy could see the narrow gap in the back of the shed. Where the shed pressed against the overgrown hedge and honeysuckle at the back of their yard, some animal—perhaps this raccoon, perhaps something else—had carved out a sizeable tunnel to allow easy passage from yard to yard, making their shed a nice, cozy haven.

  “Hi,” Wendy said nervously, kneeling down. “Do you understand me?”

  The soul of the raccoon sniffed at her hand and Wendy felt what it meant to convey rather than heard what it was saying.

  It was like a waterfall of images, nothing like what she'd expected after discussing animal communication with Piotr. He'd described it as words in your head, but this was more like a rapid-fire slideshow shot directly into her brain, accompanied with tastes and smells that left Wendy momentarily shaking and overwhelmed.

  Moldy bread. Apples. Open bags of Cheetos, jagged Sonic bags with hot dog remnants. Carrot tops and onion roots and dead squirrels and half a garden snake. A bent can of tuna fish. Cold, salty fries out of greasy cardboard cups. Licking days-old sauce off of In & Out wrappers.

  “No, I don't have any food right now,” she apologized, stunned by the depth of the raccoon's expression. “I'm sorry. What happened?”

  Separated from its mother, from its family. Tried to follow the smell but found a cat. Big cat. In the hills. Dog. Smelled the blood. Chased the raccoon. Sleep. Exhaustion. Pain in face, pain in ear. Another dog, this one bigger, meaner, no shiny around its neck. A stray. Big. Black. Teeth, nails, pain. Then…people smells.

  Not supposed to go to people smells, stay near woods, stay near shiny cans with good food at edge of woods, but never people. People are mean. People hurt with big sticks. But pain. Dog won't go into people places. Run, limp, hide. Pain in neck. Pain in face. Pain. So thirsty. Front leg hurts lots. Paw doesn't work. Back leg doesn't work, drag it. Found old tunnel. Thirsty. So thirsty, but finally found good smells, this people house smells like tunnel, like woods. This people house smells like peace. Rest. Sleep. Quiet. Safe.

  Slowly it dawned on Wendy what the raccoon was trying to get across. She knelt down beside him, swallowing deeply, and fought the tears pricking the corners of her eyes.

  “You came here to die,” she whispered. “You can smell…you know what death smells like?”

  The raccoon's spirit ears flicked and Wendy got a clear image: the raccoon's father crawling away from the highway, back legs crushed and covered with the blood-rust-salt smell of death, one of the raccoon's sisters—only a pup—clutched in his mouth. She tumbled safely down the embankment into the rich loam at the edge of the woods, stinking of death, and then, after a long, long time, their father died, curled on the side of the road while the people sped past.

  The others went into the woods but this raccoon didn't; he waited until his father died to rejoin his family. He sat vigil. He waited. Anger, helplessness, frustration, sorrow. But most of all, the overwhelming feeling of want-to. Want-to-help. Want-to-fix. Want-to-make-the-pain-stop. Want-to-want-to-want-to.

  Wendy swallowed thickly, a tear tracking down her cheek as she thought of all the hours she'd spent at her mother's bedside, talking to her mom's unmoving body, ignoring the beeping machines and savagely wishing that whatever had happened to her had just finished her off in one fell swoop rather than leaving her mother a slowly degrading shell of her former, fiery self.

  “I…I can't,” Wendy said, scrubbing a hand along her face. “You're going to die anyway, right? So I don't have to…to do this. Right? Right?”

  The raccoon blinked.

  Wendy shivered. “Don't look at me like that.”

  A tap on the window made Wendy jump and stagger back, cracking the back of her head against the dusty shelf lining the side wall. A watering can tumbled down and smacked the raccoon on the haunches. He stirred in the living world and a flood of guilt left Wendy shaking.

  “I'm so sorry!” she gasped, snatching the can up and setting it aside as Chel and Jon forced the shed door open. It squealed just as loudly as Wendy had suspected it would.

  “How did you get in here?” Chel panted, watching the raccoon curled in the corner sadly. “More importantly, either one of us could probably bench you one-handed, so how did flimsy little you close it again?”

  “Not important,” Wendy said, handing off the flashlight to Jon again. “What did they say?”

  “No one is answering,” Jon said as he turned the flashlight on and set it on the shelf Wendy'd smacked her head on. “I Googled as hard as a guy can Google and it's all voicemail and ‘Have a happy holiday!’” He scowled, the shadows lying darkly across half his face. “Figures.”

  “The vet?”

  “They don't handle cases like this,” Chel said, scorn dripping from each word. “The night assistant said to just let it curl up and die and not to approach it. Rabies.” Chel glanced down and shook her head. “Though you shot that right out of the water, huh?”

  Nervously, Wendy licked her lips. “It's in pain, guys. Real, serious pain. And it's going to die anyway. We all know that, right?”

  “Duh,” Jon said, not unkindly. “But what do we do about it? I don't think there's any way we can make it more comfortable before it dies. And hauling a heater out here to keep it warm before it dies might start a fire.”

  His legs were completely crushed but he finished crawling across the highway
, Wendy thought. When I'm a mom I hope I'm half as good a parent as that.

  “I have an idea,” she said softly. “Jon, is Mom's old spade-fork-thing in the garage? And the rake and shovel?”

  Jon paled. “Yeaaah,” he drawled. “Why?”

  Wendy forced a sad smile. “I'm going to put it out of its misery. Go get the fork and a pair of Mom's old gardening gloves. And a garbage bag. Two. No, three.”

  “Wendy, I don't know—” Jon began but stopped when Chel grabbed him by the arm.

  “You sure?” Chel studied the raccoon. “It's going to be bloody. And it really might have some kind of disease. There's no foam or anything, but—”

  “If it were me,” Wendy said, “I'd want to be put down. Okay? I wouldn't want to linger.”

  Jon stiffened. “This isn't about Mom, Wendy—”

  “Just get the damn fork, Jon!” Wendy snapped. Then she winced, regretful of her tone. “Sorry. Sorry. This is hard. Just…please, Jon. Please. Get the fork. And the plastic. Especially the gloves and maybe a latex pair from under the sink too, just to be safe. Okay?”

  Softening, he nodded. “It's okay. This is rough. I'll get all the stuff, but I just want you to know that you don't have to do this.”

  “If not me, who? You? Chel? I saw those cookies, Jon. You both have been doing so well with your personal stuff, neither of you need to be freaked out right now. I can take care of it.” She smiled wanly. “That's what I'm here for, to do the tough stuff. I've got this. I promise.”

  Jon opened his mouth to reply but thought better of it. “Okay. Point taken. You're just trying to look out for us. Thank you.” He hugged her briefly with one arm, turned, and left, leaving Chel and Wendy huddled around the raccoon's body.

  “We could maybe bundle it up in a blanket instead,” Chel offered softly. “I bet if we showed up at the vet they could give it a shot or something, even if it's not policy. No one likes to see an animal in pain.”

  “They won't,” Wendy said. “You know they won't.”

  “This sucks.” Chel rubbed a hand across her mouth. “I wish Mom was here.”

  “Me too,” Wendy said softly, still brooding on her mother, on the Walkers, on the past few months and Eddie wasting away in his own hospital bed, the girl one bed over slipping into the Light that hadn't yet come for him.

  How long would Eddie lay there because his mother couldn't do what Wendy was about to do? And what would Wendy do if Mrs. Barry decided to grow a pair and pull the plug before Wendy found Eddie's soul and his cord? She shivered. It was too much to think about right now. Better to concentrate on the mute, agonized animal at her feet. Better to handle one thing at a time.

  “Hey Chel?” she said softly. “I meant it, by the way.”

  “You mean it?” Chel's hand on her wrist was humid and hot, the skin damp from nervous sweat. She may have quit cheerleading, but her fingers were still strong, her grip still sure. Their mother's cracked and ancient floor-length mirror leaned against the opposite corner; Chel, faintly lit by moonlight, looked ghostly in its silvered reflection, all color bled away, a shadow of a girl in grey and white. “What do you mean, Wendy?”

  Wendy turned her face away from Chel's reflection. Lights from the street were reflecting strangely in the depths of the mirror, red dots, probably streetlights, floated over Chel's left shoulder like hanging eyes, giving Wendy an uneasy feeling deep in her gut. Crazily, she wished Piotr were here. He'd been around forever, right? Maybe he'd tell her the easiest way to do this, the easiest way to kill another living being, even if it was some dumb animal whose best idea of security was pillaging rest stop trash cans for refuse.

  “If…if I'm like this…in pain and wounded, please, please pull the plug,” Wendy whispered, scrubbing her hands across her face. “Don't let me suffer, okay?”

  “Eddie's going to be okay,” Chel said, misunderstanding Wendy's nervous energy.

  “I know he will,” Wendy agreed. “I'm going to make sure of it. But this isn't about Eddie. If I go under again…”

  “I'll let Dad know,” Chel promised. Then, softly, “You ready? Here comes Jon.”

  It took only a moment to prepare; Wendy donned the thick gloves and claimed the long-handled spading fork, which had been used to turn their mother's compost heap before she'd bought the tumbler two years before. The tines weren't as needle sharp as she'd have liked, but they weren't dulled by years of use, either. Their mother had been conscientious about her tools. She'd been conscientious about most things, actually; a fact Wendy had only recently really started appreciating.

  “Jon, take the shovel,” she ordered nervously. “Chel the rake. Jon, point the light this way, okay?”

  In the Never, the raccoon moved away from them, avoiding their living heat by huddling behind the mirror and peering around the edge. He bared his teeth at the mirror for a moment, and Wendy wondered what the reflective surface looked like to the spirit. She knew that she could ask, but there were more important tasks at hand.

  “I'm sorry,” Wendy said out loud, both for the raccoon to hear and for Chel and Jon. This was going to suck.

  Chel used the rake to turn the body onto its back as best as she could; Jon used the shovel to press the head as gently as he could into the floor. Chel pressed the rake into its belly, so they were effectively holding it down. The raccoon, so far gone, whimpered only a little.

  Shaking wildly, it took Wendy four tries to line up the tines with the animal's chest, centering the middle tines over the heart as best as she could. “Sorry,” she whispered again. “Sorry-sorry-SORRY!”

  At the last “sorry,” she shoved down with the fork with all her weight, feeling the metal prongs punch through fur and flesh and jab themselves into the rotting floor beneath, the squish of the heart squelching around the tool, and the hot splatter of blood gushing against her shins. The raccoon keened once, twice, and jittered for a moment against her boots before going limp and still.

  “I'm going to be sick,” Jon said, and retched on the raccoon. The backsplash joined the blood on Wendy's jeans.

  “Mom,” Wendy said, turning to look up at the ceiling as her brother and sister staggered out of the shed, both gagging, “if you're out there somewhere…please make sure that these gloves don't have holes in them.”

  Though they'd helped with the death, neither Jon nor Chel was able to bundle the body up in the garbage bags. They took turns digging a hole in the corner of the yard instead, nervously joking about ground water contamination while Wendy eased the stiffening corpse into the garbage bags by herself and scrubbed the floor down with a bucket of bleach-water.

  The raccoon vanished in the Never; no Light came for it. One moment it was there, watching Wendy dispose of its body, the next it was a flick of a tail over the edge of the back hedge and rapidly running along the fence toward the highway. Wendy sent good thoughts its way and kept scrubbing, letting the swish-dunk-scrub-scrub-scrub keep her body occupied, and sank thankfully, mindlessly, into the zen of cleaning.

  It was past one when the deed was done, the dirt was tamped down, and the only other evidence of their deed was crusting on Wendy's pants. She didn't even wait to get inside the house before stripping off her jeans and her father's sneakers, flinging them both into the garbage can beside the door to the kitchen. Jon took a cookie from the stack as they entered; Chel, surprisingly, did so as well. Wendy, stomach churning, bounded pantslessly up the stairs, ready to call this terrible day a wash and go to sleep.

  Stripping off the remainder of her clothes and flinging her top at the closet and herself on her bed, Wendy smacked her knuckles against the seatbelt buckle she'd tucked between her pillows that morning. Whimpering in pain, Wendy yanked the buckle out and glared at it; her first instinct was to chuck it against the far wall, but the buckle had been Eddie's. It was a seatbelt buckle from his father's car, scavenged for Eddie after the wreck that took his dad's life and woke Wendy to her Lightbringer duties and the Never. He'd given it to Wendy a few weeks prior,
just as school had let out for the holidays, along with a love letter and a promise to bide his time and wait for her to love him as much as he loved her.

  Now, sitting on her bed, Wendy turned the buckle over in her hands again, weighing its heft in her hands, her subconscious mind ticking aimlessly along as she stared at the edges of the buckle and depressed the button in the middle with her thumb. The buckle was jammed, locked, stuck in one spot. Like Eddie.

  “Eddie,” Wendy mused, letting her eyes relax, letting the Never swim in and out of view. “Eddie, Eddie, Edd—”

  She suddenly broke off. Wait a second. Wait just a second…

  Before, Piotr had brought her items from his kidnapped children. Pieces of them that stayed solid as long as the children were safe and in one piece. A hat, a cloak, spectacles, all firm and solid in the Never so long as the children they belonged to still existed in the Never.

  Just like Eddie's buckle.

  Examining the buckle in the Never was something Wendy had never thought to do before; she opened herself up and was happy to see that her impulse had been correct.

  The buckle was as solid in the Never as it had been in real life. Wendy poked it and the clasp clicked, coming apart slightly in her hands before catching on some inner cylinder and jamming. With a little bit of force, Wendy was able to click it shut again.

  Excited, Wendy flung herself off her bed and hurried to her closet, grabbing the closest comfy outfit and dressing as fast as she could. Her boots were on a minute later and Eddie's jacket was in her arms before she was out the door, bounding back down the stairs and speeding past the twins as she burst out the front door and sprinted toward the car.

  “Where are you going?” Chel called from the front stoop as Wendy revved the car and slapped it into reverse.

  “Hospital!” Wendy yelled back. “Be back soon!”

  Thankfully it was the middle of the week—even the cops seemed to be resting after the excesses of the holidays, and the highway was nearly empty as Wendy hurried up the familiar route toward the hospital and Eddie. Christmas was over, but KOIT-FM was still playing holiday tunes; Wendy cranked a jazzy Jingle Jingle Jingle remix and tapped the steering wheel as the 101 spun out beneath her tires.