The demon swivels its head toward me with sudden interest, sending another wash of fear over me. At the same time, a cold hand clamps around my ankle. “You—” a voice croaks, and I look down to see the man staring up at me, his face contorted with pain. His eyes, a striking ocean blue, are wide with astonishment. “You can see me?”
“Of course I can see you,” I snap. Why wouldn’t I be able to?
“You need to run!” he shouts, struggling to push himself up. The rain has plastered his shirt to his skin, allowing me to see his bulging muscles as they strain with effort. It might have been hot if the situation hadn’t been so dire.
“Not a chance.” I rip my gaze away and turn back to Cass. “I have to save my friend.”
“S-she’s caught”—the man coughs painfully—“in the demon’s snare. Nothing you can do. Save—yourself—”
But the demon has taken a step toward me, its red eyes firmly fixed on me. “Too late for that,” I growl, making a split-second decision. Whatever power the demon seems to have over Cass doesn’t affect me, so I wait until it gets close enough, then dart between its enormous legs and go for the weapon lying on the sidewalk.
“Run away!” the man bellows over the pounding rain. “There’s no use—you can’t—”
Ignoring him, I grab the scythe’s handle. The moment my hand makes contact with it, a golden light erupts from it, searing my eyes. Cassandra gasps—the first sound she’s made since being pinned in place by the demon—but I hardly register the sound as energy floods my body. I’ve never been much of a fighter, but suddenly I feel powerful, invincible, as if I can take on ten linebackers at once and win—
“Addy!” Cassandra cries. “Look at the scythe in your hand!”
I look—and my jaw drops. The blade has quadrupled in size, and is now the length and breadth of my entire body. It should be impossible to hold upright, much less swing, but for some reason the weapon doesn’t feel heavy at all. I give it an experimental swing, and it makes a whistling sound through the air as it cuts through the rain.
“This is impossible,” the man on the ground croaks, and somehow I hear him over the rain and thunder. I turn to see him propped up on his elbow, staring at me with a look of disbelief—which he shouldn’t be able to do. How in the human realm does he have the strength to sit up, much less talk? “You shouldn’t be able to—what are you?”
The demon, realizing its prey has escaped, turns on its hoof to face me. It lets out a bellow of rage as it charges me, but I dart out of the way, evading it easily. Cassandra, finally free of the demon’s hold, disappears just as the demon crashes into the storefront.
“Go for the head!” the man on the ground screams as the demon struggles to free itself. “You have to sever the head from the body!”
“Right,” I mutter as the demon pulls itself from the wreckage of the café. My palms grow sweaty against the scythe’s handle as the demon turns to face me once more, looking completely unscathed. You’d think there’d be a crack in its skull or something, but aside from the deep gouge in its torso, it looks unharmed.
I guess that means the scythe is the only thing that can hurt it.
The demon charges me again, but this time, I don’t run away. Following some instinct, I run toward it, then push off the ground and launch myself into the air. The laws of physics tell me that I should only be able to jump a few feet off the ground, but the power humming through my body tells me a different story as I rocket toward the demon’s head. I pull the scythe back like a baseball bat and swing it around, and the scythe slides through its massive neck as smooth as butter.
For a moment, I’m suspended in the air, the demon’s gaze wide with shock. Then its head slides off its shoulders, and we both plummet to the ground with a crash.
“Addy!” Cass rushes over to me as I lie face up, staring at the dark sky. She drops to the ground and leans over me, peering into my eyes. “Addy, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” I smile and clasp her hand. For some reason it feels warm, nothing like the usual icy sensation I get from touching ghosts. “I’m just glad you’re safe.”
“Right.” She pulls me to my feet, glancing nervously at the man on the ground, who seems to have fallen unconscious again. “Now let’s get you back into your body before—”
“Wait, what?” I dig my heels in, forcing us both to a halt. “What do you mean, my body?”
Cassandra jabs a finger toward a figure lying on the sidewalk. “That scythe is a spiritual object,” she explains. “When you touched it, it forced your spirit out of your body, which is all well and good, but now you need to get back into it—”
“No, she doesn’t.”
We both whirl around as the man gets to his feet. He still looks battered and unsteady, but much better than earlier, which seems crazy considering the amount of damage he’s taken. His ocean-blue eyes blaze with determination as he locks gazes with me. “You’re a reaper.”
“A what now?” I say, nonplussed.
“A reaper.” He gestures to himself, to the scythe he holds in his hand. He must have picked it up when I dropped it. “Soldiers of the angel of death. We help spirits—”
“Addy,” Cassandra says in a hurried voice, tugging on my sleeve. “Get back in your body, now.”
“—cross over to the afterlife, and kill demons like the one you killed tonight. No one else can kill a demon except for a reaper. No one.”
I fold my arms across my chest, annoyed at his know-it-all tone. “Well I killed one,” I say, perhaps a little more snidely than I should have, “and I’m not a reaper.”
“Again,” the man says, sounding exasperated now, “you have to be a reaper. I don’t know how you ended up in the human realm in a human body, but you can’t stay here. You have to come to the afterlife with me—I mean, to the academy,” he says hastily as a look of horror comes over my face.
He begins to advance on me, and I take a step backward, my sense of self-preservation finally kicking in now that my friend’s soul isn’t in danger. “The afterlife?” I say nervously as Cass begins tugging me toward my body. “Er, isn’t that where people go when they’re dead?”
“Yes,” the man says impatiently, “but you’re a reaper, so—”
“She’s not a reaper,” Cass says furiously, letting go of me so she can chew the man out. “She’s a human girl, a college student with her whole life ahead of her, and I am not letting you take that away from her!”
The man glowers at her. “It doesn’t matter what she wants—she has to go.” He raises his hand, and a blue glow fills his palm, taking the shape of a rune. “I didn’t want to have to do this, but if you won’t come willingly—”
He lunges at me, grasping for my forearm, but before he can make contact, Cass jumps in front of me. “No!” he yells as his hand closes around her shoulder. I throw an arm over my face as a flash of light envelops them, then lower it once it fades away. My heart plummets as I stare at the empty space in front of me.