Devilish

No plans this time, no pages strewn about the table or bar, dimpled at the edges by damp fingers or glasses. He hadn’t abandoned the idea of building a future in this town but there’d been no room for the long tube of the blueprint carry case as he’d been called from his room that morning by the tug of the tether that seemed to exist between his kind and the dead and dying. Without a second thought Cory had found himself pushing away the plan he’d been working on in the motel room he was still sharing with his sister, leaving pencils and the heavy metal ruler behind and those graphite smears on his fingertips again.

No company either. And he’d looked.

Cory raked his lower teeth over his upper lip, fingers trailing up and down the outside of the beer bottle Olivia had set down beside the steak and fries he’d ordered as an early dinner of sorts. Like he had done for Dani when he’d first arrived, he looked up for Officer Vale wherever he went, particularly here. Hoping to catch another look at her, a few more minutes talking to her … or the angel inside of her … the thing that had brought her back to life the same way Augustus had done for him. The reaper and the angel were a million miles apart in their approach but in their way each had given someone else a chance. His had just come with conditions, including dealing with the dead.

Swallowing, Cory forced himself to release the bottle and reach for the cutlery to eat. He needed to. The Reaper might’ve kept him going without any sort of effort but he wasn’t entirely like most of the other Reapers he met. He’d died, sure, but he hadn’t been brought back from the other side, or Heaven or Hell, as one of them, he’d been inhabited instead. A vessel for a rogue reaper in the same way the angel was to Claudia. It meant he had all the human needs of anybody else, Augustus filled them when he felt like it but some part of him needed this, to feel like he hadn’t come back as something other than who he’d been … something inhuman. He guessed it was what had turned him into some sort of campaigner for those who hadn’t died right. Those who were outside of the natural order.

Cutting a strip free from the end of the steak, he popped it into his mouth, chewed, felt it stick almost like sawdust as his mind tried to skitter to how he’d gone himself. The drunk driver driven by the seemingly horrific truth his new wife had dropped on him smashing into him, rolling him off the road and into that lake. An accident, but one that the new wife had tried to repair all the same. Cory grabbed his beer, swallowing deep gulps until the steak washed down. In his way he supposed he was paying it on, for Leah months ago, for the banshee who’d died at Whitmore a month ago. Or trying to at least. Leah had become what he was, almost. The banshee … the jury was still out. He glanced down at his plate again, reached for the cutlery, he had to take care of himself while he was doing that, take care of Dani too … and …

Blue eyes skittered up as someone slid into the booth opposite him, filled with hope for a moment, then a trace of confusion. Leah. Was it really that easy to have someone snap into existence in front of you like that? A single thought. Maybe. Maybe it was some remnant of the solid he’d done her only to find out that she hadn’t been a hundred percent honest with him. ”Leah…” he started, making some noise deep in his throat as she snagged fries from his plate. He automatically reached out to smack at her fingers the way he always had done with Dani when they’d been growing up. In that time before dinner had always been something she’d ended up pulling together for them while their mom was drinking hers. ”Oi. Get your own.” His lips pressed together then like he’d overstepped some line. ”I could say the same. Didn’t think this was your sort of place. You’re not … working?” His gaze rose, skittered around the place like he’d suddenly see someone’s liver exploding right in front of his eyes or some old guy falling off of a stool, clutching at his chest as his ticker finally gave out.

Tagged: LEAH SIVAN * Word Count: 771

He was gullible. Coming back, figuring out what Augustus had been able to do to him because he hadn’t read between the lines of the little deal they’d made should’ve cured him of that but Cory suspected he was never gonna learn. He believed in people, believed them when they told him stuff and he couldn’t even blame having died before he barely got to live for it. It was simply the way he’d always been, doggedly trusting in his sister when she’d practically taken over raising him after their dad had died, believing the doctors when they said the treatment would work, he would beat the cancer raging in his blood, hearing only the truth in every word pouring out of Augustus’ mouth, out of Leah’s too.

Cory watched her as she slid into the booth he’d occupied in a corner of Campbell’s. He should’ve been wary, pale eyes narrowing at her, wondering what she was doing back here but he didn’t have enough guile in him for it. His brow furrowed instead, confusion at her sudden appearance leaving his stomach feeling even more off kilter than it had done when he was trying to remember the joy in eating a good steak, trying to relearn how to eat like … one of them.

Leah obviously didn’t have a problem with it, she was already stealing fries from his plate, popping them into her mouth. On autopilot he reached out to bat at her. He’d have done it to Dani when they kids, squabbling over who had the more fries on their plate, stealing them back and forth from one and another while their dad tried to play referee. ”It’s not free for me. Money doesn’t grow on trees you know.” Especially not when you didn’t actually have a job. There’d been a little money in his bank account when he’d died, but that was long gone, the bank account closed down along with the whole of the rest of his past life. Dani had been helping him out but he knew he couldn’t keep up taking from her. At some point he had to find something to keep himself solvent … without resorting to whatever Augustus had been doing before Death had caught up to the pair of them and given Augustus a slap on the wrist.

Inching the plate back towards himself Cory picked up his knife and fork again, concentrating on it until he looked around the bar for the reason why Leah was here. There was usually only one reason why any of them were around. He nodded jerkily, his eyes dropping back down to where the knife was sawing through the meat. ”It’s Mystic Falls, they could do.” There was a reason why there were so many reapers were here in the first place. As Leah continued to probe, Cory shrugged, the gesture twitchy, his shoulders shifting uneasily as they dropped, like he wasn’t entirely comfortable in his shirt. ”I’ve been here … spending time with my sister, doing … working.” It was the easiest way to explain it.

He cut off as the waitress approached. That sweet smile curling over his lips as he gestured to the beer bottle on the table. ”Can I have another of these too, thanks?” He wasn’t much of a drinker, never had been. Hell, with Leah around he probably shouldn’t have drunk another anyway, any sort of impairment with her was just going to leave him more trusting, that bit more gullible. ”Had a run in out in the woods,” he told her, his voice low, faintly anxious. Like he didn’t want anybody else to hear. ”Have … have you ever heard of anything called a banshee? I mean outside the normal folklore stuff of wailing women.” He bit his lip, studied her until he popped the steak into his mouth. He hadn’t. Didn’t know about half of what was out there still, but then the brother of the guy he’d found dead in the woods had fallen to his knees right there, screaming hard enough that half the town had to have heard it.

Tagged: LEAH SIVAN * Word Count: 688

He never would’ve made much of a secret agent. Cory had gone through a phase when he was about twelve, not long after their dad had died. He’d come a special agent, the sort that everybody thought appeared in black suits and sunglasses to deal with the bad guys. Somehow he’d stop all those robberies from happening before they could hurt anybody. Picturing himself slapping handcuffs on them and marching them off to jail had stopped the nightmares for a few nights but before he’d even admitted it aloud to Dani he’d realised how stupid the idea was. He couldn’t go a full day without tripping over his feet somewhere. Gawky, even before he’d sprung up to tower over his sister, uncoordinated, the worst secret keeper that side of the universe, he would’ve been awful at it. Even now keeping his mouth shut was hard. A serial over-sharer, it was killing him to keep his mouth shut, especially from Dani. Wasn’t like reaping souls was something you could go home and talk about over dinner, was it?

Even here his eyes cut around the other tables as Leah cocked an eyebrow at him. Heat blotched his cheeks as the waitress approached but the nerves gave way to a smile for her, his fingers not smacking the bottle over to soak the table with the foamy remnants of it while he asked for another. Blue eyes cut to Leah as she called the waitress back, asking for one as well. Cory pressed his lips together as she teased him. The heat burned harder until he was practically wishing it away. ”I don’t … normally. Not a drinker at all.” He remembered when Claudia had found him here that second time they’d met, he’d been under the influence then, whatever Olivia had poured for him just enough to settle his nerves. ”Is this like the police? Are you meant to be sober as a judge on shift?” It wasn’t like they were shifts, or even times when he officially clocked in. Augustus was laughing at the thought, the echo of sound in his ears making him flinch away from it. Wasn’t like he’d had the best teacher for all of this either.

Maybe if he had he’d have been able to give the banshee he’d found in the woods better advice than he had. The man had stuck with him, the shock of it something he could understand, the brother who’d stumbled into the woods to scream over his brother’s body digging deeper. He didn’t know what Dani had gone through after he’d been pulled out of the water. Up in Heaven they didn’t let you see the aftermath, you didn’t carry the burden of seeing the people who loved you broken by the sight of your body. Cory’s movements were twitchy as he cut into his steak, his eyes flicking back up to Leah as he tilted his head. ”Not crazy,” he muttered softly. At least the guy hadn’t seemed to be.

He set his knife and fork down as the mouthful had disappeared. That disconcerting feeling was back in the pit of his stomach. Until Augustus had shown up he hadn’t known any of this was real. Poor, blind little Cory. He pinched his lips together, staring at Leah as she began to explain. That was pretty much the lore he’d managed to pull together on the computers at the library, all the old tales. Usually them being women, shrieking when death was approaching. The voices were new but then again not a single one of the websites he’d been to had actually been about the supernatural, just gathering the normal folktale stuff together instead.

Raking his teeth over his lip, he gnawed for a moment before he sighed. He went to slide into the table but the waitress was there with the beers. Flashing her a smile, he waited, then Cory planted his arms on the edge of the table. ”I met one … saw another. One of them had been killed. I think it was a hunter. I didn’t get the whole thing, just saw the end of it and him standing over his body after. Just after I started talking him through the whole thing … you know … us not being able to do anything for them … his brother showed up and screamed over him.” His mind flashed to what Leah had said about them doing that in bed and the flush in his cheeks burned hot enough for him to spontaneously combust. ”I don’t think what happened was right. Like something’s going on here and people are being killed. It … does it sound suspicious to you?” Reaching for his beer, he frowned. Leah might not’ve been Death, might not’ve been a walking supernatural encyclopaedia but she’d been sunk into all of that up to her neck far longer than him.

Tagged: LEAH SIVAN * Word Count: 817

Almost a year since Augustus had slithered into his Heaven to make him a deal to get back to earth and Cory was so sure he was still way out of his depth. There’d been times in his life, as it’d been before the drunk newly wed had driven him off the road, where he’d felt like if he stopped paddling he’d go under, the one thing keeping him afloat was Dani and his trust that whatever happened, they were gonna get through it together. This reaping thing wasn’t something Dani could help him with though, not anymore than he was able to help her with what she’d become in the wake of what had happened to her. Death himself could’ve filled him in, handling the questions he lobbed at him with either the infinite patience of a father handling a barrage of his kid’s questions or with that cutting attitude that had left Augustus cowering in his brain that first time.

Or Leah could.

Cheeks burning now at Leah’s teasing Cory wasn’t sure whether to admit he had no clue what he was capable of outside of playing Ferryman for the souls, taking them to their final resting place with an apology on his lips and the sort of understanding that burned bone deep. He dipped his chin slightly, cheeks growing hotter as he thought Leah said getting drunk wasn’t possible for them. Cory tilted the glass he’d already had beside him, studying its depths. ”I haven’t … tested it. You think all of us are that way or …” If it was just her. He hadn’t pressed too far about Leah’s history other than what she’d told him when she’d he’d run into her that first time … just enough to get naïve Cory to run to his boss to beg him to bring her back. That’d supposedly been a death before her time too.

The banshee had been different though. He’d seen the hunter cut him down, had heard him begging, talking about the woman he’d loved at the end. Even if the guy had been crazy nobody deserved that. Naïve or not he couldn’t believe that sort of slaughter was justified. Cory made a low sound in his throat, his brows knotting as he stared back down at his steak, cutting it with savage moves. ”He didn’t seem crazy.” A quiet argument, not much vehemence to it. He didn’t know, not really.

Like a kid, Cory wanted to squirm in his seat as he told his story. Most of it had to sound crazy. One banshee dying, his brother sweeping in to scream him out. The whole thing had shaken him then, left him sitting in the room he shared with Dani after, feeling like the bitter cold of the air in those woods had come back there with him somehow. He saw the look change in Leah’s eyes as he watched her while he talked. Was she thinking about the way she’d been killed? Her own brother behind it instead of broken up by it. If she did he wasn’t so sure he wanted to hear the story again.

The laugh that rolled out of Cory as the waitress returned with everything was touched with embarrassment, his cheeks still glowing in a way he wished he could turn off, making just that tell-tale pink stain vanish. He reached for his beer, took a slower sip than he might’ve otherwise done, knowing he couldn’t rely on it to get him just drunk enough to not get all bashful. ”I know there is. People die everywhere, I get that, but have you ever counted up how many bodies you’ve been called to here? It’s a tiny town, that’s not normal.” Not that he’d had a massive amount of experience anywhere else but he could read, he’d seen the reports on the local news stations too. People were dying here far faster than they should’ve been.

Cory reached slowly for his own fries, toying with one before he bit the end off of it. When the brother had arrived, stumbling out of the woods like he was a puppet with his strings cut he’d run, at least far enough that he’d watched the rest of what had happened from among the trees. The people who’d rushed in, the flashing blue lights, the arrival of the detectives the thing that had sent him disappearing fully in the end. ”Just the dead guy himself. He wasn’t going anywhere with me, he did say he hadn’t done what the hunter had accused him of though. You’ve met a hunter before?” Concern laced his features for a moment, sent him squirming. He hadn’t known any of that had existed, not until Augustus had shown up and since then he’d constantly tried to err on the side of caution, not wanting to screw up this second chance he’d been given.

Shaking his head, Cory dropped the rest of the fry. He scooted in slightly, elbows on the edge of the table as he watched Leah washing down her fries with the beer. She definitely knew more than he did. ”So you think he was probably innocent too? The hunter thought he’d helped some siren kill a boy. I believed him when he said he didn’t but I’m …” he sucked in a breath, knowing there wasn’t any point tiptoeing around the truth. ”I’m naïve. I believe people when they tell me stuff cause I wanna see the best in them. If he was … there’s gotta be some way to change it right? Like I did with you?” He could imagine that pinched look on Death’s face if he went to him and asked again for a favour. Even if the boss said yes, would the banshee agree to having to do all of this? He hadn’t been like Leah, he’d been shaken, his voice cracking, he had a girlfriend. That had to make a difference to it all.

Tagged: LEAH SIVAN * Word Count: 996

Cory stared at his glass of beer dubiously, like it’d suddenly grow fangs and bite deep. He wasn’t a drinker, never had been. In fact, these trips to Campbell’s and the Grill were about the most he’d necked ever. Even then it had been one or two glasses, like he’d thought there’d been some limit to it and the idea of trying to reap souls drunk seemed ridiculous. Most of the time it felt like he couldn’t keep doing it sober. Augustus was the one pushing most of the time, doing the dirty work with his hands. Cory sank his teeth into his lower lip, his brows drawing together before he set the glass down again. ”I … didn’t know about any of that before I got the offer. Can most things do that? Heal everything and drink somewhere dry?” He shot Leah a dubious look. He was still so far behind the game and that left him vulnerable in a way. Something he’d sworn he wouldn’t be again.

Augustus’ laughter rang out in the back of his mind. Mocking, inaudible to the woman sitting in front of him. Fat chance. He was only out of heaven because Augustus had made the deal with the witch and he’d known just how naïve the person he was dealing with was. Still was.

At least he guessed he was getting a ton of practice. Mystic Falls had problems. Maybe he’d been blind before, not just to the supernatural that had to have been on practically every corner but well beyond his view his entire life, but to the sheer amount of death too. Getting to Mystic Falls and seeing the scale of it here … something had to be wrong, something more than either Augustus or Death was gonna tall him. Probably all in the name of protecting the naïve newbie. Cory’s lips pressed together as Leah pushed the blame on vampires, his head shaking vehemently back and forth. His glass hit the table with a quiet clunk. ”Not just vampires. There’s other things that can do that too … human things too. I think something’s going on with them here too.” There hadn’t been any talk that’d made it clear but when bodies had arrows or bullet holes in them like the banshee had it was pretty obvious it hadn’t been a supernatural creature just killing for sport or food.

Cory made a quiet sound in his throat, that sense of being disconcerted by the whole thing growing until the pit of his stomach felt sour. What appetite he did have was dialled back enough that he was just picking at the food now. A nibble at the end of a fry in contrast to Leah just shovelling them down. It took a convulsively swallow to even get it down, pale eyes settling uneasily on Leah. ”They honestly think what they’re doing’s helping? That guy he didn’t do anything. He wasn’t a danger.” He wasn’t sure he could say the same for Leah, she’d lied to convince him to put a good word in with her for Death after all.

Throat constricting, body angled over the table, Cory nodded surreptitiously. He was sure the banshee had said siren. In the midst of everything else it hadn’t seemed that weird a word. God only knew what else was out there. ”Yeah, a siren. Are they real like everything else?” Like Leah was his font of all knowledge on all of this. He could’ve gotten a book out of the library, read up all about Ariel and all the sirens that’d lured the Argonauts away in the classics but it didn’t make any of it real. He’d believe whatever others told him to, and that included Leah. Cory frowned faintly, reaching out for his own beer to wrap his hand around it. ”I don’t know, that’s the problem. It’s all weird.” He pushed the glass away, raised both hands to scrub over his face to try and wash his frustration away. ”No,” he admitted on a sigh, scraping his hands down far enough to stare at her over his fingertips. ”Where do you even start on something like that? Yeah, if you wanna help … yeah. Where do we…” He couldn’t even finish the thought. Maybe Leah was the wrong person to have gone to. Dani was the investigator, if she’d been in town maybe she couldn’t figured something out.

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