There, a woman with half a face looked down at me disapprovingly. The other half of her face, a pale white skull, gleamed in the blue light.
She leaned in and whispered, “Do better.”
I rushed back into my body with a gasp. My arcana burst forth. I shoved and shoved. If Bastien wanted it, he could have it.
Already, I could feel my life waning. How long had I been trapped in that vision? When was the last time I’d drawn breath? My head swam. I had one directive, and I was going to see it through.
The beads of Bastien’s rosary warmed against my skin. I could feel the life of the others. When I shoved with my power, I pushed them right out of the beads. There was no room for the trapped souls with how much I gave Bastien.
His eyes widened. He’d felt it, the others escaping into their proper afterlife. I didn’t see them go. Something about what we were kept us from staying as ghosts. I paid that fact no attention because there was still a hand around my throat and a rosary sucking down my arcana.
Then, it finally happened. The beads shattered. Tiny glass shards sprayed in every direction. At the same time, Maddox broke free of the bone restraints. Bastien reared back in pain from the shattered rosary.
That’s when Maddox leapt.
Only, Bastien didn’t have the power that was keeping him alive. I’d been right. Bastien had been dead this whole time. He’d been using the arcana of other Reapers to keep himself firmly attached to his body.
When Maddox hit Bastien, the man’s body crumpled. Decomposition set in fast. Muscle threads came unraveled. His head lolled to the side. When he hit the ground, he flopped like a wet ragdoll.
Maddox jerked back.
His head lifted when we heard a ghastly scream. The other side had claimed Bastien’s life.
Though I breathed a sigh of relief, Maddox turned angry eyes on me. They burned with that same blue light I’d seen in my vision. His lips curled into a furious snarl. Tail lashing, he turned on me and lowered his head.
He didn’t have to say a word. I knew exactly why he was angry.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could manage.
He wasn’t going to believe me. I hadn’t meant to kill Bastien. Though Maddox wanted to put Bastien before a court and make him pay for his crimes the human way, there was no avoiding what had happened here. Bastien had been very dead this whole time.
A Reaper couldn’t stay here, it seemed. While other souls could come back into fully formed bodies, ours were different. We required vast amounts of power and sacrifice to stay on this side of the veil. The moment Bastien’s power source broke, so did his hold on his body.
Only, there was no time to tell Maddox any of this. All Maddox could see, from his perspective, is how Bastien fell apart when he hit him. Maddox likely believed that this could have been avoided had he not leapt. To Maddox, had he not rushed in for my sake, then this wouldn’t have happened.
That wasn’t the case at all. Bastien had been dead from the start. This was the inevitable end. And I couldn’t tell Maddox any of that. My words crammed in my throat as my adrenaline faded.
Maddox didn’t lash out. Instead, the connection between him and my arcana snapped. His body shrank, the bone tail vanishing. He turned and sprinted away.
I couldn’t say I blamed him. Alone, I pulled my knees to my chest and let the tears out.