Free Reaper by Katrina Monroe

sitting to the side of the
scales.
    He crossed his arms and stole a glance at
Victoria, curled inside the scale like a fetus. “Now is not the
time for conversation,” he said, his voice just above a
whisper.
    “You’re different from the last time we met,”
she said, amused, and let the feather drift from her sword to the
scale.
    Bard held his breath until, after a momentary
wobble, the scale tipped in favor of the feather.
    “I hope so,” he said.
    * * *
    The sound of glass on concrete shattered the
silence of the stairwell.
    In hindsight, she shouldn’t have gotten him
drunk. He’d been in the body only a matter of hours. There was no
telling how he’d handle it. But then, it seemed like the only
logical thing to do: follow up what amounted to be a pre and post
mortem massacre with something strong and debilitating. Knock the
recent memories loose for a few hours. Give the psyche time to
adjust.
    There was something in Oz’s eyes that’d
freaked her out. Something deeper than just having seen so much
death: a disturbance so profound that it’d startled her, made her
reaction time to his advances even more sluggish than the whiskey
alone would have.
    She gripped the handrail and lowered herself
delicately onto one stair after another, each one seeming further
away than the one prior. It’d been decades since she’d been this
drunk and she couldn’t help laughing—one nasty, belchy guffaw. The
laugh of a person who sees disaster coming and has no way to avoid
it.
    Outside, the air had gone stale. Humidity
clung to her skin in beads.
    A voice in the back of Cora’s hazy mind told
her to bring up her concerns with Bard. He’d know better than
anyone if there was something to worry about. Maybe he hadn’t seen
it because he was still bitter over having to train yet another of
their ranks, or maybe he had seen it and refused to acknowledge it.
Or maybe she was just drunk.
    She ran her fingertips along the brick wall
of Oz’s building as she walked past and chanced a look up to the
roof. A stream of urine fell, splashing against the sidewalk.
    Didn’t matter what century she was in, men
were always pissing on things.
    It was late, but she knew Bard would be
awake. She’d talk to him. See what he thought. Set her fears at
ease. First, she needed to be less drunk.
    * * *
    Cora hadn’t noticed the almost perfectly
round splotch of blood on her jeans until she slid them down over
her legs and laid them on top of her shoes next to the fountain.
Without access to a proper washing machine, it’d be a bitch to get
out.
    Wearing only a pair of plain black panties,
Cora sat at the end of the fountain and let her feet dangle in the
water, running her toes over the coins that’d settled at the
bottom. She’d bet more than half of them were hers, back when she
thought wishes held some weight. Once her feet grew accustomed to
the cool temperature, she slid her body, inch by inch, into the
fountain until she was lying flat against the bottom, six inches of
water above her, and watched the ripples drift across the
surface.
    When she couldn’t stand to hold her breath
any longer, she pushed herself into a seated position and rubbed
the water from her eyes. Her head no longer spun and her vision
cleared. At the center of the fountain, a marble water nymph stood
guard against an advancing, fanged demon.
    “Feeling dirty?”
    “Anyone ever tell you you’d make one hell of
a professional stalker?” Cora said, squeezing the water out of her
hair. “Hand me my shirt.”
    She heard the slur in her voice. The soak
hadn’t done the sobering job that she’d hoped. Bard draped the
shirt over her shoulder.
    “What you call stalking I call concern.”
    Bard averted his eyes while Cora stepped out
of the fountain and finished dressing. Her shirt clung in awkward,
uncomfortable places so she pinched the front between two fingers
and pulled it away from her body. If Bard hadn’t shown up, she
would’ve walked home in her