The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) Read Free Page A

about a raise this year.”
    I watched him walk out onto Ninth Street and hoped he’d get hit by a car. I was halfway through my third year as a part-time sales associate and making well above minimum wage. I didn’t want to have to find a new job and, as I walked through the store, moving a copy of Wicked from the end cap display back to the shelf where it belonged, I had to admit I liked working there too much to let Landon chase me away. From my first week in town, I had been drawn to the bookstore and when I’d finally applied, it had taken me seven months to get hired. Before Landon’s reign of horror, it had been a popular place to work.
    The shop had become a haven for me, a place to go where everything slowed down and, until Landon, everything had been simpler. The customers who walked through the door, whether tourist or local, had questions that were easy to answer. What book would I recommend to keep them busy on the coldest days? Did I think the movie version of a popular book was worth seeing? At the shop, I didn’t have to be myself or anyone else; I could just be a person who loved books talking to other people who loved books.
    I noticed that the window display was beginning to get dusty. It hadn’t been changed since Landon’s first days on staff. I removed the summer scene and replaced it with a simple winter display. I hung glass balls I found in the back room and littered the floor of the space with glitter and white confetti. In the middle, I placed an array of winter-themed books, from Ethan Frome to Dr. Zhivago .
    I left the store after midnight, stepped outside and paused for a moment, taking a deep breath of mountain air. At 7,000 feet, the air felt lighter and purer than it had on the East Coast. The night felt surprisingly warm for November and I hoped the higher temperature didn’t mean a mild winter. About two inches of snow covered the grass and the roofs of the buildings, but the street and the sidewalk were clear. I was hoping for a really good snow in the next couple of weeks. The town was absolutely gorgeous in snow and a good snowfall would mean a deep enough base on the mountain for me to ski without worrying about rocks cutting up my skis.
    An SUV rumbled by slowly on the dark, narrow Main Street, and I clasped my keys in my closed fist, a key protruding from between each pair of fingers, and hurried down the street to my apartment, the weather forgotten. Briarton wasn’t a dangerous town; in fact, most of the people I knew didn’t lock their cars or their homes, but the confrontation with Landon had scared me. I was pretty sure he was harmless, but I still didn’t want to run into him on the dark street. I almost wished Doug was with me, but he’d gone off to see his family again and hadn’t returned yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed away. He had to be about ready to cross over now that he’d accepted his wife moving on without him.
    I was half a block from home when I heard a loud laugh that seemed to have come from nowhere. My heart raced and I sprinted for my place. I felt silly for running, but that didn’t slow me down. I swung open the street level door and raced up the stairs. I had the key ready in my hand and opened the door, let myself in, and shut and locked it behind me. Breathing heavily, I walked into the brightly lit apartment and smiled at Angelica on the couch.
    Angelica sat up and stretched and I recognized from her droopy eyes and her mussed hair that she had been sleeping. In her drowsy state, she looked even more like a child than usual and I couldn’t help but smile. Her curly blonde hair stuck out from her head in all directions, and her tiny, upturned nose wrinkled when she yawned. “I recognized your feet, racing up here. You see some monsters in the shadows down there?”
    I had never told Angelica about the ghosts, but she had sensed that I was a little different from “normal” people and I had admitted to an overactive imagination.