I pursed my lips. My hands curled into fists at my sides, but I relaxed the second I exchanged a look with my mom. If I did anything, said anything… If I stood up for myself, then she would be at the receiving end of the yelling and the bruising. Stepan fucking Lazarov loved to tell Ilena Lazarov that she’d raised a brat of a child and that it was all her fault I didn’t respect him. So, I dragged in a breath, centered myself, and walked past my dad, up the stairs, and into my room. I was careful not to stomp and not to slam the door, either. He would have taken it as a sign of rebellion.
But why would he get so mad over a stupid letter that isn’t even real? Grim Reaper Academy. Yeah right! Something was off. Shady. Dad usually got worked up over stupid shit, but this was taking the cake. Unless… But no. I shook my head vigorously.
What if…? No. I couldn’t let my mind wander, come up with crazy, feel-good scenarios. Those days were gone. I wasn’t five anymore. Still…
With a deep sigh, I plopped onto my bed. I stared at the ceiling for a while, wondering what one would learn at a Grim Reaper Academy, anyway. How to collect souls when their time came? I snickered and turned on my side, sneaking my hand under my pillow to get ready for some extra sleep. My fingers met the sharp corner of something that seemed to be made of paper, and I jumped on my hands and knees. This can’t be! I pulled the object out, and next thing I knew, I was staring at the exact envelope my father had just ripped to pieces and thrown in the trash. I could see the thin, slightly discolored lines where the massacre had damaged the red paper. As I took out the letter and read it again, with new eyes, my heart beat wildly in my chest.
This was some sort of fucked up sorcery. It had to be. And the even more fucked up part was that it appeared to be real.
CHAPTER TWO
Grim Reaper Academy.
There weren’t many details in the letter, but there was a website, so I fired up my beaten-up laptop and punched in the URL. A dark-themed page loaded, all vintagey, shabby looking, with the logo in red and gold, those runes I was already familiar with lining the upper side of the blade of the scythe that was the focal point of the logo. Grim indeed.
As I scrolled down the front page, then went deeper and clicked on each and every link I could find, I started getting chills down my back and arms. It was in the middle of August, hot as hell, yet here I was, pulling the blanket off the bed and wrapping myself in it. It seemed so real. No matter how hard I tried to divine some clue that it was all a joke and the website had been created by someone with too much time on their hands, nothing came up. I was at a loss. Maybe it was just my crazy desire for something supernatural to happen in my life. Maybe it was me. Maybe a sane person would have seen the hoax in an instant, but I’d already accepted a long time ago that I was anything but sane. Suddenly self-conscious, I pulled at the stretchy bands around my wrists, covering more of my skin. I needed to raise some money to buy myself longer ones. The old wristbands only covered a quarter of my forearms. Maybe I could find something that would reach my elbows and not look ridiculous or too goth in hot weather. Yeah. A sane person I was not. Because sane people didn’t do what I’d done.
I shook my head and resumed my research. There were pictures of the top former students, and as I studied them, two things shocked me. First, oh my God, they were all gorgeous! Girls and boys, it didn’t matter. They all looked as if they’d been ripped out of a bunch of Hollywood movies about vampires and other breeds of sexy immortals. Secondly, their names. Okay, some of them made sense, but… Tariel? Calipso? Who in their right mind named their kid Calipso?! Unless we were talking about the Greek nymph herself?
That’s ridiculous. Okay, so they said this is the first time they’re inviting a human to apply, but that doesn’t mean nymphs exist. Or did it?
There are only twenty-two Grim Reapers in the world, the site said. Every two hundred years, our school takes in a new generation of Reapers and prepares them to replace the old generation. Delivering the final blessing of Death to the worthy and the unworthy is one of the most stressful and straining careers, and our institution is the only one currently accredited to prepare the future Grim Reapers of the world. Our mission is to turn you, honored candidate, into the Slayer that you are meant to be. We believe in hard work, dedication, perseverance, and true, healthy competition.
Well, I did enjoy some competition. At my high school, there wasn’t much of that. Academically speaking, of course. Who got the most uninspired tattoos didn’t count as healthy competition in my book. Nor who could chug ten beers in ten minutes and not throw up all over the front of his own shirt. Or her shirt. Who could prank the professors, who could steal more lunches from the odd kids in the corner of the cafeteria, who could stuff the blue-haired girl’s head in the bathroom sink and dump bleach on her head…
I shut my eyes tightly. That had happened in the first year of high school, and I got my hair and scalp burned pretty good. I had recovered since then, kept stubbornly dyeing my medium-length blond tresses blue, and the bitches in my class eventually forgave me for it and moved on to other methods of torture. Fuck it. Even with all the crap I had to endure every day because I was different and dared to ace all my classes, the bullies at school were still better than my bully of a dad. They’d forcefully bleached my hair, so what? I could take it. But being called names by my own father. Don’t go there, Mila.
Where was this place, anyway? I clicked on the Contact page and found an address and a map. Salem, Massachusetts. Fitting. Pretty far from my home sweet home Hazard, Kentucky, but I was sure I could make it if I really wanted to. If my dad let me…
I snapped the laptop shut, grabbed the ominous letter that shouldn’t have been under my pillow (not if what I’d learned about physics was correct), and snuggled in bed. It was 8 AM, and since my dad had made it clear he didn’t want to see my face today, I could still get some good, well-deserved sleep. But there was no way I could lay still, let alone drift off. Not after everything I had learned. Invited to apply to Grim Reaper Academy. An honor. The only human they had ever sent an invitation to. Only twenty-two Reapers in the world, and I could be one of them. A chance that only popped up once every two hundred years. So, once in a human lifetime. My lifetime.
And what if it’s real? What if I can finally be someone? Someone else than Mila Lazarov, the idiot who thought that if she dyed her hair blue, it would make her special? When I’d started dyeing it, in fifth grade, I’d been the only one. The weirdo. The professors called my mom about it and my black nails once a week, and the other kids admired my boldness. But that ended the second I went to high school. All girls were dyeing their hair green, pink, blue, and purple now. It was allowed. They had tattoos, I didn’t. They were cool, I wasn’t. They were bitchy and as stupid as a bag of rocks, I was smart and despised for it. I was pretty, too, and the boys noticed me. Not in a good way.
It’s real, I finally decided. It’s real, and I have to go. I don’t care what Dad says. I’ll run away if I have to. Of course the letter was the real deal. It had magically materialized in one piece in my room, under my pillow, after my father had turned it to shreds in front of my eyes. They don’t have to know of my plan. I’ll just pretend everything is fine, I’ll go back to cleaning the kitchen and scrubbing the toilets tomorrow, and I when the time comes, I won’t even tell Mom. She’s too weak. She’s always been weak, and she made me weak, too. Not anymore. I’m going to be a goddamn Grim Reaper.
I giggled in my pillow, clutching the envelope to my chest. My stomach rumbled, but I didn’t care. Grim Reapers didn’t need the food of mortals. I burst out laughing and covered my head with the blanket, so Mom and Dad wouldn’t hear me. The last thing my father would have forgiven, was my happiness.
CHAPTER THREE
To say that my heart was beating wildly would’ve been an understatement. The test hadn’t even begun, and I was panting, sweating profusely, and feeling like I had to go to the bathroom right that very instant, otherwise I would pee myself. Or worse. They had made me wear a black, skin-tight uniform that was way too revealing, and I didn’t care that all the other candidates were wearing it, too. Revealing, as in it was composed of a pair of high-waisted pants and a tank top that left my arms, and especially my wrists, bare. I hated that. Hated it with a passion, but they hadn’t allowed me to put on my wristbands. They’d given me a pair of lightweight boots that looked rather badass, I had to admit, and a pair of short gloves.
“I’m not ready for this,” I whispered under my breath.
I’d only gotten here one hour before, I was late after having gotten lost twice in the town of Salem before an old lady was kind enough to point me in the right direction, I was dead tired after a long three-hour trek through the woods because I couldn’t fucking afford a cab, and when I’d finally reached the gates of Grim Reaper Academy, they’d rushed me to what seemed to be the gym, shoved me in the girls’ locker, and ordered me to get into my uniform because the test was about to start.
Test? What test? No one told me anything about a test, and it wasn’t mentioned on the website. Shit. I guessed it made sense.
“Yes, you are. You’ll do great.”
When did this guy appear next to me? I gave him a curious glance, and he winked at me. He was slightly taller than me, with light blond, almost silvery hair, and bright blue eyes, dressed in a similar uniform, except his had short sleeves. Better than nothing.
“I’m Klaus, by the way. I was late, the other spots were taken, so they sent me here.”
“Mila.”
“Yeah. I heard. The human.”
I blushed to the tips of my ears. In embarrassment or anger, I couldn’t tell. “The human, right,” I mumbled.