Surviving Year One (Grim Reaper Academy 1)

I beamed at her. “We’re friends again?”

“We never stopped being friends. I was just… an ass for a while. Will you forgive me?”

“Oh my God, there’s nothing to forgive! I kissed the guy you like! If there’s anyone who should ask for forgiveness, it’s me.”

She took my hand and pulled me up. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

We went outside, in the cold winter air. The sun was setting, even though it wasn’t even five in the evening, and the gray clouds hovered over the forest and the Academy menacingly, holding the promise of a storm. Winter in Massachusetts was not something to be messed with. Accustomed to the mild winters of Kentucky, the cold and the storms that raged almost every night made me feel uncomfortable and slightly unsafe.

“What do you know about incubi and succubi?” Patty asked me.

I wrapped my arms around myself to keep warm. “That you feed on sexual energy and you’re telepaths?”

“And what do you think we do with that energy we absorb from our partners?”

“I have no idea. It’s no

t like you don’t eat normal food like normal people. Maybe you don’t need it at all?”

She laughed. “We need it if we want to do this…” She knelt and touched a shrub with the tips of her fingers. She closed her eyes and breathed in and out evenly, and just as I was wondering whether I was supposed to see something and I didn’t, the shrub started blooming before my very eyes. “Sexual energy is life. It’s magic and creativity. We need it if we want to be… well, creative.” She opened her eyes and looked at the shrub as if it were her baby.

I blinked and stepped closer, albeit reluctantly. I’d thought only mages could to something like that. As it turned greener and its buds opened one by one, the shrub turned out to be a beautiful wild rose with petals as red as blood.

“This is amazing! You can do magic!”

“Not really.” She stood up, and the moment the rose bush lost contact with her fingers, it started losing its color and shrinking back to its original wintery state. “It’s only temporary, and it’s not magic. It’s more like taking this creative energy that I absorb while… you know… I sleep with someone, and turning it into something else, something new. Something beautiful, that pleases the senses. Why do you think my cakes and cookies are to die for? Because I’m a succubus who’s passionate about baking, so I use all that energy in the kitchen. Lame, I know… I could have had a fancier hobby.”

“No! This is incredible!” I grabbed her by the shoulders and squeezed lightly to get my point across. “You should have told me earlier. Now I feel like… I haven’t known you at all, even though we’ve been friends for like… what? Four months? You’re just so beautiful, and special, and…” I didn’t know what was happening, and I certainly had no idea the next words would roll out of my mouth. “I wish I was more like you. You’re all demons, and angels, and gods, and fays… and things that I don’t even understand yet. I’m just… human. I can’t read minds, can’t make flowers grow, can’t fly… can’t anything. I’m normal. And you’re not. Still, you work in the kitchens and I run around pretending I’m a Grim Reaper. It doesn’t sound fair to me. It should have all been the other way around.”

Patty looked at me for a long minute, as if she were unsure of how she should react. For a second, I thought she’d burst out laughing. She certainly had the impulse but smiled instead.

“Maybe you’re more special than you think. And you just don’t know it yet.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for trying to make me feel better, but there’s nothing special about me. Trust me, I wish there was! All my childhood, I dreamed that one day someone would show up and tell me I was some long-lost princess, or promised warrior, or savior of the world, or… insert whatever fantasy destiny you wish here. Never happened. Because I’m not.”

“Grim Reaper Academy happened.”

“Yeah, but I’m still human. I’m still mortal. I’m still me. I won’t even graduate, you know that, right? I do. I don’t stand a chance. I’m just playing pretend until all this blows over and they send me back home.”

“Hm.” She reached out and tucked a strand of blue hair behind my ear. “I don’t know, BFF. I have a feeling.”

“A feeling that… what?”

“That you’re more than meets the eye.”

“So… this is just a feeling, right? You don’t have like… proof.”

She laughed out loud. “See? You haven’t lost your hope yet.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “I know, it’s embarrassing.”

Patty took my arm, and we headed back inside.

“I suggest you keep your mind open and trust that you’re not here by accident. It was meant to be.”

“Yeah, you see… that bullshit right there? It doesn’t resonate with me.”

“It’s not bullshit.” She lowered her voice.