Surviving Year One (Grim Reaper Academy 1)

I furrowed my brows. Prophecy? No. What we talked about at the Unholy Chapel… that had been just Patty messing with me and my inferiority complex.

“And what does this prophecy say?”

“That a human will come along and retire the only Grim Reaper in the world that has refused to be retired for over six centuries. You see, when a new generation of Grim Reapers takes over, the old generation either retires willingly and goes to do something else with their lives, like teaching at the Academy, or if they don’t retire willingly, they are retired by the Grim Reaper who’s supposed to take his or her place.”

“Retired as in…”

“Killed. Yes. Reaped.”

I shook my head. “And who’s this Grim Reaper that no one has been able to push aside yet?”

“Valentine Morningstar.”

“The nephilim?”

“Yep. The one and only. He’s been reaping for six hundred years, when he should have been in business for only two hundred.”

“Oh, okay.” I sat down and looked at GC, hoping he’d have something more interesting to say. He seemed to be frozen with my water bottle in hand. “Right. So, why is the staff so into this prophecy?”

“It makes sense,” GC finally said. “I’ve heard about it, too, but I thought it was just some fictional gibberish. Like most legends are. You know… like what we learn in Mythology.” I nodded. “The prophecy doesn’t only say that a human will retire Valentine Morningstar, but that he or she will also build a better world for all supernatural races.” He looked me in the eye, and I shifted uncomfortably. “That’s why the staff likes you so much. That’s why they accepted you in the kitchens, fed you, and kept you away from the VDC. Because they think you’re the human that was promised.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “You started by saying that it all makes sense, and you see… You just lost me after that. Because it doesn’t. First, it’s stupid that a human would retire Morningstar when angels, demons, mages, and whatnot have already tried and failed. Secondly, how would a human make a better world for the supernaturals? I, fo

r one, don’t even know what all of you can do. I just found out that demons have telepathic abilities.”

Paz laughed. “Well, prophecies don’t tend to make much sense. That’s why they’re called prophecies. They trump reason.”

“And thirdly,” I pressed on, “Why me? How could it be me? I have nothing to do with Valentine Morningstar. The first time I heard about him was in History.”

“He’s a Violent Death,” GC shrugged. “You’re a Violent Death.”

“Yeah, sure. If I ever graduate.” I jumped off the bed and headed to the door. My plan to change before dinner had gone down the drain. Apparently, both Paz and GC liked me in my sucky clothes, so why bother? “I’m hungry. Now, who’s going to take me to dinner and protect me from Sariel and Lorna? Or, I could always eat in the kitchen and tell Patty and the rest they got the wrong human for their prophecy.”

They were at my side in seconds. As I locked the door behind me and walked down the corridor, I couldn’t believe two of the Mighty Jerks were right there, walking in step with me, acting like I was their girlfriend and most treasured possession. Joke was on them, and especially on Pazuzu. I wasn’t the kind of girl who liked to be possessed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Oh my God, semester two was proving to be quite the challenge. The finals were in April, and I was determined to smash them. Practice was starting in May, and the students were going to be assigned to one of the current twenty-two Grim Reapers, according to their worth points and results at the finals. Since we were one hundred students and there were only twenty-two mentors, each mentor would roughly get three, four, or even five students in practice. Since Paz had told me about Valentine Morningstar and the supposed prophecy the working staff believed in, I had to be honest with myself: the whole practice thing was giving me the heebie-jeebies. I still wanted to believe it wasn’t true. Come on! I mean… I was Mila Lazarov. Nothing cool ever happened to me! Not that having to retire a Grim Reaper who’d defeated at least three opponents by now was cool…

If having Paz follow me around all through the Christmas holiday had been annoying enough, now I had GC, too. Sure, I enjoyed the attention, but it felt like I could never be alone now. At first, I slept in GC’s room, as usual, then Paz declared the arrangement wasn’t fair, and I agreed to sleep in his room a few nights a week. One night in GC’s bed, the next night in Paz’s bed, with Paz sleeping on the couch. At least, he’d agreed to that. I still refused to do anything with either of them, and I was really proud of myself, since it was getting more and more difficult. Every second of every day and night, I was tempted. They tempted me. But I couldn’t give in. I wanted to sleep with both of them, of course I did! Still, pure physics said I had to choose. And I wasn’t ready to choose. I didn’t want to choose.

“Why do I feel like you got way more than you bargained for?” Klaus laughed at my misery. We were coming back from our last class for the day, and I’d been lucky enough that neither Paz, nor GC had been in it. It was one of the few instances when I could sneak around without them following in my every step. “What are you going to do?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“You like it, I can tell.”

I blushed. “Okay, I like it. No point in denying that. It does make my life harder, though. If I liked one of them less than the other, I could have chosen by now and been done with it.”

“Students have started talking, you know. How you come out of GC’s room one morning, and of Paz’s room the next.”

It was true. Sariel called me kuchka every five minutes now, while Lorna was sticking to English. Slut, whore, man-eater. She strongly believed that what we’d all seen at the Yule Ball was true, and that my real mother was a prostitute. That made things way, way worse for me. Honestly, the only reason why the other students hadn’t lynched me yet was because GC and Paz sat next to me all the time. In the dining hall, in class, if they had classes with me, and if they didn’t, Klaus was there. It was getting suffocating. On the one hand, I was grateful that I had two boyfriends and one good friend to protect me at all times, but on the other hand… Oh my God, I needed some time alone so badly! If I wanted to spend time with Patty, I literally had to shoo them away and give them the talk about personal space and how I had a right to mine, at least once in a while.

“I’ll start sleeping in my own room,” I told Klaus.

“Will you, though? I saw your room.”

“At this point, I couldn’t care less about luxury, comfortable beds, and well-stocked open-space kitchens. My room might be small, kind of ugly, and uncomfortable, but it’s mine.”