Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera (new books to read .TXT) 📕

A woman approaches and she has dozens of small silver tattoos, like clocks and bricks and flowers, that seem to sparkle on her brown skin. Her dark eyes take me in before she unlocks the door.

“Hey again, Xyla. This is—”

“Pleasure,” Xyla interrupts as she shifts her gaze back on Wesley. She definitely won’t be dressing up as me for Halloween. “You have ten minutes before Flex arrives to escort the boy and his father. I’ll be in the back finishing some paperwork. In and out, you got it?”

“Copy that,” Wesley says as she lets us in and walks away. “Don’t mind her, E. She might not be on the front lines but her job is risky too. I’m going to go grab Darren and Daniel.”

I look around while Wesley heads into a room that I’m guessing gets used for private tattoo sessions. The shop’s name is illustrated on the ceiling like a constellation. There are pictures of past clients with their tattoos: a star on a woman’s forehead, a stallion galloping along someone’s waistband, two hands shaping the universe on a man’s forearm, a polygonal hydra with seven heads on someone’s back that glows in the dark, and, my favorite, a crowned elder—the beautiful phoenix that is born old—with its storm-gray feathers and amber eyes perfectly drawn onto a woman’s shoulder.

If I ever get a tattoo, I think I’d go for one of Gravesend. Then I could remember her when she was a beautiful newborn phoenix instead of bloodied and dead.

Wesley comes out the back with Darren and Mr. Bowes. Mr. Bowes is bald with a thick beard and Darren has shaggy black hair with his first specks of a mustache coming in. Darren is wearing a plain white T-shirt like me with camo pants and big headphones around his neck. He walks straight to a stool and flips through a binder with template tattoos. Mr. Bowes comes out to me and shakes my hand.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I say. I shake my head because I hate how that sounds. That condolence barely did it for me after my dad died. “No, that’s not enough. My brother and I are alive because of your wife. She deserved better.”

“Billie really cared for her patients,” Mr. Bowes says.

It doesn’t feel right for me to say that she cared more about her family. They know that already. “She shouldn’t have died because of us. I’m sorry that we brought danger her way.”

Mr. Bowes nods. He’s not contesting.

I cautiously walk over to Darren and sit opposite him. “Hey, Darren.” He keeps flipping through the binder. Wesley told me that it can be harder to crack the shells of children who have lost their parents, but I’m only four years older than Darren. I don’t get to act like some know-it-all. I connect with him the only way I know how. “I lost my dad a few months ago. I don’t go sharing this secret online, but I have no problem telling you that I’m actually adopted. I just found out a few weeks ago. It was a total surprise because my dad always treated me like a Rey, and I know how lucky I am for that. A day hasn’t gone by where I haven’t missed him asking me about my day or telling me some story that sometimes ran long.”

Darren closes the binder. He almost turns toward me, but stops.

“I cried a lot with my mother after my dad died. My brother, Brighton—you might know him from his Celestials of New York series—he kept a lot of his grief to himself. I’m not trying to tell you how to grieve, just that there’s no one right way.”

Darren looks me in the eye. “Why aren’t you dead too?”

My breath is caught in my throat.

“Darren,” Mr. Bowes says with a warning tone.

“No, he’s fine,” I say.

“I’m not fine!” Darren shouts, flinging the binder onto the floor. “I don’t care about your dad, he didn’t die because of me!” The commotion causes Xyla to come out from the back room and she looks as surprised as Wesley. “Why aren’t you dead too? Are you better than my mom?”

“No, of course not—”

“Why didn’t your neck get snapped?”

I didn’t think he knew the details of how his mother was killed. His father is telling Darren that enough is enough, but he’s not letting up.

“I thought you were supposed to be one of the good guys!”

“I tried, I’m trying—”

“Tell that to my mother!”

I turn back to Wesley, ready to ask him if we should go, but no, I deserve this. When I turn back around, Darren is gone and Dr. Bowes is sitting across from me with a broken neck.

“My son has to grow up without a mother because of you,” Dr. Bowes says in a raspy, otherworldly voice, blood spitting out of her mouth. “You should be dead!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

I know this can’t be real, I know the dead can’t come back to life, I know we can’t understand ghosts, but I know Dr. Bowes is right. I’m the one who should be dead.

“Remember this face!” Dr. Bowes screams as her eyes close and her flesh begins unraveling. She keeps repeating herself, burning this horror into my mind alongside the very real memory of Stanton snapping her neck, and through another repeat her voice becomes Darren’s and the illusion ends. “Remember this face, remember this face,” Darren cries with his eyes still closed like the short-lived illusion he cast over himself like a costume.

Mr. Bowes drags Darren by his arm, apologizes for his son’s behavior, which is nonsense because I deserve to be trapped in a horror house, haunted by illusions of everyone who has died because of me.

I watch them as they leave the shop, and Darren turns one last time before getting in the car, a threat in his eyes.

It’s safe to say that I’ll remember his face. It’s the face of someone