Gina Grant - Scythe Does Matter

“Right. And that’s good. It’ll show me where each of us is so I can tell us how to get to the checkpoints.”

“I get it. Amber, you’re brilliant. Skeggin’ brilliant.” Kali punched Amber in the shoulder. I winced in sympathy. Amber rubbed her arm.

“My phone has a walkie-talkie function. Do yours?” I asked. They nodded. “Good. We need to stay off the main channels. Open channel D.”

“B?”

“Did you say P?”

“No D. D. As in death. ”

“Who’s Beth?”

I grabbed each phone and set it on Channel D. Then I set the GPS functions so we could pinpoint each other’s locations.

Amber closed her eyes and concentrated. Opening them again, she pointed left. “Kali, head that way. I’ll keep an eye on your position via my phone display and let you know if you go off course. You should reach checkpoint alpha in about twenty minutes. Or, you know, yesterday morning.” She rolled her eyes so hard I could hear it. “Contact us when you get there. Go. Go. Go!”

Kali swelled up to her full height and maybe some added extra. “Who do you think you are, giving me orders?”

Amber cowered. And, I admit it, so did I. Had Amber gone too far?

Then Kali punched her in the arm again, maybe a little harder than last time. “Just kidding.” She took off through the trees, branches snapping and flying out of her way as she went, entire trees ripping from the ground in her wake. “Death and destruction. Death and destruction!” she called back over her shoulder as she ran.

My other earring fell to the ground. I stuffed it in my shirt pocket with its mate.

Next, Amber pointed straight ahead. “Kirsty, I’m giving you checkpoint delta. It’s the farthest away, but the straightest route. You should get there in about forty-five minutes, time willing. By then, Kali and I will have looped back and hit the remaining checkpoints. We should all arrive back in this clearing in about two hours. Or thereabouts, time being irrelevant.”

I knew what she meant. What could you do? Given the way things were, we might get back before we left. I drew a deep, unnecessary breath and was about to charge farther into the forest when I heard a weird tearing noise.

Like fabric giving way. Where had I heard that before? “Did you hear that?”

“Hear what? We don’t have time for this. Are you going or what, Kirsty?”

“Right. Right.” And off I went.

As I raced down a well-worn path toward checkpoint delta, I opened channel D and yelled, “Can you hear me now?”

“Roger that,” Amber responded.

“Who’s Roger?” Kali asked. “Is he dating Beth?” Sometimes even the most up-to-date immortal missed cultural references. “I’m there. Er, here. Time must have folded in on itself, ’cause I’ve only been running about ten minutes.”

I checked my hellphone. The digital readout differed from Kali’s by thirty-five minutes.

“Anyway,” Kali continued, “I’m at checkpoint alpha, but I can’t find any feathers or whiskers or fur here. There’s just a cord hanging from a branch that may have . . . Wait! What the skeg?”

“What?” Amber and I said in unison.

Kali lapsed into a language I didn’t recognize. Blue smoke drifted from my phone. “There’s a nice little carving in the tree. It says ‘Rod was here.’ Damn. He grabbed all of the . . . seagull feathers. There’s a small piece left on the ground that must have torn off when he yanked them down. He’s probably going to share them with Horace and let everybody else fail. Son of a skeg!”

I heard Amber sniffling over the sound of Kali’s swearing. If Amber flunked out without a chance to take the course over, she’d be permanently separated from her friends. Much as I believed she would be better off without them, it wasn’t my place to tell her that. And besides, we were a team. We’d pull each other through. Each of us had something to offer that the others didn’t, and that made us stronger.

“No, wait!” I said, the lightbulb coming on over my head. No, not literally. “Rod isn’t going to share the tokens. He’s going to trade them! We all will. Amber. Kali. Pull yourselves together and get to the next location. Grab all the tokens you find there, not just enough for us. We’ll trade for the rest. And keep an eye out for the crystal skull. That’ll be our ace in the whole shebang.”

“More orders from mere mortals.” Kali sighed. “I remember a time when humans begged and prostrated themselves to us gods. There were offerings. Sacrifices.”

“Grow up, Kali,” I snapped, worrying just a little about the range of her powers. But I was the next best thing to dead already, and my backless earrings now resided in my pocket, so what else could she do to me? “That skull is the ultimate trading card. As long as we all pass, who cares about being head of the class?”

The silence was telling, but after a long pause, the begrudging responses of “right” and “yeah, okay” let me know I’d chosen my friends wisely. Perhaps figuring out I was a lousy judge of character had been the first step toward learning how to be better at it.

“Okay, I’m signing off and continuing toward my first checkpoint. Amber, give Kali her new marching orders. And guys? Hurry the skeg up!”

I sprinted along the path, confident (mostly) that Amber would give me a shout if I strayed too far off course.

Nearly an hour later, Amber’s voice squawked over the phones. “I’m almost there. When I find the hyena skin or whatever, I’m supposed to take, like, the whole thing, right?”

“Yeah.” I felt cold inside. I hated to do it this way, but Rod had left us no choice.

I reached checkpoint delta too late. Three catfish lay on the ground, covered in dirt, each one shaved clean of its whiskers. The small clearing reeked of dead fish.

I didn’t know who to feel sorrier for: the slaughtered fish or myself and my friends, who weren’t going to graduate. And my poor aunt.

I hunkered down and stared at the fish, mesmerized by the rainbow light glinting off their opalescent scales.

I flailed and landed on my ass when one of the fish flopped about in the weeds. It—the fish, not my ass—was still alive! I grabbed it around the fishy equivalent of its neck, mindful of the barbed spikes on its sides. (And for the record, can I just say , Ewww!) I plopped it back in the small stream nearby, tossing in the other two in the vain hope they might be alive as well. They didn’t float back up to the surface so perhaps they’d survived.

Maybe being a Reaper didn’t mean everything I did had to be about death.

I rinsed and rinsed my hands in the stream, murmuring, “Out. Out damn slime.”

After a while I felt cleaner. At least my hands, anyway. I hoped the others had found and taken all the other tokens.

I hated to play dirty. But sometimes you had to. And if I had anything to say about it, that skegger Rod was going down.

SEVERAL MINUTES—OR HOURS—LATER,I checked in with the gals. Kali had found both her checkpoints, but it was the same story: no scavenger bits to be had. Amber reported no better luck. They’d run into M’Kimbi and Ira. Both of them had come up empty, as well. We were well and truly skegged.

“Let’s head back to the clearing. Maybe when Rod shows up with everything, Sergeant Schotz will give us a do-over.” Static hissed and sparked. I could hear the disappointment in Amber’s voice even over the bad connection.

“Not likely,” I said. “He’ll probably fail us all and give Rod the highest commendation.”

“I’ll destroy them all!” Kali shouted. A blast of scorching wind nearly fried my ear.