My parents stayed by my crystal casing, quietly watching me as I slept. I’d been brought back to The Shade, mainly because the GASP witches wanted to have me close and under extra protection. They feared my enhanced elemental abilities might make me more dangerous once the Hermessi’s influence was complete. Once I lost control over my body for good.

I stood next to it, ethereal and unseen. I’d been like this since Vikkal had done his cut-and-spell thing on me. Zeriel couldn’t be with me for too long. He was needed to hunt down the hidden cult members that had been wreaking this new havoc among the fae in both the In-Between and the Supernatural Dimension. Even The Shade wasn’t 100 percent secured. Visarion had been but one of the Hermessi loyalists responsible for the hundreds of fae now kept in charmed crystal casings. With every hour that passed, more of us were brought in. It had gotten to a point where the witches had to expand the sanctuary building and add another level to it, just to make sure it could hold us and the many others that were yet to come.

“Oh, man, this is quite the mess I’ve gotten myself into,” I murmured.

No one else could hear me, so I only had myself to talk to. I’d screamed myself hoarse, hoping I’d get through to someone. I couldn’t touch anyone or anything. All I could do was stand here and watch the chain connecting my body and soul get blacker, one link at a time. It was like an infection, starting from the body. The Hermessi’s influence had taken over, but it had yet to sever the chain. That much I’d figured in the hours I’d spent staring at myself and trying to make sense of all this.

I had a feeling that, once the last link turned black, that would be it. I’d lose my last chance to recover my body. That begged a difficult question: what then? Death? Permanent limbo? Would I be consumed as well, absorbed by the Hermessi, or would I be left as some kind of ghost, forever wandering this world?

We knew little to nothing about death and what was beyond. I’d heard about ghouls and Ben’s brief stint as a ghost, but there wasn’t much to go on. His return to this world had been made under special circumstances. Who was going to save us, the many who’d been kicked out of their bodies? I couldn’t be the only one like this… but, looking around, I couldn’t see anyone else in a similar state. I only saw their bodies.

“Any word from Cerix yet?” my mom asked Rose, who stopped in her tracks. She’d been out back, checking the serium supplies. The sanctuary was running low, and she needed to arrange for another shipment from Strava. They used the crystals to power up the protection spells on our crystal casings. The hope in my mom’s voice tore me to shreds whenever I heard her.

“Not yet,” Rose replied. “Tae and his crew have found the Brothers of the Shadow and the original library. They sent Phoenix some information, but there’s nothing there that could help with what’s going on here.”

“What did they find, then?” my dad asked. His eyes were puffy. The last time I’d seen him cry was when we’d reunited on Neraka. But those had been tears of joy.

The last thing I’d ever wanted was to cause them grief. They’d lost me before. They couldn’t fathom possibly losing me again—yet, that could very well happen if we didn’t find a way to stop the Hermessi from taking over our bodies. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel relieved. The cults hadn’t gotten to them. For the time being, anyway.

There were a multitude of emotions storming through me, and I was amazed by the fact that they all somehow felt amplified, ever since my soul and my body had been separated. Grief nearly crippled me. Fear and sadness ate away at me. My longing for physical contact would soon become unbearable.

Rose sighed. “We know a little bit more about the ritual. It requires five million fae bodies, and it will be completed when the twenty planets of the In-Between’s oldest solar system are perfectly aligned.”

My parents looked at one another, then Mom gave me a slight frown. “So, others will suffer like my Vesta…”

“I’m afraid so. We’re hoping to find a way to stop them before it gets to five million, but I’ll be honest, it’s not looking good,” Rose explained, her voice shaky. She was fighting back tears—her brother, her niece, and her grand-nieces were all like me, out cold, unable to wake up. I understood what she was going through. It hurt.

Dad rubbed his face, as if that would relieve some of the tension that had accumulated inside him. It didn’t. He was still on edge. I could almost feel it. “What solar system are we talking about?”

“We’re not sure. Phoenix is looking into it. Eritopia is just one of many we’ve identified with twenty planets. We now have to figure out which one sprung up first,” Rose said. “But we’ve got nothing on how to reverse what’s happening to the fae. I’m inclined to believe this will stop when the Hermessi are stopped, but we are nowhere near a solution on that front. These are world-making and world-breaking entities we’re dealing with.”

The disappointment hanging over their shoulders was almost tangible. I turned away, unable to watch my parents in pain for another second. Instead, I focused on Ben, Grace, Vita, and Caia. My casing was close to theirs, and I could see them clearly—serenely sleeping, as if without a care in the world. I was willing to bet that, like me, they were helplessly tethered to their bodies, trying to reach out, desperate to do something… anything. But they couldn’t. Our only option was to be here, watching it all unfold like a bad movie. I also wondered why I couldn’t see them, but that was just one of the too many questions irking me.

I couldn’t allow myself to be helpless anymore. I’d seen the anguish in Zeriel’s blue eyes. I was of no use to anyone if I wallowed in this misery. No one had prepared me for any of it, and I’d always focused on the solution, rather than the problem. In this case, my problem was that I was somehow stuck between existential planes, unable to reach out to my parents, my fiancé, or my friends and allies. Taking action—any kind of action—was the only way I knew how to cope, especially with intensified emotions such as the ones I’d been experiencing since I’d been out of my body.

I surveyed the sanctuary for a while, but I didn’t get too far from my casing. The chain didn’t extend, and, knowing almost nothing about it, I didn’t want to risk weakening or, worse, breaking it. So I circled around my casing a couple of times, both clockwise and counter-clockwise, paying attention to the conversations around me. I put the snippets together, forming a rather clear picture in my head.

“Taeral and the others are digging into the original library documents on Cerix,” I heard Rose tell Sofia and Derek a few minutes later.

Somewhere to my left, Jovi and Anjani were visiting Vita. Bijarki had come back to be with her, after a brief search mission through The Shade’s extension, where the rest of GASP were still dealing with the fallout of that attack.

“We’re not sure if there’s any other way to save Cerix, besides Inalia’s sacrifice,” Jovi said to Bijarki. “If she ends up doing that, she’ll become a Fire Hermessi. Then, we’ll see what happens next. Chances are the others won’t allow her to help Tae and his crew. It’ll be an extra force on the enemy’s side.”

“You don’t know that for sure,” Anjani replied. She was the hopeful one. Someone had to be. It sounded as though Tae and his team had their hands full.

“Harper is on her way to Neraka,” I heard Tejus say to Rose. He and Hazel had just come in from the redwood forest. They’d been out hunting for another covert cultist responsible for many of the fae now stuck here in magical comas. “Taeral had a good idea about Ramin.”

“Ramin?” Rose asked, momentarily confused.

She didn’t immediately remember the Fire Hermessi of Neraka, but I did. I’d been there. I knew what Tae was talking about. “Oh, snap,” I murmured. “He’s right. Harper and Ramin were pretty tight back then.”

Once Tejus explained this to Rose, she lit up like a Christmas tree. I knew how hard it was for her to keep her hopes from getting too high, but she could no longer control it. If Harper reached out to Ramin again, she could dig up potentially crucial information that would help GASP against the Hermessi.

“But the question remains,” Hazel replied, ever the voice of reason. “Will Ramin turn on his kind to help us?”

“We won’t know until she tries it, honey,” Tejus said.

“What if he hurts her instead?” Hazel asked, genuinely concerned.

What were the odds? Judging by Tejus’s brief moment of silence, not negligible.

“Let’s see if she makes contact, first,” Rose said. “I suppose Caspian will be with her at all times.”

“Fiona and Zane, too. They’ve agreed to do it in the Infernis palace,” Tejus explained. “It’s close to one of the planet’s most powerful fire sources.”

I caught movement at the corner of my eye. Turning my head, I stilled, almost petrified. Someone was watching me. Me. Almost-dead me. I held my breath for a moment, trying to ascertain whether I was seeing things or not. Madness could very well be a side effect of getting kicked out of one’s body. Maybe.

All the conversations around me dimmed down to mere murmurs. I’d gotten the gist of what was going on, anyway. The conclusion? We were neck-deep in trouble and had no way of getting ourselves out of it. On top of that, chances were it would only get worse.

But the guy watching me seemed out of this world.

He sat atop one of the vacant crystal casings, about twenty yards from me. Even seated, I knew he was tall. His hair was short and dark, combed neatly in a fashion that reminded me of the early 1920s on Earth—Harper had insisted that I study Earth’s history to understand the many ways in which our worlds were related. The fashions of the 1920s and 1930s had stayed with me. For some reason, I’d found the styles quite appealing. And the men, with those slick looks and bedroom eyes…

This one was different. He did in fact wear a black suit. An actual custom-tailored black suit. Long, straight pants and perfectly fitting jacket, matched with a white shirt and red satin tie. Hell, he even had a matching red handkerchief neatly folded into his chest pocket. Shiny shoes and red socks. I had to give it to him, he had his own style. What drew my attention most, however, was the golden pocket watch he held in one hand. He flipped it open once in a while, when his thumb didn’t move over the filigree design of its cover.

“Can you see me?” I asked.

The color seemed to vanish from his cheeks when he realized I could see him. Was I not supposed to? I mean, it was impossible to miss him. Whoever and whatever he was, the guy was gorgeous. Straight out of a glorious black-and-white movie. What was that guy’s name? The one Serena was so crazy about, to the point where it even irked Draven? Ugh…

Rudolph Valentino. Yes. That was him. This suited fella looked a lot like him.

“Hello?” I added, waving at him.

He slipped off the crystal casing and took a couple of steps back, pocketing his watch and frowning at me. Oh, he definitely hadn’t thought I’d see him.

“Who are you?” I asked, hoping I’d eventually get an answer out of him. He said nothing. Instead, he moved farther backward. Panic gripped me. “No, don’t go! Wait!”

Finally, he stopped moving, staring at me as if he’d just seen a ghost. Oh, wait…

A few moments passed in heavy silence as we watched one another, each of us trying to figure the other out. I had no idea who or what he was, but the one thing I could say for certain about him was that he hadn’t expected this.

“How can you see me?” he asked, his voice smooth and low.

I offered a shrug. If I’d had a body, my heart would’ve gotten stuck in my throat by now.

“This is odd,” he added.

“The fact that I can see you is odd?” I asked, my snark on full blast. “What about me being stuck on the outside like this? It’s not… odd?!”

He shook his head. “Not really.”

“Oh, so this is just everyday, run-of-the-mill, casual stuff, right?”

“They’re all synonyms, by the way,” he replied dryly.

“Thank you for the grammar lesson,” I said. “Now, could you please enlighten me? I’ve been on my own like this for hours!”

He rubbed the back of his neck, still frustrated about the little stuff. “Seriously, though, how is it that you can see me? I don’t get it.”

The question wasn’t exactly addressed to me, but I felt compelled to respond nonetheless. “I don’t know. And I’m not sure I care until you tell me who or… what you are.”

He shot me a stare—the cold kind that could easily send shivers down my spine. Only, my spine was still attached to my body, inside the crystal casing, so fortunately it didn’t affect me. My frustration, on the other hand, was bubbling dangerously close to the surface.

“You don’t see the others, do you?” he asked.

“Others?”

“Like you. You must’ve realized you’re not the only one in limbo by now.”

I couldn’t ignore the mild condescension in his tone. “Obviously not.”

“Hm, it’s not like I can do anything about it, and I’m not sure you’re going to survive this, so I might as well go ahead and say it,” he replied, straightening his back and raising his chin. “I’m Seeley. And I’m a Reaper.”

The revelation knocked me loose. I blanked out. I couldn’t process what he’d just said, though I did have a heap of additional questions now. But then, dread came over me like a blanket of ice as I realized a most horrifying truth.

My soul was out of my body. And I stood before a Reaper.

I’d only heard the title in stories from the In-Between, and a few from the earthly world. In none of those tales did an encounter with a “reaper” end well. Ever.