A Reaper Made by Liz Long Page A

reminded Tessa for what must have been the hundredth time. She waved at him in annoyance.  
    “We get it, okay?” I said in exasperation. “Don’t send anyone to the loony bin.”  
    He gave me a pointed look. “No one, not your sister, nor your parents or friends, can see your real self, Grace. I do not even want strangers to get a glimpse. You know this and you need to tell me you understand.”
    His voice was so serious I couldn’t help but nod. If my family saw me, the horror of their discovery would be too much for them to bear. Surely they’d lose their sanity at the sight of their dead sister and daughter, speaking to them from beyond the grave.  
    Tessa’s gentle elbow pulled me back to the present. “This spell, it makes you appear human again to other humans. You’ll be breathing and blinking again.”  
    “And I already feel pain when I bump into everything in my path,” I muttered.  
    Tessa hid a smile; she knew I was still as accident-prone as I’d been when alive, knocking into everyone and everything in my way. I considered going invisible as one of the major perks of Reaperdom.  
    “The rest will come naturally; you are not yet old enough to forget,” Tully said. “You already wave your arms around when you’re feeling overly expressive.”
    I turned away from his tone before he saw my face, but he wasn’t done.  
    “You must never reach out to them as Grace,” he said, “you’ll have to keep the camouflage on at all times.”
    “I don’t exactly want to send Allison to a mental institution, so yes, I will make sure to look…not like me at all times.”
    Satisfied, he nodded. Tessa rolled her eyes and stepped in to face me. “I’m an excellent potion maker, Tully. She only needs the spell every twenty-four hours. It helps that I’m old and powerful.”
    Tully looked abashed. “Yes, you are quite talented. My apologies.”  
    Tessa turned to me with a mischievous glint in her eye. “Say, how about we attend a frat party?”
    Tully sputtered. “Wha—no, you will not—”
    “Oh sure, that sounds like fun.” I nodded enthusiastically and shared a grin with Tess. She cleared her throat.
    “You ready?”  
    “Yep. How do we do it?”
    “Faerie dust of course,” Tully answered.  
    “You must be joking.”
    “Child,” he said in that firm tone that reminded me he never joked. I sighed and waved at him to proceed. He huffed, smoothing the wrinkles in his shirt. “Faerie dust is the key ingredient, another reason Tessa was a good choice to bring along.”
    I beamed at him and he hurried on as if remembering it had been my idea.  
    “Now that she has the potion, she must create an illusion. Just like you make yourself appear and disappear, she can change your appearance. The potion locks it in and keeps you looking that way until it wears off.”
    “Sounds easy enough.”  
    Tully crossed his arms over his broad chest. “And exactly how do you plan to get close enough to Allison to better understand the situation and perhaps warn her about the witch?”  
    “There’s no perhaps, she’s getting warned,” I said.  
    He furrowed his brow. “She should not know about supes—”
    “No, I know,” I said quickly, “I’ll figure something out. Are we ready to do this thing or what?”  
    Tully eyed me hard, probably seeing straight through my impatience. He stayed quiet, giving Tessa a brief nod to proceed.  
    “Stand here,” she said, pointing to the round symbol drawn in chalk on her floor. “All you need to do is keep still.”  
    My eyebrow arched, wondering what happened if I twitched. She moved on, taking up her witchy mixing bowl. Tessa began to murmur rhymes and toss dust into the circle where I stood. Having no idea what she was doing, I stayed quiet. Would I feel any different?  
    My back straightened when I felt a breeze. The dust she’d dropped in the circle rose in a small tornado around my feet. My long brown hair moved as the wind picked