Unreap My Heart (The Reaper Series) by Kate Evangelista

handling things okay now, but I don’t want you freaking out on me at the wrong moment.”
    “I’m sensing a bit of a control freak here.”
    “Let’s see you not have the need to control the situation when you’ve faced down what I have through the years.”
    “And about me being human?”
    “That’s pretty easy. She’s just going to give you something that convinces others that you’re not what you appear to be.”
    “You sound like you’ve done this before.”
    “Hell no.”
    “Did I really try to kiss you?”
    He almost missed a step at the sudden change of topic. “We’re back to that?”
    “I thought I was with Niko,” she said.
    “I take it the experience wasn’t pleasant? Nikolas can do that to people.”
    “It sounds like you hate him for some reason. Why?”
    If it weren’t for the real curiosity in her eyes, Balthazar wouldn’t have answered her question. “We do things we’re not proud of. Nikolas more than most.”
    “You know him.”
    A statement with more truth in it than anything he could say. Everyone knew Nickolas. A little too well for more than most. There lay the problem. Arianne knew Nikolas as the teenage high school boy. Balthazar knew Nikolas as the take no prisoners Reaper who occasionally did D’s dirty work. Nikolas could have easily been third in the rankings, maybe even D’s right hand, but he maintained his Reaper of Georgia status to keep under the radar for the side missions he would be given. It baffled Balthazar that Arianne didn’t seem to know this about Nikolas.
    “You’re in love with him,” he responded.
    “Since I started high school.”
    Nikolas? Entertaining love? From a human, no less. “And how’s that going for you?”
    She shrugged. “He finally noticed me when we became Chem partners.”
    Balthazar whistled. “That’s rough.” Yet completely understandable considering who they were discussing at the moment.
    “It’s not so bad. I mean, I was prepared to just like him from afar until we graduated. I guess the universe had other plans.”
    “It does that sometimes.”
    “It was all nice until he accidentally reaped Carrie’s soul.” She paused, a flash of sadness came and went on her face. “My sister.”
    “In case you forgot, the job of a Reaper is to reap souls, hence the unoriginal name.”
    “You don’t have to be a jerk about it. If you knew Carrie the way I did, you wouldn’t want her to die. She had this light in and around her. No matter how sick she got, she still managed to smile and make everyone around her feel safe. But being with Niko made me see there’s a life beyond mourning Carrie’s death.”
    Balthazar stopped when a hut made from the leather of demon’s wings came into view. Smoke curled from the makeshift chimney at the top. Good, she was home. The sooner they saw her and he made the trade, the faster they could finish this godforsaken trip and Balthazar could move on with his life. If Arianne wanted to delude herself into thinking she loved trash like Nikolas, then that was her lunacy not his.
    He faced Arianne. “Let’s get one thing straight. We’re in this together because of the bargain we’ve made. We are not BFFs or whatever you humans call it. We are not going to share sob stories. And we sure as hell are not going to treat this like some bonding road trip complete with soundtrack. Every step of this journey is dangerous. You almost died inhaling Angel’s tears because you were stupid enough to put your fear of me above the fear you instead should have for everything around you. Remember this, little girl, everything about the Underverse is dangerous. I’ve lived more lifetimes than you can count and I still have to survive by the skin of my teeth here. You wouldn’t make it a day without my help. So make this easier on the both of us by shutting up and following my lead.”
    Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them away. He wondered for a second how mean he’d have to be to get those