The Reaping (The Reapers Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

aspens about four to one, but I only preferred evergreens to Aspens in the dead of winter, with a thick layer of snow weighing down their green, prickly branches. From any location in town, I had a view of the resort mountain and of the Rocky Mountains extending beyond and that view, along with the crisp, light air, relaxed me a bit and put my fears in perspective. Those eternal mountains didn’t bow to the whims of nightmares and an overactive imagination.
    “Hey, baby-hater,” a male voice called gaily.
    I stopped and turned to see Jed a few feet behind me.
    “I mean, Kelsey. Your name is Kelsey, right?” Jed loped up.
    I couldn’t help smiling at him. He wore a Widespread Panic T-shirt and a huge, goofy grin. In the bright sunlight, his eyes sparkled and I noticed they were a blue so deep they looked purple. “Hi, how are you settling in?”
    Next to Jed, I noticed a guy in a button-down shirt and khakis. He smiled at me and I lost my breath for a moment. He had brilliant green eyes, the bone structure of a male model, and a smile that would melt the heart in the frozen corpse of a Neanderthal.
    Jed nodded. “All unpacked and ready to party. This ugly fellow here is my brother, Caleb.”
    Caleb nodded and shook my hand. “How long have you been here?”
    “About three years,” I said, wondering if the day could possibly get any stranger.
    “Where you headed?”
    “I was just going home and then back out for a run.” If it were later in the year, I would have gone up the mountain and spent a day on the slopes to ground myself and find my calm center again. Instead, I would settle for the next-best therapy I knew—running. My feet pounding the pavement, my heart thumping solidly in my chest, made me feel strong and whole.
    “Well, I won’t keep you from it,” Jed said as he started off again. “I’m sure we’ll see you around.”
    Caleb smiled. “It was very nice to meet you.”
    “You, too,” I said, relieved neither of them asked me where I worked. I didn’t feel like getting into Landon’s death with strangers. I headed back to my apartment feeling guilty for being happy to see Jed and Caleb when I should have been sad about Landon’s death.
    When I opened the door to the apartment and stepped inside, I wished I had stayed away. Angelica sat at our second-hand, Ikea kitchen table, lit candles in front of her and a worried look on her face. I took a deep breath, closed the door behind me, and crossed the room. “I guess you’ve already heard.”
    She didn’t meet my eyes. “How did you know?”
    All the fear and tension I had worked to overcome returned to my body. “I didn’t know, Ang. It’s just a coincidence.”
    She closed her eyes and sighed. “Please, Kelsey, don’t lie to me.”
    She looked at me and I could see it in her eyes.
    Just the day before, I had gotten irritated with Angelica for not washing her own dishes and had thought I might be better off living alone, but the idea of her joining the ranks of those who called me a freak hurt with an almost physical pain. She was the one person I really cared about who still saw me as ordinary. Any friends I’d had in my home town had drifted off or turned on me when my mother started telling everyone about my abilities. The readings she’d had me do had only made it worse. I’d been a little girl; I hadn’t yet learned to lie, and the dead rarely say what the living want to hear.
    “It really was a nightmare, Angelica. I’d had a particularly bad argument with him and I had a nightmare. That’s all it was.”
    She peeked up at me, and the look in her eyes, the dark mixture of fear and hope, made my knees buckle. I pulled out a chair and sank down into it before meeting her gaze again. I would convince her it was just a dream. “I know you would love it if I suddenly manifested a psychic ability, but you know it’s not true. The only odd thing about me is my ridiculously overactive imagination.”
    She nodded. “You’re