The Tessa Randolph Collection, Books 1-3 by Paula Lester (best ereader for comics .txt) 📗

Tessa felt as she fell into bed. She squirmed into her favorite position, on her right side with her knees drawn up a bit. With a deep sigh, she stared into the darkness and began to count slowly from fifty back toward zero. Somewhere around thirty-nine, her eyelids began to get heavy and slide shut.

A horrifying noise from the inky black corner of the room stabbed through the silence and caused Tessa to roll out of bed and onto her feet in a crouch, as though she may need to defend herself. But the fast movement made her dizzy, and she wobbled and then crashed back against the bed.

No matter what Silas thought, she was never going to be a superhero. If anything, he was the superhero around the apartment complex. And with him gone, there were already grumblings about broken furnaces and the leaves piling up around the pool.

But there hadn’t been any sort of talk about break-ins. Tessa scoured her room for a pointy or heavy club-like object. Either or would do, but both was preferred.

The sound repeated, and Tessa recognized it this time. She called off the internal search for a weapon.

“Pepper!” She groaned as she managed to get her feet under her and flipped on the bedside lamp. Sure enough, the cat was in the corner, sitting next to a giant hair ball, looking proud of herself.

"Are you going to clean it up?" Tessa put her hands on her hips and stared at the tortie cat, who stared back impassively, eyes half-lidded.

After a moment, Pepper stalked away from the mess, hopped up onto Tessa's bed, and curled into a tight ball. She closed her eyes, giving a clear signal to Tessa that it was her job to clean up.

"Fine. But don't ask me for any canned food for the next week," Tessa grumbled.

After she’d taken care of the mess, Tessa climbed back into bed, making sure to snap the blankets in such a way that it would disturb Pepper. The cat lifted her head and gave Tessa a searing glare.

"Hey, I'm just returning the favor." Tessa grinned and then settled herself back into her favorite position, snapping off the bedside lamp. She closed her eyes and started at fifty again, slowly counting backward.

This time, the horrible sound that erupted into the black night definitely wasn't the cat bringing up a hairball.

In fact, Pepper was just as startled by the harsh, blaring siren noise. Eyes wide with feral panic, the cat leaped off the bed and ran out of the room, her claws making a scratching noise as they dug into the carpet to give her more momentum.

Tessa sat up, flipped on the lamp again, and reached for her phone—the thing making the horrible klaxon sound. She looked at the screen and noticed it was the reaper app trying to get her attention. She'd never heard it make a sound like that before.

Never a dull moment with this job.

She frantically swept at the screen, trying to get it to shut off. The apartment’s walls weren’t particularly thick, and she could already imagine the neighbors pounding on her door to yell at her.

After fifteen seconds of frantically pawing at the device, Tessa was able to get the alarm off and open the reaper app to discover the thing had been making such a horrid noise because there was a reap happening in less than fifteen minutes.

Tessa leaped out of bed, thinking that she must've missed the original notification. She scrolled through the assignment, scanning the text to find out where she was supposed to show up, but her eyes focused on the name of the assignment instead. Her heart pounded in her ears—she recognized that name. She more than recognized that name.

The time of death and the estimated time of arrival—both provided by the app—were very close. Too close. Tessa glanced down at herself. She was in pajama pants and a long-sleeved shirt, so she decided to call it good enough.

Clutching her phone in her hand, she rushed out of her room, through the apartment, and out the door. She was several steps down the hallway before she skidded to a stop, did an about-face, and rushed back into the apartment to slip on a pair of flip-flops. She knew her feet would probably freeze and turn blue in the cool night, but she didn't have time for anything else. The assignment’s address was at least ten minutes from the apartment building, if she ignored the speed limit. There was almost no way she could make it in time.

Thankfully, Linda started right up. In fact, she seemed raring to go, which was good, because by the time Tessa was on the road, she only had seven minutes to get to the reap. It was in the same general neighborhood as Artemis Green’s house, which was also lucky because Tessa had been there several times in recent days, so she was confident of the route.

This place didn't have a gate out front, and it wasn't as majestic of a home as Mr. Greens, but in Tessa's world, it still qualified as a mansion. It was white clapboard colonial style, and there was one other car in the driveway. Tessa jumped out of Linda and hastily checked the upper corners of the porch for cameras, but, unlike at the Green residence, didn't spot any.

She crept up to the front door, half expecting guard dogs or something to leap out of the darkness at her. But nothing happened, and the doorknob turned easily under her hand. She eased herself through the doorway into a big, marble-floored lobby with a spiral staircase in the center. The area was dimly lit by the soft light of a single lamp on the far side of the room.

Movement to her left caught Tessa's attention, and she swung around, trying to think of a way to explain her presence in the home if she got caught by a family or staff member.

But it wasn't her assignment