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

writhed and shouted. But he couldn’t go anywhere. He was trapped.

Above them, a figure appeared in the portal. A tall dark man stood there, his shoulder-length hair waving as though there were a slight breeze. Blade nodded approvingly at Tessa and then turned a frown on Lee. He reached out and grabbed the district manager’s spirit and made a yanking motion.

Suddenly, Lee was standing in the portal with Blade, the fear etched even deeper into his spirit features.

Tessa was relieved to be able to use both hands to stay afloat again as she watched the two men disappear across the veil, Lee screaming wordlessly the whole way.

Chapter 21

“I MISS THE HOTEL POOL. And the bar.” Gloria rested her chin on folded arms on the desk. She sighed deeply. “But not the murder and mayhem.”

Tessa leaned on the door jamb of Gloria’s office. “There’s a pool at my apartment building.”

“And a hottie landlord,” Gloria shot back. “You two can pick right up where you left off in Miami.”

“We’ll see. I haven’t decided yet.” Tessa shrugged. “In the meantime, we could keep living as though we’re on vacation. You know—after work. Heaven knows Mist River has enough bars to keep us busy every evening for a year. I mean, as long as we stay away from Frank’s.”

Gloria sat up, her expression brightening. “That’s a great idea. Although I wouldn’t want to put a damper on you and hottie’s relationship.”

Tessa opened her mouth to argue, but Cheryl’s voice calling for her cut off her train of thought.

Why was she so intent on cutting off her relationship with Silas? In Miami, it seemed logical. But here in Mist River, where things were comfortably mundane, she was failing to remember the key points.

Gloria waved Tessa away. “Better see what the boss wants.”

With a grin, Tessa crossed the lobby to her mother’s office. Cheryl sat at the desk watching her computer screen, through which voices floated. Tessa moved to stand behind her mother so she could see the monitor. April and Timothy were on video call. Timothy’s arm was bandaged, but his coloring was back to normal. There was an unidentified purple food stain on the white gauze wrapping that made Tessa smile.

When he saw Tessa come into view, Timothy waved. “There you are. I wanted to say thank you for everything you did.”

She waved back. “I should be thanking you. You saved my life when you prevented Lee from finishing that allotment on his phone in that hotel room. You were really brave.”

Timothy puffed up visibly. “Nah. I’m just a guy who likes numbers. And Lee Stuart was always messing them up. Jerk.”

Tessa smiled again. “Which is why you followed Lydia to that stroke victim. If you hadn’t, I’m not sure we could’ve put the pieces together so easily.”

He nodded. “Even then, I couldn’t narrow it down to Lee. His invisibility made things difficult. But my time in handcuffs ignoring the very bad comedies Bubba liked to watch allowed me to put more together.” He leaned toward the camera. “You did great when I sent you on that reap in Miami. By then, I’d figured out those were extra reaps somehow. I knew those people weren’t supposed to die, but I couldn’t risk telling anyone. And I sent you because I knew you were as after the truth as I was. I figured you’d refuse to do the reap if it felt wrong.” He grinned and sat back again. “I was right.”

She chuckled and glanced at Cheryl. Was it Tessa’s imagination, or did her mother look a little bit proud?

“I owe you my thanks too.” April’s voice was soft but her tone earnest. “We’ve never had such a terrible convention. And I feel partially to blame. Our rivalry was always something, but I never for the life of me thought Lee would go so far. So dark.”

Tessa nodded. “You’re welcome.”

“Really. If you hadn’t found me in the pool exactly when you did—and if you hadn’t jumped in without thinking of your own safety—I wouldn’t be here. Lee’s spirit would have killed me for sure. And he’d probably still be roaming the earth, causing problems for the task force.” She glanced at Timothy.

He nodded. “Turns out Lee had more allocations to fill than he let on. He could have gone on quite the poltergeisterly killing spree.” Timothy’s mouth twisted in disgust.

“What about that? The numbers, I mean. How can they be made right now?” Tessa hoped Timothy wasn’t going to say that a bunch of people had to be chosen to die.

“The big man himself, Mr. Blade, fixed that up,” Timothy said. “A message came through from him this morning. He’s rebalanced the allotments, and we’re starting from scratch. By the way. That was some trick you did in that hotel room. Nice secret Mr. Blade gave you.”

Tessa’s eyes darted toward Cheryl again, but her mother kept her gaze on the computer screen. “Yeah. Well. I’m glad you’re both okay.”

“Back at ya,” Timothy said with a smile.

April grinned and cut off the video.

Tessa sat on the edge of Cheryl’s desk. “They looked good. I’m glad that’s all over.”

Cheryl tipped her head, regarding Tessa. “It’s an awesome and terrible thing to receive a secret from Mr. Blade,” she said in a calm but slightly ominous tone.

Tessa shifted her weight, suddenly both physically and mentally uncomfortable. “Um. Okay.” She didn’t know what her mother was trying to say, but it didn’t matter. She never planned to summon the scythe again. There shouldn’t be any need for her to. But there was something she’d been wondering about. She figured it was as good a time as any to ask. “How many secrets are there? And how many reapers have one?”

The corners of Cheryl’s mouth twitched upward. “We can’t be sure how many there are. And there aren’t many of us entrusted with them. But those of us who have them must guard our secret closely. Use it wisely. Or we risk becoming like Lee Stuart—twisted