"So there's four Deaths, and you are reapers that serve the Death of the West?"
"Aye."
"And he's sending more reapers to kill me?"
"Now you're getting it."
"Good times."
Next few days after that saw the once happy home turned into a bunker: Enochian splashed across the walls in every color, goofer dust lining every entrance in bulk, the whole dirty nine.
On Carlisle's insistence, the Denali packed their bags and vacated Alaska in a hurry, leaving them all behind to face the coming threat but nothing came.
Another month passed and not a drop of rain fell upon the residence. When another month came and went, the Cullens begin to drop their guards, they begin to forget all about the two anomalies living in their home but Alice didn't.
Sieg spent most of his time out In Eleazar's Smithy and today of all days, Alice finally pulled the gumption to speak to him.
He'd been hammering away at this small round thing awhile now, then he heard her walking up and he tossed it in the water pail to cool.
"Are you really a reaper?"
"One and only." He grinned. "Don't be very impressed though, plenty others where I came from and good I guess, we are tools, and tools must be-"
"Replaceable." Alice finished and that shocked him just enough to force his eyes into hers. "Your father use to tell you that, right?"
"The company line." But the chuckle he gave fell away to hesitance. "You remember?"
There was fear in his eyes, and Alice hated seeing it there. She shook her head. "Not everything...bits and pieces, I dream the same dream every night and every once in a while, a new detail pops up."
"Like what?"
They were close now, him leaning on the table and her slowly advancing 'til she could see every line in his beautiful eyes. "I remember how we met, 1920–prohibition was rough on you. You'd gotten poisoning from bad moonshine." Alice nodded. "Yeah, I came in the barn cause I heard big noise and there you were drunk to hell in the horse's stall singing show tunes. You kept saying you had a job to do, but you couldn't even stand. Just laid there whining about that job you had to do 'til you sobered. Your sight didn't return for two days."
"Aye." He said, wondering if she'd yet figured that she was the job. "You stayed the whole time. Your pet bird also kept us company, If I remember right."
"Mum's chickadee."
A gift from her Dad—filthy little traitor.
All those memories swirling in the air, Sieg's resolution loosened. He took her face into his hands and saw her freckles returning, saw the sheet of paleness that immortality had given her rescinding as he watched.
"Sieg, we were in love, weren't we?"
"I never stopped." And it was thinking this that brought him back to Earth. It was this that helped him bottle all the lust he felt for her, all the desire he had to hold her, to call her his own...he bottled it again and in doing so, pushed her away. "That was a long time ago, you need to be with Jasper now."
But She denied it. "I saved Jasper, I owe him no love. Besides, relationships aren't his thing."
Not yet. Sieg thought this sadly and he left the shed.
Alice couldn't find him in the house and she looked, she even went all the way to his room and all she found there was Vivic in his delicates.
"Anything I can do for you?"
"No!" Alice said this in reflex when he started bending over to bow. Then he straightened up and she calmed. "I-I was just looking for Sieg."
"Hey I wouldn't know, he ditched me too and I'm his familiar. A prince is never supposed to be without his familiar—a decade was quite enough o' that, thank you."
"What are you talking about?" And against her better judgement, she entered and closed the door.
"Oh that's right, you wouldn't know, would you? See girl, reapers are created in bulk by other reapers whose job involves exactly that—the new recipe is to merge a bunch of souls in a celestial bind and all the extra crap. But little Siegen was the original. Made by lord West himself the old-fashioned way, some say Death added something special and no surprise. He's lord West's absolute favorite creation above every other or at least he used to be..."
"Why? What happened?"
Vivic gave a grating laugh. "You! You happened."
