Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1)(50)

That night, Scythe Curie came into Citra’s room with clean sheets. They made her bed together, and just as they finished, Citra said, “In conclave you accused me of lying.”

“You were,” Scythe Curie said.

“How did you know?”

Scythe Curie didn’t offer a smile, but she didn’t offer any judgment either. “When you’ve lived nearly two hundred years, some things are obvious.” She tossed Citra a pillow and Citra stuffed it into a pillowcase.

“I didn’t push that girl down the stairs,” Citra said.

“I suspected as much.”

Citra now clutched the pillow. If it were alive, she would have suffocated it. “I didn’t push her down the stairs,” Citra repeated. “I pushed her in front of a speeding truck.”

Citra sat down, turning away from Scythe Curie. She couldn’t look the woman in the face, and now she regretted having confessed this dark secret from her childhood. If the Grande Dame of Death sees you as a monster, what a monster you must truly be.

“What a terrible thing to do,” said the scythe, but her voice was even, not shocked. “Was she killed?”

“Instantly,” Citra admitted. “Of course, she was back in school three days later, but it didn’t change what I had done. . . . And the worst thing was, no one knew. People thought she had tripped, and all the other kids were laughing—because you know how funny it is when someone gets deadish by accident—but it wasn’t an accident, and no one knew. No one saw me do it. And when she came back, she didn’t even know.”

Citra forced herself to look at the Grande Dame of Death, who now sat in a chair across the room from her, gazing at Citra with those invasive gray eyes.

“You asked me the worst thing I’ve ever done.” Citra said. “Now you know.”

Scythe Curie didn’t speak right away. She just sat there, letting the moment linger. “Well,” Scythe Curie finally said, “we’re going to have to do something about that.”

? ? ?

Rhonda Flowers was in the middle of a midafternoon snack when the doorbell rang. She didn’t think anything of it until a few moments later, when she looked up to see her mother standing at the kitchen threshold with a look of such abject pain on her face, it was clear that something was very wrong.

“They . . . they want to see you,” her mother announced.

Rhonda slurped the ramen noodles that were dangling from her mouth and got up. “Who’s they?”

Her mother didn’t answer. Instead she threw her arms around Rhonda, giving her a bone-crushing hug, and melted into sobs. Then over her mother’s shoulder, Rhonda saw them. A girl about her age, and a woman in a lavender garment—clearly in the style of a scythe’s robe.

“Be brave . . . ,” her mother whispered desperately into Rhonda’s ear.

But bravery was about as far away as terror. There simply wasn’t enough time to summon either fortitude or fear. All Rhonda felt was a sudden tingling in her extremities and a dreamy disconnect, as if she were watching a scene from someone else’s life. She left her mother and moved toward the door, where the two figures waited.

“You want to see me?”

The scythe, a woman with silky silver hair and a steely gaze, smiled. Rhonda never considered that a scythe might smile. On the rare occasions she’d encountered them, they always seemed so somber.

“I don’t, but my apprentice does,” the woman said, indicating the girl. But Rhonda couldn’t take her eyes off of the scythe.

“Your apprentice is going to glean me?”

“We’re not here for gleaning,” said the girl.

Only after hearing that did the terror Rhonda should have felt finally blossom. Her eyes filled with tears that she quickly wiped away, as relief followed on terror’s tail. “You could have told my mother that.” She turned and called to her mother. “It’s okay, they’re not here to glean.” Then she stepped outside, pulling the door closed behind her, knowing if she didn’t, her mother would eavesdrop on whatever this was about. She had heard that traveling scythes would show up at people’s doors asking for shelter and food for the night. Or sometimes they needed information from people for reasons she could only guess at. But why would they specifically want to speak to her?

“You probably don’t remember me,” said the girl, “but we used to go to school together years ago—before you moved here.”

As Rhonda studied the girl’s face, she pulled forth the vaguest memory, and tried to grasp at a name. “Cindy something, right?”

“Citra. Citra Terranova.”

“Oh, right.”

And then the moment became awkward. As if standing on your porch with a scythe and her apprentice wasn’t awkward enough already.

“So . . . what can I do for . . . Your Honors?” She wasn’t sure if an apprentice warranted the title of “Your Honor,” but it couldn’t hurt to err on the side of respect. Now that she had time to let her face and name sink in, Rhonda did remember Citra. As she recalled, they didn’t like each other very much.

“Well, here’s the thing,” said Citra. “Do you remember that day when you fell in front of that truck?”

Rhonda gave an involuntary shift of her shoulders. “Like I could possibly forget it. After I got back from the revival center, everybody called me Rhonda Roadkill for months.”