Parallel Lines- *RAYOR*

Chapter 6

"A feisty six-year-old." Blake grinned. "You'll do great things in your time."

Headaches again. Now I've learned to sense the pounding pain coming on. But a headache for me is the worst form of torture. I can't tell Aster about this because he'll just say 'I told you so.' Can't tell Levy because I'm not used to confiding in him, even though I know he senses my headache. Mum is rarely around and she doesn't even know about how I drank that potion.

It tasted horrible, too.

I hold my head, fingers digging into my scalp. I can't even feel it in comparison to the burning headache. I down a litre of water. It just makes me need a wee.

"Shoot," I say. I have my wee, and hang upside down from the banister, counting. I've never got past seventy-five.

Levy bursts in at sixty-six and I fall into the carpet, banging my head.

"Nicco, you fool," says Levy.

"Idiot. You made me fall!" I say angrily. He flinches, but I'm picking myself up. "What?"

"Do you want to go out?"

"We only just finished our reaping," I say, swinging upside down off of the banister again.

"Blake came here."

I fall off the banister again. "What?"

"She was looking for Gabriel, though," says Levy. I'm angry again.

"Then don't mention it," I say. "Is she still here?"

"No. But she found Gabriel."

I sigh heavily. I can tell Levy's upset because he upset me. And I'm fine with it. He's been acting weirdly defiant lately, but this is more how it used to be.

But then he leaves.

Usually I'm happy and bouncy. And I do feel some of that return to me later. I'm that sort of person- I can shrug of things like this but it's annoying.

I'm bouncy by the time Aster returns, and refuse to open the door when he rings the doorbell, even when he bangs on it. I giggle. Levy calls for me to open the door, but I don't. After the second round of shouting Levy comes over, holding a graphic novel.

"Mum will be mad," he says. At this point I would stop, but all I can think of is when he was five and used to aid me in any trouble making no matter how bad. And how he was so devoted, he would have buried a body of a person I murdered with me, and helped me with the deed.

Not that he did.

He did get more responsible as he grew older and told me to stop if it got out of hand, and mostly I listened.

Mostly. But he always accepted that I knew best.

So when he stood up to me against Gabriel, I was mad.

In the end, Levy pulled me away from the door and Aster got in.

Aster gave me a huffy look which I laughed at. "Where's Blake?"

"Home," said Aster.

"Don't you reap together? She was looking for Gabriel before," says Levy.

"We were at the beginning of the day. But then she finished," says Aster. "I'm getting more reapings," he proclaims proudly. I can tell he looks to Death as a sort of idol. I have met Death once. That was also when I first met Blake.

I was the one who met her first. Not Levy.

Aster wanted to go to meet Blake, but at the time I was too young to stay home by myself. Levy was with Mum, who was going to get- in other words, steal- a treat for him on Earth because he had done something good- I think he knew Gabriel then, and Gabriel had taught him piano. The good deed was him performing it in front of Mum, which made her giddy with happiness as all I did was swing dangerously on the banisters.