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Chapters (86)
  1. Title Page
  2. CONTENTS
  3. Love
  4. Before
  5. One
  6. ONE
  7. Two
  8. TWO
  9. Three
  10. THREE
  11. Four
  12. FOUR
  13. Five
  14. FIVE
  15. Six
  16. SIX
  17. Seven
  18. SEVEN
  19. Eight
  20. EIGHT
  21. Nine
  22. NINE
  23. Ten
  24. TEN
  25. Eleven
  26. ELEVEN
  27. After
  28. One
  29. ONE
  30. Two
  31. TWO
  32. Three
  33. THREE
  34. Four
  35. FOUR
  36. Five
  37. FIVE
  38. Six
  39. SIX
  40. Seven
  41. SEVEN
  42. Eight
  43. EIGHT
  44. Nine
  45. NINE
  46. Ten
  47. TEN
  48. Eleven
  49. ELEVEN
  50. Twelve
  51. TWELVE
  52. Thirteen
  53. THIRTEEN
  54. Fourteen
  55. FOURTEEN
  56. Fifteen
  57. FIFTEEN
  58. Sixteen
  59. SIXTEEN
  60. Seventeen
  61. SEVENTEEN
  62. Eighteen
  63. EIGHTEEN
  64. Nineteen
  65. NINETEEN
  66. Twenty
  67. TWENTY
  68. Twenty-One
  69. TWENTY-ONE
  70. Twenty-Two
  71. TWENTY-TWO
  72. Twenty-Three
  73. TWENTY-THREE
  74. Twenty-Four
  75. TWENTY-FOUR
  76. Twenty-Five
  77. TWENTY-FIVE
  78. Twenty-Six
  79. TWENTY-SIX
  80. Twenty-Seven
  81. TWENTY-SEVEN
  82. Twenty-Eight
  83. TWENTY-EIGHT
  84. Eleven Months Later
  85. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
  86. Copyright

‘Thanks.’ I try to smile as I glance towards the crowd and see Esen, standing back from the chaos, her arms crossed and the wind disturbing her curls as she chats to someone who looks as bored as she does.

‘Aren’t you going to put it on?’ Dev asks eagerly.

She’s not going to let this go, is she?

So I put it on and as soon as I do, she reaches over and presses her finger to the pendant.

‘There,’ she says with a proud smile. ‘You’re one of us now.’

I can’t look at her so turn to Esen again, but she’s laughing now and her whole face looks different.

‘Don’t worry about Ess,’ Dev tells me as she picks up a pebble and lobs it toward the sea. ‘She’s tough,’ she warns as we watch the pebble land with a heavy plop. ‘It’s going to take a while to win her over, but when you do, and I know you will, she’ll do anything for you.’

I don’t care if I win her over or not.

‘Everyone handles this differently,’ Dev admits, still looking out at the sea.

‘Handles what differently?’

‘This.’ She nods at the crowd. ‘Being a reaper.’

‘So there’s more to it than ferrying dead teenagers back and forth to the beach for eternity?’

She chuckles to herself, then continues what she was trying to say. ‘Some people, like Esen, put everything they were, all their memories and the lists of things they didn’t get time to do, into a box. Then they lock it and hide it somewhere at the back of their mind. It makes it easier to bury that person and become someone else entirely. Some reapers even change their names because they don’t think of themselves as that person any more.’

‘Is that why you ask people to call you Dev, not Isla?’

‘I’ve always been Dev, actually. There were two Islas in my year so she became Isla McDermid and I became Isla Devlin. But then people started dropping the Isla so I was just known as Devlin, then Dev.’

It’s weird. I forgot that she had a life, like I did, before she ended up in the bookshop.

‘What school did you go to?’

‘Queen’s Park then Stringer. You?’

‘I went to Whitehawk all the way through.’

‘I thought so.’

I’m about to ask her why when I realise that it’s a safe assumption to make, given where I died.

‘What about you?’ I ask instead. ‘What’s your way of dealing with this, then?’