After Death evaporated, I stood alone in the dark to collect myself. Then I found my flashlight and hurried to check on my parents. They were no longer frozen in the kitchen by Death’s power and were back in bed asleep, so I gently shut their door and headed back into my bedroom.
David Star was Death. The world’s youngest, most famous multi-conglomerate business protégé was the Grim Reaper, and I’d kissed him!
My fingers lifted to my lips, tracing the memory of our hot and heavy moment. I couldn’t believe I’d let Death himself have my first smacker. Not that I was complaining—the kiss was not to be forgotten. He’d known exactly what he was doing, and he’d done it exceptionally well.
Jerk.
For the second time in the same day, I’d unleashed an unexplainable force from my hands. The two-hundred-and-forty-pound shredded Jerkules had been knocked flat on his back by whatever shot out of my hands.
Who the hell am I? WHAT am I? Could I really be this prophesized entity who would start wars, just like Ace had predicted?
Skittles purred as she rubbed her fur against my bed curtain, drawing my attention to the magazines featuring David and “Mystery Girl” that my mother had bought at the airport. They were stacked chaotically under my bed, and when I slid one out, the glossy image of David Star’s brown eyes unsettled me. They now appeared lifeless, empty, merely a mask concealing the monster behind them.
Death posed as a celebrity seemingly for sport, slipped on a façade so everyone worshiped him. It was irredeemably evil. How did he reap the souls of the dead while being David anyway? Did he have help? There was no way one person could collect all those souls at once.
I gulped a breath. Could he be in multiple places at once? The last thing I needed to worry about was twenty thousand Deaths wandering around the planet. I already had enough trouble sleeping at the thought of one of him.
Another idea presented itself as I riffled through the pages of a second magazine. If David Star was Death himself, then what was the D&S Tower? Who the hell was Devin Star? My skin tingled as I reached a page of David and Devin posed together. Gorgeous, the picturesque duo that all of New York and beyond was obsessed with, but now that I knew the truth about David, it was clear all aspects of the Star family were fabricated. I sat back on the floor, shining the beam of light from the flashlight onto Devin Star.
I recalled my first encounter with Devin. He was charming, and so handsome it was almost agonizing to look at him. My thumb crept onto the magazine page and covered the n in his name. Devi.
I slid my thumb away from the page, horror spreading through me, as I filled in the missing letter with another. Devil. I shook my head, voicing my denial with a repeated “No.”
“There’s no way I got in a car accident with the Devil,” I said, and laughed, since talking to myself had become the norm. “I mean, come on.”
Devin is my boss, and my mentor, David had told me outside of Manuel’s taco shack. He showed me the ropes when I was a rookie.
I quickly shoved the magazines back under the bed. How could I have been so blind? Death and the Devil controlled the D&S
Tower. I already rode one yellow bus to hell my first three years of high school. Now I would be riding a one-way train to Satan’s actual everlasting torture chamber.
Sighing, I climbed to my feet to make a chamomile tea. When I stood up, my vision swam with dizziness. I fell back, thankfully against my mattress. Having almost fainted, I yanked myself up onto the bed and gripped the comforter in dazed confusion. My mind raced, but my heart slowed. Something wasn’t right.
When I got my wisdom teeth removed, they drugged me and counted back from ten as I drifted into oblivion. I hadn’t been able control the plunge, and this felt the same way. A mighty wave of fatigue sucked every last ounce of energy from me, and my eyes fluttered shut.
The nightmares began a few weeks before I met Death at Thomas’s house. Fragments of the same vague images would terrorize me all night long. Just before I’d wake up, a massive shadow would always approach me, and I’d be unable to move. These night terrors had gotten stronger since meeting Death, until I discovered he was the shadow all along.
Now the same paralyzing sensation of the nightmare overcame my body, but the dream itself was altered. This time, I was in the alleyway near the D&S Tower. The figure approaching me was not Death.
“Hello, Faith,” the Raven demigod rasped in his bone-chilling voice. “We meet again.”
The last time I’d seen Malphas, he’d taken Thomas with him on Main Street. He’d also died in Death’s Roman gladiator memory.
I should have been afraid. Here, I didn’t feel much of anything.
“Why am I here? I was asleep.”
“And in sleep you remain. This is called a demonic projection.
I thought perhaps you’d feel more comfortable if we met alone, on your terms. If you want to leave, all you have to do is wake up.”
I felt torn between two decisions. One part of me desperately wanted to say, Later, ho, and make haste like the Road Runner—whereas the other part of me just couldn’t leave.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To help you.”
“Uh-huh . . . ” Looking Malphas directly in the eyes felt like a dare to touch the tip of a scorpion’s tail. “Haven’t really been getting that vibe from you. You know, when one of your helpers slashed my arm in the alleyway and I almost died? Or when you kidnapped and murdered Thomas?”
“It was never my intention to harm you, Faith.” Malphas leaned against the shadowy wall beside him and put his hands in his pockets—the only human mannerism I’d seen from him. I wondered how old he was. Visually, he looked to be in his early thirties. There was a distinct lilt to his voice, too, which resembled Death’s untraceable accent. It even made my blood run cold in a similar way. “My subordinates were severely punished for what they did to you outside the D&S Tower. As for your friend Thomas, I can assure you he is not dead.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Prove it.”
“Thomas will prove it for you soon. You’ll see.” He smirked, and I imagined he was incredibly handsome, once. His entrancing, blazing coal eyes bore into mine, until my head felt heavy. “You took shelter in the Crossroads today. Tell me, has a revelation unfolded?”
“He killed you,” I said. “He killed you in the arena.”
His smile tightened.
“Who are you, Malphas? To Death?”
“A ghost,” he replied.
My shoulders tensed up as he approached me. All thoughts about Thomas strangely lifted away, as a crushing weight built up in my chest. Certain details about Malphas disturbed me up close, like how his eyes were onyx black with no visible pupils, or how his skin appeared so pale I could see some of the veins beneath it.
Malphas raised a clawed finger. “Death lied to you, didn’t he?”
All I could do was stand static, numb to fear. The air shifted, rippled, as if his power were edging closer to me.
“Don’t you see what he really wants is control over you?” Malphas circled me, strobing in and out of focus like a broken camera lens.
“Don’t be naïve, Faith. He wants you to obey his every command.
Like a good pet.”
Ultimately Death’s intentions with me were unclear, but if there was one thing that man enjoyed more than anything, it was controlling everything around him. My mind harked back to every encounter with Death, how he asserted his authority over me in every possible aspect, from the interview, to the date, to the fable about him being a Carrion Angel, and then finally, his unwelcome visit to my home. Every move he’d made had been a deliberate, calculated decision to maintain a power position.
“You poor girl, you had to discover the truth about him for yourself. You haven’t even seen the worst parts.” Malphas moved his fingers in a small motion. I could have sworn something akin to a claw scraped lightly against the inside of my skull.
“Remember when you were hurting, and he kept hurting you?” Those obsidian eyes held me in place, two scary bottomless pits skimming over my features as if he were reading a book. “You can feel it, can’t you? His power over you. It lingers in your veins, awaiting his next command. You were afraid to let him in. You have dreams, aspirations. Too many girls your age get swept up in temporary relationships, just like your friend Marcy. And Death . . . he knew this from the beginning. He knew you wouldn’t be easy to break, unlike other mortals. That’s why he hid his true intentions from you. You were a conquest to him, a mouse for the cat to play with. Death knew you were developing feelings for him, and he knew you were hesitant to let anyone in. He took advantage of this. He put you in danger. Now he’s put your family in danger. He doesn’t care about you. He only wants your soul, his property as he sees it, and everything else is inconsequential.”
At the mention of my family, my face turned ashen. I couldn’t allow my parents to fall into this mess.
I imagined my date with David at the carnival, and all the distance he’d put between us whenever I tried to understand him, which I was sure was by design. How was I supposed to put my trust in someone that I only knew through fragmented memories and fabricated alter egos?
The demigod leaned in closer, drawing my attention to his alien yet attractive features. “Aren’t you the least bit curious why he came to your house, darling?” Malphas asked. “He didn’t have to interact with your parents at all. What point do you think he was trying to make there?”
That he was powerful, and if I didn’t do exactly as he said, both my Mom’s and Dad’s lives would be in danger. With merely a glance, Death had put both my parents under his spell. It would take even less effort for him to kill them.
“How do you know all of this?” I asked Malphas, fighting past a fuzziness blurring my vision again.
“I voice an echo of what you already know in your heart. Death may claim to protect you, but you know it is out of selfishness. Look at his actions, Faith. Not his words. Only I can stop him.” A chilling smirk curled his sinister mouth. Malphas stepped back, fading into a growing darkness behind him. “Summon me in your darkest hour.
I am yours.”
I woke up in a cold sweat. Morning light streamed in through slight gaps in the blinds, cutting across my eyes and making me wince and roll onto my side. Nausea clawed my throat and when I lifted my forearm, it throbbed where the demon had injured me in the alleyway.
Jolting up, I swung my legs off the bed and bolted to the bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet as I dropped to my knees and retched.
With white knuckles I gripped the porcelain seat, dripping sweat, acid, and suppressed tears into the water. My muscles were weak and overworked, as if I’d run a marathon the day before. I practically had. I flushed the toilet and dragged my feet to the sink to rinse my mouth out several times, then two more times with mouthwash. As I brushed my teeth, I wrestled with the depressing thought that there was no way out. I was hopeless in my situation now.
“Let’s recap,” I told my reflection. “You’re prophesied to start a war between Heaven and Hell and who knows what other realms.
Every evil creature and their mother are after you. You’ve developed the ability to see into the past and the future, not to mention an uncontrollable lantern power that affects evil beings. If you don’t do as Death wishes, he’ll massacre your entire family. Oh, and you still have to go to school.”
School. Sprinting out of the bathroom, I lunged for my alarm clock on my nightstand and read the time. The screen was black.
Probably broken from Death’s light show with our electricity the night before. I growled and checked my shattered phone screen. I was three hours late for school!
My bedroom door blew open, hitting the wall with a crack.
“SURPRISE!”
“Jesus!” I screamed, grabbing my chest. I took in the thirtysomething-year-old woman with poker-straight blond hair and a glowing smile that could brighten up anybody’s day. “Aunt Sarah?”
She crossed the room in a few excited leaps and squeezed me tightly against her bulky pumpkin sweater. “Happy Halloween! I was going to surprise you in the kitchen, but I just couldn’t wait!”
She held me at arm’s length, her crystal blue eyes identical to my mother’s. “You get more and more gorgeous every time I see you.”
“I literally just saw you,” I laughed out. “What are you doing here? I have school today.” A wave of panic hit me as I remembered the time. “And I’m late!”
Aunt Sarah blocked my path. “Are you kidding? You better not be going to school, missy! Your mom told me this morning on the phone you’ve been stressed and she was going to let you sleep in. I’m off today. Figured I’d stop by and take you out to cheer you up.”
“You’re kidnapping me?”
“Well, duh. Playing hooky was my specialty in high school. As far as Pleasant Valley knows, you’ve had these terrible on-and-off migraines the past few days, and it’s best for you to do something spooky fun today.” She jumped a little in excitement, and so did I, although less enthusiastically. Unbeknownst to her, I had been getting terrible migraines. “Mom called you in sick at school! Play along, kid, I’m breaking you out of jail!”
Once Aunt Sarah left my room to let me get changed, I paced my bedroom floor, reconsidering this whole thing. Going out felt like another demon incident waiting to happen and staying home or going to school could be just as damning.
Death knew where I lived. Hell, he could find me anywhere I went. Hiding under a blanket in my closet wouldn’t protect me. The last thing I wanted to do was stay cooped up in the house all day, terrified of what would happen next. Maybe going out with my aunt was just what I needed.
I wore a pair of medium wash ripped jeans with black fishnets underneath and my old “Batman’s Wife” T-shirt to be festive for Halloween. Then I brushed my long black hair until it was bone straight and shiny, laced up my Converse, and quickly applied mascara, eyeliner, and burgundy lipstick.
On my vanity mirror hung my communion cross, which my mother must have snuck into my room while I was sleeping. I clasped the dainty cross around my neck, so it hung close to my throat.
I inhaled a slow breath.
“You’re a normal girl,” I told myself. “You are a normal girl.” I grabbed a zip-up hoodie and headed out of my bedroom. “Who shoots light beams from her hands.”
I spent the car ride venting to Aunt Sarah about art school options and potential majors that interested me. Before entering The Twilight Zone, starring Death, college had been my number one stressor. Funny, when actual life-threatening problems enter your life, the other trivial issues you had before then, which had felt like the end of the world, vanish into thin air.
Happiness to me was to be immersed in art for the rest of my life, embraced by the magic of color and creating. Realistically, I knew I might have to settle on being an art teacher or some variation of that, since art studies and fashion design were so competitive. I wasn’t the type of person to settle on anything less than what I truly wanted though. Not until I’d exhausted every other option to get to it. “David Star” helped me see that strength within myself.
The radio was on low in the background, and Aunt Sarah turned it up to hear it.
“The crime rate in New York City has snowballed, leaving citizens frazzled,” said a male broadcaster, “after a man was found dead outside the Empire State Building. Witnesses have referred to him as the ‘Man with Wings.’ Before investigators could arrive to the scene, it is claimed the mystery man ‘vanished into thin air.’ Video footage has turned up of this ‘Man with Wings’ lying on the sidewalk. Some believe this bizarre incident is real, while others say it’s a Halloween prank, or a publicity stunt. An eyewitness has come forward with disturbing details about the supposed dead man, claiming, ‘His eyes were pecked out of his head, and he had massive white wings, like an angel.’”
“He was alive for a while,” a staticky recording of a male voice said, who I assumed was the eyewitness. “He spoke to me. There was this blinding light, and he just went ‘poof.’ Gone. Like one of those Las Vegas magicians. Something ain’t right about this city anymore.”
“You can say that again,” I muttered.
“Witnesses have reported that in the man’s final moments, he warned of a ‘great evil coming.’”
My blood turned to ice. The angel that had crashed through David Star’s office had said those same words. With a bitter tang in my mouth, I remembered the bloody mess and the gory pits where the angel’s eyes once were. Had another angel been attacked by Malphas and his underlings? What kind of message was he trying to get across to Death?
Aunt Sarah switched off the radio. “A stuntman with fake wings is found dead and now the whole city is freaking out like it’s the apocalypse. Classic NYC.”
I felt ashamed for feeling concerned about Death’s safety. A part of me wanted to call him, confirm he was all right, and tell him about the demonic projection with Malphas. Then I remembered who he truly was. Remembered how he’d hurt me. How he’d come to my house the night before and made me feel exposed and helpless. How we’d kissed, and somehow, that was the cruelest part of all because none of it was real. The man I wanted to kiss wasn’t real. He was a character, a persona that went up in flames at the strike of a match, exposing the wicked creature standing behind a curtain of fire.
I clutched my phone with white knuckles, staring but not seeing the passing scenery outside the car. Then why did I kiss him back?
“In other news,” Aunt Sarah said. “Faith, is it true you’re dating David Star? Your mom sent me a picture of you and him in a magazine.”
It crossed my mind that she should have seen those magazines at her bookstore. If she’d checked any of her social media, she would have known too.
“We’re acquaintances through mutual friends,” I replied. “It’s a small world.”
We pulled into a picturesque farm with a freshly painted red barn, apple trees, pumpkin patches, and corn lined up in neat rows. Sunny Haven’s farm, where Pleasant Valley went to enjoy all their favorite fall festivities. Normally, Mom and Dad took me pumpkin and apple picking every year here, but the past two years we hadn’t gone. I missed our Halloween traditions, so I planned on bringing Mom home plenty of apples to bake apple pie with her and picking the biggest pumpkin in the patch to carve a jack-o’-lantern with Dad.
He wouldn’t care if we did it the day after Halloween.
I spent the next few hours pretending it was any other day. The two of us went on a hayride to go pumpkin picking, ventured back to the car to drop off our harvest, and then rode another hayride for apple picking. It didn’t look like it had rained here on the farm last night, even though the drive was only twenty minutes from my house. I wondered if Death had brought that nasty storm with him, like the force of nature that he was.
“When you were a little squirt,” Aunt Sarah began, as we carried our wooden buckets of apples down an endless aisle of trees, “we used to get you a bunch of those little mini pumpkins they sell at the barn. You loved painting them. And chucking them at your dad.”
“That’s too much,” I laughed.
“No really, you used to do this thing where you’d toss the pumpkins at your father. You’d never really hit him, but he’d pretend to be hurt and say ‘ouch!’ so that you’d giggle hysterically.”
“Sounds like I was a sadistic child.”
“The most adorable, always smiling, sadistic child.”
RAWK!
I nearly dropped the wooden basket in my hand as a raven landed on a high branch above us. All of a sudden, the bird nose-dived toward me, but I ducked down, so it crossed over to another tree. Quickly jerking its head side to side, the raven stared down at me with beady black eyes. As the dark bird opened its mouth and continued its throaty squawk, Aunt Sarah did the unthinkable and hurled an apple at it. She would have hit it, too, had it not taken flight at the last second.
“Nice throw,” I said unsteadily. The phantom mark on my forearm stung again, like claws scraping at my skin from the inside. I pressed my hand against the pain until the sensation went away. I was in too deep with this supernatural stuff to dismiss the bird as a coincidence, but I couldn’t bring myself to ruin another day just yet.
“Now I know where I got my softball skills from.”
The whole hayride back I was on edge, watching the skies for crazed ravens. By the time the ride stopped by the main entrance without a single bird or demon in sight, I’d convinced myself the raven really was just a coincidence this time.
“So,” Aunt Sarah said, as we hopped off the wagon. “What’s up with your celebrity boyfriend? You kinda blew me off before and your mom is convinced you’re dating him.”
“David’s not my boyfriend,” I said, kicking gravel as we walked.
“Turns out he’s as fake as I initially thought he was.”
Aunt Sarah placed her hand on my shoulder with a serious expression, stopping us both. “I had no idea. I’m so sorry you’re hurting.”
“I thought I would see this coming, but I was blindsided. Now I feel stupid. I wasted so much energy on someone who wasn’t even real.”
“Aw, sweetheart . . . ” Aunt Sarah hugged me in a firm embrace and emotion tightened my throat. “You are not stupid, Faith. When you’re in a new relationship it’s fun and exciting. It can be hard to see the warning signs that things might not work out.” She pulled me back at arm’s length. “Listen, life will not always work out as planned, and it shouldn’t. When things don’t work out, when we’re disappointed by love, or life, we learn the most about ourselves.
Heartbreak is part of growing up and figuring out who you are. Who you are to me is intelligent, kind, brave, and so worthy of love. You’re allowed to be upset because it’s disappointing, but don’t put yourself down. Look at how much you’ve learned instead.”
I braved a smile. “Thank you. I really needed to hear that.”
“Anytime, kiddo.” She looked toward the various food trucks parked to the right of us in a compacted dirt area. “You hungry?
Don’t know about you, but I’m in the mood for fried chicken.”
I laughed, since she didn’t eat meat. I hadn’t eaten since tacos with Marcy yesterday, and the morning vomit session had left me incredibly shaky. Before I could respond, a familiar cold sensation pricked at the back of my neck.
Death was here.
I scanned my surroundings and couldn’t see him anywhere.
What could he possibly want with me now?
“Is something wrong, Faith?”
I gazed back at Aunt Sarah, to find her staring at me with an odd expression on her face.
“Nope, I’m just starving,” I said with an authenticity that put Oscar nominees to shame. “Let’s go eat—”
Someone bumped into me as they walked past us, nearly knocking me to the ground.
I whirled around to glower at the clobbering idiot as the cold sensation hit me again. The wide back, broad shoulders, and overall massive frame of the man walking away from us was unmistakably Death. Clad in black jeans and a hoodie with a leather jacket over it, collar up, he managed to blend in with the people around us. At my stare, in almost slow motion, he looked back over his shoulder, revealing a shadowy area where his features should have been.
Death took one last drag from his cigarette, flicked it to the side, and then stuffed his hands into his pockets. He headed in the direction of the big red barn, and as I watched him stalk away, his deep voice invaded my skull. We need to talk. Meet me in the barn.
My heart pounded incessantly in my ears.
Aunt Sarah tilted her chin up, as if she were about to shout something crude to Death, but then her brows scrunched together, and her eyes narrowed.
“What a jerk,” she said. Glancing back at Death again, Aunt Sarah grabbed my shoulder, steering me toward the Sunny Haven’s food trucks for guests. “Come on, time to eat all the fries.”
Feeling drained of energy, I decided to eat before Death ultimately sought me out. Besides feeling betrayed and angry, I was also a little scared to be alone with him again.
I ordered a huge tray of cheese fries and a slice of pepperoni pizza at one of the grease trucks, then popped a squat at a wooden picnic table. Aunt Sarah stood in a ridiculously long line at another truck to buy her veggie burger.
I’ll admit it, I didn’t wait for my aunt and attacked my large carton of cheese fries with the restraint of a ferociously hungry wildebeest.
Can you blame me? I was starving. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had the ability to eat without feeling sick from nerves.
I finished half my fries and pizza in record time. Glancing back at my aunt, who was still in line for her veggie burger, I shook the ice at the bottom of my soda and crushed the cardboard container, stacking it on top of my empty french fry container and paper plate.
I swung my leg out from the picnic table and leaned toward the garbage can nearby to toss my trash. Since my aunt notoriously never locked her car, I figured I’d put my apples away while I waited for her. I lifted the wooden basket beside me and headed to the back of the lot, following a family lugging their pumpkins to their car—a mom, a dad, and a little girl skipping in between them. As they crossed the dirt lot and I approached Aunt Sarah’s car, the little girl glanced back at me. Half of her face was painted like a skull.
A car honked, and I lurched back as a purple Jeep came flying past to pull haphazardly into the spot right next to Aunt Sarah’s Toyota. Pleasant Valley’s golden boy linebacker, Brody McCormick, hopped out of the car, along with Nicole Hawkins and her two clones. Brody had painted gruesome zombie makeup on his face and the three girls were dressed as cats.
“Hey, Wednesday Addams!” Nicole greeted with a sugary sweet fake smile. “Lose your sidekick again, freak?”
“Who, Marcy?” Brody asked, chewing a piece of gum like a cow.
He inspected an imaginary spot on his car and rubbed at it with his varsity jacket. “That slut’s probably getting tested for the clap as we speak.”
“I heard she hooked up with Tommy at his party and now he’s sick,” Nicole added, twirling a strand of her glossy honey hair.
“Wanna bet he got it from her?”
“Sure didn’t get it from this freak,” Brody said, thumbing toward me. “Unless he’s got a hard-on for ugly goth chicks.”
“Aren’t you a little young to have a receding hairline, Brody?” I blurted before I could stop myself. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you have enough butt hair to solve the issue.”
The one cheerleader giggled, suppressing it with her palm as Nicole gave her a sharp look. Brody reddened, his zombie-painted features tightening. He raised his arm, and I flinched, thinking he might hit me. Instead, he swatted my crate with a fake severed human hand, spilling apples all over the ground. “Watch your mouth, you ugly bitch.”
My hand tightened around my mace in my pocket, ready to use it. Brody backed off and strode away. The girls trailed behind him, now laughing at my expense. Pleasant Valley. The irony kills me.
Growling, I bent down to pick up my apples, when an icy chill ran down the back of my neck.
“Happy Halloween.”
Straightening at that deep, velvety voice, I jerked my head to the side. And there he was.
“Death,” I breathed.
“The man, the myth, the legend,” he said dryly. “Sexy, aren’t I?”
The last time we were together, he’d been knocked unconscious by my crazy light beam, and my treacherous little fingers had investigated him like I was Nancy Drew. Now he was leaning against Brody’s Jeep, his tall frame angled toward me. I replayed our encounter from the night before and tried not to seek out the bulky muscles beneath his leather jacket, or the menacing shadow over his face, and instead focused lamely on the center of his chest.
“Have you any concept of time?” Death asked, when I couldn’t find the courage to speak. “I gave you explicit instructions to meet me at the barn. It’s been an hour of you futzing around.” Then he took a knife out from underneath his jacket and slashed Brody’s tire with it.
“Dude, what the heck!”
“He’s lucky it’s not his face.”
As the tire hissed out, Death prowled past me to the annihilate the next tire, when I grabbed his leather-clad shoulder. “Can you stop?”
“Little Brody was one smart remark away from getting his head lopped off,” Death said, twirling the blade around his gloved fingers in a dangerous dance. “He knows damn well you’re beautiful.”
I was so stunned by the compliment that I almost overlooked the whole lop-his-head-off thing.
Feeling as though someone was listening in, I glanced back at the picnic tables, to find my aunt approaching the table with her food. I turned back to Death, playing with the cross around my neck. His head dipped down, and I could feel his shadowed eyes track the movement.
“This might come as a surprise to your enormous ego,” I said at last, “but I don’t need you to defend me.” I proceeded to fix the bottom of the apple basket by wedging a broken piece of wood into the circular frame. Then I bent down to pick up the apples on the grass, gingerly placing them into the basket. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk me all the time? Like, oh, I don’t know, do your job and collect souls?”
“Thanks for the concern, but I’ve already surpassed my quota.
Why don’t you worry about upgrading your pants situation?”
“They’re called ripped jeans.” I stood up with the basket, all sass.
“Calvin Klein’s. Didn’t David Star do a campaign for them? I expect an employee discount.”
Death slinked closer to me, broad shoulders rolling in that delicious leather jacket and long powerful legs working a hell of a pair of dark jeans. He gestured to my T-shirt. “Hello, wife. Should I have worn my ‘I’m Batman’ shirt today?”
“Charming.” A sear of heat crept up my neck. I bent down again to pick up the rest of the apples to hide the flush he’d triggered. “Do me a huge favor? Perform your vanishing act and never return. It’ll be your best trick yet, I promise!”
“You’re mad about the kiss,” Death speculated in an amused voice, and my fingers paused on the skin of a McIntosh. “I’ll make it easy for you, forget it happened. It was a mistake.”
My stomach sank. As much as I didn’t want to admit it now, the kiss had meant something to me. “You must be dense in the head if you think your kiss was my biggest takeaway of last night. You betrayed me, and you lied to me.”
“Go on,” he said with an encouraging wave of a gloved hand.
Like I was complimenting him.
Oooh, he just made me so . . .
“What the hell’s the matter with you? This isn’t a joke. I’m not upset about the kiss, although it was the most disappointing portion of the night!”
He had the nerve to snicker. “You’re a horrible liar.”
“Good thing I have you around to give me plenty of pointers.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy kissing me, Faith,” Death purred, in a way that thickened his untraceable accent. “You loved it. It just shouldn’t have happened.”
“Always trying to validate something. Could there be confidence issues beneath his overbearing personality and veiled shadow?”
Death freed a growl. “Nothing to validate, sweetheart. In all my existence, a woman has never clung to my arms as desperately as you did last night.” He was a master at getting under my skin because I was already seething like a rabid dog from his taunting.
“If I was touching your arms, which I don’t recall doing, I was trying to push you away.” As if I could ever forget those sculpted biceps.
“Right, you don’t recall,” he said silkily. I hated how he could manipulate his voice like that. It did things to me. “Just like you won’t remember moaning into my mouth.”
“Okay, that’s enough of you.”
I could feel his provocative grin. “Is it?”
“If you’re so hot and glorious like you claim you are, why don’t you take off that stupid hood and show me what the big deal is?”
“Because you couldn’t handle all of me, cupcake.” His voice was a mere purr again. “I’m doing you a favor.”
I couldn’t challenge that. To be honest, at the thought of him showing me his face, I started to get nervous. If he was as frighteningly hot as I believed, it would only make resisting him even more difficult.
“Last night, I tried to tell you to stop,” I insisted, continuing our cat and mouse game. “The last thing I wanted was your lying, two-faced, dead—”
“Undead,” he corrected.
“Undead breath in my mouth!” I finished with a huff.
“Your tongue had a funny way of showing it.”
“I-I don’t remember that either,” I stammered. Thinking about his wicked tongue fueled my corrupted imagination in ways that made my reckless hormones perform enthusiastic backflips. Poker-faced, but burning all over, I tilted my chin up. “Next, you’re going to tell me I kissed you first, right?”
“That goes without saying.”
I barked out a laugh. “Good joke!”
He stole an apple from my basket and raised it to his shadowy mouth. A few crunches, and the whole apple, including the core, was polished off. Well, that was unnecessary.
Death braced a powerful hand on the roof of Aunt Sarah’s car, like a composed predator. “You got on your tippy-toes. All doe-eyed and awkward. I felt bad, so I let it happen. The end.”
“We kissed at the exact same time,” I said, fuming over this.
“Sure about that?”
I looked off into space, second-guessing myself. “No!” I shouted, pointing a finger at him as I placed the basket of apples on the ground. “No, no, no! You’re screwing with me again! It was at the same time! Might I add, I distinctly recall your hands grabbing my ass! And my thighs!” Shouting these things at him made that night somehow more real. “Which means you—you were into it, too!”
“Gaining your memory back, I see?” I could hear him grinning.
“Now do you remember the moaning?”
“I thought you didn’t like me,” I fired back.
“I don’t,” he seethed, his voice slipping back into that preternatural growl. “You are, without a shadow of a doubt, the most annoying person to ever exist.” He leaned into me. “But I won’t deny that last night was . . . surprising. Your body felt perfect against mine. You have a great ass too. I love an ass I can get a nice handful of.”
Burn. Everything was burning inside me. “You need help.
Serious therapy, dude. Padded room, straitjacket, meds, the whole nine yards! We are never talking about this again. I’m so serious.
Never again. It never happened.”
“Fine by me.”
“Good,” I panted out. I had gotten so worked up that I’d barely been breathing. “Because I’d like to pretend my first wasn’t with death personified, thank you very much.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Your first? I was your first kiss?”
I wanted to push my hair in front of my face and hide like Cousin Itt. “You knew I was a virgin, but you didn’t know I’d never kissed before?”
“The virgin part was obvious. You wore slacks to the interview.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Says the virgin. Lucky you, having me as your first. The mortal boys would have drooled into your mouth like a faucet. Me? I pride myself on my flawless tongue technique.” He lowered his voice as he leaned into me. “It’s all about the teasing and the flicking.”
I crossed my arms over my chest, boiling again over the clear underlying innuendo in his sensual voice. My attempt at an intimidating pose didn’t do much, considering the virtual bulldozer before me, and that only made me angrier.
“That’s it! Back up!” I jabbed at the air in front of me, and as if I had popped a bubble of sexual tension between us, heat rolled from Death’s body and sank into my sweatshirt to my bare skin. What the hell? “Give me space. You always loom over me like a skyscraper. I get it, you’re big.”
He snickered at the back of his throat. “Damn right, sunshine.”
“And the whole game you play with your body and how you present yourself,” I continued now that I was on a roll. “Do you think I don’t notice how you always make that little growl at me?”
“Well,” Death began, lighting a cigarette, “maybe if you’d play with me more and gave me love and affection, I wouldn’t growl so much—”
“I’m not falling for this new playful act. We have one make-out session and suddenly you’re making the moves on me? What, did you buy catnip on the way over here and now you’re frisky?”
“The irresistible don’t need moves,” he said, exhaling cherry-scented smoke. “And FYI, catnip makes me sleepy. Souls on the other hand, now, they perk me right up.”
“You don’t actually eat people?”
“No, I’m vegan.”
My eyes widened. “You consume souls?”
“Yes, Faith, the stereotype of consuming souls does in fact align with my pseudonym and my entire existence,” Death said. “Don’t look at me like that, I don’t eat the whole thing. The soul is not destroyed. I trim off some pieces for a snack.” He made a quick slicing motion in the air. “Then I send the little shit off.”
He had a way with words. “Do you collect all the souls on this entire planet?”
“Yep.” He popped the p. He sounded bored of conversation.
“By yourself?”
“Along with my seven reapers.”
Reapers? Were there more of his kind?
I tried to wrap my mind around this. “There’s no way that you and seven reapers . . . or whatever, could reap all the souls in the world. Especially while you’re constantly out gallivanting around with hot models and celebrities as David Star.”
Death reclined lazily against Aunt Sarah’s car again, angling himself toward me with a dark laugh. “Jealousy is a delicious look on you, but you should know the only girl I’ve been gallivanting around with is you.”
I felt a mild fluttering in my chest. “Just tell me how you do it.
How you . . . collect so many souls.”
“I’m a monster of many talents. It’s simple, really.” Suddenly, I felt a presence behind me. “I can multiply,” he whispered into my ear.
Startled, I whirled around. Death stood behind me, snickering. I snapped around, to find him lazily inclined against the sports car on the other side of me too. Looking back and forth between the two Deaths, I struggled to process what I was seeing. He could multiply.
Now, this . . . this was not good. One Death I could handle.
Barely. But two? Hundreds? Fantastic—now my dirty mind imagined multiple Deaths kissing me at the same time.
“Oh my G od, this is so not okay,” I said. “How many times can you freaking copy and paste yourself?”
“Thousands,” said Death One.
“When I have the energy,” Death Two added, flicking a strand of my hair into my face with his gloved finger, before exploding into a black mist.
“The duplicates only last a few minutes,” the remaining Death explained. “I send them out to do their job, and then they dissipate and the energy they collected from the mortal soul returns back to me. It’s taken years of practice. My mind can exist in layers like this.
It’s a trick. Magic. As with any magic, there are consequences that directly affect me so that I do not overreach my . . . limitations as the Grim Reaper.”
“Checks and balances.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Duplicating, stopping time, it can all deplete me fast if I’m not careful.” He rolled back his one shoulder, as though he were uncomfortable. “Then it gets complicated.”
“I’m following just fine,” I said softly.
“In essence, energy from a mortal’s life is my incentive to keep working. The soul keeps me temporarily satiated. It’s all part of my punishment.”
“Punishment for what?”
Death stared down at me for a beat before continuing. “Long story short, after I was cursed as Death, Heaven recruited me to become an angel. To use my ability to see into people’s souls for good. Let’s just say I broke a few rules up there and they didn’t take kindly to it. Now I’m
Fallen on top of whatever else I already was, and my soul is still bound to Heaven. And as punishment for being a bad boy, I’m twice cursed.
Cursed as a death creature and cursed to reap souls and distribute them to both Heaven and Hell, for all eternity.”
Damn.
“So don’t worry your pretty little innocent, moral head, cupcake,” Death continued, shifting back to his teasing mood. “I only eat the parts of a mortal’s soul I’m supposed to have.” I could feel him grinning like a piranha. “Unless, of course, a poor soul meets me on a bad day . . . ”
I loosed a shaky breath, wondering if he had more bad days than good ones.
“What about human food?” I asked, taking advantage of the fact that we were having a normal-ish discussion. If normal was the word to describe chatting with the Angel of Death.
“I tolerate it, when I’m starving.” He sounded uninterested again, or maybe he hated that he’d become the main topic of conversation.
“I lost my palate for mortal food a long time ago. Sugar and meat have always been an exception though.”
No wonder he loves frosting. “What happens if you don’t eat at all?
Reap human souls, I mean.”
His head slanted down to me, and the air plunged a few degrees colder. “We’re talking too much. Time to come with me.” He inclined a gloved finger to himself. “Now, if you will.”
“Not happening. Especially after you reminded me my soul is a Happy Meal for you.”
The huskiness of his laugh was like a hot caress against my skin.
“Every moment you remain exposed, you put yourself and your loved ones in danger. You will only attract more creatures to your essence. Do I need to tattoo these words on the palm of your hand for you to finally grasp them?”
With great restraint, I bit down on my tongue to hold back a sarcastic response, something I probably should have done a lot more often. I hated how superior he considered himself. My eyes raked from his combat boots, up his massive frame, to stare into the hidden eyes of the creature beneath the hood. Shadows twisted around his cloak, coiling in the air like phantom snakes. When we kissed, that darkness had embraced me. I’d been engulfed by his shadows and kissed by them, as if they were also a part of him.
As my brain roved over dirty thoughts of Death’s shadows—of all things—I could feel the monster himself silently watching me from beneath his veil.
I had to stop thinking about that damn kiss and remember whom I was dealing with.
“I’m not going,” I said firmly, as heat surged down my arms. “I’m not leaving my loved ones alone and exposed to you, and I won’t let you use me anymore. I’d rather die.”
He released a baritone growl that rattled at the back of his throat.
It was impossible not to recoil. When I did, my foot tripped over the basket of apples. His strong gloved hand shot out and clasped my wrist before I fell. Death pulled me forward and to the side, pinning me to the Toyota.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he purred against my throbbing pulse. “I can take a life just as quickly as I can spare one.” He lowered his head to the crook of my neck. I let him, succumbing to the madness. “You’re different than the other mortals. That’s unfortunate for you, because I find the most unusual things in this world are the tastiest.”
Out of instinct, or maybe out of pure insanity, my hands reached out to fist the warm T-shirt beneath his leather jacket. Layers of carved muscles tightened just beyond a thin layer of cotton. “Do not.
Threaten me.”
“It wasn’t a threat.” Death pressed his lips to my neck. A jolt of heat slid down my spine, coiling in the very place he’d roused the night before. All of my senses shut down, except for touch. My eyes fluttered closed as his cruel gloved hands drifted down the outline of my ribs, my waist, my hips. When he brushed a small patch of exposed skin on the upper leg of my ripped jeans, he slid a finger inside, grazing the bare flesh of my thigh and my fishnets with leather. I could not breathe. With a low laugh, his tongue stroked a wicked path up the column of my throat in a leisurely caress. “It was a promise.”
Rather than disappearing into a black mist, he pushed off the Toyota and prowled away into the parking lot. Looked like he’d be hanging around.
“Boo!” Aunt Sarah shouted from behind me. I was a miracle I hadn’t peed myself.
“Why do people keep doing that to me?” I lashed out, slapping a hand over my neck, where moments ago Death’s tongue had been.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” she said, taken aback by my outburst. “I was trying to be funny.”
“I know.” I removed my fingers from my neck in shame and raked them through my hair. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“Who were you talking to?” Aunt Sarah asked.
It took a humiliating amount of effort to focus on an answer.
“Just a friend from class.” The phantom trace of Death’s caress tingled on my neck, mocking my lie. “He had a question about our homework.”
Her shaped eyebrows bowed inward, the incredulity in her expression making me nervous. “You’d tell me if it was something else, right?”
“There’s nothing else. Honest.” I smiled convincingly.
“Good . . . Well, let me help you with that before your arms fall off.” Brightening, she took the crate of apples from me and placed them on the towels in the backseat of her Toyota.
“What do you think about you and me hanging out at that cute coffee shop in the barn house until the sun goes down?” Aunt Sarah asked, once she closed the door. In a theatrical movement, she flashed a set of haunted hayride tickets in front of my face. “Since I got these bad boys!”
