Chapter 19: Death is My BFF: Chapter 18

Nighttime closed in as I swung my car into the driveway. When I saw my dad’s truck parked outside the garage, and my mother’s silhouette in the warm glow of the kitchen window, I released the breath I’d been holding. My family was home safe.

I switched off the ignition and rested my forehead against the wheel, forcing myself to breathe in and out slowly. Adrenaline coursed through my veins like an anxious curse that never ended. I remained in the dark car until the heat from the vents ran out.

Gathering my things, I exited the vehicle and jogged to the front door.

“Look who decided to show up,” my father said sternly, as I made my way into the house. He slid off his reading glasses and shut the book in his hands with a thud.

“Hey, Dad.” I bolted the door closed and paused, mentally preparing myself for another web of lies. The overwhelming urge to tell my parents everything, or at least what happened to Thomas, ate away at me more than ever. Worried that my father would notice something was wrong, I headed to my room. “I, um, have a lot of homework.”

“Wait a minute, young lady.” I froze as Dad rose to his feet.

“Where have you been? It’s late.”

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered. “I hit traffic.”

“Why didn’t you call me and let me know? You always call or text when you’re late. I called you three times.”

“Phone died. Forgot my charger.”

Dad analyzed my features with skepticism. “Is something wrong, Faith? You look like you’ve been crying.”

“Nothing’s wrong, Dad,” I said, brightening up. “I’m just tired.”

“Cupcake?”

I whirled around, and my mother stood directly behind me. I yelped, and so did she.

“Jesus on a pogo stick!” Mom exclaimed, putting an oven mitt to her chest. In her other hand, she held a strawberry frosted cupcake with black pumpkin-shaped sprinkles. “You almost gave me a heart attack! What’s got you so jumpy?”

“I-I-I—”

“Where were you tonight?” Dad huffed, now standing on the other side of me. I knew I was just given a one-way ticket to the parental interrogation. “Were you with that boy? David Galaxy, or whatever his name is?”

A sinking feeling gripped my stomach. “No, I was studying, Dad.”

“How is David anyway?” Mom beamed, wiping at the flour on her cheek. “Why didn’t you ask him over? He would have loved these cupcakes! I read the funniest article in that said his favorite food is frosting.”

I laughed in a stunted, nervous way. “That’s great, Mom. Thanks for the cupcakes, but I’m not really in the mood for food right now.

I’m feeling a little overwhelmed about this exam coming up. Now, if you’ll both excuse me, I have to go bury myself in textbooks until dawn. Pray for Faith.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” my dad said, blocking my path. He placed his hands on his hips, attempting an stance. Instead, he ended up looking like he was striking a Superman pose. “Lisa, your daughter is home three hours past her curfew, on a school night. She’s clearly hiding something. Aren’t you the least bit concerned?”

“Honey, Faith’s eighteen,” Mom said, rubbing his arm with an oven mitt. “She has to leave the nest, let her soar.”

“I letting her soar,” Dad said stubbornly, as if they’d had this conversation plenty of times before. “Toward her and her career goals. What I won’t let her do is soar into the arms of some celebrity full-grown man who can’t keep it in his pants—”

Mom fumed, as I wordlessly shook my head in mortification. “Your daughter is mature for her age and responsible. David is nineteen. He’s only one year older than her.”

.

“That one-year age gap in boy time is equivalent to a lifetime of messing around with girls and figuring out how to con them,”

Dad said. “Trust me, Faith. Thirty years ago, I was his age, and in a college fraternity. This guy is a class act Casanova. He thinks with his .”

Mom smacked Dad with her oven mitt.

“What? Am I wrong? Anyway, Faith knows she isn’t allowed to date until she’s married.” In spite of his anger, Dad still managed to throw in that stale joke he’d used a thousand times before.

“Dad, seriously, I wasn’t with David.” I thought for sure I was going to have a mental breakdown at any second. “I hung out with Marcy at Manuel’s. We parted ways at around four and I sailed off to study. Had to stay longer than I thought . . . at the library.”

“The library, huh?” Dad crossed his arms over his chest. “I see.

And where’s your backpack?”

I looked down at my small purse, realizing I’d either left my backpack in the car, or worse, abandoned it on Main Street to escape demons.

“Please, it’s the twenty-first century. I studied on their online library. We don’t read off stone tablets and tell time off of a stick in the sand anymore.”

Mom gasped theatrically and pointed at Dad. “Burn!”

“Did you see that David punk or not?” Dad demanded, full-on scowling now. “I’m telling you, that boy is trouble. I can see it in his cocky smirk. Boys only want one thing, Faith.”

“It’s true,” Mom agreed. She cupped her hand over the side of her mouth and thumbed toward Dad. “And it never changes . . . ”

“Ew, ew, no. Guys, !” I took a deep breath, splitting my attention between my parents. “For the last time, I was not with David. I grabbed food with Marcy and drove to the library to study!

My phone died, and I lost track of time! I love you both and will you please let me go study?”

I maneuvered around my parents and hurried to my room.

My parents must’ve been shocked by my outburst, but I needed to be alone and fast, before I shattered into little pieces again.

Once in the privacy of my bedroom, I dropped my purse and double-checked my windows to make sure they were locked. I plugged my charger in with a trembling hand. The cracked screen lit up and a text from my Aunt Sarah popped up.

How’s that Encyclopedia of Vampires book I gave you? Was it love at first BITE? Laugh out loud! xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo Not in the right frame of mind to text her back, I set the phone back down, planning on replying later. Skittles strutted out from under my bed, rubbing against my shins and purring. I picked her up and gave her a quick kiss, then set her back on the floor. She gazed up at me with her big blue doe eyes.

“I’m okay, baby.”

Deciding I needed to think this all over with a relaxing bath, I peeled off my clothes and headed to the bathroom. The shallow water was a little too hot as I lowered myself into it.

I tried to make sense of it all. Thomas’s face would be all over town and maybe even on the news. And then there was Marcy. Marcy would be devastated . . .

The warlock, Ace, had told me Thomas would survive. He’d also proclaimed that horrifying fate for me, how I was given the Kiss of Death and shared a part of that monster’s soul. He said I was , and whoever was, she had a prophesized power that everyone expected from me.

And David Star . . . Death. I’d watched that vivid memory through the warlock, seen a truth unravel itself. Visually, David Star looked almost exactly like Alexandru, Death’s past self. Was David Star truly just a character that Death had created to fool the whole world? To fool me?

As I soaked in the tub, my eyes fell closed, and for a fleeting, blissful moment, my racing thoughts stopped. Until I thought of the deadly power that had shot out from my hands. How it had felt .

How it hadn’t saved Thomas.

I leaned my head back against a rolled-up wet rag and wondered if there was a way for me to activate these powers on command.

Maybe my blinding laser beam, or whatever it was, could come in handy the next time I faced off with Death.

Holding my breath, I sunk beneath the water. In the tranquility of complete silence, I squeezed my eyes shut, willing something to happen with my bizarre abilities. Vaguely, I remembered picturing Death.

Coldness washed down the back of my neck.

. A deep, velvety voice slid into my skull.

I came up for air with a gasp and turned my head to the side.

Black shadows slinked beneath the door of the bathroom and crawled toward me. Snapping into alertness, I tried to lift myself up from the tub, but the shadows lurched at me. A force gripped my shoulders and shoved me down. The darkness held me beneath the water, gripping my skin like steel claws as I submerged to the bottom of the tub. My legs thrashed. Water was carried away, spilling over the rim of the bathtub and flooding the floor. Blindly reaching out, my hands sought one of the shadows and I latched onto it, wringing it out with my hand.

Images flashed in my mind. Ominous skies with a gaping hole at the center, where lightning struck, and clouds spun in a vicious vortex as if God were spitting back a monster into the world. A massive form split the sky, plummeting to the earth on fire and crashing into the black depths of an ocean. Beneath the murky water, the object uncoiled and revealed a body, a man with obsidian-colored markings paving every inch of his skin. Thick gashes marred his back in a gruesome V, where dark ribbons of blood surrounding him as the water swallowed him whole . . .

Yanked from the vision, my nails scraped the porcelain sides of the tub, and with one final heave, I resurfaced, gasping for air. I shoved my hands under the water and yanked the drain stopper free, rapidly scanning the bathroom as my breaths shot in and out. I was alone. The shadows were gone.

I don’t know how long I sat there, gripping the sides of the tub, until the water drained completely. Death had sent his shadows to kill me, or this was a warning. Either way, I’d fought back and witnessed forbidden piece to his past.

Yep. I was dead.

Fear rattled in my bones. My parents.

I leapt from the tub and dashed across the tiled floor to my folded pajamas on the counter, almost slipping in the process. I yanked on a plain oversized navy sweatshirt and pajama pants with cartoon sheep.

When I sprinted into my bedroom, the small television next to my vanity was on at high volume. Skittles sat on my bed beside Mr.

Wiggles, posed like a calm Egyptian feline goddess and fixated on a loose piece of string on my comforter.

I hurried into the hallway to peer into my parent’s bedroom, instantly reassured to find them safe and sound asleep beneath their comforter.

My sopping wet hair dripped all over the floor as I paced the width of my bedroom back and forth. Unable to think straight with my whirling thoughts, I lunged to turn the TV off.

I could fix this. Maybe I just had to apologize to Death. No, what was I thinking? He wasn’t the type to forgive, and I was not sorry for what I’d done. Which meant I’d have to stand up to him.

All I knew was Ace had seemed to know more about Death and his limitations than I did, and I couldn’t stay here. Not with my parents in harm’s way. I had to go back to the warlock; I had to see if he could—

The television clicked back on by itself and displayed loud black-and-white static, and I nearly had a heart attack. As I watched the screen with widening eyes, it began rapidly changing channels, stopping on the 1978 version of . The final scene of panic and horror with Jamie Lee Curtis hiding in a closet and fighting off Michael Myers.

“It’s just a scary coincidence,” I said to myself. “It’s just a scary coincidence.”

Black-and-white static snow flashed over the screen again and the television blared a screeching noise.

, the same unmistakable voice of Death purred through the static.

.

With my heart in my throat, I scrambled for the remote on my nightstand to turn the TV off. Outside, a blast of thunder crashed.

The lights surged in and out with a hum. Armed with only the television remote, I pressed against the wall behind me, praying the power would stay on, but the room plunged into darkness. I remembered there was a tiny portable flashlight in my underwear drawer and tore open my dresser, fishing through it until I found it.

The flashlight illuminated a narrow beam. Skittles’s eyes flashed under the light. She had hopped onto the edge of my bed, ears flat against her head, just like the frightened jaguars in the gladiator arena. She let out a startling hiss at nothing.

The flashlight’s beam went in and out, in and out. “Come on, come !” With shaking hands, I smacked the battery pack in an attempt to fix it. Skittles’s fur brushed my pant leg as she weaved anxiously between my legs, and I almost screamed. The flashlight slipped from my fingers, clattered to the floor, and went out.

A bitter cold chill slid down my back. Across the bedroom, standing beside my window, stood a massive figure blacker than night.

The power came back on with a hum. The figure was gone.

The doorbell sounded.

“Ah, shoot.”

Skittles’s charm around her neck rattled as she skirted from the room. Breathing hard, I grabbed my old softball bat on the way out of my bedroom and crept down the hallway. I was fully aware that this was a scene straight out of a horror movie, but I was so tired of being afraid and helpless.

I held my palm out in front of my face, picturing the light, and curled my fingers into a fist. I would not go down without a fight.

I jumped a little at another crash of thunder and banged my hip into the corner of the kitchen counter with a wince. Okay, maybe cowering under the covers was a better option.

In my peripheral, the automatic porch light flicked on. Heavy, calculated footsteps creaked the old wooden boards of the front porch.

. With my heart in my throat, I slinked closer to the door, peeking through the privacy window at the porch. Empty.

. Clenching my teeth, I mustered up the courage to unbolt the lock, preparing to rip open the door and swing like a madwoman.

“Faith?” Dad asked.

The kitchen lights flicked on, and I sprang straight out of my skin for the umpteenth time that night.

Both of my parents stood behind me with their pajamas on.

Mom held an unlit candle and wore an overnight face mask that made her look like a serial killer.

“Oh my God,” I said, clutching my chest. “I almost peed my pants, bro!”

“Did someone really ring the doorbell this late?” Dad asked with a yawn and shut the front door. “And during a storm, nonetheless?”

“Maybe a Jehovah’s Witness. They’re relentless.” Mom set down her candle and opened a kitchen drawer near me, probably to find a flashlight in case the power went out again. Looking up at me, she did a double take at the weapon in my hands. “Why do you have your softball bat, honey?”

“Raccoon,” I said quickly. “Really big raccoon. I saw it eating one of the pumpkins on the porch steps, so I scared it off.”

The doorbell went off again. I whirled toward the door, my fingers clutching the bat tighter.

“What’s going on?” Dad didn’t have his glasses on and squinted at me. “Who keeps ringing the doorbell? You better not be hiding anything from us, young lady.”

“Nothing’s going on, I swear.” If Death was here, he was pissed, and I didn’t want my parents to get in the middle of it. I dropped the bat to my side. “You guys should go back to sleep. You have to get up early for work.”

Not buying it, Dad moved past me and peered through the peephole. When he pulled back, he was furious. “Doesn’t look like .” He heaved the door open, and I stopped breathing.

David Star stood on my porch, untouched by the rain. Mom let out a small gasp over my shoulder. His athletic frame was illuminated like an angel under the halo of the porch light. He wore the same outfit he’d worn hours before at Manuel’s: a Gucci suit with a black leather jacket. He had his hands clasped politely behind his back. I saw flashes of Alexandru in the arena, drenched in blood, transforming into that soul-eating monster.

“You must be Faith’s father,” David said. I noticed he didn’t reach out his hand. “It’s great to meet you, sir.”

“I bet it is.” Dad stood taller than usual and spoke in a deeper voice, as he often did to prove his authority. “It’s late, starboy. If you’re trying to sneak in a hookup with my daughter, think again.”

!

“I can assure you, I have the utmost respect for your daughter,”

David said. He slid his eyes to me and there wasn’t even a splinter of hostility in them. His expression remained blank, vacant of any emotion. “We’re just friends.” To my mother, he added charismatically, “And you must be Faith’s . . . slightly older sister?”

Mom burst into giggles and snorts. “Oh, stop it!” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and fluttered her eyelashes in a way that left me horrified and cringing.

“I’m sorry to disturb your family at such a late hour,” David said, “but Faith wasn’t replying to my texts. I wanted to make sure she got home safe.”

“Faith,” my father began in his furious voice, “I thought you said you didn’t see David tonight?”

I struggled to formulate another excuse.

“She didn’t, sir,” David answered smoothly. “I saw her a few days ago. My father and I have ongoing business with a corporate building in Pleasant Valley, so I happened to be in the area for a late meeting. When she didn’t reply to my texts, I figured I’d swing by and make sure everything was okay.”

Dad narrowed his eyes. I thanked the Lord he was suspicious of this ridiculously phony story. I mean really, why would he have a business meeting late at night, conveniently by our home? There was no way my father was buying this bull—

“You into football, David?” Dad asked.

“I’m a huge Bears fan, sir.”

“The Bears suck,” my dad, a lifelong Giants fan, blurted out from habit. Any non-Giants fan would have gotten the same response from him.

“I lived in Chicago for a while. I know it’s a been a cruel form of torture to follow them lately, but this is our year. Faith mentioned you two watch sports together. Giants fan?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Dad said sullenly. “Don’t get me started.”

“They’re doing worse than the Jets this season,” David said.

I could not this was happening!

“I’m safe at home!” I shouted, drawing David’s dishonest eyes back to me. “Healthy as an ox. You can leave now. Bye. Good night. Drive safe. Don’t let the front door hit you in the butt on your way out.” I started to shut the door, when I felt a hurl of wind push against it.

David’s mouth twitched a little as I resisted the wind.

“You left this in my car.” He raised a tight fist and opened it. I shuffled a step backward, my fingers tightening on the doorjamb.

A religious cross dangled from his long fingers.

. The necklace I’d thrown at Death in the fun house in an attempt to thwart his efforts. Poof, went the tiniest sliver of doubt left in my mind that David wasn’t Death.

It still hadn’t made any logical sense why he would put on such a well-thought-out façade around me. But the look David gave me as I saw the necklace confirmed the truth. His eyes flashed with a frightening rage that sent a clear message.

.

“You shouldn’t have,” I said tautly. “M’kay, bye.” I tried with all my strength to shut the door again, but it wouldn’t budge.

When I made no move to take the necklace from David, or invite him in, Mom reached out and took the necklace. “Aw, her communion cross! She wears this all the time. You must have been missing it, Faith. David, honey, it was so sweet of you to stop by and check on our daughter. What a gentleman.” She put her hand to her heart and then ushered him in. “Come in! Stay for a little bit!”

“Yeah, man, at least until this storm lets up,” Dad the Traitor said. I must have missed the part where he promoted David from “starboy” to “yeah, man.”

David chuckled. “Oh, I don’t want to inconvenience you. It’s the dead of night.”

I fought laboriously not to explode.

“I do have a of homework,” I said, directing the statement at my mother, who was in total fangirl mode over David. “A mountain of it. So many tests and quizzes and projects due tomorrow! We should do this another time!”

It was pointless. Neither of my parents were listening. In fact, they appeared enraptured by David’s presence, held under his influence.

“You’re not an inconvenience at all!” Mom replied cheerfully, ignoring my protests. “Come on in, David, you must be freezing.”

She ventured into the kitchen. “Would you like a cupcake and coffee?”

“You had me at cupcake.” Our eyes connected as David stepped into my home. The door clicked closed behind him without a touch.

He took his sweet time raking his eyes over my pajamas. A string of expletives trailed through my mind as I desperately tried to think of a way out of this.

“It’s so cute how both of you love cupcakes,” Mom was ranting on in the background, while Dad worked the TV for the news channel. “Faith has loved cupcakes since she was a little girl with her little toy oven . . . ”

I wedged myself between David and my home. “Get the hell off my property, or I’ll bash your head in with this bat,” I whispered.

David studied my weapon. When our eyes met again, a darkness spread outward from his pupils, consuming his chocolate-brown irises and a portion of the sclera. A slow, leering grin spread across his evil mouth. “Try,” he dared.

Then he brushed past me with his hands in his pockets and struck up a conversation with my father about a recent Giants game.

My mother called me from the kitchen, so I withdrew to her, never taking my attention off David. The outer edges of my vision blurred. I was going to have a heart attack. What the hell was I supposed to do? Kill an immortal creature? Mom plated a cupcake and handed it to me.

“He’s , Faith.” She performed a little dance in place. “Eeeek!

Your first boyfriend, a Star. He’s even more handsome in person. And he smells like a dream!” Her eyes fell on the bat still clutched in my hand. “Honey, please, enough with the bat. Put that thing away.”

Looking at her numbly, I set the bat down on the counter and gripped the plate with white knuckles.

“Honey?” Mom asked, concern lacing her voice. “Faith, are you okay?”

I strained to smile.

.

My father cackled at something David said, which drew my attention back to the monster in my house. Skittles rubbed against his calves, purring. She’d taken an unusual liking to him, considering she despised anyone outside of my family and Marcy. Still conversing with my father, David lowered to a crouch and ran his hand over Skittles’s snowy-white fur. She bowed her head in submission as though to worship him. Then she rolled over and purred obscenely.

Perfect. Even my cat was charmed by him.

David turned his head. Our eyes connected again. This time, he winked.

I stormed toward him, tossing the plate and cupcake to the side.

His spine straightened as I fisted the warm sleeve of his leather jacket.

“This is between you and me, psycho,” I grated between my teeth.

“We need to talk. In .”

I hadn’t even noticed there was background noise until every sound in the house smothered to a complete hush. I looked at my father, to find him unmoving, perched mid–football throw. I looked back over my shoulder at my mom, who was mid–hair flip.

When I turned back to David, he glared down at my hand on his jacket. “Yes,” he said, clipping the word. “Let’s talk.”

White-hot pain ricocheted up the hand touching him like an electric current, traveling to a place over my stomach, where the ghost of a bullet wound lingered like an eternal scar. I released his arm and lurched back, clutching at my gut. A flicker of pleasure burned wickedly in his gaze as he watched me hyperventilate.

“I warned you not to touch me,” he purred.

In a moment of clarity, I reached back, grabbed the bat on the kitchen table, and swung hard at David’s head. Like a scene straight of a movie, he snatched the bat at the last second before it pulverized his face. His head tilted. On the side of the bat was a big dollop of strawberry-pink frosting from one of the cupcakes.

Keeping his intense stare on me, his tongue darted out and licked all the icing off, before his fingers crushed the aluminum barrel to a pulp as if it were a can. He tore the bat easily from my hand and cast it aside.

“Now, that wasn’t very nice,” he growled and bared a mouthful of serrated teeth.

Stumbling out of the kitchen with a scream, I ran into the hallway. I struggled to focus on “David” as my whole body felt inhibited by pain. Thunder rumbled through the hallway and the lights surged on and off. He pursued me with a lazy, unhurried swagger, shadows peeling off the walls on either side of him like stripped paint. They latched onto his shoulders, forming a regal cape, which then reshaped into a cloak as he leisurely blended into the darkness.

“You should have left my business alone, Faith.”

His voice was deepening, altering, an unmarked accent rhythmically purring out the words. A horrific look of wrath carved into his features. Bones shifted in his face, forming something sharper, angular, as beautiful as poison. He cracked his head sharply to the side and light-colored markings danced beneath his skin, spreading like a wildfire. They climbed up his neck, curved alongside his face, and blackened into tattoos.

“Nobody cheats Death.”

I jerked as another rumble of thunder was unleashed outside. The hallway light stuttered wildly over his features, and I screamed as his image distorted to the wicked, green-eyed creature I’d watched Alexandru turn into. The lights surged on for the last time, before finally going out altogether. I took off through our one-story house, sprinting into my room in the direction of the window and . . .

Crashed into a hard cloaked frame.

“Especially you, .”

“Jesus!”

“Wrong.” Death snatched me around the throat with his massive gloved hand. My bedroom door slammed shut and he pinned me against it. His hooded face crowded my vision. The alluring aroma of leather, cherries, and cologne. “Sexy sheep pajamas. I would have never expected those.”

“Get your hand off me!” I gasped.

“I know you struck a deal with the warlock to get information on me,” he snarled. “You have until zero to tell me everything he told you.” His mouth lingered at my neck, and I envisioned those hidden razor sharp fangs ripping into my throat. “Ten.”

“Screw you!”

He laughed. A low, chilling sound. “Rain check. Nine.”

“Because of you, my friend is dead!” I snarled.

“You only have one friend. She’s alive.

.”

“Thomas was my friend. I can’t tell anyone about what I saw, or how he was taken. He was innocent! He had nothing to do with this!”

he growled. “I warned you that you needed my protection. Learn from your mistakes.”

“Learn from my mistakes?” In a moment of clarity, I brought my knee up to his crotch and slammed into hard muscle.

He released a low hiss. “Great aim, Bruce Lee. That was my thigh—”

“Hiya!” I connected with softer flesh.

Death bent over with a grunt. I ripped free from his hold, maneuvering swiftly under his arm. He straightened to his full height, and I was breathless for a moment at the sight of his looming cloaked frame. His head nearly touched the .

“You’ll pay for that.” From the strain in Death’s voice, it seemed not even the Grim Reaper could recover fast from a hard knee to the jewels.

“Add it to my tab.” Now that his raging muscle wasn’t trapping me, I aspired to bash his nose in with my knuckles and raised my fists to my face. “You let Malphas take Thomas, didn’t you? You didn’t come help us because you wanted me to be afraid!”

“I’m not your guardian angel,” he sneered. “My Fallen were ambushed and your was taken because of your own stubborn-ness. This could have all been avoided if you had listened to me from the beginning.”

“Don’t you blame me,” I said with a tremor. “You’re a heartless monster!”

“Projecting your grief onto me is a waste of energy. Thomas’s life holds no value to me.”

Tears brimmed my eyes. “Get out of my house!”

“Make me.” Death took a step forward, and the floor groaned beneath his combat boot. Everything about him oozed dominance.

“Leave it to to wander like a ditz into town and enter a warlock’s store. His building is on hallowed ground. Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to reach you? He could have . . . ” Death stopped himself, breathing raggedly as his baritone voice slipped into something velvety and otherworldly. “He could have imprisoned you there for the rest of your life, and no one would have ever been able to find you.”

“You wouldn’t give me answers. You’ve lied and kept from me.”

“I don’t owe you anything,” he said maliciously. “I never said I was the good guy.”

“You never said you were the bad guy either! Yet, here you are, trying to store me away for your own personal use!”

The hair on my nape lifted at his soul-chilling, bestial growl.

“You have no idea the lengths I’ve gone to protect you.”

“Protect me? You were never protecting me. You try to keep me in one piece, so I’m still valuable to you!”

He took another step forward. This time, I didn’t back away, and every inch of my skin was charged by his proximity. “What a whiny little race, mortals. You fool, is your only injustice, not I.”

Tension crackled between us. The air felt thick, so excruciating it painfully blocked my lungs. He was a live wire and the closer we came together, the closer we approached something unpredictable.

We were both quiet for a while, looking at one another. I stared into the never-ending void of his face, searching for any sight of Alexandru. For the man, and not the monster.

“You look different without all that makeup around your eyes,” he said in an oddly quiet voice.

“At least I show my face,” I snapped, insecure if what he’d said had been a compliment or not.

His demeanor turned cynical again. “I’d watch how you speak to me. That way, when I punish you for what you’ve done tonight, I’ll go easier on you. Tell me what you learned at the Crossroads.”

“He showed me the truth about you,” I said, since there was no point in keeping it all to myself. “I watched you . . . change. Ahrimad gave you his power because you killed him in the arena. You killed the person you hated the most. You killed Malphas, too, but you were devastated after what you’d done, you were grieving him like you’d made a mistake—”

“I didn’t ask for your analysis.” He towered over me, scary and unstable. The moonlight curved through the window as if storm clouds had shifted past the moon, outlining Death’s menacing black silhouette even more. “There are parts of my past you will never see, parts you would understand. If you think I owe you my life story, Faith Williams, you are sorely mistaken.”

“You lied to me,” I said hoarsely. “Why lie to me to such a degree? Why take me on a date? What was the point of it all, Death?

Why do you hide behind that cloak?”

He didn’t respond. I hated when he said nothing. At least he’d chosen not to lie.

I thought of my parents, how they were probably still frozen in the kitchen. Running for my life right now was out of the question.

I’d seen how fast he could move. I was trapped. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t either.

“You owe me an explanation,” I said, forcing back a surge of emotion in my throat. “For once, just tell me the truth!”

He tilted his head to the side, and I could feel his hidden gaze skimming my furious features. “I haven’t shown a mortal my identity for centuries. Not until the moment I take their soul.”

“Why?”

“Your kind is not worthy of my beauty, for one.”

I laughed in a humorless way, although on the inside I pitifully agreed with him. I could barely get used to his smooth, velvety, accented voice. His voice alone unarmed me in a frightening way. If he still looked anything like Alexandru, he would be deliciously attractive, a Roman god, and his effect on me would only get worse.

Regardless, his answer was shady. I knew there was more to the hood, more to him and why he hid from me still, or maybe keeping me in the dark was all part of his twisted little game.

“Only a heartless monster would do what you did to me,” I said, and I wanted to shout it a second time at the top of my lungs. “But I’ll admit it, you’re damn good at manipulating. A real pro. Really fooled me with the Carrion Angel story. Is that what your massive ego wanted to hear? Leave. I want you gone. Get out of my house!”

My hands smacked into his chest to push him back, but it was like punching an impenetrable wall. “I you!”

“You don’t hate me,” he murmured. “You only wish you did.”

I glowered at him, teeth clenched tight. “Don’t flatter yourself.

The only reason you’ve tried to get closer to me was either to gain my trust, or just mindfuck me. Those aren’t exactly attractive qualities in a man I’d check off on a crush quiz in a magazine.”

“I need to know what else was exchanged between you and the warlock,” Death said in a gravelly tone. “Either you’re going to tell me everything you’ve seen from my past, including the pieces from the warehouse, or I’m going to tear it out of you.”

“I know why your eyes are sensitive to light,” I said.

“I think you should get your hearing checked.”

“Only after see a therapist.”

He released another growl, reminding me of the frightening creature he was. Whenever he made that noise, I fought the innate urge to run and cower behind something. Once again, I tried to picture the monster beneath the hood, questioning if he even resembled a human anymore.

“Take a peek, princess,” he purred. The hairs at the back of my neck stood up. Had he read my mind again?

I inhaled as deep of a breath as I could and stood my ground. “A wild animal injured your eye all those years ago.” Cautiously, I started walking around him. He tracked me like a hawk, his shoulders rigid as if he were prepared for anything. “That’s why you wear the hood, isn’t it? That’s why “David Star” has to wear sunglasses. Because suffer from chronic photophobia. You even have a scar over your lighter green eye to prove the permanent damage . . . ” I traced the skin on my eyebrow to my cheekbone. “I saw it in your memories twice. Painted it on my canvases too. Your younger self said a wild animal damaged it.”

Silent, Death watched me under his shadowed veil.

“I first noticed your slipups when David made a mistake in his office. Even though I told him I left the carnival because I was nauseous, when I saw him the next day, he asked me how my head was.

He didn’t know I hit my head. But you, , because you’re the one who caused it! And then there’s the most obvious slipup, your ringtone. Real smooth with that one, Grimmy.”

Death flexed his hands, leather creaking. “I appreciate this little act,” he said silkily, never taking his concealed eyes off me. “Circling me as if we’ve swapped roles . . . ”

“You think you have me under your thumb, don’t you?” I asked, my chest heaving from the peak of adrenaline his closeness caused.

“I’m learning more about you and your intentions day by day. You said you went to great lengths to protect me? I’ll go a further distance to protect my family. I will go back to Ace again for answers, even if it means risking everything. And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.” I took a stunted breath. “Because I know your true name.”

The temperature in the room plummeted.

“What did you just say?” His voice rumbled stronger than pending thunder in the horizon.

“You heard me.” I paused, arming myself with the name that felt deadly to say out loud. “Your name . . . is Alexandru Cruscellio.”

“What did you offer the warlock?” I could tell by his stiff posture he was struggling to keep his fury at bay. “If he touched you . . . ”

Whatever threat hung on the end of that was never completed and also not directed at me. My face scorched a deep crimson.

“No—

, it’s not like that,” I said, flustered and talking too fast.

“He said I owed him a favor in the future. Not that it’s any of your business—”

“You my business,” Death snarled, his accent thickening now with rage. “You’re mine. Mine to protect!”

My stomach flip-flopped. “Well, you’re mine too. I know your full name. I have power over you.”

Death lunged at me in a blur, and I rolled over onto my back on the mattress, curling up my knees at the sight of his looming figure at the head of my bed. He was a thing out of nightmares with the heavy cloak and the endlessly black space where his face should have been. All the shadows in the room slinked toward him, until an aura of darkness surrounded his frame, stretching out from his back in the form of massive wings. I drew back farther on the comforter in blank horror.

“I could eat you from your toes all the way up to your smart tongue,” Death purred. More shadows collected at the edges of the bed, swarming toward me like spiders and snakes. “If you even utter that name out loud again, it’ll be the last two words you ever say. And I will take my sweet fucking time making sure of it. Understand?”

All I could do was gape at his shadows, trembling so hard that I shook the bed with me.

he snarled vehemently, his voice on the edge of monstrous.

“I understand!” The shadows recoiled away from me. I scrambled off the bed, peering fearfully up at Death as he remained where he was, his hooded head aimed in my direction.

I could still feel his wicked eyes drilling into me. “Don’t look at me like that. If you’d done exactly as I said from the beginning, we would not have any issues between us. You’d be a good, obedient human, and I wouldn’t have to discipline you tonight.”

“I really think you should try therapy. Or a giant Xanax.”

Another low growl came from his hood. “I’ve just about had enough of that mouth of yours.”

He maneuvered around the bed and prowled closer. I legit heard music in my head. I wanted to dive over the bed Michael Phelps–style, put between us, but I couldn’t, or maybe I didn’t want to.

My feet were nailed to the ground. After a few seconds I snapped out of it, backpedaling until my butt hit the wall. Now I was wedged between a nightstand and a canvas. Sweat trickled down my spine as I peered up at Death’s looming frame, sinking into the overlay of darkness across his features. Without touch, his power beckoned me closer. I resisted the urge to obey with all my might and pressed further against the wall, but the pull between us remained undeniable. We were like two opposite ends of magnets, hovering inches away from each other. A part of me desperately wanted to test this attraction, give in, lean into the monster. See what would happen.

“Frustrating, isn’t it?” He cocked his head to the side again, an animal playing with its prey. “Nothing can smother my sheer allure.

It’s a curse.” I could sense his provocative grin, feel his dark delight like a caress against my lips. “Although, I get the sense all those silly little feelings that flutter in your stomach when I come around have nothing to do with my allure, cupcake. That’s all .”

“You smug bastard,” I gritted out. “The only true feeling I have toward you is this: disgust. You make me sick.”

He pinched a strand of my damp hair and slid his fingers down, releasing a droplet of water from the end. “I can see the truth in your eyes, in the way you look at me.”

“I’m looking at you the same way I’ve always looked at you,” I whispered. “Like you’re a—”

“Monster?” He reached past me and picked up a clean paintbrush. “A part of you is scared of me, sure, but you always look at me like you want to understand me.” He swept the paintbrush down my nose and skimmed my lips. My nerve endings ignited, even as I aggressively flinched away. He flattened his palm beside my head with a snicker, leaning into me. “Tell me I’m lying.”

“You took advantage of me,” I said. “You manipulated my emotions—”

“I wore only an illusion,” he said. “There’s an aura about you that limits my power, so I had to affect you in other mundane ways.

Deep down, you know the truth.” His voice was husky, sensual. If he was trying to have an effect on me, it was working. “It wouldn’t be a challenge to seduce you. You want me, and you always have.”

“Sounds like you’re trying to validate something.”

Death laughed, a low sultry sound. “You’re not ready for me to validate anything, Virgin Girl.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” I leaned in closer to his face, daring to touch demise. He pulled back faintly, but his gloved hand remained on the wall, caging us both in. “I think deep down—and I’m talking Grand Canyon deep—you care about me. It scares you.”

“As if I’d care about a girl as prude and inexperienced as you.” I could imagine the nasty, condescending grin he wore.

My gut twisted. “I wasn’t asking you to confirm it for my benefit.

I wanted you to admit it for yourself. You know what your problem is? You’re too much of a control freak to admit it wasn’t a lie. Or maybe it bothers you so much that I outsmarted you, you refuse to see what’s really going on here.”

“Don’t be pathetic, Faith. You fell in love with an idea, and now you’re trying to summon a ghost.”

“I know what you’re trying to do, Death. It’s not working. I know you feel, I know you’re not heartless, or else you wouldn’t have gone out of your way to save me in the alleyway and in the warehouse. You wouldn’t have gone out of your way to be here, with me.”

The room blackened around him until the outline of my room was smothered completely from the moonlight. I remained untouched by the darkness.

“Do you want to know why I kept things from you? Why I’ve lied to you and pretended to be someone I’m not?” He was so close that my bare feet touched the toe of his leather combat boot, and I could taste the trace of cherries and mint lingering on his breath.

“Because I . Ever since you entered my mind, I’ve had to put much more effort into guarding myself from you. It was all worth it though. Now I know everything that makes you tick. You think you know yourself? I know you better. I’ve become your worst fear, I’ve you, and now you will never escape me, unless I show you how. I own you, Faith. Mind, body, and soul. If I wanted you to leave with me right now, you would. If I wanted you to kneel between my legs for the rest of your pathetic mortal life, you would.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” I demanded fiercely.

Our mouths crashed together.

His lips slanted sinfully over mine, stubble scraping against my sensitive skin like delicious thorns. My brain signaled this was a lethal embrace. His kiss held a magnetic decree of night. A claim that would stain my lips forever. If I didn’t stop this now, he would ruin all other valiant attempts.

We tore apart, an afterthought of hesitation. Panting together in silence, the gravity of this moment felt like a sucker punch to the face. This was wrong. Neither of us trusted each other. He scared me; I annoyed him. Predator and prey orbiting around each other in a dangerous push-and-pull dance of forbidden attraction. That’s how we worked. That’s how we .

And yet . . .

All the times I avoided going out to parties to hook up, all the dates Marcy set up for me that I was too nervous to attend, and all my insecurities about never being kissed felt like silly hiccups in a path that was destined to lead me here. I thought my first kiss would be unsure, but this I was certain. Death had awoken a piece of my soul that craved the dark. I wanted more. I wanted him.

.

Reaching for him again, my fingers traced the sinewy outline of his cloaked arms. He stood surprisingly still, looming over me as I stretched onto my toes. I dragged my hands up his broad shoulders, drew the monster closer like a possessed enchantress. He smelled just like he tasted. Lethal. Intoxicating. Dried cherries from rolled cigarettes, leather, and a masculine cologne bursting with clean citrus, a leafy forest, cedar, and him, in all of his intensity.

When I grasped the edges of his hood, he came to life again as his gloved hands seized my waist to flatten me against the wall. Our bodies molded together seamlessly.

“No touching,” he said coarsely.

My arms rose lazily above my head, his shadows twirling around my wrists like silk and pinning me to the wall. Only then did Death’s mouth finally dip down for slow seconds. I melted, drank in his venomous lips as my own naturally parted in an invitation. Death released a guttural growl, hotly prodding his tongue into my mouth.

The low drone of it vibrated in his throat like a purr, rousing a sense of urgency between us. His kisses became rougher, unrestrained—he knew I wouldn’t break easily. He lifted me up to his height and hooked my legs around his waist. Leather-gloved fingers dug into the backs of my thighs, my heart pounding with a newfangled desire for deadly touches.

I wanted to wrap my hands around his neck, grip his hair, except my wrists remained locked cruelly in place. My teeth had a mind of their own and pulled at his bottom lip. He let out another bestial noise of approval and ground his hips into mine. The swell of my breasts crushed against the solid wall of his chest, his power seeping into my skin like warm oil and sending delicious tremors throughout my body. I drowned in the euphoria of his enticing shadows, submerged in his night.

Faltering against his lips with a hard shudder, an unusual jolt of heat darted down my arms. The sensation was similar to the feeling I had right before I’d unleashed that powerful light onto the demons.

It ignited me to the core, tingles of electricity surging through my veins as warmth seared my palms . . .

I was a bomb about to go off.

Death must have known it too because he stepped back fast. My arms released from the wall, and I dropped clumsily to my feet.

“Your hands,” he rasped.

My fingers quivered violently, ice-blue fire licking up the lengths of them. I watched in both awe and horror as the fire lifted, twirling in my hands in spirals until the entire room was illuminated by the hue of the flames. I couldn’t control the surge. A blast shot out from my fingertips, straightening both my arms outward from the sheer thrust of the energy. As the fire abandoned my hands, it transformed into a blinding white light, which nailed the Grim Reaper in the chest. His whole body jolted, as if he’d been struck by lightning. The light climbed up the shadows of his frame, curling around his body, and unfurling around him in a brilliant aura. An aura that electrified the shadowy exoskeleton of two ginormous, once invisible limbs that protruded from his back.

.

Death took a wavering stride backward and rocked on his feet.

His body tipped and the rest was left to gravity. He crashed hard into the ground with a cringe-worthy thud and clatter of metal. The floorboards shook with such force that a framed picture of my family at the beach tumbled off my nightstand and shattered.

I gaped at his unmoving frame with my mouth wide open.

“Death?” Cautiously, I maneuvered around him and gave his head a little kick. Nothing happened. I nudged his arm with my toe, then his head again. Reaching down, I lifted his gloved hand. It was a dead weight and smacked on the ground when I let go.

“Ah, shit. I killed him.” Then, panicked, as it fully hit me: “I killed the Grim Reaper!”

Pacing the floor, I swiped my thumb over my raw swollen lips and contemplated what to do next. His body blocked my way to the bedroom door. I couldn’t just leave him here with my parents in the house.

How would I explain this to them? Were my parents still “paused” by Death’s power? Would they be stuck like that forever?

Where would I store his body? Could I go to jail for this? Was there a supernatural prison for instances like this, where I’d be locked in a cell with another mythical being, like a bloodthirsty vampire? Were vampires hot and spicy like they were in romance novels? I shook myself.

He couldn’t be dead. Cautiously, I lowered to my knees and cowered back as I reached my fingers underneath his sleeve to get to his wrist. Pressing two fingers into his skin felt like I was petting a deadly rattlesnake. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat, but his skin was scorching hot.

I took a deep breath and moved my fingers toward his shadowy neck to check his pulse again. My fingers disappeared beneath the darkness of his hood, as if I’d pressed through a thick fog, the empty black slate where a nose, eyes, and mouth should be. Curiously, I darted my hand in and out of the shadow and wiggled my invisible fingers. “Now, that is freaky . . . ”

I’ll admit my heart stuttered when my fingertips accidentally touched his cheek. Truth be told, it was a little anticlimactic. He felt . . . normal. And Death hadn’t jumped at me and ripped me apart, nor did my hand catch on fire, or rapidly dissolve away with decay like I’d imagined it would so many times.

Feeling like a madwoman, I caressed the coarse hair of short stubble on his jaw. Heat burned up my neck as I recalled the way those hairs had rubbed against my skin. Gliding to his cheekbones, I imagined the strong jaw on Alexandru, his chiseled, handsome features. I wandered to the raised skin of the scar above his right eye.

The damaged tissue was thicker toward the top, as if his eyebrow had split open from the inflicted wound.

.

Slowly, I skimmed over a few smaller raised areas of scar tissue scattered around his sculpted features. I reached his lips, velvety soft and a little pouty. The cold metal of the piercing in his bottom lip made my skin prickle, in response to the memory of our kiss. He had another piercing in his eyebrow, the one with the scar.

Realizing I was cradling his face, I sharply pulled back and a spell shattered.

!

Sitting back on my heels, I glanced back at my empty canvas, recalling a time I’d painted him over and over again, the eyes that had marked their territory on all those off-white linen boards. I’d never forget the haunting soul engraved within them, the vicious, raging storm.

When I looked down at Death again, I noticed his cloak was not only parted, but he was underneath it. His skin held a golden-bronze tan, and I could tell his lower stomach rippled with deep muscle. What shocked me the most (since I already knew he was ripped and fine as hell. Not that I thought about that often. Or that I cared.) were the black, intricate markings and symbols spreading across his exposed skin. They were exotic, mesmerizing, unlike anything I’d ever seen before.

“Don’t do it, Faith . . . ” I warned myself.

With my heart in my throat, I avoided touching his skin and parted the lapel of his cloak. I followed the visible trail of intricate tattoos up his torso to his chest, where branchy lines grouped together into a formation of foreign symbols. They told a secret story, like cryptic puzzle pieces of his past were engraved into his skin like reminders. Suddenly his large gloved hand shot out and clamped down on my wrist. I froze. Death could have snapped my arm right then and there, but he didn’t.

Instead, he vanished in an explosion of black mist, and I knew he’d been awake the entire time.