When the kiss broke, he leaned his forehead against mine. “I’ll try to visit more.”
“Do that,” I said, giving him the smile I knew he needed. But he’d told me that before. Sometimes he was better at following through with it than other times. Like the Raver had said, our relationship was dangerous. I knew that, and it bought him a lot of slack in the boyfriend department.
“So the bank today was crazy, right?” I said, as I straightened.
Death frowned at me. “Alex, did you call me here to exploit me for your case?”
“You’d rather I exploit you for sex?”
The frown vanished, and he lifted his arms, opening them wide. “Yes, please.”
I laughed, but cut off abruptly when I looked up and noticed the colors spinning in his hazel irises. He was being called away.
Death lifted his hand to my cheek, his thumb trailing along my jaw, the touch both caress and apology. “Rain check?”
“Please don’t go.” The words slipped out before I could catch them.
I wished I could call them back as soon as they escaped. Not because of the potential debt that sprang up between us with the words—and it was a lot; my desire for him to stay was immense and would require him to ignore his duty as a soul collector. But that wasn’t why I wished I could call the words back. No, I wanted to retract them because of the heartbreak that spread across his face.
He couldn’t stay. I knew he couldn’t. When the color spun in his irises like that, someone whose soul he was responsible for was at a crucial moment in their life. One likely to lead to death. He needed to be there to send the soul on to wherever it was souls went.
“Go,” I whispered.
Death leaned forward and kissed me. It was a soft kiss, tasting of sorrow and secrets and duty.
He broke off and leaned his forehead against mine. “I’ll return as soon as I can.”
I nodded, closing my eyes.
He kissed me one more time. A mere brush of his lips against mine.
Then he vanished.
• • •
After Death left, I packed up my laptop without ever finishing—or starting—my post on the Dead Club Forums. I’d think about the best way to word my questions tonight and write up a thread when I got to the office in the morning.
Heading back downstairs, I didn’t even bother turning on the lights as I passed through the living room and kitchen to the back door. I’d walked this path so many times now, I could do it blind. I used my key to unlock the double-cylinder deadbolt and stepped out into a yard very different from the one I’d walked through to the front door when I’d first arrived home.
The air that greeted me here was warm and comfortable without a hint of the crisp November wind that had whispered of coming winter less than half an hour earlier. The sun had almost finished setting, but the oppressive blindness that hung over my damaged vision during most low-light situations was lessened, not gone, but less severe. The shadows were deep, but not all-consuming, and I could clearly make out the castle in the distance.
It was a hike to reach it, and for the last portion, I was walking in starlight. Moon-loving flowers bloomed along the path as I walked, offering their light glow to the stars above. It was beautiful. Magical.
Like literally, magical. If I’d walked around the side of Caleb’s house, I would have wound up in the predictable small backyard with two of its sides bordered by the fences of our neighbors. But Caleb’s back door now acted as a passageway into a folded space that had opened to hold my land and castle when I’d been granted my independent status by the Winter Queen. The Faerie castle had wedged itself into mortal reality.
It had been shocking to discover the newly unfolded space, but once I’d gotten over the initial disbelief, I’d accepted that it was home. It wasn’t exactly Faerie or the mortal realm, but an intricate weave of both. My eyes liked it, my magic liked it, and it felt right.
Everyone else apparently liked it as well.
The current occupancy beyond me included Rianna, Desmond, Ms. B, and a garden gnome, all of whom had lived there before I’d accidentally inherited the castle. The new residents were my former landlord, Caleb, and our other roommate, Holly; two ghosts; an assortment of gargoyles who’d moved in on their own and decided to start guarding the place; and Falin Andrews, the Winter Queen’s knight and my sometimes—but not current—lover. It should have been getting pretty full, but it was a magical Faerie castle, and I was starting to think it conjured more rooms when needed.
I crossed over the moat and under the portcullis, and then into one of the magnificent gardens within the stone walls. I still hadn’t gotten a chance to fully explore the gardens, but tonight wasn’t going to be the day. Crossing through the garden quickly, I entered the castle proper and followed the sound of people to a dining hall. There was a huge banquet room in the castle somewhere—I’d wandered into it once by accident—but this room was narrower, holding only one long table in the very center of the room. A roaring fire crackled in an enormous fireplace along one wall, directly beside the table, which should have made the room uncomfortably hot and dry since the weather outside the castle was so pleasant, but instead the room remained at a constant ideal. Magic. The fire and the half dozen candelabras scattered among the serving platters on the table were the only light in the room. Typically I would have needed a little more light, but here it was enough for me to see by. This place might have been a blend of mortal reality and Faerie, but there was a lot of Faerie magic here.
Holly, Caleb, and Ms. B sat at one end of the table, talking and laughing as they ate. Falin sat at the other end, alone except for the smartphone in his hand. He looked too preoccupied to be interested in joining the cheery gathering at the other end of the table.
And maybe he was.
But I doubted it.
Falin was the Winter Queen’s knight, her enforcer, her bloody hands. He was subject to her commands, and she’d made him do some pretty terrible things in her name in the past. It hadn’t made him very popular. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a job one could easily resign from.
The queen’s nephew had been poisoning her, driving her increasingly insane, possibly since before I’d first had my less-than-comfortable introduction to her. Many of her commands had reflected that growing insanity. I’d been told she was getting better now that she hadn’t been exposed to the drug in nearly a month, but she still hadn’t reversed one of her last commands to Falin, that he live in my home to keep an eye on me. So he lived in the castle with the rest of us, much to the disapproval of most of my castlemates.
You would think a magic castle would be big enough that everyone could avoid each other if they wanted, but the castle had other plans. It served an enormous feast, family-style, every night. The kitchen and pantry went missing during the evening hours, and even normal, mortal food we brought into the castle and secreted away in our rooms disappeared. If you were in the castle and wanted to eat, you came to the table or went hungry.
Some days Falin came down long enough to fix a plate and carry it back to his room, but mostly he sat at the far end of the table, alone. It always forced me to choose whether I should sit with him or the rest of my friends, like some grade school cafeteria table dilemma. Today I wasn’t in the mood to choose. I’d had a long, hard day. I didn’t feel like having to think about it.
Walking around the table, I scooped up the plate in front of Falin. I’d intended to keep going, walking away with it, but I didn’t make it a full step before he caught my arm. He frowned at me, but I grabbed his wrist with my free hand and gave him a tug. Now, I’m not a small girl—in my boots, I’m easily six feet tall—but Falin was taller, and broader, and all muscle. I couldn’t have moved him if my life depended on it, but when I tugged again, he rose to his feet. The look he gave me was skeptical at best, but he followed when I led him around the table. I sat down beside Holly, placing his plate on my other side.
“—which is why I said bikes,” Holly was saying as I sat. She turned, offering me a friendly smile while completely ignoring the blond-haired fae standing at my back. “What do you think, Al?”
“About bikes?” I said, leaning forward to fill my plate with some sort of carved bird that had been cooked until the outside was crisp but the pale meat oozed with mouthwatering juices. “What about bikes?”