“Death… is a complicated being. Reapers have always existed to help him, but he walked your world too, once.” It almost felt strange talking about him. “He was banished to his domain long ago. Any time he walks the human world, chaos follows. There are more things at work to keep the balance than just him.”
Cole’s curiosity burned warmly through the thread connecting us. It made me want to keep talking, even though I was fairly certain Death would be furious if he knew I was spilling his secrets.
“What has the power to control Death?”
“Fate. And I wouldn’t really say control, just… contain.”
“Fate?”
“He’s calling himself Aiden now.” I shrugged. “He’s capable of controlling most things that happen in your world.” I had to bite back the knowledge that he was the reason for the Ardor burning through my chest and the red thread between us. “He can’t exactly keep Death sealed away, but he can certainly… show his disapproval if he breaks the barrier between worlds.”
Fate had erected that barrier long before I’d existed—he and Death had been at each other’s throats since before that.Something about spirits walking from their graves, and the living and dead being able to speak seemed to put Aiden at ill ease. I was fairly certain that the psychics and those who could see ghosts now were a direct result of when Death used to roam the mortal realm without a care for what humans he touched, what he did to the living.
Once upon a time, he’d raised entire graveyards out of boredom—that was probably when Fate had stepped in. He and his brothers worked so hard to conceal all their little supernatural beings, cupids and Enmity and everything in between, that it wasn’t a surprise that legends of the dead rising were enough to catch their attention.
“So your boss is just as weird as you are.”
The frankness and near accusation in his tone made me laugh.
“You have no idea. Let’s just say Death and Fate aren’t really beings you’d want to meet.” And gods, I would do everything in my power to make sure that never happened.
Maybe Aiden had a hand in what was going on between us, but Fate was too fickle for me to take a chance.
Chapter 17
Cole
I hadno idea what I was doing. I’d been absolutely certain that being around Sephtis for more than a few hours was going to be torture, but there was something about the warm rumble of his voice that made things inside me settle down… hurt, angry things that had felt raw and flayed open since the night I’d found him there in the hospital.
I didn’t want to think that those parts of me had broken as much as they had because he’d disappeared before I’d had a chance to talk to him like this.
But the longer I was around him, the more I remembered every time he’d appeared in my dreams—those dark moments when I’d been half sure I was awake and still felt him sitting on the bed beside me, his cool hand pressed to my chest and holding all my broken pieces together.
It wasn’t just occasionally… It was every night. He’d been with me every night, and I’d been too angry and too raw to admit it, to ever ask him in the dark when my eyes were closed to stay when the lights came up. I’d been too afraid and guilty, so sure he was a manifestation of everything I’d ever done wrong.
I was still too raw and angry to do it now that I knew the truth, still bitter enough that a part of me wanted to hate him even more for making me feel comfortable now that he was here.
“Am I going to be able to go back to work?” It was a question that had been lingering in the back of my mind since we’d finished eating. He’d shown me where his shower was, offered to let me sleep in his room… which made it pretty obvious that he had every intention of making sure I stayed here with him.
Since the vision of those hounds was still fresh in my mind, I wasn’t going to argue. But… I wasn’t going to let him completely destroy my life because he’d pulled me out of that river when he should have just let me go.
“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea.” He answered after a moment. “I need to stay close to you.”
“Can’t you come with me?” It was an obvious solution, though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to invite him into that part of my life so freely, but it was too late to take the words back.
Sephtis looked around the room we were in, his lips twisting into a frown. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think we should stay here for a few days.” He was right… It wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I think he knew it too, because he kept talking before I could argue. “Just until I figure out a better way to keep the hounds off your scent.”
Right. The apartment had some weird nullifying witchy magic or some shit. Nothing that made sense to me.
“How long isjust until?”
Sephtis’s eyes dropped then, more than answer enough.
He didn’t know what he was doing.
My first instinct was to storm out, to tell him he could take his weird abduction fantasy and shove it up his ass… but I wasn’t a child. His apprehension made sense after everything I’d seen, after everything that had happened to me.
“I’ll give it a week,” I finally conceded. “You need to figure out how to give me my life back by then, or we’re going to have problems.”
