His lips stretch into a smile.
“Actually, I have.”
Panic sets in, even as Ambrose leans back with his arm draped across the back of the chair, like this is some sort of casual business negotiation rather than a supernatural bargain for my life.
“Well?” I ask in a shaky voice. “What is it?”
Despite his nonchalant posture, he stares at me with unnerving intensity. “You're going to help me live longer.”
My brow furrows. “What do you mean? How?”
He takes a sip of water, forcing me to wait for his response.
“I told you before that taking humans’ lives adds to my lifespan. So, you’ll be taking lives for me.”
I recoil from the insinuation. “You want me tokillpeople?”
“Not exactly.”
My confusion only increases as I wait impatiently for him to explain.
“It doesn’ttechnicallyrequire you to kill. Only to be near someone at the moment of their death.”
“How does that even work?”
He reaches into the collar of his shirt and pulls out a necklace. It’s a thick, silver chain with an onyx pendant that’s carved in the shape of a raven. The small object carries an energy that ebbs with invisible power, seeming to absorb the light around it.
“This is what allows me to channel the ability to take someone’s remaining years. It’s a sort of conduit for my power. This pendant will absorb what remains of one’s natural lifespan when they die.”
“What do you mean by ‘natural lifespan?’” I ask, making air quotes with my fingers. My hands shake slightly, and I quickly lower them when Ambrose’s gaze catches on the gashes along my forearms. I had taken off the bandages earlier today to examine the healing, but I’d forgotten about needing to have the stitches removed next week. But that’s a problem for future me.
“That’s where it gets complicated. I’ve had to figure it out the hard way, but I’ve had a lot of time to do so. Essentially, it’s dependent on how long a person wouldhave lived before dying a ‘natural’ death. For example, if you decided to kill a thirty-year-old with a terminal illness who’s on hospice care, you’d likely get a few months, maybe a year at most, because the illness is his ‘natural’ death.”
“However, if you have a thirty-year-old who just got in a car wreck, but otherwise would have naturally lived until he was one hundred, you'd get about seventy years out of him. Does that make sense?”
I swallow around the knot in my throat. “Yes.”
He takes another bite of his pasta as my stomach turns.
“Next question?” he prompts, like we’re playing a trivial game of twenty questions. What kind of cruel monster can talk so flippantly about murder like this? He may not call himself a demon, but I’m still not fully convinced he isn’t. His presence charges the air like a brewing storm, and his detached demeanor only heightens the unease weighing on my shoulders.
My curiosity spurs me on despite the horror welling inside of me. “How do you know how much time someone has left?”
“You don’t.” He shrugs, rolling the small black pendant between his thumb and forefinger. “I don’t have the ability to predict a person’s lifespan any more than a normal human would. It’s generally a bit of a guessing game. I do, however, get a general sense of it once they’ve died and I gain the remaining years.”
“That’s terrible.” I don’t bother to hide my disgust.
“It’s the way things go.”
“So what keeps you from just sitting in a hospital or nursing home all the time? People die in those places constantly.”
“If someone dies of old age, then I won’t get any life fromthem, so visiting nursing homes is usually pointless. And hospitals are terribly depressing.”
“Oh, so you’d just rather stalk suicidal women instead? I’m sure that gives you all the warm, fuzzy feelings,” I scoff. But alongside my sudden outburst, my stomach twists with immediate fear and regret. I haven’t spoken to anyone like that in years, and, on autopilot, my body tenses, waiting for the inevitable disproportionate retaliation to me speaking out of turn.
But Ambrose doesn’t yell or threaten me. He simply raises an eyebrow and studies my expression before saying, “I didn’t kill you, yet I easily could have. I gave you an escape, didn’t I?”
“You tricked me!” I argue, emboldened to speak up for myself now that I know his anger isn’t so easily triggered. “You made me think I was losing my mind, then gave me hope when I was at rock bottom.”
