Devon goes still, light green eyes wide.
“And while I do believe in a lot of fucking unbelievable things”—hard not to with my family tree—“I’m having a hard time with the idea that your arrival on campus talking about some mysterious announcement and my friend dying by magic is a coincidence.” I fold my arms across my chest tightly, holding myself together.
“Shit.” Devon looks away, scrubbing his hands over his face. He looks pale, uncertain for the first time in our admittedly brief acquaintance. “I thought it would take longer. I was sure I would be the first one.” He drops back onto the couch.
“The first one what?” I bellow, my irritation and impatience getting the better of me.
Devon stares at me for a long time. “You still don’t know.”
I let loose the primal scream that’s been building in my chest. “No! Because you won’t tell me!”
“Everything okay in here, Dev?” Aadesh asks from behind me.
A glance over my shoulder shows him frowning at me as if I’m a stranger, one who is disturbing his very good friend Devon.
I fucking hate magic.
Devon manages a weak smile. “Yeah, we’re fine. Thanks, Aadesh.” He offers a half-hearted wink, which makes Aadesh flush.
Once Aadesh is gone, Devon turns his attention back to me. He rubs a hand over his eyes, as if pressure is building behind his forehead. “I shouldn’t get involved in this part. I don’t want to piss off Death if he meant for this play out differently.”
Right.This might be a game to Death, but it’s my real life. My real friends. “Consider what happens ifI’mthe one who’s pissed,” I say to Devon through gritted teeth.
Devon looks at me and then nods after a moment. “Fair point.” He takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how much you know. I’m guessing not much, since you were raised outside.”
I suspect Devon is referring more to the world of the Old Ones and not my general living conditions.
I didn’t know Death was my father. Or that he was Death. Not at first. It’s not exactly the kind of thing you spring on a little kid.
My mother never referred to him by name. Most of the time, she left the house when he visited. Or he took me with him into the city or a park… or a nearby cemetery. Again, it doesn’t seem weird when you don’t know what normal is.
Once, when I asked his name, he told me to call him Mors. I loved when Mors visited. He seemed to like me more than my mother did. And he told me all these fantastical stories about hisfriends and magic powers and how I would have them one day, too. I would be like him. Iwantedto be like him.
He was a beloved uncle, a treasured family friend, something everyone had. It was only after I learned the truth that I realized his stories were his way of educating me about the Old Ones without worrying that I might chatter about it to my little friends or a teacher or something. All manipulation and lies.
When I was eight, he taught me a new game. How to find the light in the people around us. How to pull it toward me.
At Navy Pier, he directed me to pull from a person at the top of the Ferris wheel, Centennial Wheel. I thought it was fun, a challenge. And I wanted Mors to be proud of me.
I didn’t realize what I was doing, what was happening. Not when the screams started, not when my nose began bleeding. I was focused, zoned in, blossoming under Mors’s praise. Until the woman, the wife of the man I was killing, fell out of the gondola and smashed into the ground in front of us.
Years later I would learn that the news called it a safety latch malfunction—I think she was just that desperate to get help.
Her life force walloped into me, sending me into a panic. Mors tried to calm me down, to explain that I had done exactly what I was supposed to. That I was special, and the humans were meant for us to use as we needed.
Yeah, that worked about as well as you’d expect.
When he finally gave up and took me home, he left it to my mother to explain who and what he was. Who and what I was as a result. And that I could never, ever tell anyone. I think if I’d been a bit older, I would have rolled my eyes and told her she was crazy. But at eight, a now traumatized eight, it made sense.
I refused to see Mors or speak to him after that. Through theclosed door of my bedroom, he warned me that the hunger would kick in eventually and it would be undeniable. That I would require his help. I pretended not to hear him. Prayed that he was wrong.
But when I got a little older and started to feel the first pinches of that unrelentingneed, I remembered the stories he’d told me. And when my mother couldn’t—or wouldn’t—answer my questions, I figured out how to turn off the safe search feature on her laptop and did my own research.
So, no, my upbringing had not been traditional, in either the human way or that of the Old Ones. But I’m not completely ignorant.
“Devon,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Death named a successor,” he says finally, looking up at me again, reluctance written plainly on his face. “Someone to take over for him when he fades.”
