Chapter Thirty A Date with Death
Chapter Thirty
A Date with Death
After the Battle of Cesarine, Coco often spoke of her vision to build a permanent settlement for les Dames Rouges. It made sense; her people had been forced to wander the forest as nomads, never remaining in one place for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Though I never visited their camps myself, Coco described them as dark and dismal places under La Voisin’s rule—hopeless, even, when temperatures plummeted and supplies became scarce.
Nothing like this charming village peeking out between evergreens.
Instead of felling the ancient trees, the blood witches simply built their cottages around them. Despite Death’s presence beside me, a seed of wonder still cracks open in my chest as I gaze at their brightly painted roofs, their matching front doors—a motley assortment of blush, terra-cotta, and robin’s-egg blue. Carved pumpkins from All Hallows’ Eve still leer on the steps beside them. Plots of winter vegetables flourish in each garden, bursting with leeks and parsnips and squash as pine needles flutter down to blanket everything in gold. Including—
Firepits , I realize, eyeing the stone circles in every makeshift yard. The logs within them still smell slightly of smoke—of blood—and a chill skitters down my spine as I remember Coco mentioning such a ritual last March. We’d been planting seeds in Lou’s flower beds during their Ostara celebration when I’d asked about their autumnal rituals too.
“We light bonfires in November”—Coco patted the earth smooth while Lou sprawled in the grass beside us, twisting two blades around her finger to form a tiny crown—“to protect from evil spirits that might’ve crossed on Samhain.”
I returned her ghoulish grin with a delighted one of my own—because Samhain and its spectral fingers seemed very far away then. Because they could never reach us while we basked in the sun on that brilliant spring afternoon, surrounded by dirt and flowers.
The irony of that conversation is not lost on me now.
And that wonder in my chest—it withers with everything else we pass, curling into itself like a dead spider until only Death remains.
I skirt another patch of sunlight as he lifts a hand to examine the string of pine cones draped along the wellhead in the village square. Scraps of parchment flutter from each cone, and on them, they’ve written— “Wishes,” I say abruptly, inching closer to read the nearest one: I wish to kiss someone I meet for the first time. “This is a wishing well.”
“ Was a wishing well,” Death says, perusing another piece of paper with idle interest. “Or have you not noticed this village isn’t a village any longer?” At my blank expression, he sighs before plucking another bit of parchment from its pine cone. “ People , Célie. Where are the people ?”
“What do you—?”
“Listen.”
Brows furrowing, I do just that, tilting my head and concentrating on the cottages around us, but... no sounds emanate from any of them. No rustle of curtains, no footfalls upon floorboards. My frown deepens as Death releases me to stalk around the well, jerking the scraps of parchment from each pine cone and skimming every wish.
I hear no breathing either. No heartbeats. Odd.
I glance behind us, to the left and right—unsure what, exactly, I’m hoping to find—when my gaze catches on the paddock beyond the wishing well, where the witches kept their livestock. The gate stands wide open between two enormous spruces, and the cows, sheep, and chickens living within have vanished with the rest of the village. There are no signs of struggle, however, or violence of any kind. No bodies, no blood other than that which has dried in the witches’ bonfires. They appear to have simply... left.
My intuition prickles again.
Fled , the wind seems to whisper.
I glance at the cottage nearest us, taking in the drawn shutters before stepping tentatively toward the door. When none of the revenants stop me—simply watch from the shadows—I close the distance swiftly, ducking under a moldering branch and pulling at the handle. The door swings open without resistance. Unlocked. A single forgotten jar of elderberry jam rolls across the wooden floor, and a quick sweep of the pantry confirms it to be the only food left in the kitchen.
Twin waves of relief and dread crash through me as I close the door without a sound.
If I know Coco at all—and I think I do—she would’ve evacuated this place the instant Lou told her about Death and his revenants. It was her aunt’s grimoire, after all, that helped them tear through the veil in the first place; the blood witches would be the first to whom Death turned if he had any questions. Coco would’ve made the connection. If she suspected Death might pay a visit, she wouldn’t have hesitated to whisk her kin to safety. They kept their whereabouts—their sheer existence —secret for hundreds of years before this village, and they can likely hide for a hundred more.
Thank God.
Because if Death seeks blood witches, it cannot mean anything good.
I consider him warily now, holding my breath and awaiting his reaction, but he doesn’t seem overly concerned with the empty village. He doesn’t even seem surprised. Instead he dumps an armful of wishes into the well with a disgruntled expression before turning to find me. “ To inspire laughter ,” he says in answer to my unspoken question. “ To help others. To ask questions. ” Scoffing, he lifts his face to the wind and inhales deeply. “That one could learn a thing or two from you. Honestly, the only things to which I could even remotely relate were visit a chocolate farm and do a handstand . Humans are so incredibly tedious.”
“There is nothing more human than chocolate and handstands.” Then, before he can argue— “Did you know the village would be empty?”
“Yes.” He inhales again, eyes narrowing on the tree line in search of something. “Do you know if the lovely Cosette burned her aunt’s body?” he asks abruptly. “Did she ascend the ashes?”
I stare at him.
Whatever I expected him to say, that was not it, and any answer I might’ve given catches in my throat, which constricts to the size of a knifepoint. And it certainly feels like a knifepoint has lodged there—because the only thing worse than Death seeking blood witches is Death seeking that one. That very old, very evil, very dead one. I shake my head, mustering every ounce of my conviction. “There is nothing more personal than ascension to a Dame Rouge. If Cosette chose to ascend her aunt’s ashes, it’s really none of your—”
“Ah, well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” Death chuckles darkly, stowing his hands in his pockets and strolling into the trees without warning. He expects me to follow, and I do—oh, I do, chasing after him like a bat out of hell. This is bad. “It is my concern—and yours too, I might add. It’ll be a damn difficult job to locate her body if Cosette didn’t bring it here. The Chasseurs could’ve buried it anywhere...”
His previous words echo as if from a great distance, despite how I nearly clip his heel. I’m afraid I need your help with a little experiment.
Oh God. Oh no . I shake my head to clear it, convinced I’ve misunderstood, but—but why else would he need my help? My help, specifically? Why else would he break his deal with Filippa to bring me here? Though I desperately try to remain calm, my voice still climbs an octave too high as I say, “You want to resurrect La Voisin.”
It isn’t a question, but he answers it all the same, slipping the grimoire from his pocket and lifting it into the air without looking at me. Strolling through the trees without a care in the world. He even starts to whistle . “I knew you were clever.”
My eyes widen on the hateful little book, and I wrack my thoughts for a way to—to distract Death somehow, to delay him as long as I can. “But Frederic—the ritual required his magic too. It required a blood witch. You’ll need one in order to—”
“Alas, your blood is the only requirement.”
“What about yours ?” I ask without thinking—because truly, it doesn’t matter whose blood he uses, only that he uses no blood at all. We cannot allow anyone else to rise from the grave, and especially not Josephine Monvoisin. “Or—or do you not have any? Blood, I mean.”
“At the risk of encouraging that stupid idea in your head”—he glances back at me, arching a brow and returning the grimoire to his pocket—“yes, I have blood in this body, but it would be equally foolish to attack me. Death cannot die.” Disappointment must flash across my face because he chuckles darkly, then extends his hands to the forest around us. “And I have used my blood, Célie darling, or did you think yours created all of our new friends?”
Though I refuse to acknowledge the revenants around us, I can still see them moving in my periphery, and they far outnumber my original estimation. Again, both relief and dread crest through me at the realization—because these revenants aren’t my fault, and because—
I swallow hard.
Because who knows how many Death has created.
“ Please— ” I lengthen my strides to keep pace with him. “Whatever it is you’re planning, I implore you to reconsider. The veil is already in pieces, and if you resurrect—”
I come to an abrupt halt, however, after bursting into a grove of birch trees and nearly colliding with Death’s back. My mouth parts in shock. In awe. All around us, whitewashed pots sway gently upon ethereal branches, and I recognize both with a sickening bolt of clarity. “No,” I whisper, retreating an instinctive step.
We shouldn’t be here.
This grove—it is sacred to les Dames Rouges, forbidden to outsiders except by explicit invitation. I should know. Cloaked in scarlet, I accompanied Coco here on the night after the Battle of Cesarine—along with Lou, Reid, Beau, even Jean Luc—and it was one of the most mournful and unsettling experiences of my life. To honor her blood , Coco told us, cutting open her chest and using her own to paint strange markings upon her mother’s pot, and its magic .
Ascension.
It is the last rite of a Dame Rouge, in which loved ones lift the witch’s ashes to their final resting place, freeing their spirit and granting them eternal peace. Typically, the entire camp would join the bereaved for the ritual—and a silent vigil beforehand at the deceased’s pyre—but the circumstances surrounding this ascension had been different. Secret.
Coco ascended her mother, yes, but she was never meant to ascend her aunt too.
Unbidden, my eyes drift to the farthest corner of the grove, where two pots hang alone.
Death turns slowly to face me, his silver eyes almost glowing in the muted light. “Something the matter?”
I take a deep, calming breath and hold it, forcing myself to remain exactly where I am. I cannot flee. That much is clear. I also cannot help him, no matter the consequences. “Why do you want to talk to La Voisin?”
His eyes narrow as he considers me for a moment, as he tilts his head in contemplation. “All right, Célie,” he says at last. “In another show of good faith—in an offer of friendship —I will confess that her grimoire has been... less useful than I’d hoped.” His attention flits to the pots overhead. There are no names to distinguish them, no identifiers whatsoever as to whose remains could hide within. As if realizing the same, he adds irritably, “I might never have killed Frederic if I’d known how prosaic this would all become without him.”
“And this”—I gesture to the pots, the grove—“has something to do with your experiments on my sister?”
“It has everything to do with my experiments on your sister.” Death bends to examine a particularly low-hanging pot, this one adorned with dove feathers around the mouth. “Surely you’ve realized Filippa is different. She can think, even reason, beyond the base impulses of a revenant.” He lifts a shoulder—the portrait of indifference—but his eyes shine a bit too brightly as he studies the painted markings. “I want to know why.”
“And you think La Voisin can tell you that?”
“Among other things.”
“ What other things?”
“Perhaps she can tell us why the hole Frederic and Filippa tore through the veil is so... different than the others.”
I frown at him, startled. Different than the others. It’s true, of course, but I never attributed the difference to Frederic and Filippa specifically. My mind catches on the thought; it snags, but I cannot follow the thread with Death standing in front of me. Not when he curses at each pot bearing the exact same markings. “Fucking blood witches,” he says.
Edging around him to avoid the sunlight, I say, “If their absence is any indication, I—I don’t think they like you much either.”
Death grins as he straightens to inspect another pot. “Oh, I’ll find them eventually. Never fear that .”
Dread congeals in my stomach. “Promise not to hurt them.”
“I will promise no such thing.” At my expression, his grin fades, and he turns away as if unwilling to look at me. Quartz beads hang from the lip of a third pot; they clink gently in the breeze as Death avoids my gaze. “I hear them, you know,” he says after a long moment, and gooseflesh creeps down my neck at the unexpected confession. “The dying. They call to me—not with their words, but with their spirits. In those final seconds, they crave the peace of my embrace.” Another long pause. “You did not.”
“I didn’t?” I stare at him, rapt, and try to remember, but my memories of Filippa’s coffin swirl together in a sort of abyss now, like my own personal maelstrom. Time ceased to exist inside it. I ceased to exist too. There was only Filippa and Morgane, madness and magic, and the soul-deep surety that I was going to die. No one was coming to save me, and Morgane would never allow me to live. The hopelessness had been paralyzing. The desperation had been more so. Which is why it all sounds so unbelievable now—that Death spared me, that I somehow resisted him in that eternal darkness.
Now I look away swiftly, murmuring, “Do you speak back to them?” At his inquisitive glance, I gesture to the pots around us. “The dead and the dying?”
“These are not the dead, Célie. These are simply bodies—empty shells, if you will. Their spirits have already crossed over. But,” he adds, speaking over me when I try to interrupt, “once upon a time... yes, I think I did speak back to them, in a way.”
Though a thousand more questions erupt in response, I settle on the most useful. “But you hear them even in this form?” Perhaps the most useful two or three. “The dying are still able to—well, die while you’re in our realm instead of yours? Their souls are still crossing over to—” I stop abruptly, pinning him with another wide-eyed stare. “Where do they go after they cross?”
“How should I know?”
“You are Death—”
“And you ask a lot of questions.”
He pivots abruptly, his silver eyes narrowing, and—as the revenants shift, tense and restless—I know I shouldn’t push him any further. Whatever just passed between us, Death did not like it. He did not like it at all. As if to distract himself, he reaches out to snatch the nearest pot before recoiling again just as quickly because—because the symbols cut him.
Black blood spills from his fingertips.
I recoil at the sight of it, at the peculiar smell , as he curses viciously in a language I don’t recognize. Then, like a flip has switched inside him, he seizes the pot with a snarl and flings it across the grove, where it shatters against the trunk of a dying birch tree. Ash—the remains of a person —trickles to its roots, and I blink rapidly at the unexpected violation. At the sheer violence of it. More cuts open across his palm from the contact, but they heal almost instantly.
And that answers one of my questions, at least. I watch in horror as his fingers curl into his palm, hiding the fresh skin there.
“Apologies, my sweet.” Smoothing his hair now, he exhales a harsh breath and closes his eyes as if regretting his loss of temper. As if trying to regain his control. Sure enough, when he turns to face me again, he speaks with frightening calm. “Show me where Cosette has hidden her urn, and we can be rid of this foul place.”
I stare at him incredulously. My sweet , he calls me.
We , he says.
I don’t like the sound of either one; I don’t like them at all , and I liked his outburst even less. The sheer danger of my situation reasserts itself with those swirling silver eyes. It immobilizes me for several long, tense seconds. “I don’t—” I shake my head and start again, swallowing the lump in my throat. “I don’t know where they’ve hidden it. Ascension is sacred to Dames Rouges. Even Coco would never tell me—”
“Do not,” Death says with that terrible, leering smile, “lie to me.”
Shit.
The revenants shift closer in response—close enough now to see their rotting skin, their sunken eyes. The latter gleam in the shadows around the grove like those of nocturnal beasts. I resist the urge to shrink away from them. To shrink away from Death, whose eyes no longer gleam like his revenants’ but actually start to glow .
“Be reasonable.” I gesture around us with as much poise as possible, conscious of every single movement. “Why do you think there are no names on these pots? They don’t want us to know who resides here, and those marks—the blood witches painted them to keep people like us from doing precisely this.”
Us. We.
Death steps forward then. He stalks closer, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I make a much better friend than enemy, darling.” Before I can speak, he bends his face to mine, articulating succinctly to ensure I hear every word. “You want to be friends, don’t you? You want to play nicely?”
Holding my breath, I nod.
“Good,” he breathes. “Now go get the pot.”
And because I am alone—trapped—surrounded and outnumbered by Death and his undead creatures, I turn on my heel to do just that. I still lift my chin, however. I still keep it high as I pick my way across the grove to the farthest corner. There, two familiar pots hang without beads or glass or feathers as adornment; they hang separate from the rest, cloistered together on a birch tree partially hidden by the enormous fir beside it.
I eye the pots warily before bending to seize my nightgown. With a jerk of my wrist, I tear a strip of silk from the hem and wrap it around my hands, careful to cover all my skin. Then—with gentle movements—I slide the right pot from its branch, sending a silent apology to Coco and praying she might somehow hear it. Forgive me.
“Here.” I thrust Josephine’s ashes toward Death a moment later, feeling sick, but he clicks his tongue again, unwilling to touch it. And that—that brings me a savage sort of satisfaction. Death can bleed. Death can feel pain. I tuck the information away as I lower the pot to the ground instead.
When he instructs me to remove the lid next, to extend my hand over her ashes, I tell myself fiercely that it might not work this time. This isn’t All Hallows’ Eve. Still, my vision narrows, and my ears begin to ring as he jerks his chin toward a nearby revenant, who stalks forward to hand him a silver knife. Because it’s all too familiar, too harrowing to experience again.
My blood is different now than it was then—my blood is part Michal now—and—and even if it weren’t, Josephine has no body. I cling to the latter like a lifeline, repeating it over and over again, forcing my eyes to stay open, to watch as Death draws the blade across my palm. I wince at the sting of pain.
She cannot rise without a body. Filippa had a body.
Death tips my hand over Josephine’s ashes, and together, we hold our breath as my blood trickles into the pot—less violent than on All Hallows’ Eve, yet somehow even worse for it. Because I am still just as weak as I was then, still just as trapped as that frightened human girl in a glass coffin. Please don’t let it work , I think desperately. Please let my blood fail.
We wait several long seconds for something to happen. Though the revenants keep their distance—hollow-eyed and silent—the birch trees seem to bend in the wind as if watching too. Death stands preternaturally still for another moment, his eyes fixed and his brows furrowed, before gently cracking open the pot and spreading the blood-soaked ashes upon the ground instead. As they congeal into misshapen lumps under Death’s ministrations, my stomach twists.
And we wait.