Chapter 18
The next morning, the eve of Death’s deadline, I woke early to the smell of bacon, the hiss and crackle of it frying in a pan.
The bedroom I’d fallen asleep in—a large one with a king-size bed and a private bathroom—was empty, making it the first time I’d woken up alone since I’d started traveling with the girls.
I fumbled for one of those white terry cloth bathrobes and stumbled into the hall, disoriented—only half-sure where I was or why I was even there.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen to see a man bent over the stove.
“Happy three weeks, Roslyn.” Death turned to look at me, beaming. “Hungry?”
I froze, reeling. I wasn’t expecting him until tomorrow, on the day of the deadline. What was he doing here? “I—I don’t eat pork.”
“It’s turkey bacon,” he said, and gestured to the barstools by the island. “Please sit. I could use the company.”
I started forward, stunned, and tugged the barstool out from under the island. I folded my hands to keep them from shaking so he wouldn’t know how afraid I really was.
“You like your eggs scrambled soft, right?” he asked, turning back to the stove.
“How do you know how I like my eggs?”
“Don’t worry. I’m not omniscient, just inevitable,” he said. “We’ve met before. At your diner. I circled through a few times, wearing a different face than the one I’m wearing now.”
“You can do that?”
“I can do a great many things,” said Death. “But what I can’t do is read minds. That’s why I’m so curious to know how your experience has been these past few weeks.”
Was there a wrong way to answer that question? Would he still tell me the truth about Adeline if he was displeased with my performance? Something told me the answer was no. “It’s been good. Eye-opening.”
“Oh? In what way?”
I paused, considering. “I guess…I just didn’t know what it was to live until I witnessed a bunch of people die.”
“How poetic. I do envy you.”
It seemed like such a strange thing to say. What could I have that Death didn’t? “Envy? Envy what?” I asked, and he turned to me again, his face a younger, softer version of itself.
“Living.” Out in the hotel hallway, a door slammed, and there was yelling.
A lover’s spat, from the sound of it. “You know, I love hotels. Apartments and trailer parks too. Any place where people live packed together. It gives you a glimpse of all these lives so tightly contained, condensed into the same small place. Listen.” He closed his eyes, and the voices in the hall grew louder.
It was, in fact, a couple arguing. From the sound of it, a girl had caught her boyfriend texting an ex she didn’t know she still needed to worry about.
“So much verve,” said Death, beaming. He layered more bacon into a sizzling pan, and I realized he was cooking enough for the other girls too. “So much energy in them.”
I fell quiet, waiting with a pit in my stomach for him to get to the point, explain why he was here the day before his deadline. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
“You’ve done well with the girls these past few weeks,” he said, and it surprised me just how much those words meant to me, how proud I felt when he praised me, like I’d actually done something good. “I hope you know how important it is, the work that you all do.”
“Just how many of us are there? Doing your work?”
“Quite a few.” He took the frying pan off the heat, using a fork to pick up the slices of bacon and lower them to a plate lined with paper towels.
“So everyone who dies encounters someone like the girls? Or someone else that you hire to do your dirty work?”
He frowned at my wording but didn’t correct it.
“No. I do most of the work myself. Invisibly, for the most part. Believe it or not, mine is not the face most people hope to see on their deathbeds. So I often adopt the form of a family member, or a dream; occasionally I’m a nightmare.
But I’m always there in one way or another. ”
“How do you choose who to send for what death?”
He took a carton of eggs from the fridge, cracked ten into the pan, and scrambled them with a fork. “I believe you’d call it…a gut feeling.”
“And that gut feeling led you to assemble a group of teenage girls to do your work for you?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then why did you choose us? I mean them,” I quickly corrected myself, remembering with a small pang that Death had never really chosen me at all.
“I chose the girls because I like their intensity,” he said, pushing the eggs around in the pan.
“Teenage girls are like a bottled scream, or the charged quality of the air just before lightning strikes. All this potential and possibility condensed into such a frail human body. There’s real power in that.
A power I very much like to observe when I have the chance.
And our agreement gives me the opportunity to do just that.
It’s been a great highlight of my service. ”
I noted his word choice. A highlight of his service, not his life, because Death wasn’t alive or dead. He was just…himself. Whatever that meant. I realized then that it might be my last chance to ask. “Who are you, really?”
Here, Death deflected a bit. I could tell that he was choosing his next words with care, like he was afraid of saying the wrong thing.
His self-consciousness surprised me, me being a teenage girl and him being a god of Death with the power to do what he pleased.
But it felt nice to be taken so seriously, as if my opinion mattered to him.
“I’ve walked through many ages and worn many skins. ”
“So you mean you’ve been many people?”
He nodded, then faltered and shook his head. “I haven’t been anyone in particular. I’ve adopted various human forms, but that doesn’t make me human. And as a…not-human, I don’t experience the passage of time in the linear way that you do. For me, past, present, and future happen simultaneously.”
“So, in your eyes…I’m already dead.”
“Dead, alive, immortal, unborn.” He spooned the scrambled eggs out of the pan and into a serving bowl.
“That’s the charm of you humans. You can be many things at once.
Not me, though. I’m just the one thing. I always have been and always will be.
It gets tedious after a while, which is why I relish the connections I make with inquisitive characters, like you. ”
This came as something of a surprise to me, given how very unlike the rest of the girls I considered myself to be.
They were objects of fascination. Easy to love and obsess over.
Filled with verve and energy, as Death had put it just moments before.
Once—back when Adeline was alive—I was more similar to them.
I was the moon to Adeline’s sun, and I took on a little of her light, so I seemed to glow all on my own.
But now, in the wake of Adeline’s death, I didn’t shine like that anymore.
Grief had dimmed me, made me small and forgettable.
“You have your own assets,” Death said. “You’ve already proved yourself a valuable addition to the group.”
I hated myself for the way my cheeks flushed with pride, the way my rounded shoulders squared just a little. I don’t think I was aware, until that moment, just how much I wanted to hear him say that. How much I needed him to.
“If I’m such a valuable asset, then why didn’t you choose me to begin with?
The way you did all the other girls.” It sounded more bitter than I intended it to, but Death took it in stride.
In fact, I cringed a little at the way he regarded me then, with a gentle smile, overly gracious—a clear attempt to coddle me as if I were a child in need of consoling. I felt my cheeks warm.
“I had my reasons.” He fixed me a plate: three strips of turkey bacon and a fluffy heap of eggs layered with a slice of melting cheddar, the same way Conny served it at the diner.
He gestured for me to take a bite, and I did.
The eggs were perfect, creamy and salty like he’d cooked them in butter.
The sliced cheese had a sharp and expensive taste.
“I suppose we should get down to the business that brought me here.”
I swallowed wrong. Almost choked but recovered myself. “You mean the final test?”
“A favor,” he said, but nodded. “It’s been weighing on me for some time. Are you still willing to help me?”
I felt fear like a fist clench around my stomach, making it hard to keep the food down. “Why ask when you could just force me? You’re the one holding all the cards.”
Death leaned forward, took a tray of toast—thick-sliced brioche that smelled almost as sweet as cake—from the oven. “You’re still capable of surprising me. Any request I make can be denied by you if you see fit. That’s what makes this real.”
“But there have to be consequences, right?”
He took butter from the fridge, sliced it into pats, and layered several of them onto each slice of brioche. “We’ll get to those in a moment. But first, the task itself: I need you to choose one of the girls. To kill.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe, as though someone had turned my lungs inside out.
I almost slid out of my seat and gripped the corner of the countertop to keep my balance, my hands shaking so badly I could barely catch hold of it.
When I spoke, I didn’t even register my voice as my own.
It sounded so far off, foreign to my own ears. “What? Why?”
“It’s time.” He fiddled with the toast slices, arranging them in an artful little stack on a dinner plate.
“For one, they’ve grown cocky. Puffed up by their own self-importance, as demonstrated by their inviting you into the fold without my consent or permission.
I fear, if they’re not humbled, made to remember me, something will… give. And I can’t have that.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to make sense of what he was saying as my mind reeled. The pressure of tears building in my throat made it almost hard to speak. “B-but you made a promise. You had a deal with them—”
“One they broke by allowing you into the group.”
I struggled to grasp the implications of what he was saying. This was my fault?
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” Death turned and poured me a glass of orange juice.
“There were other instances too. You weren’t the first time the girls disobeyed.
I’ve given them grace in the past, pointedly ignored certain missteps.
But I can’t afford to keep doing that. It’s time for them to remember what I am, and I hope that you’ll have a hand in showing them.
If you do, if you take this on, I’ll tell you what you want to know about your sister.
” Death reached across the countertop, touched my hand, and I caught a flash of Adeline, alive in the playhouse, gazing at me. “You see?”
He drew away, severing the vision, leaving Adeline alone to die.
“No, wait—” I lunged for him, desperate to return to her, but Death pulled back.
“Not yet,” he said. “Not until the dispatch is complete. You choose a girl, and I’ll give you what it is that you’re looking for.”
“But I—I can’t kill one of my friends.” It came out in a broken sob. “There has to be another way. What if I take myself out of the equation? What if I offer myself up?”
“How very noble.” He gave a pinched little smile.
“But I’d rather you not. You’re a good asset to this group, humble and talented.
One might even call you a stabilizing force.
You set an example that the other girls could stand to learn from.
I feel the same about Shiloh. I’m quite fond of her, as you know.
But ultimately, the choice is yours. You won’t be punished for your sacrifice if you do decide to make it.
As long as someone dies, I’m satisfied.”
Death wiped his hands on a tea towel, then nodded to himself.
“You have a day to deliberate. I’ll return tomorrow at midnight to see that the task is done.
” He smiled with a warmth that felt genuine.
“Good luck, Roslyn. I’ve not made it easy for you, but I know you’ll rise to the occasion. You haven’t failed me yet.”