Find My Way Down to You

Prologue The Before

Prologue

The Before

For as long as stories have been told, Death has never made promises nor compromises, bargains nor deals.

It is a rule I follow, without question or exception.

Yet…here I am. Back in a place I should not be. At least, not this soon.

The halls are bright and drenched in a familiar sourness: ammonia and decay and unrest.

I stand in the doorway to one of the many rooms. Behind me, nurses in pastel scrubs and doctors with long, remorseful expressions pass as if nothing is out of the ordinary. They cannot see me. Not unless I choose for them to.

I do not.

Machines beep in the distance. They are an underscore to the voice that cuts through my ears, sharp as a scythe. I hear him in my head. The boy I came here for earlier. His last request.

Please.

Over time, I have grown accustomed to the pleas of mortals. Their crying and begging. The fullness of their anger and sadness and regret. Their selfish wants. But this boy was different. His request was rare.

Somehow, he plucked the right chord that made me listen.

Please. Just this one thing.

I shake away the last dregs of his words to watch another boy inside the room.

Artificial light casts a harsh halo around him. Ivory pours through his curls like a river of starlight. His hunched body is curved like one side of a lyre.

He stands over a bed. Over a corpse.

A sling binds his left arm to his chest. His free hand trembles as it touches cold skin. Flecks of garnet cover his white shirt. Blood, mostly but not all his.

A soft chant streams from his lips. Three words—an apology. They are only interrupted by fractured breaths.

I am never here for this part. For the aching. For the goodbye.

I watch as the boy with starlight in his hair and tears on his round cheeks finally lifts his chin. He is like any other mortal, I tell myself. But when his umber gaze focuses in my direction, I freeze, startled, confused.

It is as if he sees something in the doorway. No, someone.

But that is not possible.

His stare is unwavering, unblinking. A deer finally aware it is being watched. His breathing slows as my muscles tense. We are motionless for more breaths than I choose to count. Gradually, his head droops and he cries once more for the cold corpse beneath his fingers.

My shoulders relax until a new voice emerges in my head.

Her voice.

I listen to her call. It is time to leave. This is not my only stop tonight.

It never is.

Before I can walk away, my eyes are drawn to him again. The boy who is barely holding on. Exhaustion turns his whimpers to silence. His quivering body to a stillness like oceans beneath the moon. I wait to see if he will look my way one last time.

He does not.

But I find myself lingering in that doorway a moment longer. Staring as an ending eventually becomes his beginning.