My Death Horse Overlord (The Russian Witch’s Curse #6)

Chapter 1 Whitney

Whitney

The first time I saw someone die, I was only three years old.

Mom and I were coming out of a grocery store, and a car hit a pedestrian, splattering them all over the curb in front of us. Mom made me talk to someone about it, because she was convinced that I was never going to sleep again.

I don’t think I lost a wink.

It reminded me of a watermelon Mom dropped at a summer barbecue, or a scene from my older brother Ethan’s favorite video game. I remember thinking it was strange, watching all that damage, but I didn’t know the person who was hit, and it didn’t bother me that much.

Other things did bother me.

Some of them, a great deal.

For instance, I did know the person who punched my friend Annabelle. My kindergarten year, the biggest boy in our class, Rylan, insisted everyone call him King Rylan. My friend Annabelle refused to do it, calling him Meanie Rylan instead.

He balled up his fist and socked her for it, and she collapsed like a limp noodle.

The teacher saw it too, but she didn’t do anything about it.

At least, nothing helpful. Nothing fair.

She sat the jerk down and talked and talked and talked, while he smirked.

Whenever the teacher looked away, Rylan glared at Annabelle and her friends, which included me.

I decided that if the teacher wasn’t going to protect Annabelle, I would, but it wasn’t the right time yet.

I waited until we were on the playground.

The teacher watching us looked at her phone a lot.

While she was paying attention, I stacked piles of the rocks on the edge of the playground.

But really, it was an excuse to look for a good one.

I wanted a rock that was big enough to do something, but small enough that I could hold it easily.

I wanted one I could slide into my pocket and with a prominent enough edge that it could do some damage.

Once I found the perfect rock, I noticed the teacher was smiling while she looked at her phone.

It was time.

I started to walk away from my friends. “I’ll be right back. Don’t follow me.” When Annabelle tried, I said, “You could get into real trouble for this. Stay put.”

Then I walked past the swings, around the slides, and next to the seesaws where the bigger boys played. I walked past the boys who were laughing, and then beyond the boys who were whispering, and then I walked right up to the biggest bully of them all.

“Hey, Meanie Rylan,” I said. “You shouldn’t hit little girls. Didn’t your dad ever teach you that?” I knew he never saw his dad—the rumor was that his dad left before school started.

Rylan straightened, and his mouth twisted up even more. “Shut up.” Then he called me a nasty word my mom told me never to use.

“Since your dad didn’t do his job, I’ll do it for him. Don’t hit little girls.” I took a step closer, and as I did, I was surprised how calm I felt. “Especially not Annabelle, not ever again.”

“Because I’ll get in trouble with the teacher?” He balled his hands into fists. “Cuz I don’t care.”

I pointed at him. “You think hurting small people makes you big, but it doesn’t. You just get smaller and smaller when you’re mean, until you disappear, just like your dad.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but it felt like it should be.

Rylan got mad enough to take a swing at me.

I ducked, and when I popped back up, his body was twisting around, disoriented from not striking me. That’s when I grabbed my rock, and I swung it at the back of his head for all I was worth.

It didn’t splatter like a watermelon.

I was a little disappointed, really, but he did go sprawling, and when he got back up, he already had a big bump on the back of his head. I dropped the rock before the teacher reached us, and all the other kids said he must have hit his head on the way down.

They all reported that Rylan tried to hit me.

I’m still not sure whether they didn’t see me hit him, or whether they just couldn’t believe I did it.

Or maybe they were scared of me after that.

Either way, I was commended for not getting hit.

Two fights on the same day got Rylan suspended for the rest of the week, even though we were only in kindergarten.

But what made him quit hitting little girls wasn’t the suspension. It was me.

Some people are wired to fret.

Not me.

But I’ve always been surrounded by people who fret, and whenever I can, I try to help them out. My sister Izzy frets. Not as much as some people, like my cousin Maren or my cousin Emery. But my mom’s like I am. She doesn’t fret either.

The one exception was the weeks after Dad got sick.

My mom spent every single day at the hospital for what felt like a long time.

My sister Izzy made a lot of treats while that was going on.

She made snickerdoodle cookies, which she usually burned, and chocolate chip cookies, which were always too flat, and she made oatmeal raisin cookies, which I think are a waste of good butter.

I didn’t bake. I didn’t take out the dishes, or unload the dishwasher, and I didn’t really help much with our little brother Gabe. I went with Mom to the hospital, and I held her hand while she watched Dad die.

Pancreatic cancer’s fast, as cancers go, but it’s much, much slower than a rock. In fact, it was so slow that I would sometimes see my dad dying in my dreams. He would scream in some, and in others, he would cry. But in all of them, Mom cried.

She did cry a lot, usually when she thought none of us could see her.

Or hear her.

But I did hear her more than she knew, and I felt terrible about it.

I didn’t have a rock that could help. I didn’t have anything that could help, not with Dad.

Because when death decides it’s your time, there’s nothing you can really do to stop it.

No teacher, no doctor, and no kid with a rock can keep it from taking you away.

It was sad, and it was terrible, but it actually felt really honest. It may be the most honest thing in our world.

Where there’s life, there’s also death.

Ever since my dad died, I haven’t feared it.

Within a few weeks of Dad’s funeral, my dreams of him dying faded. In fact, I didn’t really have any dreams at all for quite some time.

Not until Cobalt Blue.

And oh boy, any time I brought that one up, Izzy and Emery would groan. I think I was about seventeen or eighteen the first time that dream came.

I was walking in a night so dark that there was no light.

Not many things scare me, but I was scared the first time I dreamt about Cobalt Blue.

I’m still scared when I dream about him now, truthfully.

I’m walking at the start of it, but as my fear grows, I transition to a run.

And then, after running for a long, long time, I start to pant.

My ragged, burning feet stumble, and panic overtakes me.

Every.

Single.

Time.

And then when I realize I’m about to run right over the edge of a cliff I couldn’t even see, strong, iron-tight hands grip my shoulders and pull me back. I twist then, turning upward toward a face so beautiful that my breath catches in my throat.

“No,” he says, his voice low and tight.

That’s it.

One word.

That’s all he says.

His eyes nearly glow in the darkness, a bright, cobalt blue. Not royal blue. Brighter than that, a light, bright, almost violet color of blue. I knew just what color it was, because I had painted one wall of my room that exact color a week before.

Every time it returns, I wake up, right after he saves me. Right after he says “no,” before I can learn anything else about him. For a long time, I kept the dream to myself.

But when my cousin Emery and my big sister Izzy were teasing me about another senior at school named Sam, I told them I didn’t like Sam at all, and that I was saving myself for Cobalt Blue.

Then I had to tell them about the whole thing.

They thought it was stupid at first, I could tell, but then I told them that although he only said one word, it was enough. I knew two things the very first time I had that dream and with increasing certainty every time it repeated.

First, Mr. Cobalt Blue was the love of my life—the only man I could love.

And second, he would cause my death, and nothing I did or said could possibly change that.