James often reprimanded me for not leaving such things as breakfast to our house staff. But I think he’d forgotten he married the wild, barefoot woman from the north, with fire in her veins and stubbornness her most cherished friend.
Pouring the steaming water into the press, I left it to steep while I plated my breakfast—a couple of eggs, bacon, and some yogurt with fresh fruit. The storm continued to taunt me from the window as I arranged my breakfast on the café table before it.
The skies were so bleak, a wash of colorless clouds tumbling over themselves as they grew heavy with precipitation. It wouldn’t be long before the rain started in, or perhaps snow. I had no idea the weather patterns in Iceland, but it was early November and I could taste the frost in the air.
When I asked Day why Death lived in Iceland, his only response had been, “For stillness.” And while I could understand that Death seemed to be a bit of a loner, this was a new level of quiet. There was nothing to see for miles out the windows.
From the front living room window, the gate Grim had warned me about loomed in the distance. A shadow of iron against the landscape—almost invisible, but there all the same. It disappeared, a dotted line across the horizon, dipping and rising in the undulating hills. But from my vantage point at the back of the house, there was a patio outside, and beyond that a hike down to the ocean.
I ate my breakfast in silence, attempting to drown out my fruitless thoughts with the sound of heavy chewing. I could not remember a time I’d been left to such stillness. Seattle was loudand bustling, and when it wasn’t, you could rely on the rain to step in and make up for the lack of sound.
Silence meant thinking. And thinking brought memories, and those memories brought flashes of heat across my skin and a heightened heart rate.
It was one of my rules,no thinking.
The rules weren’t difficult. Actually, they’d been quite simple.
They went as follows: no attachments, no emotion, no looking back, no returning to the same place within the same generation, and never—under any circumstances—give my real name.
I liked to pretend that my mother’s superstitions had not worn off on me, but five was a lucky number and I wasn’t foolish enough to test Fate. After meeting her, I might have other thoughts, but my five rules protected me well enough. To move through life blindly was no easy feat, but somehow, I’d done it.
Except that somewhere along the way, I’d gone and ignored most of those rules by falling in love with the Kapoors. And because of my recklessness, a woman was now dead, and I was the center of her mysterious death.
Sipping at the coffee, I watched the horizon and counted the beats of wind as they moved through the grass.
Grim got me out of that situation, and even if he hadn’t erased me from their memories, Sanjay and Piper would give up trying to find me soon enough. I could walk out the door and never look back, move on as a ghost to the wind.
Except that I promised my soul in exchange for help.
Ending the curse would be the end of me and I wasn’t sure that was something I was ready to face, even after all this time.
When James died, I was in shock, confused and utterly scared. I contemplated for months if I’d actually killed him. I didn’t watch it happen… it just happened. And Death only confirmed the dread pooling in my stomach when he appeared asking why I’d done it.
It wasn’t as if I was proud of what I’d done. I hated it, actually. Fifty-four years old, a widow, immortal,and amurderer.
I never told my children; Beatrice had been too hysterical to even understand what transpired.But I knew.
For months, I’d visit his grave in the dead of night, pleading with his soul that it was a mistake—as if that might redeem me. All I’d done was justify the tragedy in my mind.
It was for Bea…
For Bea.
But I could not plead for Madison, or any other soul I’d ripped from the world, as I played a self-righteous hero.
I thought I’d been a savior, stealing souls from the clutches of Death. But all I’d done was trade one damnation for another. The woman who lived because I’d given her Jason’s life died two days later. I killed two people in the span of forty-eight hours.
Suddenly my yogurt lost its flavor, and my coffee burned as I gulped it down, choking on the bitterness.
I’d end the curse, if only to save humanity from myself—even if it meant giving my soul to the very being that had hunted me for a century. Too many had suffered the Tempests.
twenty-six
Icurled up with a book, pulled off Grim’s living room shelf with no care as to what I was picking. An unnamed author taunted me from the pages as I read a morbid romance where tragedy befell the couple.
Closing the book, I added it to a pile on the coffee table, wondering what I was supposed to do and how long I’d have to do it until Grim returned. With every ounce of self-restraint, I somehow refrained from snooping through the room that sat locked.
I checked.
