The warmth of the mug has seeped into my hands, yet I continue turning it slowly between my palms, watching the last wisps of steam disappear into the room while I search for another harmless question to ask. When I finally meet his eyes, I find him watching me with the same quiet concentration he’d worn all evening,his expression unreadable, though there is something different about the way he studies me now. Less curious. More certain. As though every answer I’d given him had quietly confirmed a suspicion he’d been piecing together since the moment we sat down. He leans back ever so slightly, giving me more space instead of less, and when he finally speaks, his voice remains infuriatingly gentle.
“What aren’t you allowed to tell me?”
Every thought leaves my head. The room seems to tilt beneath me, the question echoing through my mind until I can no longer hear the grandfather clock somewhere deeper in the house, or the quiet crackle of the logs burning low in the hearth, or even the sound of my own breathing. Seven simple words. Impossibly ordinary that somehow finds the one place inside me that screams for me not to answer. Because I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, but because somewhere along the way, the choice was taken from me.
And something tells me that Death has worked it out.
If I tell him what he wants to know, they’ll find out about it. I just know it. It doesn’t matter that I’m sitting in this warm, quiet house. It doesn’t matter that I’m here, safer than I’ve been in the longest time. Because they’ll know. They always know.
The mug slips from my hands before I realize my fingers have stopped obeying me, rockingdangerously against the saucer as I lurch to my feet, every instinct inside me screaming that I need to leave. Need to run. Need to put miles between myself and the question before the answer finds its way out of my mouth. My skin crawls beneath the oversized shirt until it feels too tight, too heavy, suffocating against my chest, and before I can even register what I’m doing, my nails are digging into the soft flesh of my forearms, scratching hard enough to make the sting bloom beneath my fingertips.
His voice reaches me first. Calm and careful, but I don’t hear the words. Only the panic.
The room grows smaller with every frantic breath, my pulse hammering so violently it drowns out everything else until all I can hear are the voices I’d spent the whole day trying to ignore. Don’t tell anyone anything. Don’t speak. Don’t think. Don’t remember.
My nails drag harder, then stop. Not because I told them to, because another hand has wrapped gently around my wrist. Not tight enough to trap me. Only enough to stop me from hurting myself. I flinch, the blanket slipping from my shoulders, my eyes flying to his.
He’s closer now. Close enough that I can see the concern written plainly across his face, yet somehow he’d left enough space between us that I don’t feel concerned. His grip is impossibly gentle, as thoughhe’s holding something so fragile, he’s terrified to be the one to shatter it.
“You’re here,” he whispers, never taking his eyes from mine. “Look at me. You’re here.”
For reasons I don’t understand.
I do.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WINTER
Mornings arrive much quieter now. Not because everything feels softer, but because I no longer wake expecting someone to drag me from my bed before the sun reaches the trees. Somewhere over the last several days, perhaps a week, perhaps longer, I’ve stopped counting, this old house has begun teaching my body that it is allowed to rest. The nightmares still come. They always will. Yet instead of cold timber beneath my cheek, or a rough exposed mattress older than my father, I wake tangled in linen so incredibly soft that every morning I have to remind myself I am not stealing it by sleeping here.
The room Death gave me overlooks my sleeping friends. At first, I was taken aback by it, because what a gift it is to watch over them whenever I want. I don’t have to face the cold and trek across fields of snow to do it. To watch over my shoulder and listen out for the distant echo of barking in case the men have arrived. I can simply be. At peace. At home. The place I’d go only in my mind is the place I now sleep soundly.Tucked away in the snow surrounded by trees in Death’s company.
I did leave once. The guilt of abandoning the farm gnawed at me until I convinced myself I owed it a visit. The men hadn’t been back, and that was all I needed to race back here. The humiliating panic attack never came up again. Not because it was forgotten or anything, but because Death never asked me to explain it. He had guided me gently back to the couch that night, placed the blanket that had slipped onto the floor around my shoulders and sat beside me until my breathing no longer felt impossible. He never asked why I couldn’t answer his question. Never looked at me as though I’d failed some invisible test. Instead, he spoke about ordinary things until the fear had loosened its grip on my chest, allowing my thoughts to find their way back to me one careful breath at a time.
The move was so human I almost forgot that it is him who will eventually kill me. That my soul would one day belong to him. Maybe it already does. Somewhere between the quiet evenings, and a house that has started to feel like home, a real home, I had started leaving pieces of myself here without ever meaning to in a way I hadn’t before. My mind was here for all those years, but now, so is my heart. My soul. And I’m not sure when it happened.
He leaves for work every morningbefore the frost has melted from the cemetery, always making breakfast despite my protests that I am perfectly capable of preparing meals here. But, I’ve stopped arguing. When he’s gone, I wander amongst the graves that little by little are starting to look a lot clearer. The snow has begun surrendering to my hands, each headstone slowly revealing the carvings hidden beneath months of frost, and I find myself waking from a long sleep. I hope I have enough time once spring is here to place flowers for them. Fresh ones. Not because they asked me to, but because I want them to know that they are loved. That I missed them terribly when I was away.
By the time late afternoon begins to surrender to evening, I’ve settled into the familiar corner of the kitchen table beside the window where the last of the winter light always seems to linger a little longer than everywhere else. Dinner simmers quietly on the stove, filling the old house with the comforting scent of rosemary and garlic while I lose myself in one of the dozens of books Death had stacked haphazardly across the floor of the room at the end of the hall. I’m not entirely convinced they belong to him. He doesn’t strike me as someone who has the patience to sit still long enough to read stories, though perhaps that’s unfair. Perhaps I simply struggle to imagine him doing anything ordinary as turning pages.
The one resting open across my lap tells a tale ofan ageing queen so consumed by envy that she spends her days chasing the reflection of a girl she cannot bear to let live, believing in beauty is something that can only belong to one woman at a time. I find myself smiling at the absurdity of it, tracing the edge of the page with my middle finger as I wonder how anyone could spend an entire lifetime fearing another person simply for their looks.
The familiar rumble of tires crunching over the frozen driveway pulls my attention from the page resting open in my lap. I slip a scrap of ribbon between the pages before setting the book aside, smiling to myself as I cross toward the kitchen. Dinner has been ready for almost half an hour now, the stew still warm where I’d left it simmering over the lowest flame so it wouldn’t burn.
I’m not sure when I had started waiting for his return, but I feel like I am. I shake my head, reaching for two bowls from the cupboard, listening as the driver’s door slams shut outside. Heavy footsteps crunch across the snow before climbing the front steps, and I watch as the front door opens, trying my best not to show my excitement that he’s back.
All pleasantries die on the tip of my tongue when I see the man before me. He’s covered in blood. Not a little. Covered. It stains his jacket, his hands, the column of his throat where it has dried in dark crimson streaks, disappearing beneath the collar of hisshirt before reappearing across his jaw and into his hairline. Fresh blood. Dried blood. Someone else’s life painted across every part of him until it becomes almost impossible to recognize him. For a long moment neither of us moves. His amber eyes search my face with an expression I’ve never seen before. Not guilt. Shame. Or maybe something much more fragile. As though he’s waiting for me to finally see what he has always believed himself to be.
I don’t ask whose blood it is. I don’t ask what happened. Those questions belong to another time. Instead, I set the bowls down on the bench and cross the room slowly, giving him every opportunity to step away. He doesn’t. When I stop in front of him, my hand lifts almost of its own accord, hovering beside his face for the briefest moment before my fingertips brush the dried blood clinging to his cheek.
His breath catches, and so does mine. Without a word, I lower my hand again and disappear into the bathroom down the hall, and when I return, a warm washcloth rests between my hands. He hasn’t moved. His eyes never leave me as I unfold the cloth and reach up once more, gently pressing the heat against his skin before wiping away the blood one careful stroke at a time, revealing the man I’ve come to care for beneath it.
“Ghost…”
His voice is barely more than a whisper. I glanceup, amused by his nickname for me because while I might not be dead yet, I think it’s fitting considering it is he who will eventually take my soul away.
“You don’t fear me.”
