Page 78 of Realm of the Wicked

Two Years Ago

She was going to die.

I was the Devil and she was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it.

I tossed my glasses down on my desk with a clatter. Getting to my feet, I slammed the door to my study, the walls trembling behind me. It was a blessing – or a curse, depending on who you asked – being able to see the deaths in the future. At any given time, I could look into my ledger and see the date, time and cause of death for a specific person. I didn’t do it often. It was enough to see it when I had to look forward to make decisions; why would I need to single out a human for any other reason other than necessity?

I didn’t know what made me look up Stella. I’d told myself I wouldn’t. All it would do was cause trouble for both of us. Besides, she was young. Healthy. Her parents had passed in a freak accident, so reasonably, her debt of death had been paid.

Or so I thought.

Here’s where it got tricky for me. I could see deaths in the future. I could change them. But once they happened, I couldn’t change the past. Ironic, really. All for the sake of the damned Balance. How I loathed that word.

I couldn’t stop my fingers from turning the pages, scanning until I found her name, laid out in black ink.

I expected a death from old age. Something far in the future, so she would be around to torture me for years, a constant reminder that I would not age with her. It almost felt like a failure on my part. But no, there it was, plain as day.

Stella Whittier. DOD 03/04/2024. Car Accident on Highway 80.

I stomped down the stairs, the wood creaking and protesting with every heavy step. Luna took one look at me and turned tail, running the other way. I couldn’t blame her. I would run, too.

‘Fuck!’ I screamed, pulling at my hair. ‘Fuck it all.’

Agatha’s gray head peeked out from the kitchen. ‘D?’

I closed my eyes, gathering every ounce of my restraint to not scream at her. This wasn’t her fault. Wrong place. Wrong time. All that bullshit. The Balance.

‘D, is everything okay?’

I opened my eyes, my sight blurry from anger, and some other emotion I didn’t want to acknowledge. ‘She’s going to die. Soon.’

Agatha chewed on her lip. ‘Isn’t that… a good thing?’

The growl slipped out before I could stop it, and I slammed my fist into the wallpaper. I still couldn’t be angry at Agatha. I knew what she meant. I knew she only meant good. But fuck, did it hurt to think about.

‘Yes. I suppose I’ve been a little distracted.’

Agatha snorted. I glared.

‘You’re lucky Clarissa hasn’t come down here and dragged you back to Hell herself.’

‘It hasn’t been that bad.’ I hesitated.

I’d fucked up on my quote a month ago. Let a soul slip through the month before that. None of this weighed even close to Stella in my mind. Not that I could tell Agatha that.

I hardened my face, tucking those thoughts safely away behind a wall. ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Yes, it would be for the best.’

But something must have shattered behind my carefully constructed veil, or Agatha had been with me for long enough she could see through it.

‘D,’ she murmured. ‘Oh, D. What have you gotten yourself into?’

‘Nothing I can fix now,’ I muttered.

Because that was the truth. I was so deeply ingrained into every fiber of Stella’s being that even the very concept of not being able to see her dark hair flowing in the wind, or check in to see what concoction she’d managed to scrounge together for her and Grace for dinner, felt like it would tear the fabric of my world apart. Because the simple truth, the very heart of the matter was this: there was no realm I wanted to exist in if Stella wasn’t there.

She didn’t even know my name.

I pressed my fingers into my temples. ‘She’s in my book,’ I finally said.