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“You’re …him,” Sienna gasped, finally orienting herself. She didn’t remember dropping to the ground, but at least she had hold of the sofa still.
The hand he’d apparently partially stretched toward her fell back to his side and curled into a fist. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You and I have never met.”
The vision of him before her blurred with her long-standing memory of him. Surrounded by a smokey cloud of black, face sometimes contorted in pain, sometimes in grief, sometimes even in anger. Hands always, always, dripping crimson with blood. It wasn’t a pleasant visual. The first few times she’d seen it she’d come-to screaming or shaking, but over time, it had become familiar. Predictable. And in that way, comforting.
The version of him in her living room now was not surrounded by any sort of black cloud and the expression on his face was notably muted.
Sienna pulled herself to her feet, uncertain if she was on to something or about to sound like a moron. “You don’t like to touch people, right? That’s why you’re freaked out that I touched you.”
His brow furrowed again. “You don’t know me,” he said. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
Sienna stepped closer, maintaining eye-contact as she did. She half expected him to back up, but he held still. He was the perfect height. Six-foot probably exactly, a thrilling compliment to her five-foot-eight-inches. What was it about being up close to him that scrambled her brain so bad? “You’re right, I don’t know you. Not really.” She reached out, slowly this time, and curled her hand around his gloved fist. “But I want to. I’ve wanted to for a very long time, Fenn.”
His chest rose with a heavy breath, then he jerked his hand away and finally stepped back. “Forget about me,” he said. He almost seemed to blur around the edges as he spoke. “The only knowledge I can bring you is death.”
She opened her mouth to call out to him, to beg him to stop, but it was already too late. He’d vanished.
Fenn stared down at his right hand as strange, foreign emotions rocked through him. The second time she’d touched him had been over his leather glove andtechnicallythat was safe. He still preferred to avoid it. He couldn’t actually remember the last time anyone had touched him so casually. Sulien, probably. The man had a habit of clapping people on the back when he was in good spirits. Though he’d learned to resist in Fenn’s case, so that would have been decades past.
Decades.He didn’t allow himself to think about it. About how the only time he made physical contact with another body of flesh was in the process of taking their life.
Fenn drew a deep breath and curled his hand into a tight fist, letting his arm fall again to his side. He couldn’t get past the question of how that woman—Sienna, she’d said—had managed to make direct contact with his flesh and survive. She was mortal, she had no magic shielding her, so it made no sense.
“I don’t know you. Not really. But I want to.”Her words reverberated through him and he snorted into the open night air. He doubted he’d get anywhere looking for sense.
The way he saw it, there were only two options. Either therewassomething protecting her, and he’d somehow missed it in his observance of her, or his power was faltering. The latter was a dangerous possibility. In the grand scheme of things, it hadn’t been so long since he’d inherited his mantle. Supposedly the previous Death had reigned for quite a while, and if the rest of the Four knew how he’d died, they weren’t talking. Fenn had had the impression his predecessor’s erasure had been caused by an external source. Their version of unnatural causes. If he was wrong—if the very power that made him what he’d become was already beginning to end him—then the fragile balance of reality could be in jeopardy.
There was one person he could call to hopefully verify, or eliminate, that theory. Much as he didn’t love talking to the man.
Fenn dug his phone from the inner pocket of his coat and moved himself to an empty train car. He didn’t really need to worry about privacy, but transitioning into the embodiment of the most ancient of concepts hadn’t eliminated his tendency to seek out more isolated areas. It had just made finding them easier.
He hesitated for a moment with his thumb over the screen. Cassian would want to know why he was asking. But it was too critical to let lie, so he pressed the mockingly bright button and lifted the device to his ear.
Cassian answered after two rings, his old Roman accent biting through the line. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
Fenn rolled his eyes. “I don’t even know what time-zone you’re in, Famine.”
Cassian sighed heavily. “Why are you calling me, then? It’s unlike you to reach out to me.”
He’d made this decision for valid reasons, and still Fenn felt something in his chest pinch. He wished he could at least have called one of the others with this question. “I have a concern,” Fenn said. “Can you tell if there’s an imbalance in my magic?”
Silence greeted him for long seconds, followed by faint ruffling, like shifting fabric. “I don’t sense anything of that sort,” Cassian finally said. “Why? You’ve had the mantle long enough to know how to use your power. Did you do something stupid?”
Fenn locked his jaw to let the agitation wash over him. His gaze shifted toward the group of males a few yards over who seemed to have chosen to meet in the area purposefully. Two of the four were more heavily armed than the third, and the fourth had no weapon at all. They spoke amongst themselves, gesturing sharply. Violent energy swirled from them, but none were on the path to die that night.
“Are you listening?”
“I was reflecting,” Fenn lied. “I can’t think of anything I’ve done to cause my power to behave out of the ordinary.”
“Then what makes you think it is?”
Sienna’s wide, imploring eyes swam before his mind’s eye for a long second and Fenn swallowed an uncomfortable lump in his throat. “Someone touched me,” he said.
“So?”
“And didn’t die.”
Again, silence followed his words for a long minute.
