Me.
But I didn’t want to fight her or hash out our grievances or analyze the bullshit between us, partly because I didn’t care and partly because it was of little consequence. Not when I was sitting across from her with only two lives left.
Not when I’d died at her hands.
Not when I sensed she was holding me captive.
“My sincerest apologies, Mistress,” I said, and she sneered because she wanted a fight and I did not and that failure of our minds meeting irked her something fierce. “I would never dream of telling you what to feel or how to do it.”
“Shut it.” Death waved her hand in the air. “Your incessant chatter is driving me fucking nuts.”
“Very well.”
“Not. another. word. Juma.”
Death leaned forward to pick a glass off the table, and as she did, I moved away. It was instinctual, somewhere deep inside me knew to remain as far out of her reach as possible. And had I thought about what I was doing—exhibiting my hidden, underneath-the-surface fear of her—I would have forced myself to remain still and poised and pretend nothing about her gave me pause. But as I said, it was instinct, and every instinct of mine told me to back the fuck up.
She smiled wide and full and I wanted to peel her lips right off her face and toss them in the wastebasket.
Instead.
I did as she demanded and remained silent.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she asked with laughter on her tongue, and I thought how after peeling back her lips, I would also like to cut out her tongue and spare myself another snark-filled comment from her black hole of a mouth. “Cat got your tongue?”
I started to defend myself, but she raised a finger to her lips, the same finger she’d used to cut me open on many occasions, and I quieted.
“Not another word, remember?” she asked, and I leaned back in my chair and silently fumed.
Fuck you! I wanted to shout into the room with no walls and fake lighting and bullshit furniture, all of it contrived and for show. I wanted to tell her how immature she seemed, how her fits of anger and rage reminded me of five-year-olds melting down on the playground in Central Park after missing their afternoon nap. I wanted to rise and snarl and go head-to-head with her in some kind of sick immortal combat, despite the fact that with only two lives left, I was looking more mortal every day.
Instead.
I sat on that stupid chair with my feet barely touching the floor and I watched as she sipped her whiskey and twirled her hair around her finger and smiled at me as if we were friends, as if she didn’t want me dead, as if I didn’t want to kill her.
“Mistress!” Marina shouted as she burst into the room through a door I didn’t know existed until it did. “Juma died again.”
“This I know, Marina.” Death smiled and nodded in my direction. From where she was standing, Marina could not see me due to the ridiculous design of my chair, so I crooked my neck around the back and waved in her direction. She caught my eye and crossed herself, a habit from her Catholic school days and something I noticed she only did when under extreme duress.
“Mother of god, Mistress,” Marina muttered, and glared at Death, then stepped toward me and cupped my face in her soft hands. “You killed her.”
Death nodded. “Yes, I most definitely did.”
“You killed Juma.” Marina snapped her neck in Death’s direction and shouted, “You killed your own Poocha! Not only your own, but your best and your beloved. Ay, dios mío! What have you done, Mistress? What has gotten into you? Have you lost your mind?”
Marina released my face and stepped back to study me, her eyes running up and down my body as if she could tell the suffering I’d endured in the quiet of the driveway on Martha’s Vineyard. She squinted, and all of her seemed focused on uncovering my hurts. What she intended to do with them, I had no idea.
“What did she do to you, Juma?” Marina asked, and Death tensed and I suddenly wanted no part of whatever was happening between the three of us.
“Nothing,” I lied.
“You can tell her, Juma.” Death waved her hand at me and looked bored. “Marina and I have no secrets.”
Her words hit me just where she’d intended, those tender places I tried to protect but she seemed able to find no matter how well I hid them. I flinched without meaning to, not wanting to, but was incapable of stopping myself because even though Death was speaking of her relationship with her chaat, her girl Friday, the second most powerful being in Death’s realm, she was also indirectly speaking of us. And she fully intended to hurt me, much more so than when she gutted me in the driveway, because she knew her words would find a dark nook in my soul to sit and fester, she wanted them to. So she flaunted what she and Marina shared and in doing so, quietly cut me to the core because unlike Marina, everything between myself and Death was built upon a lie.
“In that case,” I replied with a smile full of false bravado and bitch, because sure, Death might have thrown me off right there, but she wasn’t the only one who could play this game. “What do you want to know, Marina? How she bore down on me without warning, knives slashing everywhere? Or how she then eviscerated me on the drive, under the morning sun, with only the trees as witness? Oh, I know. You want to know how she laughed as my insides hung on the outside, then when I asked her to spare my life, that I had only a few left, she smiled and pierced my heart with her blade.”
Marina paled as my words fell at her feet, but she did not look surprised, for she knew her mistress much better than I could ever hope to, so she probably knew Death was capable of even worse. She smiled at me the way she used to when I was younger and would get bored and roam the halls, looking for someone to keep me company, finding her each and every time.
She touched my hair and bent low to kiss my forehead, then turned on her heel and sat on the couch next to Death. I watched them for a second, a study of contrasts. Where Marina was soft and curved and so very touchable, Death was all sinew and lean muscle and just plain hard. Where Marina was warm and sexy and lovable, Death was chilled indifference. And yet, the longer I watched them, the more they seemed made for each other, symbiotic in their mutual need.
“Mistress,” Marina said as they both glanced my way, and again, I felt I was being held captive, only this time by both Marina and Death, “this situation is not amenable. At all.”
“I know that,” Death snapped, and rolled her eyes.
“I’m not so sure you do,” Marina countered. “Because if you did, you would have done as Sayyid requested, and brought her home.”
“But, Marina,” Death said with mischief on her tongue, leaning away from her chaat as a look of feigned shock washed over her face, “that is precisely what I did. I brought Juma home.”
“Sayyid?” I asked, unable to resist interjecting myself into their conversation. “As in Rouxs Sayyid?”
“That is not his proper title, Juma,” Marina said, and shot me a look before returning her attention to Death. “And you”—she pointed at her mistress—“you know very well Sayyid did not mean for you to kill her.”
“See,” Death said, and touched a finger to her cheek, looking gorgeous and psychotic at the same time, “that’s where you’re wrong, sweet Marina. He never provided any details when he made his request. He simply said to bring her home.”
“You knew what he meant,” Marina said, “and it was not this.” And here she pointed in my direction, her face a mask of disappointment and concern, and I knew all of it was for Death.
“Oh, it was very much this,” Death said as she stood and glared down at Marina, “and you know why, Marina? Because I decided it was! Because I make the decisions around here. Not you, not her—” Death swept her arm in my direction, coming inches from my face with her deadly fingernail. “—and damn sure not motherfucking Sayyid.”
“Calm down, Giselle.”
The low voice I’d known since childhood reverberated through our bodies in that weird way of speaking the Rouxs had,
where they never moved their mouths because their mouths appeared permanently shut, if they existed at all. They insisted they could move their lips if they so chose; they’d simply decided a long time ago not to waste the energy on such simplistic, unnecessary movements. Instead, they harnessed energy and consciousness, infused it with magic, and communicated through us and with us, all the while saying nothing at all.
It was wondrous and disconcerting, and every time I crossed their paths, I needed a moment to wrap my head around the impossibility of their possibility.
Except tonight.
Tonight there was none of my usual game of sense and sensibility with Sayyid, tonight I was all about the Giselle he pushed into the space between us.
Giselle.
Giselle?
Giselle!
I caught Death’s eye and smirked, and I swear if I were within her reach, she would have killed me all over again.
“Giselle?” I asked, unable to help myself, needing to roll the name around in my mouth and spit it into the air to make it real, speak it into existence, lest she leave this room and this space and decide all of this—the conversations, the naming—never happened. I needed to make sure it happened. And so I repeated, “Giselle.”
“Enough, Juma,” Marina shushed me halfheartedly.
“Yes, I agree,” Sayyid said with his ghostly maybe-he-said-it, maybe-he-didn’t support of Marina. “Enough, Juma.”
If the Rouxs had a leader, it was most definitely not Sayyid. I had no idea how they were structured or organized or if the linear concept of hierarchy even existed within their confines, but I knew Sayyid was too much of an outlier to hold any seat of authority. He was the one all those years ago who found my ten-year-old self wandering alone and entertained me for hours with his weird too-white face and missing eyebrows and glittering eyelashes. I had asked him that day if I could touch him, and he laughed and told me to give it a try, so I did.
For hours.
We sat across from each other on some steps in a dark corner, alone, and I tried and tried and tried to make contact with some part of him, and each time I slipped through something that felt like energy and heat and cold whirling around so fast, it made pops and pricks of pain but could not be collected or contained. Try as I might, I could not grasp any part of him.
Sayyid had been reprimanded then by another of his kind with a gruff voice and angry eyes. Grud was his name—Grud is so rude—but that hadn’t stopped Sayyid from finding me again. And again and again. So often over the years that eventually Grud asked to talk to me himself and then introduced me to Larkin and Bach—like the composer?—and Maeve. And then finally the strange and beautiful Firenza, she of the large eyes and voice full of laughter, their leader if ever they had one.
It was Firenza who gifted me with the gruesome and deadly astras all those months ago, and although Sayyid showed me how to use them, it was she who suggested I would need to do so at all. It was she who told me to be on guard. It was she who warned me to watch out for Death.
“But I was just getting started,” I groused to Sayyid, “and fucking with Giselle is so much fun.”
To her credit, Death gathered herself and appeared unmoved by my teasing and carrying on, unperturbed by the revelation of her proper name. I assumed this was because it was her name—her birth name, her given name—and was as much a part of Death as her smooth brown skin and dark stunning eyes.
But to me, Giselle was new and almost commonplace and suddenly where she had been Death or Mistress or even Dark Mistress, now she was quite normal and everyday. With three words, Sayyid succeeded where many had failed—he humanized the inhuman.
“Enough, Juma,” Death added her voice to the chorus, blowing on her deadly fingernail as if to remind me there were things she could do to me and she wouldn’t mind doing any of them, over and over.
“Whatever you say, Giselle.” I laughed and couldn’t help myself—I needed to say it a few more times.
Death rolled her eyes, crossed her legs, and leaned into the back of the couch. Her body language suggested I bored her, and at that very moment, it hit me: This threesome had something up their sleeve. I didn’t know why that moment in time affected me in ways others did not, but it did. Death’s lack of interest in anything at all—my teasing, Marina’s reprimand, Sayyid’s revelation—struck me as odd and so unlike her. Because she loved nothing more than displaying her power for an audience, and she had a rapt one right here, but instead of her usual threats or subtle suggestions we behave, she did nothing.
I recalled the time she asked me if I would like to be her. I remembered when she told me being her wasn’t so bad. And I thought about our fight when I ripped her to shreds with my astra and she never really defended herself. All those moments and more slammed into me, and I collected them and parsed them and wondered what the fuck was going on, what was I doing here, against my will despite the fact no one would ever admit to as much, surrounded by Death, her chaat, and a Rouxs.
“Why am I here?” I asked in a hurry, as though all the air were rushing from my lungs at once, my voice tinged with slight panic. “What are you all plotting?”
“Put your panties back on, Juma,” Death said with a laugh, and settled into the couch, watching me as though I were a wayward child she needed to corral back into the playpen of her fucked-up creation. “No one is plotting anything.”
“And I’m supposed to believe you? You are a liar and a cheat,” I hissed, and laughed and crossed my arms in disgust and irritation.
“Sit. the. fuck. down.”
I paused as her words moved through me and her tone suggested her patience was spent and it was time for me to do as she said, no questions asked, no snark tolerated. I glared at her and shot Marina and Sayyid withering looks, but I sat because they were my key to crossing back to life, and I very much wanted to cross back to life and my folks and Dutch.
Always Dutch.
“Juma.” Sayyid looked me up and down with his all-knowing eyes, and just like every other time he stared at me, I felt naked and exposed. “There are some things to be discussed, important things, regarding you and your remaining lives.”
I shifted in my seat, irritated my feet barely touched the ground, unsettled by the fact the three of them knew something I did not.
“Don’t be nervous, love,” Sayyid said. “You seem ill at ease right now, and that is hardly my intent.”
“Well, forgive me, Sayyid,” I snapped, “but I just died a pretty fucking horrible death at the hands of your beloved Giselle and am left now with only two lives, both of which I would like to spend on the other side of things, with other people, rather than here, with the likes of y’all, but I have the sick sense that is not an option right now.”
Sayyid cocked his head to the side and glanced at Death. “I simply sought an audience.”
“And now you have one,” Death replied.
Sayyid shot her a hard stare before turning to Marina. “And she’s able to cross back, correct?”
“Not exactly,” Marina replied. “I myself just learned of all this, Sayyid,” Marina said as she waved her hand in the general direction of Death and me. “I was coming to inform the Mistress of Juma’s passing, only to find Juma, sitting right here. I’ve had no time to do anything with her lives.”
“So if I understand correctly, nothing has been tallied?” he asked, continuing his questioning of Marina’s processes, details I had never bothered learning, because I never thought they would matter.
Marina shook her head. “Oh no, it’s been tallied. She died.” And here Marina glared at Death. “I just haven’t had a chance to set up her return, I was so upset by seeing she’d died again.”
Sayyid turned back to me and shot me a mournful look. “That’s too bad—I hoped we could let this one slide.”
“No,” Death said, “not a chance.”
“Giselle, be reasonable here,” Sayyid suggested, and again I sensed they all knew something I did not, and it made my
blood run hot.
“Absolutely not.” Death shook her head. “Juma is dead, plain and simple. She’s got two lives left to work with. I suggest she makes them count.”
“That is what I was trying to do, Mistress, before you so rudely interrupted me,” I growled under my breath.
“No, Juma, that is not what you were doing. What you were doing was letting that man fuck you backwards and forwards and every which way but south, and you were loving him and your parents and his friends. What you were not doing was making sure your remaining lives mattered.”
“They were coming!” I stood and shouted. “And you prevented me from killing all of them, wiping that driveway with the lives of those Black Copse and destroying one more finger of The Gate!”
“The Gate is not your battle!” Death stood and shouted right back at me, so angry, the vein in her forehead pulsed. “Nothing of concern to Dutch Mathew is any concern of yours! You belong to me!”
“Marina,” Sayyid said to the chaat, “go prep Juma to return, please,” and Marina left the room while he turned back to us. “Both of you. Sit.”
“Fuck you, Sayyid!” Death barked, and the room fell quiet.
I had walked these halls and roamed this realm for thirty-one years. I knew Death ran the show, she was the Head Bitch in Charge, and all decisions proclamations reclamations happened only with her approval. Poochas, Alighters, the Rouxs, Deaders, her chaat—none of us controlled the way this place ran.
Death did.
And we all followed her lead.
Except when we didn’t. Or I should say, when the Rouxs didn’t. Because if there was one thing I’d learned over my years of slipping into the shadows and entertaining myself, it was that the Rouxs had some power—how much, I could not tell, but enough to give pause and consider twice when crossing them. They were some wily motherfuckers, and it was probably in one’s best interest not to wind up on their bad side.
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