Page 87 of Death is My Ride or Die

Taking the tea from Ace, I made my decision. “Yes.”

His eyes crinkled as he smiled, and he bent to briefly kiss my hand in a gesture of appreciation. “You might feel loopy. Then you will succumb to the spell, and I will walk you through a visualization. Now to activate the potion.”

Ace cupped his hands around the top. He murmured some words, and his eyes flashed white. He pulled back sharply from the mug, and the drink roared. Threw-my-hair-back roared.

“Quelle horreur!”Ace exclaimed. He combed his fingers through his wind-blown hair to fix it and then grinned. “It’s perfect!” He picked up the cup and held it out for me. It was a little milky, with specks of gray.

“No freaking way, man.”

Ace chuckled. “You must take a sip quickly, before it congeals.”

I couldn’t stop grimacing. “Can you maybe give me a countdown?”

“Three,two,one, now,” Ace said quickly, then cupped the back of my head and brought the drink to my lips. I took a big gulp. The acidic, slimy texture caught in my throat a little. I heaved but managed to keep it down.

“Disgusting,” I coughed out. “Mint . . . didnothing. Dizzy. Room is spinning.”

“I have you, don’t worry,” Ace said, taking my elbow in a firm hand as he guided me back to my chair. “In order to unravel a secret through your power of sight, the Spirits will need the context of a specific moment between you and Death. One where you questioned his intentions.”

“Jesus. Help me narrow it down, will you?”

Ace worked his jaw. “All right, I will. How about when you lost your friend Marcy and signed the contract? Do you remember how he was behaving that day?”

I remembered his surreptitious grin. The one Death wore as I’d signed away my soul. He’d acted so strange afterward. Like there was no sense of urgency to save Marcy.

Marcy.

My vision strobed in and out.

And then I was elsewhere.

I was standing on the roof of the D&S Tower. Death stood about ten feet away with his back to me, and in front of him loomed a figure in red.

Lucifer.

The scene warped nonstop around the edges, and I could barely hear their quiet conversation. Only a single sentence before the scene dissipated.

“. . . stage an attack with Malphas and frighten her,” Death said.

Now I was standing in my front yard watching a menacing, hooded figure approach my bedroom window. Judging by his broad back and immense frame, it was Death. He wrenched open my bedroom window with ease, as the lock had already been broken. Peering into the dimly lit room, he paused, his head turning toward my bed. I could see myself stir. I was asleep.

Death held out his gloved hand toward Marcy, shadows pooling like wisps in the air. She awakened with a start.

“Come to me,” Death commanded in a whisper.

Marcy crawled through the window obediently, her eyes glazed over. Dawn began to break as she crossed the dewy lawn. Death murmured foreign words beneath his breath, and the surroundings shifted like a mirage. Ravens. They were all around, circling like vultures. Looking up at the sky, Death slowly pulled down his hood, his mouth still moving in what appeared to be a spell. Mismatched green eyes were consumed by darkness as his appearance altered to his father’s . . .

“Faith,” cried a voice in the distance, and I watched myself run across the lawn after Marcy. The raw panic wracking my expression brought me back to all the pain and anxiety I’d felt that day. The desperation of signing my soul over.

And it’d been a trick.

Another twisted trick.

Another lie.

“Faith!”

My entire body jolted. My surroundings strobed in and out between reality and the past. Violet eyes. I warped back to the present, crouched over Ace’s body with my fingers curled tightly around his throat. White glowed from my fingers, burning into his flesh.

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