Page 22 of Death Trap

“Yes, your powers are awakening,” he replied.

Hadn’t Azrael said something like that, too? When I had overheard him in Cole’s motel room?

He went on. “Your soul has detected danger. The balance between good and evil has been shifted, and it’s time…”

There it went again. The censor.

I cursed. This was going to be one frustrating conversation.

Eli’s annoyance was beginning to peek through, too. “Like I said before, you are the one who matters. You are the only one who can restore the balance and save all dimensions—both the living and the dead.”

My head suddenly spun, and I held out my arms to keep my balance. When Eli stepped closer to help me, I waved him away.

“I’m sorry. Did you just say…save all dimensions?”

“I did.”

Me, responsible for saving everyone? What did I look like? A superhero? No way. Not even close.

Azrael’s words to Cole in the motel bounced around in my head. Hadn’t he said I could ruin everything for him? Is this what he meant? He had gone through an elaborate plan to get me out of the way.

Every muscle in my body tensed.

But whyme? That’s what I wanted to know.

“You said there were others like me?” I squeaked out, my voice betraying me.

“Yes. But not many. Some are still in the middle…”

Censored.

I smacked my forehead and let out an aggravated grunt. “Are you kidding me?”

Every time I was close to an answer, this censor had to cockblock me.

“The others are not available at the moment.” Eli changed his sentence to get something through the censor, even though it revealed almost nothing.

“I’m assuming the switching between spirit form and living form was also part of the ‘powers awakening’?” I made sure to make the air quotes, too. When Eli nodded, I went on. “Will there be more surprises?”

He paused, debating his words. “There may be.”

Goodie.

“Will I ever be able to use the white light without passing out or without the splitting headache?”

“Once you complete…”—the censor blanked out some words, but he kept talking and it picked up again at the unimportant parts—“you’ll be at your strongest, and that means you’ll be able to control all your gifts.”

So, I would have to do something—maybe some kind of test or task—in order to gain full access to whatever powers I had stored inside me. At least, that’s what I got from that disjointed statement.

I started to make a mental list of what I had found out so far from this interrogation. Mental lists were sort of my go-to.

One: something had happened with the censor, and it was now blocking Eli from telling me anything about my life. That meant someone was targeting me specifically andreallydidn’t want me knowing the truth. Who had that much to lose? The only person I could think about was Azrael, just by what I had heard him telling Cole when I had listened in to their conversation. He had said I could ruin everything he’d worked hard for. And Azrael would have access to the censor as the Angel of Death and previous leader of the afterlife dimensions and reapers. He was the only one who made sense in this scenario.

Two: Eli was a Guardian, meaning his soul had been created to protect me. I guess that could excuse the “stalking,” then. And it did make sense why he’d intervened during the night with Xaver. Whatever my mark meant, it was important, and it was my responsibility to restore the balance between both sides of the veil.

Just thinking about it made me want to hurl. I had wanted answers, but I had expected something more along the lines of finding out I was a schoolteacher or an activist in my life. I never expected this. Not even a little bit.

Three: even though I didn’t remember him, I knew Eli somehow—and for a very long time, if what he’d said was right. This was the part that was really throwing me for a loop. How could that be? I had died just over a year and a half ago. My soul hadn’t been in the afterlife for hundreds of years, like Simon’s had.

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