Don’t drink or eat too much, or too little. Only the right amount. Those were the lessons that her etiquette book taught. Signa just hadn’t known what qualified as too much. Now she knew it was three scones. So despite Death’s push, she didn’t take another, even when Diana began prying again into the business of the Hawthornes, hunting for gossip she would undoubtedly spread. There was no room to relax in this conversation. She was more on her guard than ever, judging every inch of her body—from where she rested her pinkie to how quick her breathing was. Did she sip too quickly? Was the amount of sugar she added to her tea appropriate?
Exhaustion weighted her shoulders; socializing was going to take more getting used to than she’d anticipated.
For so long Signa had waited for this day; waited for the time when she would sit and chat with her friends as part of high society. For the time when others would show interest in her, and she might finally have the company she’d spent so long yearning for. Yet when Marjorie returned to the parlor, it felt as though an eternity had passed, and all Signa wanted was freedom and a good nap.
Charlotte was the last of the ladies to depart, and much to Signa’s surprise, she refused to linger. Her eyes skimmed over Signa as a quick “I’m glad to see that you’re doing well” passed her lips before she grasped her skirts and followed Marjorie out the door.
Tears burned Signa’s eyes. Charlotte had recognized her. She’d recognized her, and yet… It meant nothing. Perhaps all that time together—all that friendship—had meant more to Signa than it had to Charlotte.
She’d forgotten that Death stood behind her until he grumbled, “Two of those girls behave as though they’ve just been let off their leading strings.”
Swiping her eyes, Signa pivoted to him. “What are you still doing here?”
Again the shadows around him shifted, forming a table for him to kick his feet onto. “Good day to you, too. I came to see how you were settling in.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Signa turned and paced the length of the parlor, not wanting him to see her so shaken. “How are you even here?”
He considered this, tipping back in his shadow chair. “You’ve spared Blythe for now, but that doesn’t mean she’s cured.” The chair straightened, and he looked to her. “I’m here because she’s still teetering on the bridge between the living and the dead. Because of that, when we are both near enough to her, it seems you can see me. I wasn’t sure until today if that would be the case.”
Blast this unfortunate connection of theirs. What she wouldn’t give to cover the veil into the afterlife and never look upon it again. “And why is it I can hear your voice in my head?”
“Same reason you can hear my voice when I speak aloud, I suppose.”
Were he corporeal, Signa would have shaken him. As it was, she spun on her heel and stepped toward him with a wrath that fueled her entire body. “Couldn’t you see that I was busy?” she snarled. “This was important to me.”
Death turned as though he could see the girls through the walls. “Why? I’d think such creatures only important to their mothers. Didn’t you find it odd how two of them asked solely about your fortune and your family? They asked little about you.”
True as it was, the last thing she wanted was to agree with him. And so she said stubbornly, “They’re to be my friends.”
“Your friends?” He stood, the table and chair he’d formed slipping back into the shadows. “Why? I’ve never seen you so…”
“So talkative?” Signa pressed. “Never seen me with company?”
They were nearly chest to metaphorical chest now. This near to him, Signa’s skin buzzed not with fear but power. Determination. He was Death, and because of that she had no need to filter herself. No need to impress him.
Death bent so that his shadowed face hovered before hers, only a breath between them. “I’ve never seen you so demure, and so sickeningly stifled.” A scone flew at her then, landing hard on her chest. She barely caught it before it hit the floor. “You wanted this, didn’t you? Why would you let one person’s opinion prevent you from having it?”
She curled her fingers into the flaky crust of the scone. “I was being polite. There are rules about these things—”
“What you were being was hungry. And if you’re hungry, you should eat. Damn your rules.” There was something dark about his tone. A sour disappointment that, to her frustration, gnawed at her.
“And what does it matter to you?”
The question ignited a burning rage in his eyes. An inferno that had him before her again, sucking the air from the room. “It matters because you’re better than that. You were not made to be meek or wanting. If you embraced who you are, imagine the power you might wield. Imagine the things you could do.”
“You mean the lives I could take?” Signa stepped closer. “Imagine the spirits I could speak to? The bidding I could do for the dead? I don’t need to imagine it; I live it. That life consumes me, and it’s not one I want.”
“How do you know?” he demanded. “When all you do is run, how do you know what it is that you want? Would you rather spend your life pretending to be whatever it is you were with those girls?”
She threw the scone back at him, and to her surprise, it didn’t slip through him as the knife had when she’d stabbed him. He caught it.
“Leave,” she said once she’d managed to stifle her surprise. “You don’t know me, and you never will. It’s as you once said, we’re both very busy people, and you’re nothing but a distraction.”
He scoffed, the sound so human. So male. “I came to offer my assistance. A murder would be significantly simpler to solve, I imagine, if you knew how to use your abilities.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she said, not caring to consider the offer. “I can already speak with spirits—”
“So you see no value in an ability to walk through walls?” he demanded. “To alter your body so that others cannot see you? To become the very night itself, and submerge into the shadows? Imagine the spying you might do.”
Those would be useful powers, yes, but accepting that meant accepting his help, and she had no desire to entertain him and his ego for any longer than necessary.
“All my life, I have wanted nothing more than to be rid of you.” She squared her shoulders before the shadows that loomed over her. “I begged, night after night, death after death, for you to leave me alone. And now you want to offer me help?” There were not enough words. Not enough savageness within her to tell him the extent of what she thought of that. “I hate you, and I hate everything you’ve done to me. I will solve this, and I will do so without you.”
All around them, the day winked out. The darkness was all-consuming as Death grew larger, his anger so palpable that it suffocated the room. Above them, the chandelier shook, its lights flickering like an approaching storm. The sunlight filtering in from the windows snuffed out like a candle.
“You no longer have a choice in this.” Death’s voice shook the walls, knocking two porcelain teacups to the floor. “I tire of these games. I know you better than you think, just as I know that you will never rid yourself of me, Little Bird. As I will never rid myself of you.”