“What was—” I stopped. We were in my apartment.
PC jumped to his feet in the center of my bed, his tail tucked and ears quivering. Then he realized it was me and yipped in greeting before lunging from the bed.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, but as I moved to pick him up, I felt things inside my gut shift and squish in ways that seemed more than a little not good. Nothing was falling out at the moment—I wanted to keep it that way.
PC danced around me, but when I didn’t pick him up, he gave up and moved to Death. The dog was so not loyal. Death leaned down and petted the small dog, a strange look on his face.
“What?”
“He feels different from what I expected.”
I had no response for that. Until the last month, he had been in my apartment all the time. It never occurred to me that I’d never introduced my dog. He’d been able to interact only with objects that I touched while touching him, my planeweaving forming a bridge long before I even knew about the ability. But now Death was mortal and could interact with anything he wanted. He couldn’t stay mortal. That had to unbalance the world or something, didn’t it?
“So, uh, what now?”
“We have to get you mended,” he said, picking up PC.
“Excuse me?”
He pressed those full lips together, as if he wasn’t sure he should say what he was thinking, but he already had my oath so after a short hesitation he said, “Soul collectors aren’t exactly immortal, but we are unchanging.”
“Like the fae.”
He shook his head. “The fae like to think themselves unchanging but they are simply unaging.” PC licked Death’s chin and he jerked back in surprise before smiling and scratching behind the dog’s ear.
“Okay, so soul collectors don’t change. I kind of knew that. You’ve looked exactly the same since I was five.”
“It’s more than the way we look. We can have that altered if we desire. But we don’t change at all, which means if we are hurt, we don’t heal. We have to be mended.”
I absorbed all this. The last time Death had exchanged essences with me a cop had shot him—that’s sort of a hazard when you do major magic in the middle of an active crime scene. He’d seemed fine as soon as I gave him back his essence, and I’d assumed he’d healed. Of course, I had holes in my lungs and rearranged innards and they weren’t slowing me down.
“So then, I need to see this…mender? Where is he?” And would he fix me? I wasn’t a soul collector.
Death frowned and set PC back on the bed. “I can’t take you. This mortal body has certain limitations.”
“If you took my essence, your body should be fae.”
“Still mortal.” He smiled and walked over to me. “Just much longer lived.” He put his hands on my hips, careful not to touch any of the wounds. “Now we need to get you cleaned up so that the others can take you to get mended.”
Others? “Not the gray man.”
His brow pinched. “Gray man?”
Crap, I always forgot that the collectors didn’t know what I called each of them. But they wouldn’t give me their names, what was I supposed to do?
After a moment, Death nodded. “Appropriate description,” he said. “Fine, not him.”
Which left the raver. I didn’t offer her nickname, but retreated to the bathroom. I grimaced when I glanced in the mirror. With my tattered clothes—and stomach—covered in drying blood, I looked like an extra in a horror flick. And all the drying blood? It made getting my top off hell.
I ended up wearing the shirt into the shower until the water loosened the blood enough that pulling the fabric free didn’t threaten to skin me. Once I scrubbed clean, I dried off, trying to avoid my mirror. But I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Four ugly—and fatal—puncture marks pierced the right side of my rib cage. Ribbons of flesh hung from around the wound in my stomach and I could see darker things beyond the torn flesh. My stomach clenched at the sight, but at the same time, even though I could feel the wounds, they didn’t seem quite real. Maybe it was the lack of blood.
Just to be safe, I wrapped gauze around the stomach wound. I didn’t bother with charmed OMIH-certified bandages—they were expensive and if I couldn’t heal, an accelerated healing charm wasn’t going to do me any good.
Death looked up as I emerged from the bathroom in just the gauze and a towel. His gaze trailed over me, not in a searching-for-wounds way but with eyes that were all male interest and heat. A flush burned across my cheeks, but what was under that towel wasn’t anything I wanted to show off, that was for sure.
“I made you coffee,” he said, holding up a mug.
“Now that’s a change.”
He smiled. “Want me to hold it for you?”
I giggled, a girlish peal of a sound. The movement hurt, but I couldn’t seem to stop. It was the stress. I’d been betrayed and then warned off by Falin, feared I’d been addicted to Faerie food, started glowing, spent too long with my father, one of my best friends had been attacked by a ghoul, whom I then almost—should have—died from, and now I’d exchanged life essences with Death. It was too much for one day and I was either going to laugh or cry, though at some point, it became both.
“Hey,” Death whispered, wrapping his arms around me. “Hey, what is it?” He stroked his fingers through my wet curls. “I’ll leave the coffee making to you from now on, okay?”
I buried my face against his hard chest, but I had to smile. “It’s not that. It’s just, everything.” And I poured out every action, every fear, because he was Death. He stood there, holding me, making comforting sounds at times, offering a word or two of understanding, but mostly listening, his fingers twisting in my drying curls. “And what if the mender won’t fix me?”
“Then you’ll be a planeweaver in an unchanging body and I’ll be a collector in an unaging one.”
I shook my head. “You can’t remain mortal. But if your mender does fix me, and we switch back…” The last time I’d taken back my mortality I’d had a seizure. And we’d only switched for maybe fifteen minutes. What would happen this time?
“We’ll figure it out,” he said, and stepped back. The friendly comfort in his eyes took on a glint of a much different kind. “But for now, your coffee is getting cold.”
This time I accepted the mug when he handed it to me. It wasn’t cold yet. In fact, it was perfect. For his first time making coffee, I was more than impressed. Of course, he’d spent years watching me.
“It’s good,” I told him, and he flashed me that dazzling smile of perfect teeth and smooth lips.
I swallowed. It was a good thing the ghoul didn’t get my heart, because it was suddenly working double time. I glanced into my coffee mug. “I should get dressed.”
“For now.” That same heart-melting smile.
Oh, I’m in so much trouble. But I couldn’t understand how he could look at me with so much heat. I had to look terrible. I’d been crying and my curls were half air-dried, and then there was what hid under the towel. I cringed and set down my mug. “So if taking my life essence gave you a mortal body, how come I don’t have your incorporeal one?”
“You do. You just haven’t stopped touching mortal reality yet.”
Right. Planeweaver. Well, I had no intention of letting go of the mortal realm. But one more issue nudged at the edge of my brain.
“You have a fae body, so why aren’t you…glowing?” After all, my Sleagh Maith body glowed.
“We switched life essences. It gave you my immortality and me your mortality, but magic is part of the soul, not the body.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’d never considered that the Sleagh Maith glow might be part of their—our—magic.
After I was fully dress and I’d walked and fed PC, Death held his hand out to me.
“Ready?”
I accepted his warm hand, and this time, when I closed my eyes, I was prepared for the cold.
“A night club?” I asked, eyeing the exterior, which wasn’t impressive with the bass thumping through the brick walls.
“Trust me, this is the most likely place.” Death started for the door. Only to be stopped by the bouncer, who wanted IDs and money.
I balked at the cover charge, but dug in my purse. Death put a hand on my arm, stopping me.
“Never mind,” he told the bouncer. Then he turned and walked back the direction we’d come. I had little choice but to follow.
“I thought you said this was our best bet?”
“It is. Hold your breath.” Then his arms were around me, a warm anchor in the sudden cold.
A moment later the chill abated. I looked around at the ugly green tiled walls with rust-stained urinals. “The men’s restroom?”
Death shrugged. “Normally if I pop into the mortal realm and a person occupies the same space, they get a chill. But with this body, I’m not sure what would happen.”
The fact it probably wouldn’t be pretty didn’t need to be said.
“Come on.” He pulled open the door and then led me into a madness of lights and bodies.
While I liked barhopping, I’d never been a clubber. Dim rooms with flashing strobes equaled one blind grave witch not having a lot of fun, so I avoided dance clubs like a particularly vicious curse of pox. This club was worse than most with fog machines pumping onto the floor and the dancers using glow sticks and charms to create elaborate trails of light following their movements. I might have Death’s unchanging and hard to kill essence, but that clearly didn’t fix my eyes.
I squeezed them closed and opened them again. All I could see were random flashes of light. Except, out in the center of the floor, I could clearly make out one solitary figure in a bright orange top with matching dreads that glowed in the black light. Her movements were fast, her body moving in time with the pounding bass. At least, until she spotted us. Then she stopped dead, her scowl exaggerated by the black light–sensitive makeup. As she stalked across the dance floor, she swept straight through several of the other dancers, making them pause and shiver. Of course, as hard as they where moving, the chill might have felt good.