Page 42 of Death's Daughter
I’ve never heard that term before—fades—but oh, the sinking in my gut tells me exactly where this is going. The only way it can go, given the pieces of the puzzle I’m currently clutching.
“No,” I begin, backing away from Devon. “That’s not… It’s—”
“He’s chosen you,” he says softly. “You’re the new Death.”
12
My hands are trembling, and I clench them into fists at my sides to make them stop. “Impossible. I’m human. Mostly.” I shake my head, still backing away from Devon. “I can’t be—”
“Or, more accurately, you will be Death. One day,” Devon adds, as if that makes it better.
My back connects with the edge of the doorframe at an awkward angle, sending a sharp snap of pain through my spine. I straighten up, grateful for the reality check. I don’t know what Devon is talking about, but I do know a thing or two about the Old Ones.
“The Old Ones are immortal,” I say. “Or close enough. So they don’tneedsuccessors. Why are you trying this bullshit?”
“It is rare,” he admits, sitting forward on the couch. “But they can choose to fade, to pass along their powers to a successor.” Devon speaks with a certainty that I’ve never felt about anything related to the Old Ones.
I laugh a little too loudly. “And I’m just, what, supposed tobelieve you? About this made-up thing I’ve never heard of that would derail my whole life? Please.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Who sent you?”
He closes his eyes in seeming weariness. “No one sent me. What reason would I have to make this up?”
“Why do any of you do anything?” I throw my hands in the air. “Because it entertains. Because you’re bored and you’ve lost what little humanity you ever had to begin with.”
Devon is on his feet, moving toward me, closing the distance between us in two strides before I even realize what’s happening. His green eyes are cold and laser focused on me. “I recognize that you don’t know me and therefore have no idea what it has cost me to hang on to the humanity you’re so beguiled with,” he says, his tone icy and clipped. “But I beg you not to assume what I will or will not do based on what others have done. My life would have been so much easier if that were the case.”
I’ve offended him. By accusing him of not being human enough. Interesting. If anything, I would have guessed it would go the other way. No one wants to be considered too much like prey, like food.
“All right.” I hold my hands up in silent surrender of the point, and after a moment he relaxes, his body returning to its deliberate casual stance.
I wonder, then, how much this lazy, unaffected, sexy-king-of-all-I-survey posture is an act.
“It hasn’t happened in recent history, but we have stories of Old Ones choosing to fade in the old records,” Devon says, resuming his position on the couch as if nothing happened.
We who?But I’m caught more by this second reference to choice.
“That’s how I know you’re wrong. My father would never voluntarily give up power,” I say flatly. “He enjoys it too much.”
In this moment, I’m eight again, back on Navy Pier, staring up at the Ferris wheel. The smell of cotton candy and funnel cakes fills my nose, along with the faint fishy scent in the breeze off the lake.
My father’s hand is warm and reassuring on my shoulder, and it helps relieve the pinching dread in my stomach at what my mother will say when she finds out I’m not where I’m supposed to be. Mrs. Greeley, our neighbor, is supposed to keep an eye on me until my mother gets home from teaching. But my father was waiting, leaning against the front door of our house as soon as the bus pulled up.
He crouches beside me, and points. “The gondola right at the top.”
“The what?” I ask, confused.
My father laughs. “Here, let me show you.”
He lifts his hand, like he’s anticipating a ball being thrown to him. But then I feel thepullof his power and then the responding warmth of the life force flowing from the people in the carts above, like the wind from a car passing too close on a hot day.
But it is the expression on his face that is forever burned in my brain. The joy, the pleasure, the… fulfillment.
It made me squirm with discomfort at the time—it seemed too intimate. Not that I had the words for that at that age. I wouldn’t see anything like that again until the first time I had sex with Jay Ellings, my senior year in high school.
Trust me, that is not a realization you want to have about a parent, even if you’re not connected or related in the traditional parent/child way.
My father would have taken lives even if he didn’t need to to survive. He would take them—does take them, presumably, still—because he revels in it.
So, no, he’s not voluntarily giving that up. And even if he did…
