Page 76 of Villains Never Die

He glanced up and smirked. “We’ve been here an hour and you’re already admiring me? Focus.”

“What are we doing?” I asked.

He squinted at me and lifted the open book. “Looking for your—”

I slammed my book shut. “Bloody hell, not that! What are we doing? What is the expiration date on this…this relationship?”

Rook snorted and leaned back in his chair, his arms squeezing across his chest. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“I can’t break up with you if we aren’t together,” I said. He already stared at me like I’d gone batty, so I confessed. “I told you Wesley Lake threatened us.”

“And I told you I’m not worried about it. His threats are empty and a desperate attempt at controlling you.”

“I called it ‘my relationship.’ It just slipped out.”

“Okay. I’m failing to see the problem here.”

I stroked my thumb up the crease between the book’s pages. “I don’t love you.”

Are you sure about that?

You definitely caught feelings.

You’re usually a better liar than this.

I blinked and ignored the dead’s inability to let me have one serious moment alone with Rook.

Rook, who laughed. He waslaughingat me again. “You don’t have to love me. Do you like me? Is fucking and spending time with me enough? You’re overthinking it. If you’re happy, then keep doing what you’re doing.” A beat, then, “I’m happy.”

It hit me like a word in a foreign language I suddenly understood the meaning of. All the nerves in my stomach were fear that he’d leave, and fear was even more foreign than happiness. But the banter I’d become addicted to, the warmth that contrasted the new cold inside me, the little smiles he dragged out of me with less and less effort… seemed like happiness.

“Maybe I am overthinking it.”

He leaned across the space between us and kissed me. “Stop overthinking it. It can be a relationship, even if it isn’t a normal one.” He laid his hand over mine and then gripped my fingers, rubbing them in his that seemed so much hotter than mine.

“Fuck! Your fingers are like ice.”

“Speaking of abnormal.” I cleared my throat. “Ever since what happened the other day with the vision or whatever it was, I’ve been cold. Everywhere—deep inside, too. I don’t know how to describe it.”

“A curse maybe?”

I turned my hand palm up so he could massage heat into my frigid skin. “It’s not magician magic. It’s not mine. Something burrowed inside me.”

“Like a parasite?”

“Like a resident. Like the way I can funnel death into people—it isn’t mine.”

Rook tapped the book in front of him. “Then keep reading. Maybe something here can explain it.”

It was three hours later when Rook shoved a small, bland book into my hands with so much force I almost dropped it. The cover was brown with age and stains, the pages more cream than white, and the title was printed in peeling gold-foiled letters.

Grimorio del Respiro e della Morte

I opened it to the page Rook had marked with his thumb and he withdrew his hand.

Evocare la morte

Below the page’s header was a drawing of a woman of cold shadow in a magic circle. The rest of it was in Italian. It would take me a few hours to translate it, but this was it. It had to be.