XXX

Break. Break, damn it.

Ace and I were in an extension of his library, a large, circular area with bookshelves as high as I could see and balconies with doors leading into other secret rooms.

"Try to visualize your light becoming a weapon, such as a fireball or a bullet or a knife," Ace instructed. He stood about ten feet to my right, leaning against a bookcase with his golden cane propped beside him. "Whatever you prefer to wield. That might help you."

I tried to visualize a knife. Nothing. A gun. Nada. One of those medieval spiked ball things with a chain. No dice. I dropped my hand and heaved in a deep breath.

I brought my head back in frustration and looked at the ceiling. "We've been at this for an hour. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result—"

"Leads to discipline, ma chérie ," Ace finished.

" Not what I was going to say. At some point, you throw the in the towel or try something new."

"Again," Ace said, his violet eyes calm and steady. "You can do this. Don't give up because you are struggling. Stay in the struggle. Move toward it."

Rolling off the tension in my shoulders, I raised my hand toward the vase. In the silence of concentration, all I could think about was Death. I kept remembering our same lesson with the vase. The turmoil of emotions I kept trying to push down resurfaced, and my vision blurred. My fingers trembled before I dropped my arm with a curse.

"Give me your all, ma chérie ," Ace said. "You can't back down now; you have come so far."

I scrubbed a hand over my face. "You're right. I can't give up."

"Why?" he prodded. "Why can't you give up? Tell me."

"Because," I muttered, "I have to be able to protect myself."

"Why?"

"To protect the Book of the Dead . Aunt Sarah passed it down to me, and now it's in Lucifer's possession, but he can't touch it. When Death goes to take back his scythe from Ahrimad, who knows what will happen. All I know is, it'll be up to me to protect the book. I can't let Ahrimad or Malphas get their hands on it."

Ace began a slow walk around the marble platform until he stood on the opposite side of the vase as me. "Your power is energy," he said. "That energy is moved by your will. I have taught others to properly channel their gifts with this same drill, and this is how you will learn too."

My mouth fell open. "You taught Death this, didn't you?"

"This isn't about breaking the vase, Faith. And it isn't about Death. It's about you having agency over yourself."

"Maybe you haven't noticed, but I don't have any agency over myself. I gave that away the moment I pressed my bloody finger down on that contract and signed my soul away."

"Stop whining and break the vase, ma chérie ," Ace commanded, power vibrating through his voice and pulsing in his violet eyes like electricity. The golden urn levitated off the marble platform. "Or else the vase will break you."

The vase fired toward me. Snapping into action, I dodged it before it shattered against the bookshelves behind me. I whirled around, and another identical vase was halfway toward me. I had little time to react: my hand shot out instinctively, and I fired an orb of light at it, annihilating it.

There were rows of marble platforms. I turned in a slow circle and realized I was surrounded by other vases as they materialized around the room.

"Outstanding," Ace said with a feral grin. "But what if there's more than one obstacle in your path?"

Ace's magic swelled. The vases thumped rhythmically against their platforms until the cylindrical room filled with their drumming. I shut my eyes and tuned it all out, tuned everything out, and pulled all of my focus into my light. Something within me charged back to life, ready for anything.

The urns soared toward me. I smashed two on either side of me with slices of my light from my hands and roundhouse kicked a third. The combinations Death had made me practice tirelessly clicked in like second nature, orbs of light firing out of my fists and attacking each vase one by one.

Suddenly, the vases transformed, becoming people. Faceless enemies coming at me with weapons and fists. I imagined a sword similar to the one Death had given me. My mind whispered for it to manifest, and the light listened as a blade molded from energy appeared in my hand. Books ripped from their shelves and levitated like stairs in the air. I climbed them as I battled the faceless enemies, balancing like a cat on each book as the enemies appeared from nothing.

The books I stood on trembled beneath me, and I nearly toppled before leaping for a balcony beside me to grab the top of the handrail. I dangled there, holding on for dear life as my fingers twisted desperately to get a better grip on the slippery railing.

I flung my legs back and then forward and swung onto the second floor, landing on marble. I pushed aside the throbbing pain in my body. My breath heaved, and sweat poured down my face. Muscles I didn't know I had burned, and the room ignited with white as I pushed myself harder.

Hurrying down a set of stairs to the bottom floor of the library, I stilled. The floor was a graveyard of hundreds of shattered golden vases.

I looked down at my hands. Veins beneath my pale skin vibrated with power, my fingertips submerged in white flames. Both of my arms were still consumed with light.

And I wasn't afraid.

I was in full control.

The light dissipated as I grabbed at my neck to find the chain of the barracuda had broken off. Picking it up from the rubble on the ground, I pocketed it with a big smile and burst into a victory dance that involved a mean moonwalk and robot finale.

Something smashed into my back, and I went flying across the room, landing haphazardly on a couch.

"That was fantastique , ma chérie !" Ace said cheerfully. "But always stay humble, and always check behind you."

Ace's magic gusted beneath me, and I was back on my feet.

We were sitting on opposite ends of a red leather couch with our feet propped up on a coffee table. Ace was reading an old leather-bound book with a Greek title, whereas I was flipping through an encyclopedia of ghosts.

"I want to know about your friendship with him."

Ace sighed. "You're not going to drop this, are you?"

"Nope."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "My father was a respected healer in Rome," he began, shutting his leather book with a thump. "Back then, warlocks had much more freedom than they do today. They would claim they were specialists in herbs and would hide their magic while helping patients."

"If you were born in the Roman era, then why the heavy French accent?"

"It adds to my mystique," he answered in a perfect American accent. With a sly smile, Ace propped his head up on the armrest with his thumb and his pointer finger. "I'm a little over the top, but when you're two thousand years old, you tend to get bored. I migrated to France and lived there for almost two hundred and twenty years. Such a beautiful language, French. It's ingrained in me."

"It suits you," I decided.

"When Death enrolled in a high circle of gladiator fighters all those years ago," Ace continued with a casual wave of his hand, "I became one of his closest friends."

"What happened between you two that made you . . . ?"

" Not be friends?" Ace asked with a bit of a sad smile. "Malphas knew of my family's paranormal background and hired me as a private medic to tend to his son's injuries, since he was half-mortal and healed differently than other contestants. Alexandru's mother, Phoebe, had taught him at an early age how to cast black magic, but the more we worked together, the more he wanted to know about my own medicinal practices and spells, so I began teaching him everything I knew. And in return, well . . . " He shifted in his seat and coughed into his fist. "If you can imagine, I spent most of my boyhood painfully shy and awkward with les femmes . Alexandru helped me— er —"

I choked on my spit and laughed hysterically. "Well, well. Once upon a time, the Harbinger of Doom was your wingman, huh?"

"I could tease you too, you know, virgin ," Ace said.

"You seem embarrassed," I said and playfully placed my hand over his as if to console him. "He made you memorize Roman pickup lines, didn't he?" I looked dramatically into space. "Are you Medusa? Because seeing you makes me hard as stone . . . "

Ace ripped his hand out from underneath mine as I cackled with laughter.

"I should never have opened my mouth—"

"I'll stop," I said, running a hand over my face to clear the slate. "Please continue. I'm sorry."

The warlock sighed and continued. "By the time I'd heard the news of . . . what happened to Alexandru's family, and to Malphas in the gladiatorial arena, Alexandru had already abandoned his childhood home. He'd burned it to the ground."

"Oh my God."

"Alex showed up at my door a few weeks after. He'd changed drastically. He was . . . animalistic. He'd lost all his humanity and wielded all Ahrimad's powers. He was soul-thirsty with no will to live." Ace swallowed hard. "He couldn't end his own life, so he begged me to help him. I was young, na?ve, and terrified of what he'd become. To see him in his true form like that . . . he was unlike any creature I'd ever studied in my father's books."

I thought about the pain in Alexandru's face in the gladiators' arena. Had the deaths of his mother, his wife, and his unborn child led him to that point?

"What can you tell me about Death's mother?"

"Ma chérie."

"I know. I know this is a sensitive topic, I'm just trying to understand."

"Alexandru's mother made a bad decision before he was born. She practiced magic she shouldn't have practiced. It brought a curse upon the entire family . . . "

"Are you saying this curse had something to do with her death?"

"All I know is there are many answers the Fates deny me." Ace's fingers fisted on the table. "Death vowed to destroy the men who had killed my father if I helped him try to reverse his death curse, so I did. There were spells to help curb his hunger, and I was determined to find a way around his curse. But deep down, I knew there was no hope of reversing it. His soul was marked by Dis Pater . Hades, god of the Underworld. Maker of Ahrimad."

"Holy shit," I whispered.

"Even though I'd failed Death, he kept his promise. He brought me the head of the man who'd executed my father. Then he was gone, and Heaven recruited him. Where I saw a friend who had become a monster, they saw a warrior. They would use his death powers for good. I didn't hear from him for more than four hundred years after that. By then, he'd already fallen from grace. He never told me why, but I have my theories. He's not the same person I befriended all those years ago. He's transformed himself a thousand different ways. He's taken more hits from this life than anybody I've ever known, and he's so entrenched in demise that he's become Death himself.

"Don't get me wrong," Ace added, his violet gaze clinging to mine. "I haven't remained the same either. I've lost twice as much as I've won, and I've suffered the consequences of my own everlasting appetite for power and vices. But I wonder, wouldn't you succumb to your sins too, if you were us? Wouldn't anybody?"

We contemplated this in silence. Hearing such a remarkable story from Ace's perspective was fascinating to me, and I wished I had been there to see how Death used to interact with him. The fact that they'd been friends —the fact that Death had had any friends for that matter—boggled my mind. He'd made a huge point of closing himself off from the rest of the world.

"You're the only human left who remembers who he used to be," I said, drawing the warlock's attention back to me. "When he was Alexandru. I think that means a lot to him."

A smile played on Ace's lips. "You give me far too much credit. You're the one who has the most faith in him now, when he considers himself the worst version of himself. With your help, who knows what transformation he could make next."

"You say optimistic things like that," I said, "and I want to believe you. Ever since I met him, our lives have gone to the dogs. I lost possession of my soul and any chance of a normal life." I released a self-deprecating laugh. "Well, I wasn't exactly normal before all of this, but I was me . I had dreams. I wanted to go to college and pursue art. I mean, what kind of life is this, anyway? I'm afraid. I'm always afraid. Everyone around me is a sinner or a villain to an unfathomable degree. The scariest part is that the line between what I thought was good and what I know is bad has blurred, and I don't know what the hell that makes me."

My eyes snapped to Ace's hand as it curled tightly around mine. "It makes you human, Faith. It makes you human."

"There you are," announced a deep voice. "One needs a map to navigate this place."

Leo, Death's head reaper, strode into the room toward us. He wore dark jeans and a casual gray T-shirt that exposed a sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. His amber eyes drifted to Ace as he rose out of his armchair. The two men exchanged a "bro nod" hello.

"Hello, León," Ace greeted. "It's been a long time."

"Two hundred years, at least. Hardly recognized you without your long hair."

"And I hardly recognized you without that ghastly rat on your face you once called a moustache," Ace fired back with a grin.

"You had to go there." Leo laughed, then he slid his gaze to mine. "In case you didn't know, this guy was notorious in the supernatural world for his long hair. I'm talking straight white hair down to his ass and a different woman running her fingers through it every time you saw him."

I burst into laughter. "I hate that I can picture that."

"Ladies loved the hair," Ace said and winked at me.

"They still do," I said good-humoredly. "But I'm wondering how you were so suave with the ladies? It couldn't just be the hair . . . ?"

Leo seemed a little confused by the inside joke, whereas Ace shot me the evil eye and discreetly gave the back of my leg a little whack with his cane.

"I'm guessing you're my ride home," I said to Leo, trying to maintain a nonchalant fa?ade. On the inside, I couldn't help but feel upset seeing him. Because it meant Death was upset with me.

"Until next time, I must say adieu , ma chérie ."

"Adieu." Not knowing if we were at the hugging stage of our friendship, I raised my hand awkwardly for a high five.

Ace made a face and pulled me into a tight hug. "Remember what I told you, mon ange ," he whispered into my ear, "about walking through fire."

He kissed me goodbye on the cheek, and Leo and I left.