Chapter Eight

“Coffee is my life! Well, that and men.”

—Eve Cassidy

Blonde strands from that overgrown pixie cut hung in front of those seafoam green eyes of my human friend. She wore Xiangu’s black robe, which on Eve Cassidy, a punk who normally wore tight black jeans and shirts that fell off one shoulder, was strange.

“Eve?” I had to ask again after I found a way to lock my knees and stand to meet her face to face.

She put her hand over my lotus pendant. Her fingers were warm with life. The connection brought on a new rush of grief that hit me like a hard, raging wave. I yearned to throw my arms around her. What I knew was that this Eve wasn’t the human whom I had attempted to save two years earlier. This was Xiangu. It was her test.

Still, what else was I supposed to do? What did Xiangu want of me?

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered. “Sorry I couldn’t do more to save you, Eve.”

“Do you remember the time we first met?” she asked in that familiar French Canadian accent that made me homesick for Le Nektar, her freshly brewed coffee, and idle conversation about life and pixie fashion.

I laughed, thinking of our past together. Eve had started work at Le Nektar in Quebec, a new, trendy coffee shop that had sprung up one day between my apartment and the tattoo shop where I’d worked. I had stumbled in one cold winter day, snow covering my jeans up to my knees. Eve had been having a tough morning trying out new coffee drinks. I’d ordered a latte. It had been the worst latte I had ever drunk, but I admired Eve’s determination. She wanted to become a barista, and she wouldn’t let a failure here and there get in her way.

“You knew I hated that latte,” I said, chuckling.

“You were the only one nice enough not to say anything. You even came back.” Her fingers moved from the lotus pendant and dropped to her side, hanging lifelessly.

“You needed a cheerleader.” Standing before Eve, at least the illusion of her, brought on the one emotion I couldn’t eliminate or run from. Guilt. It started when I was born into this life of marking unwitting people for death.

But the chance to look into Eve’s eyes one more time was too enticing. I needed to hear Eve say, “I forgive you, Ollie.”

When I lifted my gaze, I looked into another set of eyes that demolished my desire for forgiveness. I jumped back, nearly losing my balance.

I knew the Deathmark. I knew the face even if I had only seen him for a few short minutes two years ago.

Nicholas Baird.

Exactly like Eve had, he stood before me in Xiangu’s robe, his face still marred with my Deathmark. The palm print burned into his face was a clear, angry skull, the first inadvertent step in my journey into Masterhood. I didn’t look upon him with fear as I had that horrible night Eve died and my life changed forever.

This time I hardened myself.

“I know what you’re doing,” I said in a strong, fearless voice. “You’re testing me. You’re trying to get me to prove my worth.”

Nicholas’s angry grey eyes grew heavy with judgement. “What makes you believe that?”

“You want to see how I react to the various souls that I’m responsible for, to see if I care about everyone I’ve influenced in some way.” My stance burrowed into the ground like tree roots. Xiangu would have to work harder if she wanted to break me.

Nicholas pivoted away and began a slow, measured return to the opposite side of the circle, exactly where Xiangu was sitting when I entered this mindfuck. Upon turning around to sit, the Reaper was gone and Gerard, my beloved original Scrivener mentor, stared through his thick, black-rimmed glasses at me.

“Stories of your arrogance are true.” Gerard repeated the words he had first said to me when I arrived in his shop to begin my mentorship with him when I was sixteen. “I am not surprised you think so highly of yourself. Like a child, you gain a little experience and believe that you are a Master.”

“I am,” I argued. “I’ve proven it.”

“Master?” He cocked his head. “You’ve melted a few Reapers and have a red and black rebel sticker on your Stygian ID. Those things do not make you a Master. It comes from far more life experience than you’ve lived, Dormier. Masterhood is not what you can do but how you see your world.”

“I may not be at your level, Xiangu, but I am on my way. Given the opportunity to live long enough, I will prove this to you.” Heat, as it always had, began to surface in my neck and chest. Soon it would writhe its way into my arms and hands. Since I was still wearing my leather motorcycle jacket, this power remained hidden. But she sensed it, that much I was certain.

“That’s why you’re here. To live,” Gerard said.

“I wouldn’t seek your help for any other reason.”

“It is pure ego to think I’d hand over the gift of life effortlessly.” His hands folded in his lap, displaying Xiangu’s gestures through the facade. Gerard never sat with such elegance. He was a grumpy, old-school tattoo artist. He was anything but polite.

I held my stance, keeping my head high. “I didn’t think that coming here and demanding you heal my mark would be enough. I knew you’d ask for something in return—whatever it is, I don’t know. I need you if I’m going to live.”

“It’s a terrible place to be in the shadow of another who is your only choice. I’m the only one in Styx who can give you what you seek.”

I prepared for the next in her lineup of tests. She would soon turn from Gerard into Mama. I felt it coming. Xiangu would go for the worst of all of my losses, and then she’d end it with my proudest—Marin.

Shielding my heart from the impending shock of seeing Mama again, I folded my arms over my chest. I would want to throw my arms around Mama, to kiss her cheek, and stare into those violet eyes surrounded in freckles and ground nutmeg skin. I would show Xiangu a side to me more vulnerable than the side that loved Eve.

My heart pounded wildly in my ribs. It, too, was ready. And it would explode if she didn’t do it soon.

When she—or Gerard—stood again, there was a catch in my throat.

I was ready.

Xiangu’s transition from Gerard into her next test didn’t happen swiftly like the others. This transition was methodical for obvious reasons. Once Gerard’s glasses vanished and his gruff face diminished into the pale, clean skin of another one of the Stygians I had affected, I understood Xiangu’s methodology.

She’d get me with Mama another time.

“You are much like me, Scrivener Dormier,” said former Head Reaper Marin. There was no skull Deathmark tattooed on his face. He appeared to me with clean, bald skin and those empty black eyes. Had I not been the one to melt him into slime, I would’ve fallen to my knees in horror. But now, I feared nothing about his presence. My hands hadn’t yet forgotten the feel of him disintegrating beneath their power—flesh from muscle, muscle from bone. I would never forget it.

“I, too, walked into this place and asked Master Xiangu for help with a problem, albeit a much different problem than your own,” he said, casually strolling toward me. “I stood where you stand now with as much fire and anger.”

“I’m guessing you’re about to tell me how if I’m not careful, I’ll end up the same corrupted leader of Styx like you.” I refused to back up as he came closer.

“You are as smart as you are proud, Dormier.”

I squared my shoulders, even though my insides quivered violently.

“My story began differently than yours,” he said, unbothered by my resistance. “I sought Master Xiangu for a second chance. She provided me with one after I passed her test. That began my quest to the seat of Head Reaper.”

I breathed deep as I allowed myself to dip a toe into this game. Curiosity is a dangerous vice. “Xiangu helped you become Head Reaper?”

“She afforded me the tools. Everything after that was my doing.”

“She knew you were running Styx when you weren’t even a Reaper.” Heat rose into my neck. “She knew you weren’t crossing souls over like you should’ve been.”

Marin stopped in the center of the grassy circle. His hands dangled at his sides.

“She knew and did nothing?” This time I walked toward him, breaching the outer rim of the circle. “Did she know about the Scrivener Purge, too?”

By now, my red skin must’ve been obvious because my cheeks were hot. I damn well didn’t care, either. There are some things about this world that still horrified me. Master Xiangu’s apparent connection to Marin’s corruption was one I did not expect. Errol had spoken of her as someone who had suffered from the Purge’s effect on our kind. She was forced into seclusion, forced to hide her skillset at the fear of being hunted by the perpetrators of the Purge.

Marin didn’t reply even when I moved toward him. He didn’t budge when I came close enough to touch him. And he didn’t even blink when I put my hands on either side of the collar of his black cloak. “It’s true, isn’t it? She knew you ruined Styx. Why would she let that happen?”

The wrinkles in his milky forehead twitched ever so slightly. That was the only thing about him that displayed a reaction or emotion.

“Why?” I screamed through gnashed teeth.

There was nothing about this alliance between Marin and Xiangu that I liked. Nothing good had come from it, only more power and from that, more corruption. That my kind possessed the wickedness to collude and then destroy nearly every living Master Scrivener and many regular Scriveners was nothing I could wrap my mind around. Power seemed the only reason. Power meant security. Power meant getting exactly what someone wanted, when they wanted it.

Scriveners were no less corrupt than any other. We weren’t all pious, and we weren’t all immoral. Like me, we were a mix of both, and sometimes, some of us leaned too far to one side.

Marin never bothered to give me a reply. I unraveled my fingers from his robe and backed away. This was not a retreat. This was not giving up.

“You look surprised to learn about the unsavory side of life,” he said.

I shook my head. “I never believed this world was made of rainbows and sunshine.”

“Then why do you look shocked?”

“Why would she allow you to destroy Styx like you have?” I asked, my rage melting into sadness.

“She had no choice. I made sure she kept quiet on the matter.” Marin’s visage quavered. I saw a flicker of Master Xiangu’s face before Marin’s expression steeled. “I had ways of keeping Stygians quiet. She did not have enough power to speak.”

“You forced her silence.” I was getting a better sense of Xiangu’s position. She was not a mastermind alongside Marin. She was a puppet, another toy for him to use for his gain.

Now, all that anger I felt was replaced with hopelessness and stomach-churning grief. From what Master Xiangu was showing me, everyone is corruptible, everyone can turn into a monster or be the puppet of one.

My eyes welled with tears as I stared into the face of reality.

“I…” Words were difficult to formulate as I sorted through the thoughts tearing through my head. “I was taught to believe that goodness always prevails. A part of me knows there are boogeymen. I just never believed that they would win like Marin had.” And he was still winning, since I bore his Deathmark.

“Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t,” he said.

“I want to be the vehicle for goodness, Master Xiangu.” I addressed her once more, even though she still wore Marin’s face. “I don’t want to hurt anyone else. And I don’t want to see others hurt anyone else like Marin hurt you. I just want to restore peace to Styx. I can’t do that if I’m dead. And if you won’t, there isn’t another Master Scrivener to help bring Styx back into balance.”

His eyes never blinked, exactly as I remembered. I had to hand it to her, Xiangu pulled off Marin’s demeanor better than her other impersonations. “You came here for help. The gift of healing Deathmarks is not something that comes without a price.”

“I didn’t expect you’d help me for free. I only hoped that you’d see that I want to help Styx. I want to help Scriveners. I want to help us make it a good place again.” Truth was, I didn’t know what my payment would be for Xiangu’s help. The worst that I could have imagined was that I’d have to give up another loved one to save myself, a test that I wouldn’t take on. But learning the gory details of Styx’s corruption was hardly the fallout I’d anticipated. Xiangu must have known that I wasn’t the kind of person who could bury such depravity.

And therein stood my price—living out the remainder of my days knowing the lengths of wickedness. If I lived, would I tell Styx? Would I let that wickedness out? Or would I carry it with me, bearing the weight of it for years to come?

“You’re backing away, Master Dormier. I cannot heal your Deathmark from so far.”

Following one long, deep breath, I said, “Maybe I can’t save Styx. I’m just one Stygian. Maybe I’m not enough.” I left no time for Xiangu to transform into another person from my troubled past when I spun on my boot heels and made for the tunnel of massive hedges and pink flowers. I would face the fate that Brent would hand me. I would die with dignity. There was no other option.

But I stopped a third of the way through the hedges when I heard the one word that turned my heart from fire into ice.

“Babygirl?”

No, no, no.

Guilt erupted from a chasm deep inside me, one I knew and dreaded would surface on a day like today. I waited, my back to Xiangu. Turning around meant committing to the remainder of this test. I could still leave. I could escape the nightmare if my heart were strong enough to resist.

“Babygirl, it’s you?” she said in her thick New Orleans drawl.

Mama’s freckles. I wondered if Xiangu could replicate them, too. I always loved those freckles. They were our only visual similarity, since my biological parents had been killed in the Scrivener Purge, and she and Papa had fostered and then adopted me. We shared freckles because, as I had liked to believe, difference in skin color didn’t mean we couldn’t love each other like mother and daughter.

“Please, honey,” Mama pled. “Don’t go.”