“Gabe, can I ask you something?”

“Go for it.”

“Is your boss a girl?” she asked.

“My boss?” he asked, turning fast enough for her to run into him. “Why do you ask?” He’d gone still, like a panther about to launch itself.

“Before I became somewhat-dead, I heard a woman tell me to trust you. She called you my Gabriel.Then she told me to kill myself.”

“You’re saying Death spoke to you?”

“I think so, yeah. Is that bad?” she asked.

Gabriel frowned, appeared pensive then struck off again without another word.

“Gabe, is that bad?” She scrambled after him.

“I don’t know what it means. Death can take on any form she wants, though, so I don’t know if it was Death or not,” he said. “She’s a conniving, self-serving, arrogant creature. Heartless, too.”

“Wow,” she said, taken aback. “I’ve never heard you speak bad about anyone. You have a thing for her?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you really were, um, with her?”

“For thousands of years. And then I wizened up and realized I’m just another gem in her collection.” Gabe’s bitterness was quiet but evident. “I think I might’ve entertained her until she grew tired of me.”

“Her loss,” Katie said. “Any normal woman would know you’re a catch.”

“Death is far from normal.”

“She’s an Immortal or demon or what?”

“She’s almost as old as time itself and older even than the Ancients. I think she was a goddess at one point,” Gabe answered. “She found me when I was a youth, after I’d seen the slaughter of my family at the hands of demons. I watched her take their souls.” His voice took on a hushed note.

“And she let you live?”

“She can’t take a soul whose time has not yet come, and she was in the mortal world. She offered me a job instead, to work for her.”

“And you took it.”

“I did. But she never let me forget I was once a human. She always resented my human weaknesses.”

“So you started working for her, and then you guys became … romantic,” Katie said. “Then, what? She got tired of your humanness and dumped you?”




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