Belladonna (Belladonna #1)(27)

Signa digested the information, uncertain what to believe. He didn’t sound like he was lying, but then again, he was Death. It was likely he who invented deceit.

“Lillian’s waiting for me.” She turned to face the garden gates. “There, inside the garden.” The locked garden.

“And how do you intend to get in?” Again, the most aggravating amusement stirred in his voice. “Climb up the ivy? I think I might enjoy watching that.”

Signa ignored him. If what he said was true and she really could possess his powers, then there was a way. If he could become incorporeal—if he could become the very shadows themselves—what was stopping her? Her only hesitation was that she wasn’t quite sure how to use such powers. The night she had killed Aunt Magda, she hadn’t meant to do anything to the woman but keep her away.

“Can you walk through walls?” Signa asked, though she thought she already knew the answer.

“I can walk through anything,” came Death’s response, voice lifting with intrigue.

“So if I wanted to walk through the garden gate—”

“You’d simply have to summon the power, make clear your intention, and do it.”

“And what of my body?” she asked. “Will I remain whole, or will I turn into a spirit?”

Death’s chuckle was a low rumble that shook the ground. “You will remain wholly yourself. You need only to be here with me, on the other side of the veil. Why don’t you give it a try?”

It wasn’t as though she had another choice.

Drawing a breath deep through her nose, Signa tried to gather her powers—which felt ridiculous, considering she couldn’t feel anything and still half believed this was all some cleverly contrived lie—and ran straight into the thick iron bars of the garden’s door.

To her surprise, she did not smack headfirst into the gate. But she didn’t quite get through it, either. At least not entirely.

The trees shook, and the earth quaked as Death’s laugh shuddered through Signa’s bones. She hadn’t even been sure he could make such a sound, though upon hearing it, she felt heat rising to her cheeks. For she was stuck in the garden gate, her front half inside the garden and her back half still with Death.

It felt like there was something hard inside her. Cold, biting metal that grated against her insides. Her hands trembled at the wrongness of it all, as though she’d been sawed into two parts.

“I forgot to mention,” Death added in that clear-meadow voice of his, “if your powers are the same as mine, then our skills are centered around intention. You can do anything you want, yet if you doubt yourself for a second… Well.” Again he laughed, and Signa couldn’t help noticing that the stars winked with the sound, as if they, too, found her ridiculous.

Just how much power, she wondered, did Death have? How much power did she have?

Signa hurried to shove several more berries into her mouth, not wanting to discover what might happen should she return to being fully corporeal in this state—or perhaps worse, discovered by Sylas. “Are you going to help me,” she hissed, “or will you simply stand there and continue to laugh, you useless heap of shadow?”

Slowly, Death’s laughter ceased. “Now, now, Little Bird. You need only ask for help, and it shall be yours.”

Annoyance boiled within her, spilling over. “Just get me out of here before—”

“Before your berries dwindle away and you’re fully mortal once more? Or before that boy finds you bottom up?” Though Signa couldn’t see him, she stilled at the brush of shadows that chilled her skin. “No one has dared speak to me in the way that you do. Why is it you are so polite to others? So demure and soft, and yet so bullish when we speak? Ask me kindly, Signa Farrow.”

She rolled her eyes. “Perhaps it’s because whenever you’re around, someone always ends up dead.” But there was more to it than that. Perhaps it was because Death couldn’t exist—because he shouldn’t exist, and Signa wasn’t fully convinced that he wasn’t part of her own imagination. Someone she’d manifested in her loneliness, as a way to explain the strange things happening around her.

Or perhaps it was because Death was real, and near him Signa grew too comfortable. With all her pretenses lost, her words became sharper and more venomous. Possibly, it was because there was no need to impress him. No need for social graces and second-guessing her every thought and action. With him, there was no pretending. Perhaps this was simply who she was.

“You’ve been watching me?” she asked.

“I find that you make the time pass quicker. Otherwise, I grow bored and weary, and who else can I taunt?” His response surprised her—so brazen, so forward.

She hated how flustered it made her. “Considering that you find me so fascinating, you’d better help me out of this before I solidify and bleed internally from the iron bars that are piercing my organs.” Death waited, still and patient and significantly more amused than he ought to have been, until Signa bitterly added a terse, “Please.”

“Ah, that’s better. I’m glad to see you’re learning.” He was before her then, shadows reaching toward her. Reaching… A hand? Signa had never seen anything remotely human about Death, but it was indeed a hand swathed in shadows. A hand that hesitated in the air for a moment before his fingers curled around hers. Life around them stilled, taking a breath.