Belladonna (Belladonna #1)(5)

There was an edge in Death’s voice when he replied. A hint of darkness looming in the meadow. “As if I don’t already try.” He turned from her, and Signa could only watch as Death reached through her aunt’s corpse and tore the spirit from her body.

That spirit took one look at Signa, then at Death, and her eyes widened with understanding. “You rotten witch.”

It felt as though the ground were falling out from beneath Signa’s feet. Already her mind was crawling in on itself, her vision tunneling as she stared down at her trembling hands. Hands that had betrayed her. Hands that had stolen a life.

“What have I done?” she whispered, her body curling into itself. What have I done, what have I done, what have I done? And then, with dawning horror, “What do I do?”

“First, you take that breath.” For some reason it eased her nerves to hear Death speaking and not Magda, who sat staring at her translucent body in shock. “I assure you, I did not expect this—”

“What do I care for your assurances? You’re the reason this happened!” Signa didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so the sound that escaped her was a mix of both.

Death’s shadows tripled in size as darkness enveloped the room. “You summoned me. I’ve done nothing but come where I was called. I’m not your enemy—”

At least at this, she knew to laugh. “Not my enemy? You are a perpetual cloud upon my existence. You’re the reason I’ve spent my life in places like this, with people like her, surrounded by spirits! You’re the reason I’m miserable. And look at what you’ve done now.” Her eyes fell to the corpse in front of her, and Signa buried her face in her translucent hands as tears burned hot. “You’ve damned me. Now no one will ever want to marry me!”

“Marrying?” Death stared at her incredulously. “That’s what you’re crying about?”

She sobbed harder, the words doing nothing to ease her spiraling mind.

Had Signa been looking, she would have seen that Death’s shadows wilted. She would have seen that he reached out for her, only to draw back before she could reject him. She would have seen his shadows wrap themselves around Magda’s mouth, silencing the woman before she could say another cruel word.

“I never meant for this to happen.” His voice rang genuine. “Our time is limited, and I know that whatever I say right now, you won’t hear it. But I’m not your enemy. In two days’ time, I’ll prove it to you. Promise me you’ll wait here until then.”

Signa made no such promise, though it wasn’t as if she had anywhere else to go. Still, she didn’t look up until Death was gone and warmth crept back into the room, bringing feeling back into her fingers and toes as life once again colored her skin. The effects of the belladonna had worn away, leaving a pulsing headache and the seething spirit of her aunt as the only reminders that Death had visited.

Signa took one look at her through watery eyes, and Aunt Magda scowled. “I always knew you had the devil inside of you.”

Without argument, Signa fell back upon the floor to stew in her misery.



Signa stood before the crooked door of her dead aunt Magda’s house later that evening, hugging herself as she waited for the coroner to finish his work.

He made haste—not because he was unnerved by the body but because he was fearful of Signa with her raven hair and oddly colored eyes, and of the crowd of neighbors who watched from a distance with knowing looks.

“You never asked for this to happen,” Signa whispered to herself as she braced against anxious onlookers. “You may have thought it, but thinking is not the same as doing. You are good. People could learn to like you. This is his fault.”

His fault, his fault, his fault. It was her new mantra.

Signa hated Death even more now than she did before. Hated what he’d somehow caused her to become. Though… she couldn’t say she was sad that Aunt Magda was gone.

Or at least mostly gone.

“Are you going to let them take me?” Aunt Magda’s spirit croaked, angry even in death. “You owe me, girl! Are you going to let them stuff me into a bag like that? Do something, you little witch, I know you can see me!”

“Unfortunately, I can hear you, too,” Signa grumbled, realizing she’d spoken aloud when she earned a surprised blink from the man lifting her aunt’s bagged body into the back of a black carriage. Unsure what to do, Signa stared between him and her aunt’s floating spirit until the man grew uncomfortable and excused himself, sputtering on about how sorry he was for her loss and how he’d be in touch.

All the while, neighbors held their crosses tight around their necks, whispering that they always knew there was something off about the girl. Telling anyone who would listen that Signa was a bad seed, and that Magda should have known better than to invite the devil into her home. There was even a spirit among them in a loose white tunic, who crossed themselves over and over again as they stared at Signa with empty, hollow eyes.

She tried not to scowl. It didn’t matter that their gossip bothered her. It didn’t matter that she would have given anything to have just one person to confide in—because they weren’t wrong to fear her. Signa had used the powers of the reaper.

She just needed to figure out how it had happened.

Signa’s skin prickled as she backed away toward Magda’s house, hoping neither the neighbors nor her distracted aunt—who was busy making a fuss about her body as the coroner’s carriage disappeared down the street—would follow as she sneaked away and into the garden.