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It wasn’t like she could hold down a job.

Wasn’t like anybody would hire her, anyway.

Not when she couldn’t remember anything from her past. She remembered the last eighteen months…and before that? Nothing.

Zilch.

Nada.

Bupkis.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. She could remember plenty of things; it was all just nonsense. Nightmares filled her mind. Visions of death and dying, of fear and running away from something trying to catch her. Of a man—a creature—whose face she had never seen.

A hand, black as pitch, reached for her. Claws, jagged and impossibly long, slipped from the shadows. Silver circlets hovered around its wrists, floating as if they were outside the law of gravity.

Black robes.

It was coming for her.

She had to run.

But it was all impossible.

The only memories she had of her past were ones that couldn’t possibly have happened. Everything else was gone. It was the product of some “significantly traumatic event” or whatever the fuck the doctors wanted to call it.

Muttering, she kept picking at the loose string of her hoodie. “I’ve been coming to these appointments for a long time now. I don’t understand the point in making me talk about things that aren’t real.”

“Healing takes time. Now, please…what else happened after you fell?”

She shot the man across the coffee table a glare. “What always happens when things fall. I stopped falling.”

He didn’t notice. He was writing in his notepad. The quiet scratch of a pen against paper was the only sound for a long moment. “And?”

Maggie shut her eyes.

Jagged rocks had met her at the bottom of the castle. Its parapets were black silhouettes against a barely brighter sky. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move.

She was already dead.

The silence of her heart was deafening. Her body was dead.

But she was still…there, somehow. Lingering. Stuck. Waiting for Death himself to fetch her.

Someone was suddenly there beside her. But it was not the reaper, although black robes swirled around him, caught in the wind she could no longer feel. He knelt beside her. Claws, long and jagged, as dark and shining as onyx, reached for her. Silver bands caught the dim starlight, stark in contrast against the shadows around him.

He spoke.

“You will never die alone.”

It was a promise and a threat.It was comforting and terrifying. A single claw touched the spot over her heart. She remembered a sensation like something was being punched through her. Not the claw, but something else. Something worse.

“Is that all the figure said to you?”

She nodded weakly. “The memory ends there.”

“And how does it make you feel?”

“Afraid. Terrified.” She refused to look up at the man and meet his gaze. The way his low, dark voice carried through the room was intimidating enough. She didn’t need to see him look through her like he always did. Like she was an open book, waiting to be browsed at his leisure.