Page 35 of Deceiver

“I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant, I don’t know, it seems like a lot. My house is way smaller than this, and sometimes it’s a little overwhelming for me.”

“I have an abundance of time.” Wilder smiles, glancing out at me from the corner of his eyes. “In between assignments, I have plenty of opportunity to work on my house, and as I said before, it’s a family home, so it does require maintenance.”

“How did you learn how to do that stuff? Did your dad teach you?”

Wilder scoffs, shaking his head.

“You have a dad, right?”

He pauses for a moment before slowly taking mugs out of the cupboard.

“No, my father didn’t teach me.”

His guarded response pokes at me. “You’re keeping something from me, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Wilder says, glancing at me again. “We haven’t had much of a chance to talk yet. That’s all.”

“No, I guess we haven’t.”

The coffee machine finishes brewing, and Wilder offers me sugar and milk for my coffee. I fix up my drink, taking a seat at the table in the breakfast nook again.

“We have time to talk now.”

Wilder nods, sipping his coffee. “What do you want to know?” he asks, as if that’s not a loaded question.

“What do I want to know? How did you get into what you’re doing for a living? How did you find me? Why do you have so much time? Why do you act weird every time I bring up your family? I have, like, a million questions.”

He nods calmly, still sipping his coffee, then glances out the window past me.

“I was chosen for the job, but I had to die first.”

“What?”

“I had to die first,” he repeats. “That’s the only way you become a Soul Chaser. There’s certain criteria, and I happened to fit it at the time. When I died, I was given the opportunity to come back, but in doing so, I had to be committed to finding and capturing Horrors when they escape the Below.”

I sit there stunned for a moment.

“Wait. You’re telling me you died and came back to life?”

“That’s correct.”

He says it so calmly, like this is an everyday conversation.

“How did you die?”

“I was trampled by a horse and carriage after church, saving somebody else who was in the way.”

“A horse and carriage.” I stare at him in disbelief. “How long ago was that?”

“A very long time ago. Two hundred and four years, to be exact.”

Now I have to wonder if I’m being pranked. I laugh, but Wilder doesn’t.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“Two hundred years ago?”