Page 24 of Grim

“Well, as it turns out, I do not have time for this. I have a problem.”

“I know,” he says with a dramatic yawn.

“You know?” I question, irritation hemorrhaging from my voice.

He shrugs one broad shoulder lazily while leaning back in his seat with a smirk. “Can’t call yourself the Big D and not know all the happenings.”

“You could actually not call yourself that,” I point out dryly.

He snorts, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his desk. “Okay, I’ll play along. I do love a good role-play.”

“Don’t ever say that to me again,” I scoff, crossing my arms over my chest.

“What’s going on, Kane? What happened?” He smirks, folding to rest his elbows on the desk like we’re two colleagues catching up over espresso.

“My most recent case—”

“Rue Chamberlain,” he cuts in, the name rolling off his tongue like he’s reading it from a grocery list.

The casual dismissal hits harder than I expected, but I press on.

“Yes, the premature heart condition. Well, I …” I hesitate briefly, not entirely sure how to share this part. “I intervened.”

“You did?” He feigns surprise in a grossly exaggerated way.

“Please stop that,” I growl.

“You’re no fun.” He pouts.

“So, she’s alive,” I say through gritted teeth. “Again. But—and here’s the part that brought me here so quickly,Big D.” I make sure I have his complete attention before continuing. “She can still touch me.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

“I know.”

“How is that possible, D? I have assisted in the crossover for so many souls. And never—not once in all this time—has a living human been able to touch me.”

Big D leans back, his fingers steepled like he’s about to impart some great wisdom upon me. I resist the urge to slap him upside the head with the forgotten paddleball.

I steel myself for the ingratiating tone his voice is inevitably about to take on.

“You see, Kane …” And there he goes, prattling on with a voice that manages to mix boredom with condescension into an aural cocktail that makes me want to kick him square in his thick, veiny neck. “When the order of events is thrown off, Time becomes very mad. And when she’s mad—”

There’s a shimmer in the air beside him, and the temperature seems to drop. Just like that, they appear. The Weaver Sisters. Time and Fate stare daggers at me, making no indication whatsoever that they just materialized out of thin air. Just another moment of omnipotence.

Neither of them says hello. They don’t have to. They’re not really here for a casual chat. They’re here to find out why I took my leash off and ran in the street. They want to know why I’ve been a disobedient dog.

In my centuries of service, through plagues and battlefields, I’ve never been in the presence of these three immortals at once. The potential severity of playing doctor begins to dawn on me as I stare at the trio.

Big D, Time, and her twin sister, Fate.

The air itself goes still, thick as molasses, humming with the weight of power that hasn’t had to announce itself in eons. Their presence doesn’t just fill the room; it becomes the room.

Time speaks first, her voice curling in the air like cigar smoke in a dimly lit bar—velvet slick, languid, and low. The kind of voice that winds around your spine before you know it’s there. “And when she’s mad,” she says, dragging the words out like the final note of a requiem, “she gets very, very mad.”

She slinks behind me, a whisper of silk and shadow, her breath grazing the back of my neck. “And that … is when Time stands still”—a pause—“for others,” she finishes, her smoky murmur descending into a wicked purr, followed by a laugh that uncoils like a serpent. It’s not loud, nor is it shrill.