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fifteen

Astoria

B y the time we touched down in Boston, the sky was already beginning to bruise. The mottled purple swallowing the dimming light as the sun made its retreat.

I stepped out of the airport with the same feeling I did every time.

Relief. Excited smiles beamed around me.

Children running between their parents legs, businessmen jutting out the doors with their phones clutched tight, and even a group of young women wearing matching sweatsuits and sashes that read Bride and Bridesmaid.

Everyone travels for one reason or another.

A young boy passed by my leg, looking up at me with a toothy smile before his father tugged him along. Were they on vacation? Perhaps visiting family? Not running, that’s for sure.

Fishing around in my pocket, I pulled out a penny, setting it over my thumb.

For a moment, I’d forgotten I had a travel partner until Grim stepped up beside me, all of my belongings in tow.

Paying him and his quizzical brow no mind, I tossed the penny over my shoulder, closed my eyes, and made a silent declaration to this next chapter of my life.

“Did you just make a wish on a coin? In the doorway of a dirty airport?” he questioned, wrestling one of the heavier bags over his shoulder.

“Why even speak if you can just read all of my thoughts?”

“Perhaps I just enjoy hearing your sweet voice,” he said, giving me a knowing look before stepping up to the curb and hailing a cab.

Leaning into the open window to speak with the driver, Grim looked back at me and winked. He was relaxed. Happy, even. I could almost picture us this way, an elderly couple enjoying a visit to our grandchildren in the city.

Shaking that dangerous nonsense out of my mind, I found my penny on the ground, picked it up, and pocketed it for safekeeping. I'd use it again when it all fell apart and I’d be forced to start over.

It had become a tradition; one I’d followed through with every airport I visited and every trip I’d taken. It was the way I wished good fortune into my next life, hoping and praying that this would be the time it would stick.

Futile , it may be, but that didn’t stop me from trying.

I rubbed my palms together, smiling when I found that my skin moved differently against itself than before. I’m sure Grim thought I was strange for becoming emotional over gray hair and a wrinkled face.

It was silly.

But I’ve spent countless mornings before a mirror, tugging at strands, scouring my scalp like a prospector panning for gold. Desperate for a glint of gray, proof that I was moving forward, that my clock hadn’t stopped. That I was aging .

I turned my hands over, marveling at the quiet signs of life etched into them. The stretch of skin pulled taut over bone. The calluses roughing my knuckles. The deep, familiar lines that told stories no one else could read.

It’s strange, isn’t it? How, in the end, what we have to show for a life lived are these bodies—flesh and bone, worn and marked. Memories blur with time, but the body holds our records.

“Astoria, darling, this young man is going to take us to our hotel.” Grim was looking back at me, holding the door open as the cab driver put the last of my bags in the trunk.

“Where are we going?” I asked, ducking into the small yellow car. I’d asked him this too many times to count.

“To the hotel.” Grim slid in beside me, his leg warm and solid against mine, and casually draped his arm around my shoulders. “I have something to show you.”

I had half a mind to argue if only to prove I still could. It wasn’t like me to just go along with what Death wanted. I’d made an entire afterlife out of resisting him, but the stranger in the front seat kept me compliant.

Maybe I wasn’t losing my edge. Maybe I was just... tired of fighting the inevitable for sport?

Boston wasn’t the same as I remembered. The last time I was here, it was with James and the boys, before Beatrice was born, before everything softened and shattered in the way time tends to do.

The cobblestone streets had been swallowed by smooth asphalt, and the charming brick buildings now stood shadowed by sleek towers of glass and steel.

The harbor yawned beneath a settling fog, the last light of the day bleeding out in a slow sigh. An entire day, gone, spent in transit. Not that it mattered. I had thousands more to waste, if I wanted. Still, there was something about the city now…

It was beautiful in a different way, foreign and familiar all at once. Despite everything, despite him , I felt that familiar itch again. The need to wander and pry open the edges of this new life and see what spilled out.

“What brings you love birds to our great city?” the cab driver called over his shoulder in a thick Boston accent. He wore a well-loved Red Sox ball cap and a dark blue sweatshirt, his dark hair streaked with gray and pulled into a bun beneath the brim.

“Life,” I offered.

“Funeral,” Grim said at the same time.

I shot him a glare. Really? A funeral?

“Oh,” the cabbie said, his voice dipping into solemnity. “I’m very sorry to hear that. My condolences to you both.”

Grim nodded graciously.

“Funeral?” I questioned, elbowing him hard in the side.

He bent low, warm breath ghosting over my temple. “You’ve made quite the mess of the cosmic balance, darling. It’s the least I could do to stage your demise properly.”

“ My demise?”

“We’re almost there,” he clipped. Once again, infuriatingly vague.

“Almost where ?” I asked, this time loud enough to earn a curious glance from the rearview mirror.

His mouth found mine before I could protest. It wasn’t sweet, nor slow. It was strategic, as if he knew the exact shape of my resistance and kissed around it, capturing my mouth in a blood-searing kiss that felt like it might scorch the last innocent piece of my already-tainted soul.

The kiss deepened—his hands, his mouth, his everything folding around me—until the cab driver chuckled and muttered something about “how nice it was to see old love.”

I shoved him, hard. Enough to build the wall between us once more.

Grim had the gall to smirk. “You have no idea,” he muttered back to the cab driver. Clenching his jaw he turned to stare out the window, thinking the city might offer a distraction from his poor and untimely choice.

I touched my lips, now swollen and burning. Why hadn’t I pulled away sooner?

“You can’t just kiss me to shut me up,” I snapped. Anger rose fast, hot, and furious—not just at him, but at myself, too. For letting it happen. For wanting it.

He turned, brows drawn in mock confusion, then grinned. That infuriating, knowing grin. He placed a warm hand on my thigh. “Thought I’d spare us from your incessant questions.”

“I hate you.”

“So you’ve said, a thousand times,” he muttered.

“I hate you, I hate you, I hate—”

“We’re here!” the cab driver interrupted cheerfully, eyes flicking between us in the rearview mirror.

Grim, undeterred, leaned in close and brushed his lips against the shell of my ear before pressing another kiss to my temple.

I scowled at him as he stepped out and held the door open in his usual manner. He was disorienting and every angle I tried to study revealed another, each one sharper than the last.

Still thinking about that kiss and how recklessly easy it had been to fall into it, I climbed out of the cab, missed the curb, and stumbled. Grim caught me instantly, his hand firm beneath my elbow, steadying me as I gawked at the view before us.

Too distracted to notice we’d driven well beyond city limits, I found myself standing before a historic inn that was more reminiscent of a storybook bed and breakfast than any hotel chain.

The colonial-style house stood proud, framed by an expansive garden and a white picket fence.

Even blanketed in snow, it felt as though a dream… or perhaps a trap.

“The ocean’s just beyond the garden,” our cab driver said, unloading our bags from the trunk. “My wife and I come here for our anniversary sometimes.”

“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, shivering as the cold bit my thin and wrinkled skin through my jacket.

In an instant, warmth enveloped me as Grim's coat appeared around my shoulders, fitting perfectly as though it had always belonged there. He frowned and wrapped it more snugly around me. “Let’s get you inside.”

After tipping the driver and sending him on his way, Grim snapped his fingers, dispelling the enchantment that had cloaked us during the ride.

His appearance shimmered, shifting like a trick of the light.

Gone was the mundane facade. In its place, he now wore a long black trench coat layered over a slate-gray sweater and dark slacks—classic Grim.

He ran a hand through his dark hair, effortlessly tousling it into place.

A second snap and my own disguise melted away.

Age slipped off me as though thawing snow.

My skin regained its youthful glow, flushed pink from the cold.

I caught a curl between my fingers, scowling at the vibrant red restored to its full brilliance, the frizz catching soft snowflakes.

I glanced down at my Converse, soaked through and stained with slush creeping up the cuffs of my jeans.

“No magical wardrobe change for the blight?” I quipped, only half joking. He looked like a dark prince out of a cursed fairy tale, and I looked every bit of the tired college student as I pretended to be.

“I didn’t think you’d want me to,” he said, hesitant. “But I can—”

“No, you’re right. I don’t.”

Turning on my heel, I trudged up the walkway, jaw tight. I didn’t want his help. I didn’t want his pity. I definitely didn’t want his lips on mine.

…Did I?

No. I don’t.

Grim chuckled behind me as I yanked open the door. “I’ll get us checked in, darling,” he said smoothly, steering me toward a cozy sitting area near the windows.