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twenty-five

Astoria

T he window above Grim’s bed revealed hazy skies and rising winds, the grass outside bowing and singing beneath the wind’s fingers. I stretched, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, vaguely wondering if my unusually restful night had more to do with the mattress… or the fact that I’d slept beside him.

My pulse didn’t spike at the thought, in fact my mind stayed quiet. Maybe it was easier to pretend things weren’t complicated when he wasn’t here—when his side of the bed was empty, the sheets still rumpled where he once had lain.

I reached for the glass of water on the nightstand, cool against my palm, and took a sip before noticing the neatly folded note beside it.

Astoria, I hope you’re feeling better today. Please make yourself at home. I had business to attend to, but the house will provide whatever you need. Just ask. I’ll return as soon as I can. Under no circumstances are you to leave the gates surrounding the property. Please… for my sake.

— Grim

P.S. I’ve warded the gates, if only to keep you honest

My heart lurched. He might have looked fine last night, steady enough to carry me to bed, but I wasn’t imagining things.

I’d seen the tremors in his hands, the way his breath caught as if he was fighting something invisible and losing.

And the marks, they were jagged, sprawling things across his torso like lightning trapped under skin.

He was exhausted, unraveling, and still he’d gone.

But why is it that Death looks like the one who's dying?

“What am I even going to do?” I muttered, just to hear something break the silence. My stomach answered, grumbling loud enough to echo. I reached for my sweater draped over the bedpost and caught sight of my bag, now resting neatly on the chair in the corner.

That gave me pause. A small, thoughtful gesture. He’d moved it as though I already belonged here. As if this wasn’t bizarre at all and that I hadn’t just spent the night in Death’s bed, wearing sleep shorts and a band tee from a concert I’d attended over four decades ago.

I pulled the sweater over my head and turned toward the chair, only to freeze again. Hanging above it was a signed photo of Elvis, his name scrawled in bright red ink. Next to it, a painting—impressionist, faded, framed as though it might be an original.

He never stopped surprising me. These were artifacts of humanity. Of life. Of the very things he claimed to loathe.

And… Elvis?

Seriously? I didn’t take Death for an Elvis guy. The photograph was a bit out of place, vibrant, almost kitschy with the neon glint of the signature still bright after all these years. I moved closer to inspect it more carefully. The signature was unmistakable. My brow furrowed. It had to be real.

Grim had a thing for contradictions. I didn’t know why that should surprise me. He surrounded himself with relics of humanity—art, memory, softness—as if he couldn’t help but collect what he claimed to despise. As if he needed to keep some evidence that life had once passed through his hands.

He called himself ancient. Immutable. The end of all things. But he clearly felt. He bled, he burned, he broke down in front of me. He tried not to show it, but the effort was cracking.

And maybe he cared for me more than he ever meant to. More than he knew how to.

Death was supposed to be still. Absolute. But he moved like a storm barely held together. He was inevitability made flesh, and yet… he kept choosing.

Me, even. Over and over again.

I swallowed hard, unsure why my chest was tightening.

Hobbling about the room, I slipped one wool sock on after the other and made my way down the dark hall.

The walls were covered in a textured vine-patterned wallpaper, the deep color of a sleeping forest, and I paused before the large arched door that led to Grim’s office, the ancient brass knob teasing me as I made my way to the kitchen.

Sconces lining the hallway flickered to life as I passed, the beeswax candles igniting in a slow, deliberate dance.

Their soft glow was welcoming, though the magic surrounding them felt strange, too.

It was as though the house itself was listening to me, responding to my every move. The air hummed with something old, something I couldn’t quite place. I wondered what kept this house running, what power sustained it, or who was behind its strange ways. Was it Grim’s doing? Or something… else?

Opening the fridge, I didn’t expect to find anything.

But there it was: a butcher-wrapped parchment containing thick slices of pepper-crusted bacon, sitting next to a jar of creamy yogurt.

Beside it lay fresh fruit and a few vegetables I swore hadn’t been there yesterday.

I blinked, unsure if my eyes were playing tricks on me.

“Uh, thanks?” I muttered, half-expecting Grim to appear out of nowhere.

The overhead basket light flickered, and the oven clicked on, as if the house was thriving off my gratitude.

“Is it possible to rustle up some coffee? Or point me in the direction of—”

Behind me, a hutch rattled. The door opened on its own to reveal a French press and an assortment of coffee beans in glass jars, nestled alongside tea leaves.

I didn’t even flinch this time. Magic stopped surprising me a while ago, not long after my first encounter with Grim. And yet…

I glanced toward the hutch as I grabbed the French press. Magic. My plague. It always seemed to cost something and the Tempest curse was no different. But it was never worth it. Magic did not grant—it devoured.

The cottage shuddered, the cabinets tapping open and shut, as if to argue with me. It brought a soft smile to my face. I could see why Grim enjoyed living here.

“Sorry,” I muttered, tipping my face to the ceiling as if that's where its heart lived. Nonsense, utter nonsense.

With a click of a knob, the kettle was well on its way to boiling as I scooped a generous helping of coffee beans into a handheld grinder. It was mundane and exactly what I needed.

The last few years we’d spent in the hospital, coffee was consumed on the go and breakfast served on white styrofoam trays.

Even before then, I’d spent so much time traveling and moving from place to place that I hardly cooked.

And when I did, I was flooded with painful memories of time in the kitchen with my own brood of children at my skirts, watching with a love I never deserved in their curious eyes.

James often reprimanded me for not leaving such things as breakfast to our house staff. But I think he’d forgotten he married the wild, barefoot woman from the north, with fire in her veins and stubbornness her most cherished friend.

Pouring the steaming water into the press, I left it to steep while I plated my breakfast—a couple of eggs, bacon, and some yogurt with fresh fruit. The storm continued to taunt me from the window as I arranged my breakfast on the café table before it.

The skies were so bleak, a wash of colorless clouds tumbling over themselves as they grew heavy with precipitation. It wouldn’t be long before the rain started in, or perhaps snow. I had no idea the weather patterns in Iceland, but it was early November and I could taste the frost in the air.

When I asked Day why Death lived in Iceland, his only response had been, “For stillness.” And while I could understand that Death seemed to be a bit of a loner, this was a new level of quiet. There was nothing to see for miles out the windows.

From the front living room window, the gate Grim had warned me about loomed in the distance.

A shadow of iron against the landscape—almost invisible, but there all the same.

It disappeared, a dotted line across the horizon, dipping and rising in the undulating hills.

But from my vantage point at the back of the house, there was a patio outside, and beyond that a hike down to the ocean.

I ate my breakfast in silence, attempting to drown out my fruitless thoughts with the sound of heavy chewing. I could not remember a time I’d been left to such stillness. Seattle was loud and bustling, and when it wasn’t, you could rely on the rain to step in and make up for the lack of sound.

Silence meant thinking. And thinking brought memories, and those memories brought flashes of heat across my skin and a heightened heart rate.

It was one of my rules, no thinking.

The rules weren’t difficult. Actually, they’d been quite simple.

They went as follows: no attachments, no emotion, no looking back, no returning to the same place within the same generation, and never—under any circumstances—give my real name.

I liked to pretend that my mother’s superstitions had not worn off on me, but five was a lucky number and I wasn’t foolish enough to test Fate.

After meeting her, I might have other thoughts, but my five rules protected me well enough.

To move through life blindly was no easy feat, but somehow, I’d done it.

Except that somewhere along the way, I’d gone and ignored most of those rules by falling in love with the Kapoors. And because of my recklessness, a woman was now dead, and I was the center of her mysterious death.

Sipping at the coffee, I watched the horizon and counted the beats of wind as they moved through the grass.

Grim got me out of that situation, and even if he hadn’t erased me from their memories, Sanjay and Piper would give up trying to find me soon enough. I could walk out the door and never look back, move on as a ghost to the wind.

Except that I promised my soul in exchange for help.

Ending the curse would be the end of me and I wasn’t sure that was something I was ready to face, even after all this time.

When James died, I was in shock, confused and utterly scared. I contemplated for months if I’d actually killed him. I didn’t watch it happen… it just happened. And Death only confirmed the dread pooling in my stomach when he appeared asking why I’d done it.

It wasn’t as if I was proud of what I’d done. I hated it, actually. Fifty-four years old, a widow, immortal, and a murderer.

I never told my children; Beatrice had been too hysterical to even understand what transpired. But I knew.

For months, I’d visit his grave in the dead of night, pleading with his soul that it was a mistake—as if that might redeem me. All I’d done was justify the tragedy in my mind.

It was for Bea…

For Bea.

But I could not plead for Madison, or any other soul I’d ripped from the world, as I played a self-righteous hero.

I thought I’d been a savior, stealing souls from the clutches of Death. But all I’d done was trade one damnation for another. The woman who lived because I’d given her Jason’s life died two days later. I killed two people in the span of forty-eight hours.

Suddenly my yogurt lost its flavor, and my coffee burned as I gulped it down, choking on the bitterness.

I’d end the curse, if only to save humanity from myself—even if it meant giving my soul to the very being that had hunted me for a century. Too many had suffered the Tempests.