Get a grip.
Steadying myself, I take the creamer, giving the skeleton a tight smile, feeling like I’ve gone mad.
I sense Thanatos, meanwhile, watching it all with a perverse amount of pleasure, though perhaps I’m just assuming he enjoys my discomfort.
I pour a little cream into the drink, then hand the creamer back, proud that my hand doesn’t shake. I have seen and done many disturbing things, yet this is what spooks me. A skeleton.
I all but elbow Thanatos out of the way to escape the undead, pushing through the door and heading into the dining room. Only at some point since I entered the kitchen, undead servants have entered this room too. Two of them are beginning to set out more platters of food while another cleans drapery that already looks spotless. Through the windows I notice another two revenants tending to the shrubbery that surrounds the house.
I stare at them all in abject horror.
“Don’t tell me there is something my wild-hearted Lazarus is scared of,” Death says, studying my face as he steps up beside me.
My wild-hearted Lazarus. A shiver courses through me, and I tell myself it’s from the sight and not his words.
“Make them stop,” I say, uncaring whether or not they are capable of taking offense. This is wrong.
“I wouldn’t dare,” Thanatos replies just as fervently.
I rotate to face him, my coffee half-forgotten.
“Do you not remember, kismet?” he says, tilting his head. “You told me I didn’t know how to take care of you. So I learned.”
All the air seems to escape my lungs at his admission. I had assumed as much, but to have it confirmed …
My gaze sweeps over the skeletons once more, and now instead of seeing the horror of their existence, I see—I see a horseman trying to prove his worth to a woman who scorned him.
“I was hoping you’d like it,” he continues. “I want you to be comfortable. I gave you a reason to run last time. This time, I want to give you a reason to stay.”
My throat bobs.
“How long have you been getting this place ready?” I ask softly.
“This house in particular?” he asks, looking around us. “A month. But there were other houses I found and prepared and other servants who assisted me along the way. I have spent our time apart amassing all the … necessities you might need—clothes, food, and a dwelling fit for a queen.”
My God. Meanwhile, I’d resented the hell out of him. I mean, I had good reason to—he was making my life a living nightmare. But still.
I rest a hand on a chair back near me, sagging against it a little.
The horseman’s eyes flick over my form. “Care to sit?” Thanatos gestures towards a fainting couch in an adjacent room.
Distractedly, I head over to it, taking a seat and setting my coffee down on a nearby side table. The horseman follows me over. Only when he sits down next to me do I realize that this piece of furniture may have very well been one of the items the horseman took with him to this home; the shape of it allows for Death to easily sit while accommodating his wings.
I want to ask about those wings, which are so large that they drape on the floor behind him like the train of a gown. I want to ask about the glowing markings too, the ones my eyes keep dipping down to. I find I want to touch them badly, and I have to clasp my hands to stifle the urge.
Death catches me staring, and embarrassed, I force my gaze away. I can feel his inquisitive eyes on me.
“How do these skeletons even know what to do?” I ask, nodding to one of them bustling by. Anything to distract myself from the fact that I want to unravel this man—and lick his tattoos while I’m at it.
“I already told you, kismet, though the soul might be gone, there is still an afterimage of the person who once existed.”
“What does that have to do with cleaning?” I ask. Up until yesterday I’ve never just sat next to the horseman and shot the shit with him. It’s almost as destabilizing as watching these revenants work.
“You’re asking questions that don’t have nice, orderly human answers, Lazarus. The dead clean because I tell them to.”
“But they know how to clean and you don’t.” That’s weird, right? “Do they have higher thinking?”
“Their spirits are gone, kismet,” he says softly. “What is left is not self-aware. But their bones still remember what their minds once knew.”
He gazes at me as I process that. And then he continues to gaze at me, even when the silence stretches out between us.
“It’s still rude to stare,” I say, picking up my coffee once more.