*sparkly pink cloak billows out as she drops down from the realm of Writing Secrets Off of Wattpad and lands on her Kingdom*

WHAT IS UP MY REAPERS?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ONLY A FEW MORE SPICY CHAPTERS LEFT. I CAN SMELL BOOK 3 IN OUR MIDSTS AND LET'S JUST SAY IT SMELLS SEXY AND DANGEROUS WITH A HINT OF NERVOUS SWEAT. OH YEAH, IT'S GOING TO GET INSANE!!!!

HELLO PLEASE KINDLY VOTE AND LEAVE FEEDBACK ILYSM IT MEANS THE WORLD XOXOXOXOOXOX

ALSO, ALSO, ALSO, IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ALREADY, SONY PICTURES HAS AQUIRED THE RIGHTS TO DEATH IS MY BFF!!! THERE ARE SOME NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND I CAN'T F*CKING WAIT TO SHARE!! GET #PUMPED HELL YEAHHHHHHH MY DUDES GIVE YOURSELF A PAT ON THE BACK CUZ THIS WOULDN'T BE HAPPENING IF NOT FOR YOU #FAM.

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This part of the woods was forbidden.

            I advanced toward the massive willow tree of over forty feet, and there, behind the vines and moss on its sinewy trunk, was the mirror that Ahrimad had been trapped in. The mirror that young Death had communicated through to reach Ahrimad, and the portal that Ahrimad had escaped from when he deceived Death.

            I was drawn to it. Mesmerized. As I neared the sweeping canopy of the willow, the sounds grew crisper. The orchestra of croak of frogs in the nearby stream amplified, as did the chirps of birds and insects, the rustling of trees.Then the scent of the woods hit my nostrils at once, pine and cold mud beneath my feet; the heat of the sun slanting through surrounding leafy trees and the gentle arms of the old willow.

            Suddenly, as I stood before the willow's trunk, I heard another noise. A ringing. It was a soft hum in my ears, like a sirens call layered over my environment. It was coming from the mirror.

            "Is anybody here?" I asked, strangely expecting a response. My voice echoed a little, as if I were in a cave. Or dream.

            A single footstep. Peering into a slit between the vines, I saw him on the other side of the willow tree.

            My heart struck my chest with a rapid force. I slowly edged to the side, breathing hard as my brain confirmed whom I'd seen. The Raven Demon.

            The last time I had seen Malphas, really seen him, he'd tried to hypnotize me to paralyze Death by stabbing him with an enchanted knife. Death had also used an illusion of Malphas during his training with me, which lead to my injury and Death ultimately deciding I should be separated by his world. 

            The Raven Demon was handsome

            My next thought was that Malphas had used a demonic projection to bring me here. Wherever here was, this had to be his doing.  "Take me back," I demanded and backed away from. "Take me back right now."

            "Darling," he said with a composed smile, "I'm not the one who brought us here. You are."

            Hearing his raspy voice was like a PTSD trigger. The vivid memory of Malphas manipulating me, as well the image of him and his underlings murdering Light Angels around New York made my stomach churn. Squeezing my eyes shut, I desperately tried to get out of this nightmare.

            "Wake up, wake up," I begged.

            "Try clicking your heels together, dove."

            At the nearness of his voice, I reeled backward with a curse. "Don't get any closer," I grated out. "I would have never summoned you to me."

            Malphas took a moment to study his surroundings. "I'm just as confused as you are, believe me."

            "Is this a dream?" I demanded, leaving no room for kindness in my tone.

            Malphas pulled his focus away from the willow's canopy above him. "This is all too thorough to be a dream. We're in Limbo. The realm of lingering souls and memories." He plucked a leaf from the willow and rubbed it between the pads of his fingertips. "I believe it is in your nature for your soul to come back here."

            "My soul?"

            He nodded. 'You're having an out of body experience."

            "How––how do you know that?"

            "Well, you're transparent. And you're glowing."

            I looked down at myself. Great, I looked like a friggin lantern ghost. If only Death could see me now, the jokes would be endless. I could not believe this was happening. Was I really a mere six feet away from the murderous psychopath I was training to defend myself against?

             "Murderous psychopath?" Malphas asked, amusement flickering in his cold eyes. I must have spoken out loud. "I consider myself rather sober in my decisions, but I'll take it."

            "You can stop talking to me now."

            He rolled his eyes. Or at least I think he did. It was hard to tell, considering there was no whiteness to his eyes. I was more focused on the fact that he hadn't tried to kill me yet and was being relatively nice. "Listen, dove, I don't have time for chitchat, either. If you want to figure out why I am here, then tell me exactly what were you doing before this."

            It took a moment for me to figure that out for myself. "I––I don't know," I answered unsurely. I couldn't believe I was even responding to him!

            "You don't know?" Malphas took a step in my direction and I shuffled back. Autopilot clicked in and I lifted my fists. The Raven Demon's eyebrows shot up in surprise and he raised his palms. "I see Death has been training you. He learned from one of the best."

            My response was a cold stare.

            Malphas' mouth curved into a grin. "Right, well since you don't know much of anything apparently, can you at least tell me if Death found a portal into the otherworld yet? He'll be wanting his scythe back sooner than later, I'm sure."

            "Ask him yourself," I snapped. It was his fault his son didn't have his scythe anymore to begin with. Why did he care?

            "Females are so well refined these days." He pulled his attention elsewhere, staring at trunk of the willow in fascination. Slowly, he outstretched his hand, which drew my attention to the obsidian tint to the tips of his pale fingers, and gripped the vines. With one hard tug, a blanket of vines pulled away, revealing an aged mirror. Goosebumps pebbled my arms. "This is where it happened, isn't it?" Malphas glanced at with me with those his soulless black eyes. "This is where it began. You've seen this spot from his memory before."

            I knew he was saying that this was place where Death first summoned Ahrimad. Where he was damned to darkness. But from Malphas' inflection, I would have bet my life that he didn't believe himself. This wasn't where Alexandru's journey from man to monster began in the slightest. It began with his cruel father.

            My pendant burned.

            As if hearing my thoughts again, Malphas turned his wicked features on me. "Why did you summon me here, Faith?" When I had no response, fury flickered behind each of his endless eyes, like a candle vaporizing life at the far end of a tunnel. For a second, I could have sworn he looked through me, and a wave of unexplainable emotion overtook me so intensely that I had the sudden urge to rush to him. My heart jackhammered.

            "You didn't summon me here, did you?" Malphas asked with a cock of his head. His gaze dropped to my pendant and any color left in his pale face dissipated. "She did."

            I woke up with the waning memory of a strange dream and the ends of my socks smoking.

            "Not today!" Gripping my burning socks by the neck, I ripped them off and shook them out. Then I tossed my glass of water on the nightstand––which I had in preparation of any morning fire–– and tossed the water onto the end of the blanket.

            Once the small fire was out, I threw a pillow over my face and flopped back down to the bed to sleep longer.

            Mini-Cruentas had other plans and nickered at the end of the bed, performing a little dance around my body with his hooves.

            "No," I groaned. "Seven more hours. Please, for the love of sleep deprivation."

            Cruentas jumped back and forth on his front hooves and back hooves like a mad-horse, shaking the bed.

            "Bad boy," I scolded.

            Cruentas dropped his favorite blue tennis ball into my chest. Groaning, I peered out from under the pillow at him. His nose was inches away from mine. He stared unblinkingly with those ruby red eyes.

            "No," I said firmly.

            He snorted and blew hot air into my face.

            "FINE!" I sat up quickly and Cruentas kicked up out of my way on his hind legs, and then proceeded to gallop in a circle on the sheets. Griping the tennis ball, I hurled it across the room. He raced off the comforter, leapt, and vanished, reappearing at the end of the ball's trajectory to catch it. In a flash, he returned the ball and nudged it to me.

            Since Cruentas didn't seem to have any commands from Death to take me to the gym and forced me to play fetch for five more minutes, I figured I was supposed to meet him outside in the apartment. So, I dressed in a plain sports bra, tank top, and shorts. After brushing my teeth and washing my face with my "temporary" travel-sized bath products, I found myself searching through some drawers under the sink for makeup to make myself look more presentable. Maybe it was time not to look like a sweaty hobo around Death's un-sweaty godlike self in the gym for once.

            At the thought of Death, a thought popped in my head that I had something important I wanted to share with him. Something about a dream I'd had... Oh, well.

            "Ayyyy." In one of the drawers, there was a small bag from my room at home that Death, being a man, must have grabbed thinking it had all the essentials. But it was filled with products I hardly ever used. "Noooo."

            I looked up at my reflection and realized what I was doing. Putting makeup on to workout. For a man––man-monster, monster-man. Whatever Death was... I slammed all the drawers at once. You have no reason to impress him.

            Stepping out of my bedroom and into the hallway in an unrelenting crabby mood, I halted with surprise as I came across an unsuspecting person leaning his lean but powerful six foot tall frame against Death's dining room table. Dark amber eyes lifted to mine, glimmering to a brighter gold as a charming grin framed the man's gorgeous mouth.

            "Morning," Leo said.

            "Good morning..." I glanced around, expecting Death to make his usual cryptic grand entrance. "What are you doing here?

             "We're relocating to the Academy today."

            "An academy? What academy?"

            "The D&S Academy."

            I blanched. "Lucifer has a school?"

            "Yes, and he's sponsored thousands of schools throughout the entire world," answered Leo, which I thought explained why my high school was a living hell. "Schools specially designed for the supernatural. Although some of us have chosen to be this way, hundreds of thousands of supernatural are born from supernatural parents. They have to be educated too, but in vastly different subjects with various curriculums that the mortals can't be exposed to, like other worldly history and understandings of the world."

             "Holy shit. Lucifer is like Professor Xavier but with better hair, isn't he?"

            Leo chuckled. "You have a funny imagination." 

            "Where's Death?"

            Just like that, his amused expression closed up. "Otherwise engaged," he said.

            I crossed my arms, a twinge of hurt in my chest. I'd expected him to be accompanying me for training after our moment the night before. "What's he doing? Collecting? Doing hot yoga for his terrible mood swings?"

            I'd pay to see that last one, I thought hopelessly.

            Leo shrugged. "I would tell you if I could."

            Don't ask me why, but the first thing my stupid brain jumped to was Death with another woman. How the hell had I not thought about Death and all of his duplicates? What if his other "selves" were out slinging the D like it was Christmas handing out snicker doodle cookies?

            I was definitely overthinking this. I had no right getting jealous at all, Death and I weren't even a thing! Right, you're just a virgin who owes the Angel of Death a strip dance.

            "Leo, if we're all going to be working together," I said, finally exiting Crazy Hormone Land, "I expect to be in the loop."

             "Any pressing issues or text messages you would like to leave His Highness while he is away will be forwarded to subordinate Glenn," Leo said, as if he were a programmed like a damn robot to say that. "Would you like me to summon Glenn or send Glenn a text message for you?"

            I released a short laugh. Here's my text message to Glenn: Tell his Highness Jerk Reaper he can suck my big toe. "That's okay," I said tightly, "I'll figure out how to get the message to "His Highness" myself."

            I had the harrowing thought that, Death wasn't around for a reason, and he keeping more things from me than I initially thought. Maybe this was about us. Maybe last night wasn't as monumental as I thought, and he was pushing me away again.

            "Told you she'd be up," Gunner said as he rounded the kitchen counter with a titanic sized container of chocolate milk and a half-eaten donut with fruit loops on the icing. He wore a black t-shirt with a mini grilled cheese sandwich on the right breast pocket "The Prince of Insomnia has been shitting on her sleep schedule, too." He drank greedily from the container and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pausing as Leo shot a disapproving look in his direction. "What?"

            "You idiot," Wolf growled, appearing from the darkness behind Gunner like Dracula. Must have learned that from Death. He snatched the carton from Gunner's grasp with a heavily tattooed arm. "Never drink Death's milk."

            Gunner smirked. "Why?" He sniffed the top and drank more. "Did he slip a little bleach in it? Little bleach never killed nobody."

            "Everybody knows Death is possessive over his milk," yawned a voice from the couch. Must have been 'Flash', since he was Sloth-like and all. "How many centuries have you been dead and you've never noticed his cat mannerisms?"

            "Shit." Gunner capped the milk and slowly pushed the rest of his donut in his mouth with one finger, his laughter strained. "Maybe he won't notice?"

            Blade stepped out of the shadows by the TV, twirling a blade around his fingertips. "And maybe I'll piss liquid gold tomorrow morning, you daft soul sucker."

            I see the Scooby Gang is almost all here," I commented with an unenthusiastic clap. "Anybody going to tell me why I'm getting a welcome parade today?"

            "Because we're all curious about Lamp Girl," Romeo purred from behind me. His pink Mohawk was spiked up perfectly and matched the color of his eyes. "Has anyone ever told you your ass is mountainous? You've got the cake."

            "Anyway." Leo got in-between us and blindly shoved Romeo back over the couch. Romeo flipped over it and nearly bonked his head on the coffee table, before catching himself and muttering a foreign curse word. "It's not his fault," Leo explained, " Romeo is literally cursed to behave that way." He turned to the whole group. "We have work to do, boys, let's hurry this up. Denim, do you have that note for Faith?"

            "Yes," boomed Denim as he appeared from out of nowhere too, handing me a folded up piece of paper. He wore the grouchiest expression that almost put mine to shame. "From Lord Death himself." Clearly someone was perturbed that he was the messenger dove.

            I peeled open the note.

            I've settled on black lace.

             -D

            I knew instantly he was talking about the strip tease that was never, ever to happen.

            "The nerve of this man," I growled and ripped the paper in half with a mirthless laugh as I faced the reapers. "I'm ready to go punch something extremely hard."

* * *

THAT'S IT???? SCREAM "CUPCAKE" IF THAT CHAPTER LENGTH WAS B.S.!!

LOL BUT SERIOUSLY, MOMMA ALREADY HAS A LOT WRITTEN OF THE NEXT CHAPTER AND I NEED THAT #MOTIVATION #WERK #NAUGHTYCUPCAKE

PLEASE KINDLY VOTE AND LEAVE FEEDBACK ILYSM IT MEANS THE WORLD. SERIOUSLY.

Social media for Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat: katrocks247

ONLY A FEW MORE SPICY CHAPTERS LEFT. I CAN SMELL BOOK 3 IN OUR MIDSTS AND LET'S JUST SAY IT'S GOING TO GET INSANE!!!!

HERE'S SOME FAN EDITS FOR DIMBFF I'VE GOTTEN RECENTLY THAT ARE #LIT

ALSO IF YOU HAVEN'T HEARD ALREADY BECAUSE YOU SKIP MY NOTES AND CLEARLY HATE ME, SONY PICTURES HAS AQUIRED THE RIGHTS TO DEATH IS MY BFF!!! THERE ARE SOME NEW DEVELOPMENTS AND I CAN'T F*CKING WAIT TO SHARE!! THIS IS ALL THANKS TO YOU GUYS!! GET #PUMPED #YES

https://youtu.be/UpuOcGSgAZs

https://youtu.be/miy3J3mOd2w