Trolling myself by putting this song on the chapter. It's been a minute, I know! But when you all read the manuscript you're going to be like. "Oh, I get it now." LMFAO.

Mother is back, and oh does she have a STORY TO TELL. 

*CUPCAKES rush into the chapter screaming and drop their best pick up line for any character in Death is My BFF*

Don't forget to leave lots of comments and vote if you want more #FADE!!!!

Welp, I was in some deep doo doo now.

"What are you doing in here?" Kalace demanded when I'd yet to respond.

I looked down at Victorian Death's unconscious body on the slab of stone. I still had my hands on either side of his face. His skin was feverous hot, clammy to the touch, and the dark slashes of his brows pinched slightly inward like he was in distress, but his eyelids were closed.

I straightened, quickly withdrawing my hands. "I saw His Highness unconscious in the room. I thought he might, um, need help."

Kalace strode forward, furious. "You had your hands on his face and were talking to yourself. Accusing him of killing you."

Because he had. But hadn't been accusing Victorian Death. I'd been talking to the ghost of Death, my Death, future Death, or whatever I could call him. The apparition was of his corpse that I kept seeing. I really should get a handle on that whole haunted by vindictive Death thing.

Pulling my focus back to Kalace, I rapidly tried to think of a way out of this. "Would you be so surprise if he had killed me? You know how the Prince of Darkness is, carelessly murdering the innocent. Not to mention how he tore into my corset at his dining table. You were there, you saw him almost slay me!"

Slay? Okay, maybe I had to dial it back a little with the word choice.

"And what exactly were you planning on doing now?"

From behind Kalace, Ace made himself known, and my heart skipped a beat. He shook his head at me in a scornful way as he slowly reached for a ceramic pot by the door. As if Kalace sensed someone was behind him, he started to look over his shoulder, when––
"RETRIBUTION!" I screamed like a madwoman. "I was going to snap Death's––" I glanced down at his throat­­–– "thick, corded, rather muscular neck whilst he was slumbering. Yeah, that's right! I would have snapped the Prince of Darkness' neck. And I would have gotten away with it, if not for you meddling...warlock!"

Kalace looked at me as if I'd lost my marbles and little did he know he shared the same expression as his future self too. Right before Ace lifted the pot and smashed it right over Kalace's head. Kalace fell into the door jam and hit the ground with a resounding thud, making Ace.

"I leave you alone for five seconds," Ace began in a fury.

Voices echoed from the hallway outside.

We both froze. Looked down at Kalace's body. Looked down at Death on the stone slab. And then looked at each other.

"Hurry!" Ace whisper yelled. "Help me with the body!"

"Which body!"

"My body­­––I mean, this body. Kalace's body!"

"Well, technically, Ace, it's a memory so it's not really––"

"Get your ass over here!"

I scurried across the stone floor and grabbed Kalace by the feet. But when I went to lift his shoe off the ground, I struggled immensely. Much more than I thought I would.

"Good God. What are warlocks made out of, lead?"

Ace visibly strained to lift Kalace up by the shoulders, although he was able to drag the body back a foot. "It's a heavy bone potion," he huffed. "Warlocks take it so that we can stay on our feet easier."

"Who the heck is Kalace fighting? A T-Rex?"

"Something like that." He glanced at Death on the stone slab. "I must have been anticipating Death would put up a fight tonight."

The voices were getting louder in the hallway, and I recognized one of the hearty laughs as Wolf's and the talking voice as Leo's.

"That's Leo," I whispered. "Leo and Wolf, Victorian Death's­­ knights."

Ace hauled Kalace another foot back, enough to hide with him behind a barrel. It was so weird seeing the two of them side by side. "I'll stay in here. Go distract them, ma chère."

"I'm in Victorian Death's magic room by myself, isn't that suspicious? What if they throw me back in a cell?"

Ace was too busy arranging barrels around the body to hear me. "You're more acquainted with them than I am. Go out there and do your awkward thing. You'll figure it out."

"Hmph! I am not awkward. I'm...cute. Never mind!" I stormed out into the hallway, immediately spotting Leo and Wolf smoking at the end of the hallway. They saw me, I saw them.

"Well, if it isn't my two favorite knights!"

Leo straightened as I came closer and quickly snuffed something out with his boot.

"Smoking something illegal, are we?" I poked toward my eyes and back at them. "I got my eyes on you two crooks."

Wolf narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his hips in a position of authority, whereas Leo laughed.

"The hell are you doing down here?" Leo asked.

"The court isn't allowed in these parts of the castle," Wolf added, much less friendly as he stepped forward to grab my arm. "You have any idea what happens to people who get curious in Hells castle?"ƒ

"Easy," Leo muttered, placing a hand on Wolf's shoulder. "I'm sure Miss Faith has a good explanation."

"I was just going on a nightly stroll," I explained, "and I lost my way a bit."

"And ended up all the way down here in the Prince of Darkness' remedial room?"
"I scraped my arm on the walk," I said, clutching my elbow. "Ow, ow, oof. Yeah, it's stinging like a bee right now." Stinging like a bee?

Leo reached out a hand toward my arm. "Do you want me to take a look at it?"

I moved away from him, a little jumpy. "That's alright, Kalace fixed me right up. The warlock."

"With the white hair," Wolf said, indicating with a chop of his hand to his waist at the length.

I snorted. "Yes, with the hair. Kalace was a doctor at one point, you know. Said he just had to get a few supplies and he'd fix me right up. He'll probably do his little..." I twirled my finger in the air. "Thinga-majig and it'll on its healing way."

"Thinga-majig?" Wolf repeated, deadpanned. "Well, let's see this scrape you speak of."

"See it? See what?"

Wolf looked at me like I had two heads. "The scrape. I just said the scrape."

"Oh, right. Right..." I nervously laughed as I tried to think of a way out of the white lie that had turned into a giant lie. Leo just stared down at me with deep concern.

Something fell in the magic room, making a loud clunking noise.

"What was that?" Leo asked.

When he started forward, I blocked his way with both my arms out like a goalie. "Halt! Don't go in there! Not unless you want to see a naked warlock and his wand rooted into your memory for the rest of your lives!"

Leo arched a brow. "You were fornicating?"

Oh, God. "YES! Yes, I was fornicating, okay? Can't a lady have any privacy anymore." I lifted my chin high and pulled my dress up higher over my cleavage. "I had...urges. In the middle of the night."
Wolf cocked his head as he looked me up and down, not buying it. "Urges..."

I felt a little acid climb up my throat at the thought of my next words. "Kalace really is an excellent lover. Though, he's still collecting himself. It's been a while for him and the ol' magical...pipe...was, um, a little rusty, if you know what I mean." Was it possible to die from internally cringing?

"I don't buy it." Wolf shoved past me toward the door.

"Hey, don't go in––!"

When Wolf blew open the door, I could Victorian Death was no longer on the stone slab and my eyes went wide. Ace was hunched over in the middle of the room shirtless, hopping on one foot to get his foot into a pair of trousers. I could tell it was him and not Kalace because his white hair was cropped short.

"Evening!" Ace said, trying to quickly fasten the pants together. The pants were too tight and made a tearing sound, making him gasp. I ducked behind Wolf with a smothered laugh, and I suspected Ace had flashed us all, by the way Wolf quickly looked over his shoulder at Leo and I in disturbance.

"Sorry about that," Ace said, out of breath and holding his pants together. "Seems I ate too many of those turkey balls at dinner." His face went pink. "Meatballs, I mean."

I mentally palmed my forehead. You're supposed to be smoother than me, Ace.

Wolf pushed past Leo and me to get out of the room. "I don't get paid enough for this."

Leo hovered at the doorway; his one eyebrow scaled higher than the other. "Right. Well, just be sure to get back to your rooms by soon." He nodded at me, and I didn't miss the slight disappointment in his expression, before he made his way down the hallway to follow Wolf.

Once the coast was clear, I slid into the witchy room and closed the door with my back to it. "Dude! Where's Death?"

Ace indicated to the stone table, struggling to figure out where to begin with the ruffled shirt in his hands. "Wave your hand over the table, ma chère."

I strode to the stone table and waved my hand over it. Magic rippled over the image of the empty table and fell away like a tarp, revealing Victorian Death still lying unconscious. His skin was still a few shades lighter than its usual tan, and his lips slightly trembled in his sleep.

"And Kalace?" I asked Ace.

"Jabbed him with a sedative." Ace walked to barrels by the door, where Kalace's fancy Victorian feet stuck out from behind the barrels, like the Wicked Witch of the West. Ace kicked off his dress shoes and tugged the boots, completing the outfit. "He'll be out for a while, if it doesn't kill him."
"Yo..."

Ace shrugged. "Would you rather us get caught and mess with this memory further?"

"That was really close," I whispered. "You don't have the Kalace hair."

"I don't think Wolf or Leo they were focused on my hair, ma chere," Ace huffed, buttoning the rest off his shirt. "What the heck were you thinking, sneaking down here? I told you not to leave that bedroom."

"You almost got caught!"

"Following this memory and understanding why we're here might be important to finding his corpse," I argued. "I couldn't just sit around and do nothing. Time is precious, and it's starting to feel like we're running out of it."

Ace ran his hand through his hair. "I can agree with that. But now we're in a predicament. Kalace is unconscious and this past Death will be expecting him when he awakens. I was just going to take the illusion of a courts man to stay out of this memory. These placeholders in time are just as fragile as the dying mind behind him. The more we disrupt the natural course of his memory, the more in danger we become."

Our heads turned sharply toward Victorian Death. His eyes were still closed, his head turning side to side on the table. Tendons strained in his neck and his arms as he suddenly raged in his sleep, his head arching back and his chest straining against the chains. Ace seemed to jump into action and strode toward the table.

"What's happening?" I demanded. "Isn't he sedated?"

"It seems to be waring off. He's profusely sweating, and his skin is boiling hot." Ace lifted his head suddenly, his eyes elsewhere as he frantically thought. "Did you hear any of the ingredients Kalace used in the sedative?"

"No, why?"

"He could be having an allergic reaction."

"A what? But he's...." Dead, couldn't quite come out all of the sudden. Dead made me think of a grief I had to keep pushing aside to focus. Dead made me think of the sound of my skull striking that library floor and how intimate I'd become with the word.

"Faith, stay back from the table," Ace urged, hurrying to the counter of jarred herbs. He picked up a few tools on the counter and sniffed them. "Are you sure you didn't hear any herbs or names of the sedative?"

"No, but he said he was a list of sedatives that could take down a dragon."
Ace brought his head back. "Merde. I remember this."

Death released a monstrous snarl, his eyes flying open. He immediately started convulsing, blackness foaming out of his mouth.

"What's happening to him?" I demanded.

"He's essentially overdosing." Ace calmly wedged a piece of wood between Death's fangs and held him down by the shoulders. "Mortal drugs aren't potent enough for him, so he took to drinking demon blood to numb himself. Has similar effects of alcohol and is slower to leave his system. Highly addictive and dangerous."

Hearing Death was ever addicted to something was news to me. Despite my new aversion to this version of Death, watching him suffer made me anxious for his well-being. "What do I do? What do you need me to do?"

"There's not much we can do but wait this out. These sedatives interact with demon blood, but only when it's in the stomach. Once his body burns through the demon blood this reaction should say the way."

"Did Kalace know he was addicted?" Of course, by even saying that I was asking if he'd knowingly poisoned Death.

"No," Ace said, his jaw tight. "This was when I found out." He leaned over the Prince of Darkness and pushed up his eyelids, and I couldn't help but feel like he was touching venomous snake. "Death?" He patted his cheek and shook his shoulder. "I'm going to give him a slight jolt to get his heart pumping, but he might act delirious, so stay over there."

Ace rubbed his hands together fast like he was about to do something crazy. He bent down and grabbed a small bucket off the ground and dosed Death's head with water.

Death jolted awake, shaking his head to the side with a gasp. The water in his obsidian hair splashed all over the floor, startling one of those castle cats in the process. It darted across the room with a shrill hiss.

Death's head was angled toward Ace, his chest heaving up and down fast. "Kalace, there you are." His deep voice sounded weak, slurred, and a loopy smile on his mouth. "One of these days you have to get the courage to kiss Livia. She likes you, I can tell."
"Livia?" Ace asked, and I vaguely remembered the name.

Death rubbed the side of his head, wincing. "The girl with the pretty eyes and the braids..."

Ace looked up at me with concern, and I realized who Death was talking about. Livia had been a girl from the other memory with Alexandru and Kalace in the Roman Era. The girl Alexandru had teased Kalace about.

"He's talking about something that happened eighteen-hundred years ago," I whispered to Ace, seeing as Death was completely delusional at the moment. "From the memory I entered. Maybe we're reaching his conscious?"

Disbelief washed over Ace's features.

Death's sat up a little, and we both stilled as his unfocused eyes slid back and forth between us. "Where am I? When's supper?"

"You're in your healing room," Ace told Death in a slow, controlled voice. "You're soused by sedatives and you're having a reaction."

Death stared right at Kalace as he spoke, but it was like nothing was registering. "What happened to Livia?"

Ace flinted his gaze in my direction. "She died young, from sickness. Over eight-hundred years ago, Death. She was mortal."

A look of sympathy surprisingly crossed Victorian Death's paling face. "Such fragile things, mortals," He noticeably swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing as his body stiffened. "I'm going to be sick."

Ace quickly moved his hand in a swiping motion through the air. The heavy chains and rope fell in a heap on the floor, and Death's shadows seemed to seep out of his body more freely. Ace turned Death onto his side, and suddenly his body lurched, and he heaved a black substance from his mouth like a waterfall.

"Cook's wafers are always so dry," Death mumbled, once the vomiting stopped, his body halfway hanging off the table and his head dangling toward the floor. "Tell the cook I don't like those, Helvius. The chocolate cake pairs better with my milky..."

Ace and I shared a worried look.

"You should go back to your bedroom and let me handle this," Ace said, hiding his degust as he clinically evaluated Death. "He'll be inebriated all night long. Alright, now, time to get to get cleaned up, you big ass."

Death groaned in an unhappy way as Ace tried to lift him up from under his armpits.

"If you think I'm going to go cower in my bedroom and leave you alone," I whispered to Kalace, "you don't know me very well."

Death stilled. "Why am I hearing a whiny, whispering female voice? You promised me, Kalace...nobody else can know about this."

"I think any promises he made broke the second you projective vomited black tar onto his shoes," I said.

Death slopped down onto his back again and turned his head toward me. Blackness stained his chin, and his pupils were so large that only the thin rings of his mismatched green irises were showing. "The...hell is a maid doing here?"

My head tilted to the side in confusion. The maid? Did he really not remember what he'd done to me? Where I should have been was dead on the marble floor of his library.

"Don't touch me, maid," Death hissed. "Not unless if you want to die a gruesome demise, entertaining as it would be." He blew out a long, aggravated breath, and it seemed to wind him for a moment. "I can stand on my own, or else Helvius will act as my cane. I shall call on him now and make the little tree stump bring us all sweets." He cleared his throat as though he were about to raise his voice. "Helvi––!"

Ace jabbed a needle into Victorian Death's neck, his words cut off with a choked-out sound. His eyes rolled back a little and he collapsed onto the table with an 'umph." He slid off and hit the unforgiving ground at a dead weight and a cringeworthy thump.

"Dude!" I shouted to Ace. "You have to stop doing that! We can't just keep knocking everyone unconscious around here!"

Ace tossed the needle away into a wooden bin. "What was I supposed to do? Cover his mouth and get my hand bit off? He was about to call on a servant, and the last thing we need is anyone else in this room. Plus, he's already dead."

"Undead," Death giggled.

This was a goddamn mess.

"He'll just be a little loopy is all," Ace said. "Harmless, I'd even argue. The sedatives will leave his muscles weaker, and his power hindered. He won't remember a thing. You grab one arm and I'll grab the other."
We both hauled Death off the floor. Damn, he was huge, but not nearly as heavy as Kalace and his "heavy bone" spell on his body.

I inclined his head toward Kalace's bare feet behind the barrels. "What about Gandalf over there?"

Ace gave me a flat look. "I'll deal with him later. Let's get this bastard to his room."

"Don't open the door," Death murmured to himself. "You fool..."

"You know where to go, right?"

"This place is like thirty times the size of Disney World," Ace said. "I'm just assuming his bedroom is at the top floor. I should warp."

"No," Death said with a ragged breath. "Don't warp. They're waiting."

"Who's waiting for us?" Ace asked.

Death wet his dry lips. "The souls with no faces. Don't let them grab you..."

I stopped in my tracks, remembering how Ace had said he'd felt like something had tried to 'grab' him when we'd warped from outside into the castle.

"Holy shit," I said. "He's talking about the Forsaken. The souls with no faces."

I couldn't tell if Ace had caught on. It made me think there was a chance that this was Death reaching out to us in the memory. That maybe in Victorian Death's delirious state, my Death was surfacing, warning us about the unknown and Charon's forsaken creatures. Saying it out loud felt like it could mess with this fragile memory, but my heart raced with the possibility.

"Hurry, let's get him to his bedroom before someone sees us," Ace ushered.

We hauled him up another flight of stairs, my mind racing a thousand times a minute.

Death's arm was a deadweight looped around my shoulder, my legs working to keep him upright step by step. With my hand grasping his wrist, I could see the jagged points of his talons through his leather gloves and tried to keep them pointed away from me. Even if I didn't see him as a threat, the looming fear of what this version of him was capable of kept me on edge at all times.

We came across a massive black wooden door. Ace hovered his palm over the wood and red particles illuminated around the door. "This one, but there's ward to stop any magic," Ace said, his violet eyes roaming all over the engravements in the door. "This keyhole is so unusual, I have no idea what to do with it."

"Starry ceiling," Death murmured. "The siren woman is a trap. She makes that wicked serpent sleep with her voice. Deceived me..."

"Siren woman and a snake? Who's he talking about?" I whispered to Ace.

"I haven't a clue," Ace replied.

"Who's that girl's voice?" Death's voice was so weak it waned into a whisper. "Don't let my father find me with a girl, Kalace. You know what he did to Annona..." Then his head lulled back on his neck, his arm slipping off my shoulder. Ace and I lunged to turn around and catch him, holding him up at a dead weight.

"Dear god," Ace gasped, his face straining as he Death up from the waist from behind, while I had him by the armpits. "There goes any help from him to stand on his own. He fainted."

But not before telling me more from some deeper level of conscious.

"This is worse than Kalace," I said, heaving my side of Death up at a less uncomfortable angle for my arms. "Here, you hold the big guy, and I'll look for a key on him." Before Ace could argue, I already dumped Victorian Death on him. He made an 'oof' noise and nearly went down, hiking Death up from around the waist.

Voices echoed down a nearby passage, making Ace and I freeze up.

"Hurry," Ace said.

"Shoot, shoot, shoot!" I jumped in front of the door and scanned the lock, getting a good look at what the key would have to look like. Ace was right, the key had three holes like there were three separate keys. Turning toward Victorian Death, I scanned him up and down. Then I looked back at my shoulder the lock, my eyes widening.

"Bring Death closer to the door, I have an idea!"
Ace shuffled forward, and I held my breath as I peeled Victorian Death's glove off his right hand. I stared at his resting, pale and sweaty face, feeling like I was petting a sleeping jaguar. Black tattoo-like markings snaked up his pointed nails. As I stretched Death's arm toward the lock, I imagined what those nails looked like when they unleashed, how they sliced through my corset like butter.

"What are you doing?" Ace asked.

"I'm okay, I can touch him. I think his talons might open the lock."

Carefully holding his hand still, I aimed his fingers into the keyhole. I thrust Death's fingers sharply out, and his talons unleashed like blades into the intricate padlock. There was a clicking noise as mechanisms moved within the door. The voices of what I expected were guards rounded down the end of the hallway, and I wasted no time slamming down on the doorknob and helping Ace quickly drag Death inside. I shut the door and locked it as Ace dragged Death across the floor.

"Help me lay him down," Ace said, and we both hauled Death's massive body onto the nearest couch in the room. From his knees down, his legs dangled off the armrest, and clearly the couch was far too small for him. Something slinked out from the shadows, another rumpling a curtain, and one moving lump underneath the bed that turned into a little furry head popping out from under a thin blanket. Cats. There were so many of them in here.

"Don't touch me..." Death groaned, drawing my attention back to him. Ace appeared to be evaluating Death again with a grim expression. "I'm perfectly fine and able. My Fallen guests coming tomorrow, and I must get ready..."

Ace pressed Death back down to the couch with an easy palm to his chest. "You're not going anywhere like this. You can barely form a coherent thought."

"Where's Kalace? Bring me Kalace, he always knows what to do."

"I'm right here, Alex. You're talking to me right now."

Death pried one eye open. "Ah, right. I knew that. You, Kalace, said you'd help me sleep." His words were a little ragged, like his lungs weren't working properly. "But you poisoned me! You lying, treacherous––" Death keeled over, narrowly missing the waste basket I slid beside the couch. Blackness poured from his mouth, until he spat in the bin. "Vile, wretched, liquid. Your efforts to get back at me are most extraordinarily creative. You've cursed me to experience mortal sickness!"

Ace pushed Death back onto the couch. "Take some responsibility for once. This is your doing. You told me you didn't take anything prior to the sedatives. You lied, and now you're overdosing."

Death turned his head toward Ace, sweat dripping down the side of his face, and only one eye creaked open in exhaustion. "Overdosing? Truly?" The words purred out of him and grinned with dripping black fangs. "Riveting."

Ace grabbed Victorian Death by the collar, making him tense up. "This would have killed anybody else. What's the matter with you?"

Death wet his dry lips. "So many things, my friend. I've simply lost count..." He started to laugh in a low, almost psychotic way to himself, before his throat tightened and he started heaving like he might vomit again. When nothing came up, he slumped back on the little couch in exhaustion and shut his eyes. "Will someone turn down that music? I need to water my dead plants..."

And the lucid moment was gone. There wasn't any music, but there were a few dead plants in here. Unsurprising that Death himself couldn't keep a houseplant alive, either.

Once Death appeared to be resting again, Ace turned over his shoulder to gaze at me, his voice lowering. "He's completely pitted. I'm going to wet a cloth for this fever, although I don't think it'll help much."

"Wait, I have to talk to you," I said, catching Ace by the sleeve. I pulled him aside, through a black curtain and into another room. The massive king-sized canopy bed, minus the drapes, sat on the far wall across the room. Tilting my head up, I saw the ceiling went up high with shelves of books and furniture but there were no foreseeable stairs. A small, dark shadow strut across one of the beams, a cat, and I realized that's exactly what that appeared to only be accessed if someone were to...climb up.

I thought about how Ace had found me, fragile and broken after falling that great height from the balcony in the library. And I imagined how the ghost of Death's corpse had been standing behind his Victorian past, working him like a puppet. "What if disrupting the memory is what brings us closer to Death?"

"It's a possibility," Ace supposed. "It's also would be dumb and reckless to mess with this memory any more than we have."

"I've seen a memory of Death turn to dust right before my eyes, I know there are risks. There are some lines we can't cross here, and I don't know if either of us know what those lines necessarily are, but I do know I have much more wiggle room than I did before. What if us being here, changing things, is exactly what we need to do? What if he's becoming more aware of us?"

"You have proof of this?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. I think his soul...is haunting me." When Ace just stared at me in blank surprise, I continued. "I've seen apparitions of him a few times. Of his corpse. He still has the dried blood from the dagger in his chest, and his hair his blonde. And he looks... sickly. Like a skeleton almost. I've touched him before, but I've also walked right through him..."

Ace rubbed the back of his neck. "Faith..."
"What? You don't believe me?"

"No, it's not that I don't believe you. It's that I don't know what to believe here. It is chaotic and unpredictable. Frankly, I'm in admiration that you've the mental strength to make it this far. I don't know if I could have."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "I'm not crazy Ace. You're a warlock with purple eyes and you're having trouble believing this? What if his soul is able to project or something? Make this make sense, I know it makes sense." It had to. It had to make sense because a part of me was losing hope.

Ace gave me a willowing smile. "Death's life is flashing before his eyes, Faith. Our Death is dying and weak. I'm not saying I don't believe you or that you can't try something new, okay? I'm saying I know what this version of Death is capable of, and what you're implying is dangerous. I won't find you the way I did in the library again."

I shrugged out of Ace's grasp. "You don't get to decide what I do, Ace. I'm not a little fragile girl. I wouldn't be here if I was too afraid to take a leap. Just because you found me the way that you did in that library, doesn't mean I'm not capable of taking care of myself. I'm still here, aren't I? I'm still fighting for what I know I have to do."

Ace's mouth fell into a flat line. Sighing, he took my hand in his. "I didn't mean to make you think you can't make decisions for yourself. I just can't lose you." His eyes glistened as he down casted them. "I don't want to lose him, either. But he's making it awfully damn difficult not to walk away with all that damn vomit from his Victorian ass."

I burst into a small fit of laughter, smothering it with my hand. "Listen, I obviously don't want to lose you, either. And I'm glad you're here, because you're much more knowledgeable in these things than I am. Let's say I'm actually seeing Death, some kind of projection of him, that he's reaching out to me. How is this possible? Give me the cold-doctor answer, not the fluffy 'I-don't-want-you-to-break' answer."

Ace's chin lifted as I spoke, and I could tell he'd pieced together a thing or two without me saying it. "Astral projection takes a lot of strength, and even then, his corpse is in no state to be actually transporting around." He explained this gently, like he was prodding an open wound in me, and he was. "The slow rate of time in the Unknown is the only thing keeping him from dying faster by that blade in his chest. In theory, at this rate, if he is even alert, I'd expect he's reduced to basic instinct. He would scarcely be the Death you remember."

I thought about how that eerie apparition of Death had appeared to be working against me. Telling I didn't belong here, that I should leave. Sure, Death had his morally grey edge, and he wasn't exactly a pacifist, but it seemed so unlike him to resort to the level of violence toward me that the apparition of Death.

My mind harked back to a moment between Death and I in his warehouse. Before we'd gone to the mausoleum. How Fallen by nature were like animals, driven by primal urges like killing, eating, mating, and his scythe had been the only thing keeping him lucid. His scythe had been the glue to keep him together, and once Ahrimad had taken it away, Death had slowly become more beast-like. His words in the warehouse suddenly haunted me.

Soon I'll be driven completely mad by my hunger, unable to communicate in the mortal language, and I'll even forget who I am.

"There's a way for us to bridge the gap between his unconscious and us," I said at last. "I'll need Victorian Death pretty out of it to do it, but if I'm right about this, if his unconscious is trying to communicate with me, I need to travel into that in-between again." I took a deep, unsteady breath. "There might be Forsaken there with him, but I have to try––"

Ace instantly did not like the idea. "What makes you think I'd ever agree to that?"

His answer left me instantly defeated.

"I'm not watching over your body while you travel into some deeper level of unconscious. Do you have any idea how insanely stupid that sounds?"

"You clearly have no idea what I've been doing here. This is how I've gotten this far already." Why did it suddenly feel like this would be my battle? That there were more layers to what was happening here. My voice came from a hollow place. "It's risky, I know, but the timing right now, with Victorian Death all out of it, might be perfect. This will speed things up for us, I know it will."

"The last thing we want is for this memory to go haywire while you're doing your little experiment."

"That's why you're going to stay here. To babysit our unconscious bodies." Ace looked like he was about to argue again when I interrupted him. "I'm running out of hope here, so either you help me, or I find a way do it myself."

Ace grit his teeth together, an aggravated noise coming out of his mouth. "It's insane. How you can be so different from him, and yet you and him are two stubborn peas in the same hazardous pod

"Does this mean you're going to help me?"

"Yes, but we're doing it my way. As a safety measure, I want him restrained while I keep him sedated. I'm going to have to­­––"

Death's scream of distress bellowed from another room, making the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end. Ace rushed out of the room first, and I followed right behind with dread in my gut.

***

Don't forget to leave lots of comments and vote if you love me!!!!

YOU GUYS I KNOW THIS CHAPTER BE SKINNY WITH THE DEATH & FAITH CONTENT AND TBH THIS CHAPTER WAS HARD AF TO WRITE SO IT'S NOT MY BEST BUT I KNEW I NEEDED TO GET SOMETHING UP TO GET MY MOMENTUM GOING. JUST TRUST THE PROCESS BECAUSE THIS BRIDGES TO A GREAT TURNING POINT. TRUST. 

Where have I been?????? Well, I just wrapped up a semester of college and I had some things with my editing, but the real editing process starts at the end of this month for DIMBFF so keep those fingers crossed everything goes well!! AHHHHH.

 P.S - EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THAT AS OF RIGHT NOW IT LOOKS LIKE THE DEATH IS MY BFF MANUSCRIPT IS GOING TO BE NEW ADULT... YEE. HAW. *Death-size eggplant emoji*

SCREAM "WE WAITED FOR ZADDI WAY TOO LONG" IF YOU WANT THAT NEXT CHAPTER SOON! THIS BOOK ABOUT TO GET W-I-L-D.

XOXO

GOSSIP DEATH

Follow me on Instagram and TikTok!!! Katrocks247 for both.

ARE YOU IN THE DEATH IS MY BFF FACEBOOK GROUP????? NO??? AFTER ALL THESE CHAPTERS. BITCH, GET ON THAT. LMFAOOO