Taliyah’s house was all done up in white and blue, from the walls to the upholstery. It made a kind of sense, all things considered, that she preferred winter colors, given what she was. The stark walls, the cool palette tones, it should have made the house feel frosty, cold, and unwelcoming. But there were enough homey touches, like the afghan thrown over the back of the couch, toys strewn around, a forgotten mug that said ‘World’s Best Mom’, which made the place feel snug and welcoming instead. Certainly, more than Cain’s Spartan bachelor pad—at least when I’d first moved in. The mac hadn’t even had a single house plant, for Pete’s sake. I wasn’t good at keeping green things alive, but a couple little succulents in the kitchen window were both charming and hardy.

  We kept things fairly light while the kids finished up their dinner and the milkshakes we’d picked up for them. Once they got bored and eventually herded up to bed, the atmosphere changed in the house. Tension building.

  When Taliyah settled back at the kitchen table, after pouring a cup of joe for both of us, I took a deep breath and placed Cain’s class ring on my finger. Now, we were two souls sharing a single body. It was mine, so I had the most control over it. That meant I could shut Cain out, stuff him in the mental equivalent of a closet, really, and control how much of the world he could perceive through me. I didn’t tend to do any of that, because the whole point of summoning Cain was to help investigate crime scenes. Plus, it just seemed rude. If I wanted privacy, I could just take the ring off. No need to be a jerk about it.

  The flip side of that, was that I could also relinquish my body to Cain’s control for a bit. It could feel awkward, and a little scary, watching your limbs move without you thinking to move them, or hearing your own voice come outta your kisser, but the words belonged to someone else.

  But this was the first time Cain and Taliyah had talked, really talked, since he’d been rubbed out on the job. And if there was a chance this might also be their last conversation, I wanted them to be able to have it without a peanut gallery. Namely, me.

  I didn’t go away all the way, though. I didn’t shut myself in the closet, where I’d drift in darkness until Cain was finished speaking with his sister. Maybe it was rude, to not give them their total privacy. But Cain was going into danger for me, was facing being reaped and still chose to walk at my side. I wanted to support him, too. Especially ‘cause I knew he wasn’t any good with emotional charged stuff. Not that Taliyah was much better. Regardless, I wasn’t gonna be an active participant, but more a comforting presence.

  If he wanted me to butt out, it wasn’t like he’d be too shy to say so, anyway.

  Cain pulled in a deep breath, relearning the feeling of lungs expanding. My fingers flexed against the table, bunching the cloth there.

  Taliyah lowered her mug, her winter blue peepers searching our face. “Darla? Are you okay?”

  To his credit, Cain’s breath didn’t shake as he exhaled slowly. “It’s me, Tally.”

  Taliyah’s cup of joe sloshed right out one side, coming dangerously close to spilling onto the white tablecloth. She put it down hastily, peepers real wide. “Cain?”

  I’d never heard her voice so small and uncertain. It was probably for the best that I wasn’t in charge of my body at the moment, or I might have teared up and then I’d never hear the end of it from Cain. He wasn’t exactly understanding when a dame needed her some crying time.

  Cain, the emotional equivalent of a cinder block, just nodded. “Yeah.”

  An awkward silence happened then, so thick it was smothering. I started regretting my hands-off policy. I shoulda known the Morgan family was in desperate need of an emotional referee. The two of them together were like two goldfish trying to be sentimental.

  Taliyah reached for her mug again, folding her fingers around it tightly. Her face fell into cold lines, but I recognized the mask for what it was.

  “How are you?”

  Cain thought about the question for a minute, and then shrugged one of my shoulders. “Fine.”

  I would have rolled my peepers if I could. The man had gotten rubbed out by a demon, brought back as a ghostie, and was now sometimes living in the body of a dame, or a metal ring. Fine, he said. It was such a Cain thing to say, it almost made me laugh.

  Judging by the way Taliyah’s mask cracked enough for her kisser to twitch, she thought the same thing. A little bit of tension bled outta her shoulders.

  Cain cleared my pipes. My hands flexed against my thighs. Normally, I’da told him off, but I knew it wasn’t personal. I doubted he even knew he was doing it. He was trying, and that meant a lot.

  “How are you and the kids doing?”

  “Good.” Taliyah flexed her fingers, glancing down at the rapidly cooling coffee in her white mug. “Okay. We all miss you.”

  My head rocked back, as though the words had hit Cain like a slug outta nowhere. “Oh. Uh. I mean, I miss you all, too.”

  With a sharp sound like glass breaking, the liquid in Taliyah’s mug froze into black ice. Her eyes blazed with a cold light. The heavy streaks of white in her hair shone in the dimness of the dining room.

  “Then why haven’t you talked to us?”

  Cain stared at her for a long moment. Even in her casual clothing, sitting there in a suburban two-story house, Taliyah looked like what she was turning into; the next Queen of Winter. There was just a breath of something other to her, an extra layer of polish that most humans just didn’t have. The lines of her beautiful face looked sharper, more ethereal.

  Cain shook his head and turned our gaze back to the table. “I’m sorry,” he said, as gruffly as my voice could manage.

  “I don’t want an apology, Cain, I just want to understand.” With a shaky hand, Taliyah tucked her hair back behind her ear. “Did I do something? Are you… are you angry with me...?”

  “No.” Cain gentled the sharp edge of my voice when he spoke again. “No. You didn’t do anything. It was me. I just… I was trying to figure some things out. It was kind of a lot to take in. That’s all.”

  “And it was easier to focus on the job.” Taliyah nodded like she understood him real well—like she woulda done the same. The mask started to slide back into place, calmly neutral, hiding her pain away again. “I understand.”

  Cain shook my head real sharp. “No. It was stupid. I should have talked to you, I just didn’t know what to say.” He took in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’ve been a shit brother, Tally.”

  Now, I usually don’t swear none because I think a lady shouldn’t be repeatin’ cuss words, but that word did sound kinda hep comin’ from my mouth.

  Something flickered in Taliyah’s expression, but otherwise she didn’t react. “I don’t understand.”

  Cain fixed her with a look, and it just felt like such a big brother look. A look that said, ‘I know you’re feeding me a line, and don’t think you’re getting away with it for a second’, but all he said out loud was, “I know you’re not human.”

  Taliyah went still. Like scary still. Inhuman still. Her peepers were real wide. I wasn’t sure she was still breathing.

  “Hey, relax. It’s okay.” Cain reached over to pat her hand awkwardly. “It’s not a bad thing. It just took some getting used to.”

  Taliyah let out the breath I was pretty sure she’d forgotten she was holding. The exhale was rushed and painful sounding. “How do you think I feel?”

  He shrugged, pulling back. “I don’t know. Pretty confused, probably.”

  The short huff of air was too brittle to be a laugh. “That’s one way of putting it.” Then something else seemed to occur to her. “So… that’s why you stayed away?”

  Cain was quiet for a long time, and I could see the pain filling Taliyah drop by drop for every second that ticked by. I wanted to shake him. Maybe if I wrestled control back of one of my hands, I could slap him upside the head and hopefully knock some sense into that block.

  Finally, he shook my head. “Nah. Not that part. It just takes some getting used to, finding out that your sister is a faerie princess.”

  Taliyah recoiled so hard that the handle snapped off her mug and I was left wondering just how much strength she had. “You know?”

  “Yeah. You’re meant to take over the Winter Court as its princess, and eventually it’s queen.”

  I woulda slapped my forehead if I’d had a hand. Way to sugar coat it, Cain. Way to ease her into this new situation, you galoot.

  Her mouth moved silently for a few long moments, but Taliyah couldn’t seem to find the words. Cain didn’t interrupt, or fill the uneasy silence, he just waited, watching his sister come to terms with the fact that he knew what she really was and what she was destined to be.

  With exaggerated care, Taliyah placed the handle of her mug down on the table and laced her fingers together.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on, Cain. Things are changing, and I don’t know why. I have these new instincts, and these powers.” Frost started to climb over the white tablecloth, turning its folds into a winter snow scape. The whirls and patterns in the delicate ice all spiraled out from where her hands were clasped together so tightly, all the blood blanched outta her knuckles.

  The thin lines around her peepers and kisser were more prominent when she looked up at us again. “They scare the hell out of me, Cain. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I can’t be a freaking princess, much less a faerie. I’m the Chief of Police!”

  My mouth tightened, lips pressing together before Cain sighed. “You might have to be both.”

  Faerie Princess Chief of Police? I’d watch that show.

  Taliyah shook her head hard enough to make her hair whip around. “I can’t. This magic crap, being royalty, taking over, it’s going to put my kids in danger, and I won’t have it. My entire life, everything I’ve built here, this could ruin it all.”

  “Hey.” Cain reached out and covered her hands with one of mine. It probably would have worked better with one of his own bear paws, but the sentiment was the same. “It’s going to be okay, Tally. If I can, I’m going to be there with you, every step of the way. Darla’s right; you’re my family, my sister and you always will be. Even if we don’t share blood.”

  It was hard to describe how Taliyah’s face softened. It was a bit like watching snow melt, how the icy piles smoothed at the edges. Then her eyes hardened into chips of blue ice.

  “What do you mean, ‘if you can’?”

  I winced. Maybe not the best choice of words, but I had to give him good points for sincerity.

  “Oh, um.”

  “No bullshit, Cain.”

  He shrugged, like it wasn’t anything major. “As it turns out, Death blew into town.”

  “Death?” Taliyah frowned, like she wasn’t following.

  “Right. Death or the incarnation of Death. Or one of three entities of Death.” He shook his head. “It’s complicated.”

  “Death.” Taliyah’s voice was flat, emotionless. “As in, actual, literal Death itself.”

  “Himself, I think,” he hastened to add. “But he doesn’t appear to be here for any of the living.”

  “Um…”

  “From what I understand, he’s the version of Death that’s in charge of picking up ghosts and other dead stragglers. Emphasis on the word ‘dead’.”

  “And you think he’s going to take you, too?” Taliyah’s voice was almost too calm, each word enunciated carefully in the way of people who are so mad, they’re a hairsbreadth from yelling.

  “I don’t know,” Cain admitted. “He mostly seems to be here for Darla.”

  “For Darla?” Taliyah repeated, frowning. “Last I checked—she’s alive.”

  “She wasn’t always,” Cain answered.

  “So… Death wants to take her back or what?”

  “Not exactly. It seems… he wants to date her.”

  “Death wants to date Darla?” Taliyah repeated, clearly at a loss.

  Why was everyone so darned shocked that Death might want to date me? Was it so hard to believe that I mighta caught Damon’s interest?

  “And, apparently, he just decided to pick up some lost souls while he’s here.”

  “Explain more about this Death and Darla thing,” Taliyah said.

  “He’s got a thing for her,” Cain groused, shaking his head. “I’m not sure how else to put it. He wants her to stay with him and he’s being a pushy creep about it.”

  “So what’s she going to do about it?”

  He shrugged. “Play poker.”

  “What?”

  Cain, er I, chuckled. It sounded strange. “Long story, but now she’s got to play a game of poker against Death, and if she wins he’ll leave Haven Hollow, and if she loses, then she’s stuck with him in his creepy ghost hotel.”

  In any other circumstances, watching the progression of emotions flowing over Taliyah’s normally serene face would have been funny as heck. The fact that it was about me personally though, with Cain flapping my dirty laundry around for all to see, just made me want to crawl into a hole and die. Again.

  “I’m not sure how to respond to that.” Taliyah shook her head. “So, Death is blackmailing Darla in order to get her to stay with him?”

  “Yep, that’s about it. The poker game is a compromise, if you can believe that.”

  That had the ice closing back over Taliyah’s face. Her peepers narrowed into dangerous slits. Even the room seemed to drop a couple degrees. Sometimes it was all too easy to believe that Taliyah was soon to be the queen of the court of Winter.

  Cain lifted one of my hands, placating like. “I know. But we can’t exactly arrest him. He’s Death.”

  The mulish look Taliyah shot us said that she’d arrest the Boogey Man if she caught him breaking and entering, but she finally nodded, conceding the point, if grudgingly.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said. Her tone brooked absolutely no argument. “If I really am some kind of faerie royalty, maybe that will have some kind of weight where Death is concerned. Who knows?”

  It wasn’t a bad idea, really. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure on how the supernatural hierarchy worked, since Wanda was really the only one who talked to me about those sorta things, and as far as she was concerned, it was witches at the top of the pile and then everyone else down by their feet. But Taliyah acting as a witness to our match might help to stack the deck a little bit more in my favor, and I was all for that.

  My kisser twisted up, but the expression wasn’t mine. Cain smiled at his sister, in all her ice queen glory.

  “I’d be honored to have you there, Tally.”

  Taliyah’s answering smile was so bright, it was nearly blinding.

  Chapter Fourteen

  What exactly do you wear to a date with Death?

  Most people never have to think about that kinda stuff. Death doesn’t usually make appointments, after all. Usually, everything’s hitting on all eight, and then wham. Your jealous squeeze shoots you dead while you’re wearing your favorite party dress—which becomes less and less your favorite as the decades tick by.

  Lately, between Libby’s skill with a sewing machine and the fact that Wanda owned a magical clothing shop, I was almost spoiled for choice in the wardrobe department. My closet was jam-packed with swell dresses, skirt and blouse combinations, and enough accessories to sink a dinghy. See, Libby’s ‘love language’ as I’d heard the term most recently, was making clothes and food for her friends.

  And Wanda had given me a few things from her shop (namely stuff that didn’t sell none) so I also had me some slacks that kept you from passing wind, a pair of socks that could make you dance better than you’d ever danced, a blouse that was supposed to make you smell like a rose… That one didn’t work so well, though, and most times I ended up smelling like feet which made me think maybe Wanda had been on a bender when she’d enchanted that one and instead of ‘rose’ she’d accidentally used the word: ‘toes’.

  I’d even started adding some sharp suit coats and slacks to my wardrobe just to appease Cain’s male pride. He always got especially grouchy if I tried to get out the door in anything floaty or lacy if he was gonna be my copilot. Trousers weren’t my preference, but I did believe they made my behind look pretty aces.

  I flipped through what had been Cain’s closet, now stuffed to the rafters with all my clothes. Not a gray sweat pant or police uniform to be found. It didn’t normally take me long to piece together an outfit, drawn out arguments with my resident spook notwithstanding. This was a bit different from figuring out what to wear to the office which was usually something pretty and feminine, but something that still spoke the lingo of competence. This felt more like I was girding myself for battle, as if silk and cotton were steel chain mail that would help me win the day.

  For once, Cain wasn’t being his usual pain in the rear about my clothing choices, shouting at any hint of pink or ruffles or god forbid I try to accessorize with something sequined.

  “Something form fitting, at least to the hips,” he muttered as I slid the hangers around. “If it shows off your arms and shoulders, even better. If Death is like any other man, you might be able to distract him with your looks.”

  I frowned, thoughtful. “What about showing some cleavage?” My tone was doubtful, mostly because, while I assumed all men wanted to see some cleavage, I didn’t really have any to work with. I was a little more blessed in the balcony than I had been my first time around, but not by much. It hadn’t mattered much in the twenties when the flat-as-a-board, straight up and down style had been in vogue. Heck, women used to bind their curves to mimic my body type. That didn’t seem to be the case anymore though, from what I’d witnessed through recent movies and television, anyway. Lately it seemed like men wanted curves, but only in two places, and women needed to be slender as a fawn everywhere else. Which, I hated to say, most bodies just didn’t do.

  “Go with what you’re blessed with, Darla, and cleavage isn’t it,” Cain answered.

  “Well, thank you very much,” I muttered.

  He shrugged as he stood before me, leaning against his closet. “Hey, you asked.”