Page 35 of To Dance with Death

By lineage, then.

Except…that can’t be right. Because while some seem to be gathered into families, crowded along with those are more codices with mismatching surnames, and the farther away, the more they vary. Worse, it isn’t chronological, nor is it arranged alphabetically in any sense.

My head spins. I split another one down the middle, then flip to the end, where the thicker parchment inks sins in red. The very last page has the designated echelon—along with the soul’s lodgings. Dimly, I note that if I find Emilia’s codex, it would be easy to locate her here.

But none of these codices seem to match up when I examine more. Not by status or designated echelon, either, which is also listed plainly.

Then I find a thin, silky codex with only two listed sins. Flipping back to the front, I notice that this codicil has no date of death.

A codex of someone who is stillalive.

Frowning, I turn back to the sins, noticing that as I sit here, red is being inked onto the page.

A sin, current and in the making.

Carefully, I tuck the codex back into its spot, gazing wearily at the rest of the Abyssal. Therehasto be some kind of organization to this place.

To my distress, however, not even the shelves are labeled, and upon selecting another few codices down the row—each varying in color, size, texture, and appearance—I find them much the same. A gathering of matching surnames, only for those to taper off. Perhaps it’s still by family somehow—ones that have married into one another.

I push to my knees, only for a rush of dizziness to swirl my line of sight and send me tottering. I wait for it to clear, then drift back into the aisle, but I’m interrupted by a heap of striped fur. Thenuzzle of a giant nose, there against my hip. Before I can register it, I hear a voice.

“You know, visitors here tend to lack a pulse.”

I swivel, recognition as swift as the swing of a gavel.

And there Anton is, that emerald gaze pinning me to the spot.

Chapter Twelve

Anton

It was a downright shock to see the girl’s face in the Realm of the Dead.

He remembered her well enough; Sadira and her cohorts had sent her to placate him. His first thought was that she must have died, and that would have been perfectly fine with him. A companion, one as appealing as her, wouldn’t hurt if he was to resign himself to live here for the unforeseeable future. And death had a way of distancing souls from their choices in life. She wouldn’t have cared about Sadira’s cause for long—a few months, at most.

Upon following her, however, he came to the shocking conclusion that she was not, in fact, deceased.

It was her scent that gave her away.

Souls smelled like wind and smoke or something in between—an aroma he had to get used to. And so when presented with such a bevy of scents at once—fresh linens, soap-scrubbed skin, nutmeg, and something sweet, like the first bloom of a water lily in the spring—it stood out. Then Ishu betrayed him and bounded up to her like a long-lost friend, and he realized she’d recognized her, too.

The little minx washere.

But how? Why? Has she been sent to lure him back into the land of the living?

Leaning against a nearby column, he tucks a hand into his gaping, iridescent robe, threaded with emerald and a deep, luminescent blue, and observes her for a good long minute until he decides to make himself known.

Her response rattles him.

“It’syou.”

There’s something about the way she says it, as if he were an answer to some long-forgotten prayer. Like she didn’t expect to see him here at all. Then, to make matters even stranger, she stares like she’s expecting something fromhim.

“You found a way into this realm,” he says. “How?”

She notches up her chin, her loose plait unraveling around her face. Her hand rests on Ishu’s head—is that a purr he hears? “Youmade it here, did you not?” she states. “Is it really so difficult to believe I found a way, too?”

Ah, yes. Well, no. Maybe? Moranya opened a new portal for him in Razam, except that it was only supposed to lethimin.