Chapter Four The Keeper

Hearing my name shouldn't have frightened me.

I'd spent an entire day desperate for someone to notice me.

But not him.

Not the man who had just discussed my death like an inconvenience.

"Mira?"

He was looking directly at me.

I backed away.

His eyes followed.

"No," he whispered.

The phone was still in his hand.

A distant voice came through it.

"What is it?"

The man didn't answer.

His other hand disappeared beneath his coat.

I turned to run.

Pain ripped through me.

Not the memory of pain.

Real pain.

It started beneath my ribs and spread through my body so violently that I folded over.

A silver glow flickered beneath my hands.

"What are you?" the man whispered.

Good question.

I didn't stay to ask him.

I stumbled toward the conservatory doors.

The floor disappeared.

So did the walls.

For one sickening moment, there was nothing beneath me.

Then my feet struck a cold stone.

I was back in the hall of floating candles.

The silver-haired woman stood behind her desk.

She wasn't calm this time.

"What did you do?"

I stared at her.

"Me?"

She came around the desk.

"Who saw you?"

“The man involved in my death.”

"Mira."

"He knew my name."

"Who was he?"

"If I knew that, don't you think I'd be asking different questions?"

She muttered something under her breath.

"What happened to my hands?"

She ignored the question.

Of course she did.

Apparently withholding information wasn't something I'd escaped by dying.

"Send me back."

"No."

"I was listening to him. He mentioned the Council. He mentioned my name and an heir. I need to know what that means."

"You are not going back."

I moved toward her.

“You said I had thirty days.”

“You were given thirty days under ordinary circumstances.”

“And this isn't ordinary?”

“You were seen.”

"Your presence was detected by the living."

"I didn't choose that!"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

Her expression softened, but I didn't want sympathy.

I wanted answers.

"I was murdered," I said. "My husband knew I was in danger before he married me. My friend helped arrange some ridiculous plan to frighten him, and someone used it as an opportunity to kill me. Now a stranger who shouldn't even know I exist can see me."

My voice cracked.

"And you want me to quietly disappear?"

"I want nothing from you."

"Good. Then put me back."

"I can't."

Behind me came the sound of stone grinding against stone.

I turned.

Two black doors were opening at the far end of the hall.

There had been no doors there before.

Darkness waited beyond them.

I knew what they were without asking.

My anger faltered.

"No."

"It's time."

"No."

I hated how small my voice sounded.

The woman approached me.

"Mira—"

"I haven't finished."

"Life rarely gives anyone that luxury."

"I don't mean my life."

I looked back at those doors.

"I mean this."

Rowan's letters.

The empty pantry.

The disabled camera.

Lena.

The Council.

The mysterious man speaking about children I'd never had.

There were finally answers within reach, and death was taking them from me too.

"What happens when I walk through there?"

"You leave this world."

"And that's it?"

"For life."

I laughed, but there was nothing funny in it.

"Of course."

All my life, other people had known things about me that I hadn't.

My mother had died without telling me much about her family.

The pack had decided a woman without a wolf was weak.

Rowan had married me without telling me why.

He'd known I was in danger and decided I was safer and ignorant.

Lena had decided she could manipulate my husband and still call herself my friend.

Someone I'd never met had apparently decided I shouldn't have children.

Everyone had made choices.

I had lived with the consequences.

"I'm not going."

The woman looked genuinely sorry.

"You don't choose when death ends."

The darkness beyond the doors seemed to move.

Then it pulled.

My feet slid backward.

I grabbed at the desk.

My hands went straight through it.

"No!"

The pull strengthened.

"Mira, don't fight."

"Easy for you to say!"

Another foot.

Then another.

The doors grew closer.

I thought about my grave.

About Rowan eventually moving on.

About Lena living with whatever she'd done.

About the people responsible for my death congratulating themselves because Mira Vale had conveniently died without producing an heir.

Something hot flared inside me.

"No."

The silver-haired woman's eyes widened.

Light spilled between my fingers.

The same silver light from the conservatory.

Only brighter.

The pull stopped.

Every candle above us went out.

Darkness swallowed the hall.

Then someone started clapping.

Slowly.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The silver-haired woman went completely still.

I heard footsteps behind me.

"That," a man's voice said, "was unexpected."

I turned.

A figure stood between the black doors.

Tall.

Dressed entirely in dark gray, with hair so pale it looked almost white.

He wasn't old.

He wasn't young either.

His face had that unsettling quality of something that could have existed for twenty years or two thousand.

His eyes settled on my hands.

The silver light vanished.

The woman bowed her head.

"Keeper."

He ignored her.

He was looking at me.

I was becoming tired of strange men staring at me like I wasn't supposed to exist.

"Who are you?"

One eyebrow lifted.

The silver-haired woman looked horrified.

Apparently dead people were expected to have better manners.

"The Keeper of the Moon Gate," he said.

"That doesn't answer much."

"It answers exactly what you asked."

Wonderful.

He walked toward me.

I didn't move.

"What happened in the living world?" he asked.

"A man saw me."

"I know."

"Then why ask?"

"I want to hear what you think happened."

"I think I'm dead and somehow today still managed to get worse."

Something flickered in his expression.

Amusement, perhaps.

He circled me once.

I disliked that immediately.

"Can you not do that?"

He stopped.

"Interesting."

"There is nothing interesting about being murdered."

"No. Murder is terribly ordinary."

My temper rose.

"But this isn't."

He reached for my hand.

I pulled it away.

"Ask."

Now he definitely looked amused.

"You were described as wolf-less in life."

"I was."

"No shift?"

"Never."

"No inner voice?"

"No."

"No healing beyond the ordinary?"

I shook my head.

He studied me again.

"What?"

The Keeper looked at the silver-haired woman.

"You didn't check?"

"There was nothing to check."

"Apparently there was."

My patience snapped.

"Could somebody please remember I'm standing here?"

The Keeper looked back at me.

"Something followed you into death."

I frowned.

"What?"

"I don't know yet."

That frightened me more than an explanation would have.

A supernatural creature called the Keeper admitting he didn't know something about me wasn't reassuring.

"Is that why the man saw me?"

"Perhaps."

"Who was he?"

"I am not an information service for unfinished murders."

"Very helpful."

His mouth twitched.

Then he became serious.

"You have two choices."

I glanced toward the black doors.

"I thought I didn't have any."

"You didn't."

"And now?"

"Now you've become inconvenient."

I almost laughed.

"Story of my life."

The Keeper raised his hand.

The darkness beyond the doors changed.

An image appeared inside it.

Silverpine Manor.

Then my bedroom.

A younger version of me sat on the edge of the bed wearing my wedding dress.

My breath caught.

I remembered that night.

I'd been twenty-two.

Terrified.

Happy.

Hopelessly in love.

Rowan stood by the window with his back to me.

"What is this?"

"Four years ago."

My wedding night.

I moved toward the image.

My younger self looked so painfully hopeful that I wanted to reach through the darkness and shake her.

She had no idea what was coming.

Four years wondering why she wasn't enough.

A rainy road.

Death.

The image disappeared.

I rounded on the Keeper.

"Why did you show me that?"

"Because I can send you there."

I forgot everything else.

"What?"

"Not as a ghost."

My throat tightened.

"Alive?"

"Yes."

The word was so simple.

My knees almost gave way.

"You can bring me back?"

"No."

Hope shattered as quickly as it came.

Then he continued.

"I can send you back."

I stared at him.

"What's the difference?"

"Bringing you back would return you to a corpse on a wet road."

He stepped closer.

"Sending you back places your soul at a point when your body is still alive."

My wedding night.

Before the loneliness.

Before Lena's scheme.

Before my murder.

Before all of it.

"Would I remember?"

"Everything."

"And everyone else?"

"They remember only the life they've lived."

My heart—or whatever remained of it—seemed to pound.

I could save myself.

I could find out what Rowan had hidden from me.

I could stop Lena before her betrayal.

I could identify the man in the conservatory.

I could—

"There's a price."

Of course there was.

I looked at him.

"What price?"

"Death doesn't return what it takes without creating a debt."

"What kind?"

"The moon will have a claim on you."

I waited.

He offered nothing else.

"That isn't an answer."

"It's the only one you get before choosing."

"Can the price kill me?"

The silver-haired woman looked away.

That was enough to answer.

I swallowed.

"So I can go through those doors now and stay dead."

"Yes."

"Or return four years and possibly die again because of something you're deliberately not explaining."

"Essentially."

"You're terrible at selling this."

"I'm not selling anything."

He held out his hand.

"I'm offering you a choice."

I stared at it.

The old Mira would have been terrified.

She would have wanted guarantees.

She would have asked what Rowan wanted.

She would have worried about disappointing everyone.

That Mira had died on Silverpine Road.

But she wasn't gone.

I was still the woman who had loved too much and asked too little.

Maybe a second life wouldn't magically change that.

Maybe I would have to.

"If I return, is everything destined to happen again?"

"No."

That mattered.

"Then what happens?"

"Whatever your choices "

My choices.

For once, those words didn't frighten me.

I took his hand.

"I accept."

His fingers closed around mine.

Pain shot through my body.

I screamed.

The silver light returned, racing beneath my skin.

The Keeper's eyes widened.

For the first time since he'd appeared, he looked genuinely surprised.

"What?"

I tried to pull away.

He held on.

"What is happening?"

He stared at the light spreading up my arms.

Then at me.

"Mira—"

The hall vanished.

***

I hit something soft.

Air rushed into my lungs.

I gasped and sat upright.

My heart was beating.

Actually beating.

I grabbed my chest.

Warm skin.

Breath.

A body.

Candles burned around me.

White sheets covered my legs.

On a chair near the bed hung a wedding dress I hadn't seen in four years.

No.

I knew this room.

I knew this night.

Then a man's voice came from behind me.

"Mira?"

Every part of me froze.

Slowly, I turned.

Rowan stood beside the window.

twenty-four years old.

Alive.

And looking at me as though I had just returned from the dead.

He had no idea how right he was.