Chapter 29-1

Agnes Schaffer smiled, and there was something like fondness in her gaze as she looked at me. It wasn't the way a therapist would look at their patient. It just made this entire situation all the more confusing. My head was still throbbing painfully from the amount of things I just did not understand. "What...are you doing here?" I demanded, rubbing my forehead with the heel of my palm. "You're my therapist, you're not supposed to - " "So this is how Death thought he could do it, then?" Havoc said. His voice had risen several octaves, bouncing off the walls of the church. "By sending a ghost after me? Did he honestly think that would work?" He was pacing the floor, raking his fingers through his hair. It was unnatural, seeing this normally suave, put-together man looking as if he were about to fall apart. "What do you mean, ghost?" I said. "That isn't - " "Death doesn't know I'm here," Agnes said, crossing her arms as she looked to Havoc. "I'm acting alone." "Acting alone?" Havoc laughed again, and the sound sent chills down my spine. "Oh, I doubt that." "And that's really so difficult to believe?" Agnes said. "You of all people should know that sometimes the dead don't always stay dead." The only thing my addled brain was able to make sense of was shouldn't that have made Agnes Schaffer a zombie and not a ghost? "It's your first appearance in over four hundred years," Havoc snapped at Agnes. "Excuse me if I'm a little baffled." "Or could it be," Agnes said, an unsettling smile beginning to curl her lips, "that the past has finally caught up with you?" The expression on Havoc's face made it very obvious that whatever past he shared with Agnes Schaffer was most certainly not a pleasant one. "Wait, what?" I said loudly. "Can somebody please tell me what's going on? I'd honestly like to understand." Agnes let out a soft sigh, turning away from Havoc to look at me. Her face suddenly looked very different than before. Her skin seemed fairer, less wrinkled. Her hair was becoming lighter, longer, and the gap between her front teeth was gone. It was as if thirty years had suddenly disappeared from her face. Actually, she looked rather beautiful...in a way that didn't seem quite normal. Whatever Havoc had said about this being her first appearance in over four hundred years made even less sense, because this was not the face of a woman who was hundreds of years old. It was impossible. Why was I having difficulty believing that it could possibly be the truth, given everything that I had already been through so far? For all I knew, it was the truth. "My name isn't Agnes," she said. "It's Lucrezia." "Am I...supposed to know who you are?" I said confusedly. "Because I don't. I'm more concerned about the fact that your face just changed shape." "My face has never changed," the woman who I thought was Agnes Schaffer told me, and she was smiling. Why was she smiling? I didn't see anything worth smiling about. "You just weren't seeing clearly." That could be said about plenty of other aspects of my life. It still didn't make me understand what the hell was going on, though. "I still don't understand," I admitted. "How are you - " "Oh, use your brain, you insipid child!" Havoc snarled at me. He had not stopped pacing, and he looked even worse, more distraught, than he had moments before. It was as if he were a wild animal trapped in a cage, prowling around. "You damn well know who this woman is, even if you don't know her by name!" The woman who called herself Lucrezia shot a nasty glare at Havoc before turning back to me. "He is right, Archer. Even if he announced it in a less than eloquent manner." I sat down on the steps of the altar and pressed my fingers against my temples, desperately wishing the throbbing would just stop. Nothing about this situation made sense. Havoc had come for me, as the end had finally arrived, and I had faced my fears. Or so I'd thought. I had been in the process of witnessing my own funeral and just how it affected my family - what Havoc told me was my biggest fear, me losing them - and out of the blue, my therapist of all people showed up, only for me to discover that she wasn't really my therapist after all. Would anybody in their right mind understand what was going on? Who was this woman? The woman who I had believed to be Agnes Schaffer, but was really named Lucrezia. Whoever she was, she must have been very old, if Havoc was correct in saying that this was the first time she had appeared in four hundred years. You can't imagine what it's like, living with that guilt for four hundred years. I looked up at Lucrezia in confusion, wondering why those words Death had spoken to me months ago were suddenly now floating across my mind. When she had first shown up not five minutes ago, she told Havoc that Death didn't know that she was here, that she was acting on her own. So she knew Death, or had known him at one point. "Wait a moment." The thought sprung up out of nowhere, burning everything else away. "You...you're not.." Havoc barked out a laugh and reached over to clap me on the shoulder, giving me a firm shake. "Now the boy finally gets it!" I forced myself to say the words that seemed so impossible but might be the only plausible explanation at this point. "You're Death's wife, aren't you?" Lucrezia gave a small, sad smile as she crossed her arms over her stomach. "Once upon a time, I was." "Would you like to tell Archer here the poor, sad story, or shall I?" Havoc said, a maniacal grin spreading across his face. It was only because I was watching her so intently did I see Lucrezia flinch at Havoc's words. I wanted to reach out and comfort her, even though she was a total stranger to me, and I still wasn't entirely sure that this all was real. "Don't bother," I said to Havoc. "I know what happened." "Oh, but the story is so much fun," Havoc said, turning those unsettling eyes on me. "An angel who fell in love with a beautiful mortal, got himself thrown out of Heaven to be with her, only for her to go mad and - " The sound of a door creaking open cut Havoc off mid-sentence, echoing through the church like every small noise seemed to. Havoc whipped around and then started to laugh. "Oh, now, this is a party! So good of you to join us, mate!" Both Lucrezia and I stepped forward, following Havoc's gaze, as a figure began to emerge from the shadows across the church. It became clear a moment later who it was, as the figure stepped into the light that illuminated the altar. It was Death. Except he looked as if he had just went up in a round against a prized cage fighter and lost. There was a long gash across his cheek that was steadily dripping blood, there were odd bruises dotting the left side of his face, and he was awkwardly holding his side as he walked towards us. The state of his clothes only increased his haggard appearance. I didn't think it was even possible for someone like Death to get hurt like this, because I knew for a fact that he was not human. "Death, what the hell happened to you?" I said, quickly moving to help him. "And what are you even doing here? I thought this was the end of the line." He brushed me away without a word, limping his way down the steps of the altar, and it was then I realized his eyes were only for Lucrezia. She was looking at him with an expression on her face that I would never be able to find the words to describe. Something about this moment seemed entirely too tender, too personal, for me to be witnessing, but it wasn't as if I could go anywhere else. I was stuck.