River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)

“Then if you want it, take it,” I tell him. “I can’t stop you.”

He cocks his head. “But you have stopped me. That’s the thing.”

His gaze holds me hostage and I don’t know how much time is ticking past or if it’s standing still, as it’s known to do.

Then he reaches out and grabs my hand with his. His gauntlets look like leather, but they feel like the softest fur. “Let me take you somewhere you’d like,” he says, giving my hand a squeeze I feel in my toes. “To the Library of the Veils.”

Okay, now he has my interest. Truthfully, I would have gone anywhere, just to get out of my room. I realize there’s a chance he’s still planning to murder me, but I’d rather die somewhere different, I guess. Surrounded by books sounds like a good way to go.

I nod and give him a tight smile, and even though I don’t look at Bell as I walk past, I can feel her trying to ask for more sunshine.

“I figured you like books,” Death says to me as we walk out of my room and down the hall. The castle is a little brighter than normal, thanks to the light bouncing off the white snow outside and filtering through the old windows.

“You figured I like books?” I repeat. “This is starting to sound like small talk.”

“There is no small talk with you, fairy girl,” he says, his hand releasing mine and sliding up to my elbow where he takes a firmer hold. “Everything you say is like a double-edged sword.” His skull tilts, glancing down at me. “You know, I never thought a mere mortal would fascinate me as much as you do, but here we are. I just can’t seem to figure you out. You’re frighteningly complex.”

I burst out laughing. I feel like I haven’t laughed for days, and the sound is foreign to my ears.

“Me? Complex?” I scoff. “Right. Okay. You want to know how complex I am? I’m a social media manager for a clothing company that marks up twenty-dollar coats which I convince people to buy for five hundred. I live in North Hollywood, in a shared house, as do most other working young professionals, surrounded by succulents and surfboards. I take capoeira on Wednesday nights, I go to a local bar and drink margaritas on Fridays. My favorite food is ramen, I don’t have a cat but I love cat videos, I wear all the sweaters as soon as September hits even when it’s eighty degrees outside, and I don’t care if people know I love pumpkin spice lattes. I watch anime but I watch anime porn more, and I scroll through TikTok to help me fall asleep at night, even though it makes me buy candles and crystals and crochet supplies that I never use. I am not complex. I am what they call a basic bitch. I just happen to be a basic bitch in the Realm of the Dead. And maybe that’s what you find fascinating.”

Death stops and stares down at me and I can almost feel him thinking, a pause hanging between us as he takes in all my babbling.

Finally, he says, “Basic bitch?”

I wave my free hand dismissively. “It just means I’m not special. I’m no different than anyone else. Whatever complexity you see in me, it’s not there. I’m just…foreign to you.”

“Ah,” he says, slowly nodding. “I thought you meant you were not very adept at being a bitch, and I was going to say otherwise.”

I glare at him. “That’s funny. Did Death manage to make a joke at my expense?”

“Who said I was joking?” Then he starts walking again and tugs at my arm. We go up the grand staircase to the next level and turn the corner. There’s a huge iron door with an inscription on it that I can’t read.

“What does that say?” I ask.

“There was a door to which I found no key,” Death reads. “There was a Veil through which I might not see. Some talk a little while of me and thee, there was—and then no more of thee and me.”

I stare at the door. Not only does there not seem to be a lock, there doesn’t seem to be a handle either.

But Death runs his hands over the skeleton designs down the middle of the door and then something hisses and the door opens, the air sucking us in, as if we’re opening the door to an airlock.

“Welcome to the Library of the Veils,” Death says, placing his hand at my back and ushering me in.

It’s dark save for the grand windows that line the end of the room, done up in the circular petal designs you might find in a Catholic church, but then all at once the lights go on, illuminating how grand the room is.

No, grand isn’t the right word. It’s fucking magnificent. I’m such a whore for libraries in general—I once spent the majority of my Manhattan vacation inside the New York Public Library—but I’ve never seen any like this.

The library itself is at least three stories tall in places where the bookshelves reach up into the narrow circular turrets of the castle, the shelves themselves built into the iron walls. It’s the library from the Beauty and the Beast cartoon, except gothic and foreboding. It’s not just all the iron, or all the skulls and bones as décor, or the strange glass cages placed around the room with blankets draped over them, but it’s this strange sense of…I don’t even know if I can describe it. It’s a sense of life and of death, it’s ever-changing and powerful, like the atoms in the air are constantly being rewritten. It feels like there are more than the two of us in here, that instead there are hundreds of thousands of people among us, people that I can’t see. I can feel them all at once, all their energy, and I’m not surprised to feel the hair at the back of my neck standing stiff.

There’s also a large floating book in the middle of the room and a dog made of iron guarding it.

“That’s Rauta,” Death says rather proudly, gesturing to the dog. “You wore his collar for a bit. Remember?”

Rauta opens its mouth and growls at me, literal sparks shooting out.

It’s fucking terrifying, and I’m not kidding when I said it’s made of iron. Part of it looks like a normal Tuonela dog, with bone and some patches of fur, but other parts look like they’re welded on. Like a steampunk demon hound with red glowing eyes. Thank god that collar is back around the dog’s fat neck, even though it doesn’t seem to be chained to anything.

“Not a dog person?” Death asks.

“I love dogs,” I say defensively. “Just not the ones that belong to Doctor Frankenstein.”

Death chuckles and walks over to Rauta, crouching down to pet it. He strokes his gloved hand over the dog’s head and the dog visibly calms down, its metal tongue hanging out as it lies down on the rug. “There’s a good dog,” he coos to it. “You’re doing a good job guarding this place. A very good job.”

“Is he sentient?” I ask, peering at him. The iron dog totally seems at peace now.

“All animals are sentient,” Death says, straightening up. “They all experience emotions. They all have souls.”

“You know what I mean. Is it like Sarvi?”

“Oh. Thank the Creator, no. I couldn’t handle that.”

I go back to looking around the room. It really is morbidly beautiful, and the more I stare at it, the more the details surprise me. For one, the lights that came on aren’t from candles but from white lights glowing from sconces around the room. For two, the books themselves, all bound in leather and skins, seem to jostle and move on the shelves. There must be thousands and thousands of them all subtly vibrating.

For three, pretty sure I just saw a ghost glide past from one end of the library to the other.

“What?” Death asks, staring at my face.

“Is this library…haunted?”

“Oh. Yes. Very much so.”

My eyes widen. “By who?”

“By whom, you mean? And it doesn’t matter. It changes all the time. It’s haunted by the dead. I don’t see them anymore, though I did when I was a young boy.”

“But why is the library haunted, of all places?” I ask.

“It’s the Library of the Veils,” he says patiently. “You know what the Veils are, don’t you?”