Chapter 3

The bodyguard led me up the sweeping staircase, his heavy footsteps silent on the thick carpet. We walked down a long, dark hallway lined with portraits of stern-faced ancestors. He stopped in front of a heavy oak door at the very end of the hall.

"This is the room," he grunted, then turned and walked away, leaving me alone.

I placed my hand on the doorknob. It was cold. A deep, unnatural cold seeped through the wood, making the hairs on my arm stand up. This wasn' t the normal chill of a house in mourning. This was different. Wrong.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

The room was opulent, filled with expensive furniture and dark, heavy curtains that blocked out all light. In the center of the room, on a large four-poster bed, lay a figure under a white sheet. The air was still and frigid. I felt a draft, but the windows were sealed shut.

I didn' t go to the bed. Not yet.

First, I set my bag down and took out my tools. Not the tools of a butcher, but the tools of a Matchmaker. I pulled out a small, antique brass compass. It wasn' t for finding north. It was for finding disturbances.

I held it flat in my palm. The needle, instead of pointing to a cardinal direction, spun wildly, jittering back and forth. The energy in the room was chaotic, agitated. Not the quiet stillness of death, but the buzzing energy of something alive and terrified.

My eyes scanned the room, inch by inch. I ran my fingers along the carved wooden walls, feeling for incongruities. My fingertips brushed against a tiny, almost invisible hole drilled into the wall, perfectly positioned to give a clear view of the bed. A peephole.

They were planning to watch me.

Anger, cold and sharp, went through me. I pulled a small piece of black wax from my pocket, warmed it between my fingers, and pressed it firmly into the hole, sealing it completely. Let them watch a black wall.

From my bag, I took out a silk robe embroidered with silver symbols my grandmother had taught me to sew. I slipped it on over my clothes. Then came the mask-a simple, white porcelain mask that covered the top half of my face, leaving only my mouth and jaw visible. It was for protection, Grandma always said. To separate the living practitioner from the dead client.

Finally, I placed a small brass censer on the bedside table and took out a stick of my own hand-rolled incense-a mixture of sandalwood, sage, and something else, a secret ingredient from Grandma' s garden.

I struck a match. The flame flickered, then died.

I tried again. The second match went out. A knot of unease tightened in my stomach. This was a bad sign. A very bad sign. The air was too heavy, too resistant.

On the third try, the incense finally caught, a thin ribbon of white smoke curling up into the still air. The scent, calming and sacred, began to push back against the room' s oppressive cold.

I turned to the bed. It was time.

I stood over the shrouded figure, my heart pounding a slow, heavy rhythm against my ribs.

"Okay, Alex," I whispered to the lump under the sheet, the sound swallowed by the silence. "If that' s even you. I don' t know what' s going on, but your 'parents' are paying me a ridiculous amount of money to make sure your ghost doesn' t miss out on siring an heir. So, cooperate, will you? Let' s make this quick."

My voice was steady, a little sarcastic. It was how I coped. Talking to the deceased as if they were just difficult customers. It kept the fear at bay.

I reached out and slowly, carefully, began to pull back the sheet.

I started at the feet, my movements practiced and respectful. Part of the ritual involved anointing the body, a symbolic cleansing. I uncovered his legs, his torso. He was dressed in a fine silk suit. The body was... flawless. Too flawless. There were no signs of a fall down a marble staircase. No bruises. No broken bones.

My unease grew with every inch of sheet I pulled back.

I finally reached his face. I took a deep breath and pulled the sheet away completely.

It was him.

It was Alex. Older, with a few more lines around his eyes, but it was undeniably him. His dark hair, the strong line of his jaw, the faint scar above his left eyebrow from that time we tried to build a bookshelf and he' d slipped with the drill.

But he wasn' t the pale, waxy figure of a corpse.

There was a faint flush to his skin. A subtle, almost imperceptible rise and fall of his chest.

I leaned in close, my ear hovering just above his lips.

I felt it.

A tiny, warm puff of air.

He was breathing.

My blood ran cold. This wasn' t a job. It was a setup. They hadn' t hired me to perform a ritual for the dead.

They' d hired me to be the last person in the room with a living man they wanted to murder.

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