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.

I was almost expecting for Death and Lucrezia to suddenly leap at each other with declarations of love and start making out, but they didn't.

Death came to a stop a few feet from Lucrezia, fixing her with an intense gaze. She stared back, her hands curled into fists at her sides.

"Oh, my." Havoc nudged me with an elbow, whispering, "Isn't this so touching?"

At this point, I already knew that my life was well on its way to being over, so I didn't hesitate to tell Havoc, "Go fuck yourself."

Death and Lucrezia paid us no attention. It was as if they were the only two people in the world at that moment.

When Death finally spoke, it sounded as if his voice had been put through a blender, it was that broken and harsh.

"I've never stopped looking for you."

Lucrezia managed a small smile, but there was genuine warmth in her eyes as she looked at Death. "I know."

"Is it..." In that moment, Death didn't look like a powerful supernatural being who could bend time and bring people back to life. He looked as if he was staring at everything he had ever loved and lost for the first and last time. He looked human. "Was it wrong of me to wish that you hadn't made it? That you would be shackled here like every other poor soul, just so that I could still be with you?"

"I know," Lucrezia said again as she moved closer to him. There were barely a few inches of space between them now, but they still weren't touching. "I know you would have leveled all of Rome just to find me."

Death choked out a laugh, a disbelieving expression on his face. "Leveled Rome? Lucrezia, I would have set the world on fire if that meant you and I could be together. Even just for a few moments. And our son..."

I was not an emotional person by any means. I made it a conscious habit to keep my face a blank mask, because I didn't like people knowing what I might be thinking or feeling.

Yet watching Death and Lucrezia, seeing the way that they looked at each other, made a dull ache stir in my chest. I was positive that was written across my face.

Because I recognized that the way Death said Lucrezia's name was the same way I said Hadley's. And it had been four hundred years since Death had last seen Lucrezia, and nothing had changed for either of them.

"I know that this is a very emotional time for the two of you," Havoc said, sauntering forward to clap Death and Lucrezia on the shoulders, "and I understand that you want to spend every moment you can together before this nightmare falls apart, but Archer and I have more important places to be at the moment. We'll be going now. I hope you don't mind."

He stepped back, moving towards me.

I felt a wave of fear crash over me as I saw the look on Havoc's face. Christmas had come early for him, it was obvious, and he was going to enjoy whatever pain he was about to inflict on me immensely. That I knew for a fact.

My heart pounded erratically against my chest, my palms were sweating, and I felt bile rising in my throat.

This was it. This was it.

I was going to die.

And I realized right in that moment that I wasn't ready to die. I didn't want to die. I wanted to live. But if dying meant that my family would be safe, that they would live, I'd do it a thousand times over.

"You know, I really do have to thank you for showing up right at the eleventh hour, Death," Havoc was saying delightedly. "It's making this whole ordeal that much more enjoyable, knowing that you're going to have to leave your darling wife all over again. I don't even mind that the bitch ended up stuck as a spirit, because this is so much better. At least you'll get to say goodbye, unlike the first time. But I can imagine it's going to hurt a hell of a lot more now than it did then."

Havoc moved closer to me, and I knew that the end was about to finally catch up with me, but before he could lay a hand on me, Lucrezia spoke.

"If you so much as lay one finger on my nephew, I'll personally ensure you never see the light of day again."

Death, Havoc, and I all spoke incredulously at the same time.

"What?"

Lucrezia had just called me her nephew.

Whatever this nightmare was must have affected my hearing, because there was no way I had heard that correctly.

"I believe you heard me correctly," Lucrezia said dryly. "Archer is my nephew. Granted, there's a good few greats heading the title, but he's still my kin."

"Lucrezia, are you serious?" Death demanded, looking back and forth between the two of us in astonishment.

"Quite serious, I assure you," she said, looking to Death. "Archer is Valente's grandson."

"Who?" I said in confusion. "I don't even know who - "

"Valente was my brother," Lucrezia told me. "He's your ancestor through your grandfather Ceasario's line."

There was no way I could be positive if Lucrezia was telling the truth or not, because I knew next to nothing about my grandfather's family line. He had died when I was barely four years old.

"What difference does that make?" Havoc snarled, stalking towards Lucrezia. "Your family line is irrelevant. There is nothing you can do to save that boy."

Any person in their right mind would have immediately run for the hills being approached by Havoc like that.

Lucreciza did not.

Even though Havoc had several inches of height on her, she only moved closer. I could practically feel the hatred rolling off of her in waves.

"Is it?" she said, her voice smooth and deadly soft. "You really ought to read the Edict more closely. The debt for Archer's death was never paid, true, and you're here to collect. But you're not taking him."

"Oh?" Havoc said, arching an eyebrow. "And are you going to stop me?"

"I am."

Death seemed to understand what Lucrezia was hinting at, while I stood there in utter confusion. The look on his face was physically painful to witness.

"Lucrezia, please."

Something registered with Havoc then, and his teeth clenched together with an audible snap. The expression on his face was pure, unadulterated fury.

"You want to do a trade."

Lucrezia smiled. "I don't just want to do a trade. A trade is what's going to happen."

An alarm went off inside my head.

"You want to do a what?" I said, sounding winded.

Death, Lucrezia, and Havoc paid me no attention.

"And just what makes you so sure I'd accept your trade?" Havoc said to Lucrezia.

I could tell it was difficult for him to keep back the anger boiling underneath the surface. I didn't want Lucrezia to be the one he finally snapped at.

"Because you have no choice," Lucrezia told him. "Archer and I are from the same family line. You want his blood. And you'll get it. Through me."

"What? Lucrezia, no, I can't ask you to - "

Death shot me a warning look that immediately made me shut my mouth, even though I wanted to scream.

Why would Lucrezia even think about taking my place?

"You're dead," Havoc snarled. "You killed yourself four hundred years ago. You have no blood."

Lucrezia waived an airy hand, as if none of what Havoc had just said mattered any.

"That's very true. I've no doubt my skeleton has already turned to dust in some unmarked grave in Rome. But, as you can see," she said as she held her arms aloft, "this body is perfectly functional."

"You implanted yourself," Death said, and there was something like awe in his voice as he stared at Lucrezia. "Geinus."

"The real Agnes Schaffer passed away peacefully in her sleep months ago," Lucrezia said, staring right at me. "I simply...took over. I may not have possessed my original body for centuries, but the essence of what made me Lucrezia Allegretti still remained. So when I implanted myself in this body, what was left of Agnes became me."

I felt as if I had just been put through a wringer.

Everything I thought I knew wasn't real. Nothing was real anymore.

"You've been looking out for me this entire time."

Lucrezia smiled at me, and then it was glaringly obvious why Death had fallen in love with her.

"Of course I have. That's what families do. They look out for one another. And that's why you're going to let me take your place."

"Lucrezia, I - "

"Enough of this bullshit!"

I barely had enough time to register that Havoc was making a desperate lunge for me before I threw up my arms in attempts to brace myself against the attack.

But Havoc never reached me.

Death had snatched Havoc by the scruff of his collar, yanked him backwards, and Havoc was sent spiraling into the air, only to collide with one of the pillars that supported the foundation of the church.

The sickening crack that broke through the air at the sound of Havoc's skull smacking against the marble of the pillar made me wince and shrink backwards.

I waited with baited breath for Havoc to immediately pick himself up off the ground and begin a new attack, but he remained awkwardly slumped against the pillar, motionless. Blood was beginning to trickle down the side of his face.

I looked over to Death, who was now clutching at one of the pews to keep himself upright, his breathing labored.

Something on my face must have spelled out what the hell was that, because Death gave a pained smile and said, "Not as hurt as I look, apparently."

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, but Lucrezia beat me to the punch.

"You have to leave. Now. He won't be unconscious forever, and when he wakes up, you can damn well be sure he's going to send this place tumbling to the ground."

Already I noticed that the unsettling apparitions of my family members had begun to grow dull and were slowly disappearing from sight, one by one.

"But how is he even unconscious in the first place?" I said quickly. "I thought - "

"We're not human, but we can still bleed," Death said.

"Go," Lucrezia said, giving me an urgent shove towards the door Death had come through. "Now."

I hadn't even begun to process everything that had just occured, and already it was starting to fall apart.

I stayed right where I was, not budging an inch.

"How can I ever - "

Lucrezia clapped a hand over my mouth before I could finish my sentence.

"Don't thank me. Just live. Be with your family. Our family. Will you do that for me, Archer? Please?"

I nodded when she pulled her hand away, not trusting myself to speak. There was a painful lump in my throat, and my eyes were burning.

Lucrezia turned back to Death, and this time reached out to place a hand against the side of his face. His eyes slid shut as he turned into her touch.

I wanted to look away, to let them have this last private moment together, but I couldn't.

Lucrezia slid her other arm around Death's shoulders, pulling herself up to his level, and just as she was about to press her lips against his, he muttered, "Don't."

She pulled back a fraction of an inch, her face drawn in a confused expression.

"It's going to hurt."

"It's always going to hurt."

Death opened his mouth as if he were about to say something, thought better of it, and then tugged Lucrezia closer so he could finally kiss her.

That time I did manage to look away. Even at a moment like this, I felt my face turning red with embarrassment.