My Gran started to shift before my eyes, her white hair growing and turning brown, the same shade as mine. She had bangs and her skin started to thicken and get a shine to it. She changed so she looked the same age as C.C. as he moved next to her.

Death moved. He was in between me and Gran, but he only seemed interested in me. Lincoln tried to shove himself in between us, but Death got his hand around my wrist. He pulled me towards him, away from Lincoln. Lincoln moved towards us, but Death spoke, and he froze in place.

"Motus cessat!"

"If you didn't notice," my Gran snapped, "None of the humans speak Latin."

"Fine," My uncle hissed, dropping my wrist. He moved towards Lincoln.

Lincoln collapsed when my Death was a few feet away, and I ran forwards and fell on my butt between the two of them. My uncle pulled me up roughly.

"You two get back to your room and don't leave until someone comes to get you."

"Don't move," Gran snapped.

"And you," Death said, turning towards C.C. "Hide behind my sister if you want. It doesn't change the fact that you're dead. I'd hate to be you."

Lincoln stood up behind me. "We're not going anywhere."

Death turned. "Yes, you are."

He turned back around, and I watched as the room started to move of its own accord. Vases started to float.

"Run," I yelped, me and Lincoln both running for the door as furniture started to fling itself at us. The furniture started to box us in, so the only place we could go was back to the room we'd come from.

The door banged shut, locking. Lincoln twisted the doorknob as I banged on the wood, but we were locked in. I went to the end table and picked up a bobby pin. My boyfriend was good at all things that helped a hoodlum, including lock picking. I handed them to him, and he bent down to start picking the lock, but the metal started to cave in, sucking the pins into itself and closing the entire knob.

We were trapped. It doesn't stop you from trying everything you can to get out, knowing that you can't. In fact, it just kind of spurs it on. I eventually gave up, collapsing on the bed.

I heard banging from the other room as Lincoln was messing with something else, but he walked towards me eventually, laying down next to me.

"There's a ventilation system. I think if we have any time to spend here, I might be able to get us out."

"What's the point?" I muttered, not really meaning for him to hear. "Because we have nowhere to go."

"You want to know what the point is? If we stay here, we don't have control of anything, but if we get out, we at least control where we go."

"We're entirely at the mercy of my family."

"That monster is not your family. I don't think he's the same thing that offered to help us. It's like a split personality or something."

"Do you really think that or are you trying to make me feel better?"

"Both." He replied simply.

"I'm sorry about that conversation with my Gran."

"I'm not. She cares about you, Sky. So do I."

"My family doesn't give you an easy time."

"I deserve your dad not liking me."

"No, you don't. My dad should let it be enough that you make me feel—feel like I do."

He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, smiling at me as he did. "Your dad's reasonable. I'm not the best person in the world, Sky. I'm not anywhere close. I think he knows that, and I can respect that he doesn't want me near you, but I've also never been much for rules. I need you. I mean, you heard him explain. I physically need you."

"And you heard too. So do I." I muttered, kissing him gently before he could talk again. He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in again. When he let me go, my head falling breathlessly on my pillow, I looked at him. I watched as my fingers wound their way through his still damp brown hair. His fingers delicately traced my jaw, and he pulled me in again.

It's amazing how much emotion a kiss, literally shoving your mouths, much like you would a cupcake, into each other has.

It's amazing how my lips still burned after he wasn't touching them anymore, his eyes seeming to see the fire still smoldering on them, no one the least bit concerned about the flammability of anything around us. Everything burned. My cheeks. My lips. My hands. It was as though the flames had come back, back to eat us whole, our arms around each other.

We wasted time, but I looked at Lincoln, his eyes still seeming to see right into me, and it was worth every second."I fu—"

"Language," I whispered.

"I love you." He smiled back.

"You're grinning like an idiot. I like it when you smile like that."

"I can't help it. I swear I can't." He promised, his face still lighting up.

"You know, it would be kind of nice to be alive again." I murmured.

"It would be nice to live in a beach house."

I playfully hit his chest, and he pretended to wince as though I'd done some damage. I thought he was going to say something else when there was a voice at the door.

"Can we come in?" It was Death. The voice was colder than the nice one my uncle used to talk. Maybe Lincoln was right about that split personality thing.

The lock clicked without us answering and we each pulled the blanket a little higher over ourselves, watching as the man came in.

Well, first C.C. was shoved in, barely getting out of the way for Death to stroll right past him. Then, Gran followed, her face radiant with a rage that sent shivers through me. She looked so much younger than I'd ever seen her.

She went to C.C., easing him gently off the ground and into a chair, where for the first time, I saw that his hands were bound together. Gran touched it, and it glowed black, causing her to recoil as though it'd burned her.

"You don't touch my family," she snarled, and I quivered into Lincoln, the voice so much scarier than anything I'd ever heard her use around me.

"Your dear old brother wouldn't," Death hissed, "but as you said, I'm a killer. Not your brother."

"Knock it off, Mors."

"Knock what off, Vita?"

"This. You are not a monster. You never have been."

"You don't know me. You don't love me, so why should I keep extending an olive branch? So you can keep on stomping it to pieces?"

My Gran moved towards him and wrapped her arms around him, and he shoved her away.

"And even if you do honestly believe you care about me, the human never was yours to keep."

She glowered at him then, but only went over to C.C., burning her hands again on the metal that bound him.

"I made those," Death explained, looking at C.C., "so you wouldn't be able to meddle. I knew you'd want to one day."

"I'll make you a deal," Gran said simply. "I only want the three of them to be turned over to me and you can have whatever you want from me in exchange."

"I give him up," Death said pointing to C.C. "The other two are mine."

"What do you want?" Gran asked simply.

"I want you to acknowledge that your brother never meant to hurt you, Vita."

"Fine. I acknowledge that my brother, that you, have never and would never have done anything to intentionally hurt me."

Death nodded. "Take him and leave."

The chains disappeared, and the door was held ajar of its own accord for her to leave. My Gran, as I mentioned, has never used conventional methods to do anything. She waved her hand and a portal, almost exactly like the one I'd made, opened.

"Go," she told C.C., and he looked at her hesitantly, and then stepped into the portal. I didn't see him after that.

"Now you leave, Vita."

"Not without my Skylark. Or Lincoln."

For the first time, they both looked at us.