Chapter 2
Lyndsey's heart pounded in her chest, but it wasn't fear. It was a chilling heat, something she'd never felt before.
Lyndsey gripped the notebook tightly and looked up at the stormy night sky. Rain pelted her face, but she didn't feel cold anymore.
"Be kind?" she whispered into the void, her voice so soft only the wind could hear. "I'll think about it."
The gazebo on the mountain behind the school was leaking, but it was still better than the rooftop.
Lyndsey sat on a stone bench, the death note spread out in front of her. The rain was the perfect cover. There was no way anyone would be out here at 3AM.
She stared at her left index finger. The cut she'd made with a box cutter had already scabbed over. Three seconds later, the scab dropped off, revealing fresh pink skin underneath.
Five seconds after that, her skin was completely smooth, like nothing had ever happened.
She raised her hand toward the dim streetlight outside the gazebo. Her fingers were long and slender, her nails now a healthy pale pink instead of that old malnourished yellow.
She could see the veins on a leaf thirty yards away, and even hear a mouse rustling through the grass.
Her whole body felt light, like she'd dropped twenty pounds of dead weight.
The notebook flipped to the next page on its own.
It wasn't the wind. It was the paper moving by itself, writhing like a million tiny bugs crawling beneath the fibers. Blood-red words seeped out of the blank spaces, line by line, perfectly straight like they'd been printed, but with a kind of ancient, otherworldly handwriting.
It read: [Rule One: Steal the lifespan of the wicked to prolong your own life. Take an innocent life, and you'll lose double that from your own.
[Rule Two: Lifespan can be spent however you wish, on beauty, strength, or smarts, whatever you like.
[Rule Three: Kill a hundred people, and you'll be forced to inherit the reaper's mantle. All your emotions will be erased and you'll be doomed to eternal emptiness.]
Lyndsey stared at Rule Three for ages. She reached out, her fingertips hovering above the page, feeling a faint pull, like some invisible whirlpool spinning deep within the paper.
"So if I stop at ninety-nine, I won't become a reaper?" Lyndsey asked.
The blood-red words twisted and reshaped themselves instantly.
The reply read, [Are you sure?]
Lyndsey frowned, about to snap the notebook shut, when the temperature in the gazebo suddenly plummeted. Her breath turned to white mist, and a thin layer of frost crept across the stone bench.
The sound of rain vanished.
It wasn't that the rain had stopped. It was as if some unseen force had sealed it away. Lyndsey looked up and saw a figure perched on the eaves of the gazebo.
He wasn't quite a human.
Pale was the first word that came to her mind. From his build, he looked like a youth, dressed in an ancient-style black suit. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, the blue veins at his temples clearly visible.
But what really caught her attention were his eyes. They were pure black, no whites at all, like gateways to the void.
He had wings. Not the soft, white feathers of an angel, but black, bony wings, something between a bat and a predatory bird. When folded, they nearly wrapped him in darkness.
A single black feather floated down. The moment it touched the ground, the grass shriveled up and turned to black dust.
"Stop." His voice didn't come through the air. It vibrated inside her skull. "The last person who used the death note is still screaming in the void.
"He's been trapped there for three hundred years, ever since he killed his hundred and first victim: an old lady who once gave him a piece of bread."
Lyndsey's heart skipped a beat, but she didn't back away. Instead, she clutched the notebook even tighter. "Who are you?"
"Night." The youth dropped from the eaves, weightless as a feather. He hovered several inches above the ground, his black wings spreading just enough to block the only exit from the gazebo. "I'm your watcher, your curse, and your... potential.
"The death note chooses its own host." He raised his hand, and a writhing cloud of black mist gathered at his fingertips, making a faint, sobbing sound. "I'm nothing but a captive, condemned to witness it all."
Lyndsey stood up. She was a head shorter than Night, but there was no fear on her face as she looked up at him. "So your way of telling me to be kind is to scare me?"
Night tilted his head, a surprisingly human gesture that made him seem a little less otherworldly. He leaned in, and Lyndsey caught a scent, like a pine forest after a snowfall, but also like old blood.
He reached out, his ghostly fingers passing right through her shoulder, sending a bone-chilling cold through her. Then he pointed at her right hand.
"Look," he said.
Lyndsey looked down. On the tip of her right index finger, right where she'd written Kaycee's name, there was a faint ring of black lines, like ink bleeding into her skin, or a cursed tattoo.
"The reaper's mark has started," Night said, his voice dropping lower. "Every name you write, the ink will spread. Once it reaches your heart, you'll never feel the sun's warmth again, never taste sweetness, never..."
He paused, something flickering in those green eyes. "You'll never be able to cry again."
Lyndsey stared at the ring of black. It throbbed faintly, almost like a living thing.
"So, before I lose the ability to cry—" She looked up at Night and flashed him a smile, one that made his black wings shiver. "I've got things I need to take care of."