Chapter 29
Misery
The only positive to visiting Hunger’s estate was seeing my girl again.
“I know, I know,” I murmured as Peach squirmed in my arms, talking up a storm in her cute noises, giving me hell for leaving her. “I was away too long. And you can’t go home for a while yet, but I’m here now.”
“She chewed up my best chaise,” Hunger complained, his voice as deep as thunder but warm where thunderstorms were ice cold. “I’m thinking about billing you.”
“Bill me, I don’t give a shit,” I replied. “She’s worth it, aren’t you, my baby?” I cooed to Peach, my heart squeezing when she threw her head back and squeaked out a wahoo!
After losing Cat, getting her back as a goddess, every ensuing fight at her side, and now this—Death fading away from us and keeping that knowledge to himself like the prideful, protective bastard he was—one yahoo from Peach and my face crumpled.
“She also pissed in my Armani loafers,” Hunger went on with his itemised bill, his golden-tan arms crossed over his chest, face chiselled and disapproving, with a kindness he could never quite banish from his eyes. “And chewed up my new suit jacket. I paid a fortune on that.”
I arched a brow, nuzzling Peach’s head.
Hunger sighed, his gaze flattening. “Fine. I abused my powers and liberated it from a store.”
“That’s called stealing,” Tor remarked with forced cheer as he kicked his dirty boots against the front step and marched into the house, a weight to his shoulders that had begun to lighten now heavier than ever. Cat died in front of our eyes, and now we were watching Death waste away.
“It was on the sale rack, Torment. I couldn’t just leave it there.”
“You and your obsession with labels,” Tor scoffed, coming across the tastefully decorated room in Hunger’s manor house to scratch Peach’s head. “I hope you didn’t miss us too much.”
“I didn’t miss you at all,” Hunger drawled.
Tor extended his middle finger in slow motion. “I was clearly talking to Peach.” He bent over me to plant a kiss on her furry head. “So where’s this summoning circle of yours?”
“It’s not mine,” Hunger replied airily, if it was possible for someone with a thunder-deep voice to speak airily. “It belongs to the domain. I’m just its guardian.”
“Don’t be a pretentious douchebag.”
Hunger’s eyes flared, his head rearing back in offense, but he paused abruptly. “What exactly is a douche?”
“Don’t look at me,” I said when Tor frowned at me. “You’re the one who said it.”
“I heard some cool guys in leather jackets saying it ten years ago in New Jersey,” he replied defensively. “How am I supposed to know what a douche is?”
“Handsome, I presume, since it’s referring to me,” Hunger cut in, eyeing a smear of dirt Tor had tracked in. I had a feeling a full house clean would find its way onto that itemised list.
“A douche is something you use to clean your ass,” Cat said, to seismic shock, and Hunger’s abject horror.
“You’re calling me a rectal cleaner?” he demanded. “Worse! The receptacle of a rectal cleaner. I’ve never once been so insulted in my existence.”
Tor pinched the bridge of his nose. “I apologise from the very bottom of my heart. You’re not a douchebag. You’re a dickhead. That’s a knob that grows from your forehead, in case it was ambiguous. Can you show me the summoning circle now? Please.”
“Well.” Hunger harrumphed. “You’re a clitorishead. Far less impressive than a dickhead.”
“Actually, clits have far more nerve endings,” Madness said, slinging an arm over Cat’s shoulders and beaming at us. “They can come a bunch of times unlike boring mortal cocks, and they can’t take down a fully grown adult with a single hit unlike a dick.”
“I dislike you intensely,” Hunger hissed, his brows forming flat lines over dark chocolate eyes.
“Aww.” Madde pouted, flinging himself at Hunger and wrestling the taller man into a hug. “Don’t lie. You lurrrve me.”
“I am as fond of you as a rash on a bollock.”
“Ha! I taught you that word.” Madde grinned. To Cat, he said, “He totally likes me.”
“Yeah,” Cat agreed with the ghost of a smile. My heart faltered, then sank. Pain was outside with Death, trying to mitigate his suffering with one of his many potions and concoctions. That was all we could do now his decay had progressed so far—mitigate.
Hunger’s irritation softened into something warm and sympathetic when his gaze alighted on Cat. “Judgement. How are you adjusting to your second life?”
She shrugged. “I’ll be a lot better when we’ve got a cure for Death.”
“I’ll escort you to the summoning circle,” he offered, genteel manners replacing the scowling irritation we inspired in him. “It’s just beyond the grounds of my home.”
Cat’s expression killed me. So did the hollow pain I felt through the bond, nothing like her usual warmth.
“Here,” I said, handing Peach over. “You need her as much as I do.”
Cat leaned up to kiss my jaw, Peach’s curious stare putting a mild smile on her face. It lasted all of two seconds before reality swept back in like the tide of a storming ocean.
Together, we followed Hunger through the alternatingly manicured and wild grounds of his estate, to where the next item on Cat’s list awaited us.