Chapter 34
Cat
“Cat?” Death urged Mort closer, sweeping down to the cobbles in a plume of dark magic.
I didn’t slow. “I had a dream, and the woman in it told me to go here. It’s hard to explain.”
Mostly because I could have hallucinated the entire thing, and there was nothing inside the house but cobwebs and fog. But if there really was an immortal woman here, and she could help us fight Violence, it would be worth knocking on the door.
“It could be a trap,” Death began, angling himself closer, an arm of shadow brushing my wrist but unable to stop me raising my knuckles to the cornflower blue door and rapping a quick beat.
I expected silence. Instead:
“Bugger off,” a belligerent voice snarled from inside.
“Um,” I began, but mentally rapped my own wrist. I was a death goddess, I was Judgement. So I straightened my back and reached for the door with a slow tendril of magic, winding around the handle, reaching through the narrow seams between the lock, depressing tumblers until the door swung open.
“I have news—”
A bright green streak of magic slammed into my throat and swung me around like a ragdoll. My back collided with a kitchen wall, rattling the three flying ducks hanging above my head.
“About your daughter,” I finished in a croak, pulling a ball of magic from my core and driving it into the glowing power around my throat.
I’d never seen magic like it. Not smoke, not shadow, not even the swirling fog that doused the whole domain.
This was… verdant. And it glowed like a lightning bolt.
It didn’t hurt where it touched me, but the sheer power coming from it made my heart quicken and my skin itch with awareness of how overpowered I was.
“My daughter?” the gruff voice demanded, and a figure peeled away from the mural on the wall. She literally stepped out of the painting of a sunlit glade, transmuting from paint to woman in seconds.
My mouth hung open. I stared, wondering if the bunny rabbits and deer in the glade would walk out of the wall, too.
“What’s the matter with you, girl?” the woman huffed. “Never seen someone walk out of a mural before?”
“No,” I answered, my voice betraying my shock, my awe as I stared at the woman. She was East Asian, and she must have been sixty years old, with honeyed skin, a cloud of silver-white hair on her head, and lines around her mouth. Her narrowed eyes were green. The same impossible shade as her magic.
She didn’t look immortal, but she did look like she’d happily bray me over the head with a rolling pin.
“I can’t say I have,” I finished, staring but unable to stop staring.
“Where’s my daughter?” Her glowing magic released me, and I told myself it was because my death magic ball had beaten it into submission, even if I knew that was false.
She stalked towards me and reached for my shoulders to grab me the manual way, but Tor inserted himself between us, and my husbands spilled into the small, homely kitchen, looking like a mob of criminals among the bright cupboards and cheerful decor.
“I, uh.” All my confidence fled when I realised how insane I was going to sound. “I spoke to your sister in a dream.”
“You spoke to my sister.” Her eyes narrowed further, and she shoved her hands in the front pockets of the tabard she wore over a raspberry coloured cardigan. “Impressive, since she’s dead.”
“She wanted me to tell you your daughter is in danger. That Violence has her.”
A low rumble came from my left and I glanced up into Tor’s face. “You never told us this.”
“I thought I’d made it all up, but then I saw the blue house and…” I waved my hands around. “Maybe I’m not crazy, and it was real.”
“If my sister really did speak to you from beyond the grave,” the woman said warily, “why has she never spoken to me?”
“I don’t know. I actually know nothing, except your daughter’s in danger and you have to help us fight Violence. Please,” I added.
She scrutinised us for a moment, her mouth thin. “No.”
“No?” I jerked forward, but Tor pulled me back. “But Violence is amassing power to kill us all, and this entire place is going to be wrecked by him. We need—”
“I could not give two shits what you need. My daughter will be fine, she’s a big girl.”
Her words struck me right on the solar plexus, and I had to lock my body against a flinch. This was my first experience with a mother, and she didn’t care at all that her daughter was the captive of Violence. Would my own mother have been so apathetic to learn what I’d been through?
Right on the heels of that hurt was rage at the injustice.
“No,” I barked, shrugging off Tor’s hold and advancing on the imposing woman. “Actually, you don’t get to abandon your daughter when she’s in need. You’re her mum and you’re supposed to care that she’s tied up somewhere, being beaten and tortured by that monster.”
When the woman blinked, verdant fire filled her eyes. “You have no right to tell me what to do in my own house. And for your information, I was just saying that to get rid of you so I can go and save her myself. You’ll only get in the way. Like you’re doing right now,” she added.
Her mouth opened for another barb when Madde moved forward to defend me, and Miz followed him in a blaze of pale hair and protective rage.
And the woman went absolutely still. I wasn’t sure she breathed at all as she stared at Miz.
“We should go,” he told me, unaware of the mannequin-still woman staring at him like she’d seen a ghost. “We’re on a countdown, remember?”
I knew that. If Violence found the failsafe stone before we could use it to summon the spirits from the mortal realm, we were fucked. But something strange was happening here.
I laid my hand on Miz’s arm, peering around him at the white-haired woman. She was a shade or two paler than she’d been, and only now blinked, shaking her head hard. “You know him, don’t you?” I said, frowning between her and my husband.
Miz had noticed her attention—she’d yet to pull her stare away—but the tilt of his head and the furrowed lines of his brow told me the recognition didn’t go both ways.
“Not as Misery,” the woman muttered, her expression souring. “Everyone get the hell out of my house, or I’ll start firing magic up your backsides.”
I shrugged and turned. Well, it was worth a shot, and at least she knew about her daughter now, even if she wouldn’t help us. We’d wasted half an hour, but we could still reach the gates and the summoning stone before Violence.
The cool air hit my face, making me aware of how warm it had been inside.
“Not you,” the woman said, her voice a crack through the silence of shuffling feet and the low whisper of wind through fog. She was staring at Misery, her mouth set, arms crossed over her chest. “If you want my help, you can stay.”