Chapter 35
Misery
“You don’t have to,” Cat said instantly, her voice pitched low and her hands coming up to frame my face. Her palms were warm, comforting, and a knot unwound from my chest. “We have no idea who this woman is, and I don’t care how nice her kitchen is, I don’t trust her alone in a room with you.”
“The clinically insane one can stay, too,” the gruff woman called from within the blue house.
Cat’s jaw clenched, but I saw the smile she fought at Madde’s wild laughter and victorious fist pump.
“It’s your choice, Miz,” she said, a thumb stroking my cheek.
I loved her touch on my face, craving the reminder that I had her back.
Those minutes we’d lost her were as long as years, and part of me still couldn’t move on from them.
And if Violence got another goddamn inch of control over the domain, I wouldn’t just lose her—I’d lose everyone. Everything.
So I eased Cat’s hands from my face, kissed each palm, and said, “It’s fine. I can handle myself against one woman.”
Inside, barked laughter echoed.
“Come on.” I hooked my arm around Madde’s neck and hauled him back into the blue house. And I couldn’t fathom for one moment what the woman could want with me.
“This better be good,” I told her, the back of my neck crawling when the door flung shut on a ribbon of magic brighter and sharper than any I’d seen before.
“Oh, it’s good,” she promised, grabbing a whistling teakettle and pouring herself a cup of what smelled like peppermint. None for us, I noticed. Maybe it was an intimidation tactic. Either way, it pissed me off.
Madde put his hand in the air, and the woman’s expression flattened.
“What?” she grumbled.
Madde gave her his best smile. “May I have some tea, pretty please?”
“You may not.”
“May I enquire why?”
“You may not.”
Madde turned to me. “I don’t like her.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” she said, taking a seat at the table in the middle of the room, a landscape of rolling hills painted across its surface. I looked at it absently and then darted forward like someone had grabbed me by the throat.
“That’s…”
“Ford House,” she agreed. “Sit.”
I sat, considering the woman. I’d never seen her before.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t a disciple of Nightmare.
Cruelty and Violence could have easily smuggled her into the domain and given her this house.
But… the surface of the table was scratched, worn back to the wood in places. She’d lived here a long time.
“Who are you?”
“Depends what question you’re asking,” she replied, frustratingly mysterious. “One question’s very hush hush, and I doubt you’ve even thought to ask it. Maybe you never will. But the question you’re asking is easy enough to answer. I’m Joanna Ford.”
The name was a fist swung into my chest with enough power to crack bone. It hit my heart and stopped it. My head swam. Joanna. Little Joanna, the youngest of the Ford family. My family.
“Uh.” Madde gave her a weird look. “Who?”
“Joanna,” I rasped, pulling out a seat and dropping into it. “I thought Nightmare killed you.”
The woman—Joanna, all grown up—shrugged. “She gave it a damn good try.”
“But you’re—” Alive. Exceedingly powerful. “How?”
An enigmatic smile curled her mouth, cutting smile lines into her face. “That’s the other question, which I won’t answer because it’s none of your beeswax.”
Madde sat beside me and rested his elbows on the table, his chin propped on both hands. “What if we asked really, really nicely?”
“No.” She used a bright stream of magic to knock his elbows down. “Now tell me what you know of my daughter, and I’ll tell you what I know of Violence.”
“But—how are you here?” I blurted, unable to get beyond it. There was no lie in her eyes, in her voice. This was Joanna. The last time I saw her she was four and she was dead. Murdered like the rest of the Ford family. Nightmare’s doing, or my own under her control. I thought of Rosalind and—
My whole body jerked. “If Cat spoke to your sister in a dream—”
“Rosalind,” Joanna agreed, slurping at her tea. “Why she’s spoken to that girl and not her own sister, I’ll never know.”
“Maybe it’s because Cat died at Ford, too,” Madde supplied, tapping the chimney of Ford House on the table. “Stranger things have connected two spirits across worlds. Do you believe that my lioness spoke to her then?”
“I do,” Joanna replied, and considered Madde. “I like when a man can acknowledge a woman as a greater predator.” She reached back and snagged a tin painted with swirls of clouds and sky. “Have a cookie, Madness.”
“Don’t mind if I doodle.” Madde eagerly opened the tin and helped himself.
“I don’t know anything about your daughter,” I told Joanna with a wince. “Until today, I didn’t know you had a daughter. You’re just a baby in my memory. But I’ll help you save her. We all will.”
“I don’t expect help,” Joanna muttered.
“Tough shit,” Madde said around a chocolate covered biscuit. “You’re getting it.” He glanced at me. “She’s your family.” I nodded in confirmation. “And we’re brother-husbands, which makes her my family, too.”
“We are not brother-husbands,” I protested.
“I say we go get your daughter, murder Violence, and then all go get ice cream sundaes.”
Joanna shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”
“But we need to weaken him first. He keeps stealing too much magic from the domain, and my lioness is working on a way to steal it back.” Madde gave her a hopeful look. “You don’t have a weapon that can kill him, do you?”
“Better.” Joanna smiled. Sharp and dangerous. This was not the sweet little girl I’d known hundreds of years ago. This was a woman who’d won her life through battles and ferocity. “I can show you how to do it yourself.”