Chapter 24
TORMENT
Iresisted banging my head against the warped glass of the mirror when it showed me another random vision instead of my family. Hell, I’d happily see the frowning face of Neglect right now.
“Show me Cat,” I tried for the tenth time in the last few hours.
“No, not an actual cat,” I growled when the glass flickered and showed the interior of a different room.
Not the box room with its rounded walls that I’d spent too damn long staring at.
A different building, in a place where the sea was visible through a window opposite.
Unfamiliar, but not Darkmore Manor. Not wherever they’d brought me to, either.
A grey cat trotted across the broad stones that made up the floor, its tail high in the air and stomping gait full of importance and confidence.
“Hey, where are you going, kitty?” a familiar voice called.
Cruelty. I gnashed my teeth when she came into view, trailing lace from the wedding gown she never took off.
“Ha, caught you,” she said when she’d snatched the cat up off the floor, cuddling it to her chest despite its attempts to squirm free.
“You can’t run away, kitty,” she chided the animal as I snarled, my lip curled back from my teeth and pure hatred racing through my veins.
How the fuck dare she have a normal life, all picturesque and quaint and shit?
Although there was nothing quaint about the churning waves outside and the angle that suggested this was another fucking palace.
I tried to gauge if it was in Death’s domain, but it was impossible with the tiny glint of scenery I could see through the window.
The scent in the air was tropical—sunshine and ocean salt and lemons. Not helpful, either.
“You need to stay with me,” Cruelty said to the cat, her voice high and babying.
“We’re almost packed, then we’re leaving.
You’ll like that, won’t you? I’ll get you a big room in our new home, with scratching posts and as many toys as you want.
I just have to find the last Cruelty, get him to take back his job, and we can have the best life!
Just you and me, living happily ever after forever, with no stupid rules, no cruelty to sow, no death and pain and suffering, just happiness! ”
I narrowed my eyes, leaning closer to the glass.
It wasn’t possible for a previous death god to return to their position.
From what I knew—which wasn’t much—when we died like this, when the last seed of magic keeping us alive as a death god faded, we’d move into a new life.
But remember nothing that came before it.
If Cruelty thought it was possible, she was deluded.
But she was deluded. The last Cruelty… It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her mention him in these glimpses through the mirror, but it was the first I’d heard her hint at why she wanted to find him.
And a stone sank fast in my stomach when I remembered he wasn’t the only person she wanted to find, to the point of obsession.
“Fuck,” I grunted, the sound of my voice enough to make the vision swirl and dance away. When the ripples cleared from the mirror, it was to show a face pressed to the glass, eyes so bright they practically glowed and a grin hooked so wide it was like the Cheshire fucking cat.
“Jesus!” I yelled, startling into the back of the mirror.
“Hi, Tor!” Madness said happily. “Did you miss me?”
I inched forward a step. “Are you real?”
“There’s no faking this level of crazy,” he informed me proudly, then glanced over his shoulder at—I had to blink the sting from my eyes—Death, Cat, Miz, and Pain.
“You bastards took long enough,” I growled, mostly to cover up the strangling lump in my throat. They found me. Despite Cruelty’s and Violence’s taunts that they’d never find me where they’d stashed me, they actually did it. “Get me the fuck out of this thing.”
“That’s a slight problem,” Death said with that soft burr to his voice and the look in his eyes that told me I was screwed, and he was trying to soften the blow.
But Madness shook his head with a scoff. “No, it’s not. No problemo whatsoevo.”
“Are you okay?” Miz demanded, hoarsely enough that I knew his head had been a mess over me being trapped here. Cat was right behind him, the two of them rushing at the mirror as Madde pressed his palms against the spotted surface of the glass and—reached inside.
“How the fuck?” I blurted, but I didn’t struggle when the mad bastard grabbed my arms and pulled me through. The mirror fought, clinging to me like the hands of a hundred greedy ghosts, but then my head whipped forward on my neck, my feet scrambled to meet the floor, and I was free.
“I made a fancy potion,” Madde informed me.
“I’m okay now,” I breathed, answering Miz’s question. I opened my arms, and three bodies hit me at once. I would have shrugged Madde off usually, but he’d just freed me, so I was feeling charitable.
“Beautiful?” I wrapped my arm around her when she clung to my side, dropping a kiss first to the crown of her head, then to Miz’s wobbling bottom lip. “The last time I saw you… Are you okay?” I asked her, trying to shut out the sight of her empty, staring eyes.
“I’m okay now,” she echoed my words, squeezing me tighter. The scents of them all hit me with enough force to choke my throat. Peaches and honey and violets and burned sugar and leather.
I blinked the sheen from my eyes enough to lock them with Death’s, hating the apology there. Fuck that. He wasn’t to blame for any of this. “Get the fuck over here,” I rasped, a weight falling off my shoulders when he wrapped his arms around us all. “You too, lurker,” I said to Pain.
“Oh, I don’t want to get in the way,” he replied, shifting his weight, Converse shoes shuffling on the stone floor.
I tested my magic by pulling up a tendril—sore and tender like a bruise, but still there. I wasn’t powerless. The mirror had caged me, but not killed me, and not stolen my magic. I used the tendril to grip Pain’s arm and yank him into our hug pile.
“You’re Cat’s. You’re not in the fucking way,” I said, and that was that.
My legs were jellified and it kind of hurt to breathe, but it was the best damn hug of my life.
The second Miz tried to draw back, I grabbed the front of his shirt and dragged his face to mine, kissing him deep and possessive and hot.
I didn’t care that I was out of breath; I cupped Cat’s face and kissed her hard, my fear and desperation showing in every rough stroke of my tongue against hers, every desperate taste.
I couldn’t bring myself to stop until I knew her head must be spinning.
I took a breath—one—and grabbed a fistful of Death’s braids to claim a kiss that seared my skin and lit up every cell in my body.
“Fuck I missed you all,” I said breathlessly, not ashamed to admit I clung to them.
“We missed you, too,” Madness replied and grabbed my face, planting a smacking kiss on my mouth.
“Right.” Why did I taste sardines and jam? “Thanks for that.”
Madde winked. “You’re welcome.”
“Pain, you want a kiss?” I asked wryly.
He gasped, fluttering a hand at his face. “Little ol’ me?”
“You’re blushing,” Cat said with a laugh—a little quiet and raw for my liking, but now I was out of that damn mirror, I could soothe her anxiety in the way I knew best: with my head buried between her thighs.
“It’s hot in here,” Pain protested. “I—” He went deadly still, all levity leaving his expression, and I reacted at the same moment the others did. Death swept Cat into his arms and Miz and I took up protective positions. Madness summoned a whole horde of darkness, and I saw why a moment later.
Violence stood in the entrance to the small mirror room, his broad face expressionless as always. I’d only ever seen the fucker crack a smile when he was torturing someone.
“I’m not going back in that fucking mirror,” I warned him.
“But—” Madness shook his head. “It makes no sense. The potion should have made us undetectable for six hours and—ohhhh. I forgot forget-me-nots. Shit.”
“How do you forget forget-me-nots?” Miz hissed, his expression icy as he watched Violence. “It’s right there in the name.”
“Go!” I barked, sinking into my power to whisk us away into the darkness and take us to safety.
“You could do that,” Violence said with the coolness of a damn serial killer. “But you’d be leaving your rat behind.” At our blank looks, he added, “Your otter. Your beaver.”
Madness gasped at the same time it hit me. “He has Peach!”