15. Where Death Wears Many Faces #3
“That’s what she said.”
“My mother gave us a supernatural loophole in the form of a haunted riddle. Very on-brand, actually.”
Mina sits across from me and pulls a notebook from beneath the table. Of course she has a séance notebook. Mina would bring office supplies to an apocalypse and ask whether anyone needed color-coded tabs.
“Let’s make a list,” she says.
“Of deaths?”
“Okay. Not as cheerful as I had hoped.”
“Is she saying that we go to a place where many people have died?”
I rub my temples. “What place has multiple faces of death? A cemetery?”
“Too obvious.”
“A hospital?”
“Lots of near-death. But the walls there definitely listen. They probably have a staff newsletter.”
“Where then?”
Mina taps the notebook with her pen. “Riddles from the dead are terrible. They always make sense exactly one minute too late.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It was not meant to be. It was meant to lower expectations and keep you safe.”
I look toward the cracked mirrors.
For the first time since the gallery, I feel something other than trapped.
Confused, yes.
Terrified, absolutely.
But also able to move.
The curse has rules. Rules mean edges. Edges mean there may be a way around them.
And if there is a place where death wears enough faces to make the walls forget how to listen, then maybe there is finally somewhere I can speak.
Hope is not soft.
People talk about it like a warm blanket or a candle in a window. Lovely images. Completely misleading.
Hope is teeth.
It is the reason I stand in Mina’s wrecked séance room with cracked mirrors at my feet, salt on my skirt, my dead mother’s riddle burning through my ribs, and think, Maybe.
Maybe the curse can be fooled.
Maybe silence is not the only way to survive.
Mina watches me from across the table, her notebook open with a phrase prominently highlighted: Where lovers die for an audience.
“The playhouse,” I say again.
“You said that already.”
“I’m testing whether it gets less terrifying.”
“And?”
“No. But it’s becoming more organized.”
“Low bar, but we’ll take it.”
I stand too quickly. The room tilts. Mina reaches for me, but I wave her off with all the dignity a woman can manage while covered in séance residue.
“I need to tell Dorian.”
Mina’s expression shifts carefully. “Tell him what?”
“The loophole. The playhouse. The false death idea. My mother. Thread Seers. All of it.”
The cracked mirrors seem darker. Not moving. No longer listening.
Still, my skin tightens.
Mina notices. “Maybe not at the station.”
“Right.” I glance at the walls. “Not there. Not in public.”
“Possibly not inside any building with history, plumbing, portraits, sentimental moldings, or judgmental fruit.”
“That narrows Everwilde to parking lots and one suspiciously ugly storage shed behind the bait shop.”
“The shed has vibes.”
“Everything has vibes.”
“Exactly. This town is exhausting.”
I pick up my phone.
Dorian’s name sits in my recent messages like a bruise.
I imagine calling him. His voice, controlled and tired, softening on my name despite everything. I imagine telling him I spoke to my mother’s spirit and received a riddle about death wearing many faces.
Then I imagine the walls leaning closer. The curse tasting the shape of his name in my mouth. The thread between us flaring bright enough for something hungry to see.
My hand shakes.
Mina’s voice gentles. “Fate.”
“I’m so tired of being afraid of sentences. You know how much I love them.”
“I know.”
“I’m a matchmaker. Words are half my job. The other half is aggressively interpreting body language from people who think ‘I’m fine’ is a personality.”
“Which is why your business cards should be larger.”
I laugh once, small and shaky.
Dorian would not laugh. He would say something dry about font size, then pretend not to be amused.
My chest aches. I want him so badly the want feels less like longing and more like weather.
But wanting him has become visible. And visible things are being targeted.
I open a text and type the most innocuous sentence I can: I found a loophole. I’m scared. Please meet me somewhere the walls can’t hear.
Too much. Too clear. Too dangerous.
I delete it.
Mina says nothing.
That is how I know she understands and hates it.
I try again.
Are you eating?
Absurd. Ordinary. Safe.
Maybe that is why it hurts.
I send it before I can talk myself out of it.
A minute passes.
Then two.
My phone buzzes.
Yes. Unfortunately, Kelly is supervising.
My breath catches.
Another message follows.
Are you?
There he is.
Not gone.
Not unreachable.
Not safe, but still there.
I type back:
Mina is threatening soup. I may survive.
His reply comes almost immediately.
Avoid chowder. Apparently it’s suspicious now.
A laugh breaks out of me.
Real this time.
Mina lifts an eyebrow. “Good?”
“No.” I press the phone to my chest. “But alive.”
The cracked mirrors lie dark around us. My mother’s words still hum in the air. Somewhere in Everwilde, a killer is turning fear into tools and love into bait.
But the curse has rules.
Rules have edges.
And tonight, ordinary feels like the only safe magic left.