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I winced at the thought of the stern, grey-haired white man I’d glimpsed during orientation. “That secret is safe with me. I’m not chancing risking his wrath.”
“Smart girl. Now go on inside, get dry and warm. I’ll have your car brought in.”
“Thank you,” I said profusely. “You’re a life saver. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
She batted me away with a smile. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
I hurried up the path towards Lawrence Hall, where my room was dry and semi-warm, and was immensely glad I hadn’t run into Emerson Radclyffe instead of Carmilla. I got the sense he wouldn’t be helping me tow my car so much as getting me written up for disorderly behaviour.
Lawrence Hall wasn’t home yet, but relief still hit me when I pushed open the heavy door and made my way past the breakfast hall—empty—and winced at the clock on the wall that must have been wrong because there was no way it was past eleven.
No wonder I was hungry.
With no distractions, my mind wandered back to the party, to Nightmare and the curse and the death gods I was apparently bound to. Married to? I’d been too big a coward to ask how exactly they defined the word bride. Was I engaged to be married, or had the curse already signed the certificate?
They’d been equally sweet and cagy, upfront and secretive. They knew Nightmare—I saw Miz flinch at her name, at her proximity. No way had they told me the full truth, but maybe I should have been glad of that. The bit of truth they had told me was horrifying.
I was cursed.
We were all cursed—Honey, Duncan, Alastor, Darya, and everyone else who’d been there. Byron ran out because his sister called, and I prayed that meant he was spared. Otherwise he’d, what, become a vampire? Hunger for blood?
This is so fucked up.
I might have dismissed it all as bullshit if I hadn’t felt the change, the discord within me. And if Honey’s words didn’t ring, over and over, through my head.
My fur must have been soaked. Her fur, like she was already thinking like the cat she’d dressed as for Halloween.
“Fuck,” I hissed, because I needed to say it out loud, because the truth was so bad I couldn’t keep the expletive in my head.
I trudged up the steps to our floor, my chest so tight it was like Miz had never wiped out all my anxiety on the ride to Death’s domain.
Instead of continuing to my room, I hovered outside Honey’s, my hand curled in a fist to knock. But my courage deserted me. I had to tell her. She needed to know. But I didn’t want to speak any of it out loud. She’d think I was mad. All the things the gods had told me…
But they still hadn’t told me where they tied into Nightmare’s plan, why they were interested in me in the first place. Because I was their bride? Or because they were in league with Nightmare?
The answer seemed obvious.
I lifted my hand and knocked softly on Honey’s door.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CAT
The irony wasn’t lost on me. My name was Cat, and yet Honey was the one curled up in a pile of fleece blankets on her bed, kneading the fluffiest blanket while she purred.
Purred.
I froze in the doorway, just staring.
“So, uh, this is a thing,” I said, blinking. I quickly shut the door behind me, unable to take my eyes off my best friend. She was purring, kneading the fleece like cats made their little biscuits, and when she lifted her head to look at me, not only did the purring ramp up in volume, but her eyes changed. Her slit pupils widened, and a big grin crossed her face.
“Cat!” she cried happily, arching off the bed in a decidedly feline stretch before rushing across the room to head bump my shoulder. I staggered back. “Where did you go? I tried to find you, but your scent was faded so I knew you hadn’t been back. And—you’re all wet.” She made a face and let go of me, shaking out her hand to try and get the droplets off.
“I…” I looked at her, at her slit-pupiled eyes, and burst into horrible, gut-wrenching tears.
Between sobs, I told her everything, from what happened while she was drunk at the party to just now, Tor bringing me home via his massive, shadow-dark horse.
By the time I finished, she was no longer purring and her eyes were so wide I saw myself reflected in them. She didn’t have whiskers, fur, or claws, but her mannerisms and behaviour screamed cat.
