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“Well, so are you, and you do okay!” Honey complained.
“Thanks,” I said, my brow knotting, “I think.”
“Oh!” she said suddenly, digging through her cardigan pocket. “I got you this as an apology gift.”
She held out a yellow pen balanced on both her hands like she was bestowing me with a sword, and I gave her a strange look but accepted the apology gift—and grinned when I saw it was covered in mallards.
“Okay, you’re forgiven,” I said, and laughed when she groaned and splayed across the table, barely avoiding knocking over her cereal bowl.
“Thank fuck for that. I knew the duck pen would work.”
“Ducks will always earn my forgiveness,” I agreed, tucking it into my pocket and startling when my alarm went off on my phone. “Fuck, ten minutes until my first lecture. I better go get my bag. Thank you for the pen.” I dragged her into a hug when she stood too, and said, “We’re good, Honey, don’t worry. I still love you.”
She sagged. “I still love you, too, Cat. Even if you haven’t told me anything about your three hot husbands today.”
“Later,” I promised. And god, did I have a lot to tell her.
I ran upstairs, searching every person I passed for Alastor Carmichael, boneless with relief when I didn’t run across him. That was one thing I hadn’t worked out how to tell Honey yet. She was enamoured with him, and I needed to warn her what kind of person he was, but how did you tell your bestie her crush had thrown you up against a mausoleum and threatened you?
Coat thrown on and bag hanging over my shoulder, I locked my door and ran back downstairs, giving a wide berth to a girl with voluminous straw-coloured hair and freckles who cast a spell in the hallway. She was currently making a plant pot float, and I wasn’t keen to get levitated next.
Getting out of Lawrence Hall unscathed was like a slalom course, moving around cursed student after cursed student, but I made it out—and skidded back before I could step on the paw of the tiny grey tabby kitten limping across the path.
“Oh,” I breathed, kneeling, my heart skipping when I realised what I’d thought were stripes were actually streaks of blood. “Oh no, baby,” I cooed, very carefully scooping up the kitten and cradling it to my chest. I meant to take it to the laboratory building where I knew Professor Palmerston—part time teacher, part time surgeon—would be, but the second I held the kitten to my chest, a deep clang went through my soul.
It throbbed like a sick heartbeat, like the pulse of magic I felt when Nightmare killed, and I jolted forward a step before I could process the intention. I glanced down and cried out when I saw my hands were empty.
There was never a kitten. Nightmare had set a trap, and I’d walked directly into it.
CHAPTER THIRTY
CAT
Light struggled to reach the ground here, the dense tree canopy encouraging the darkness that ebbed and flowed around me. It was the same thriving dark I’d seen from Death, Miz, and Tor, but where that had never felt malevolent, this darkness wanted to hurt me and would revel in it.
I’d tried to speak, tried to choke out Death’s name and pray names had power like in old fairy tales, but I couldn’t open my mouth or choke out even a gasp.
I felt so stupid for walking directly into a trap, for playing into her hands. Terror caught me in its icy grip that Nightmare had learned enough about me to know I’d instantly pick up the kitten and try to help it. She’d used that against me—the part of me that wanted to care for vulnerable animals, that wanted to nurse them back to health. She’d taken the one good part of me that anxiety had never touched, and made me resent it.
“There you are,” Nightmare’s sultry voice called through the trees, and there she was, standing in a clearing. Her golden skin and long red hair were dappled with sunlight, darkness gathered around the skirt and train of her black lace dress. I couldn’t bear to look at her unnatural beauty, but with her curse in my veins and whatever she’d done with the kitten, I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Tears gathered, burned, and streaked down my cheeks. I didn’t even have enough agency to flinch when she neared, the train of her dress gliding over the ground. She brushed the tears off my cheeks with sharp-nailed thumbs.
“No need to cry, my terror,” she soothed, holding my face in her hands. Inside, I screamed, fought, and threw up, but outwardly I did nothing. Stood there like a sacrificial lamb. “I won’t hurt you.”
She smoothed ragged strands of white hair from my face and said, “I only need one little thing from you. An act of loyalty, a tiny test of how amenable you are to my commands.”
No, I hissed, screamed, pleaded. No. Please. I don’t want to do anything.
She smiled, her face so unnaturally beautiful and blood-chilling at the same time, the iris of her white eye leaking blood steadily down her face. “I just need you to get Darya Henderson alone and bring her to me. Use any means necessary to get her here. You can do that, can’t you, Cat?”
I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I wasn’t going to hurt Darya; she was my friend.
I tried to wrench away from Nightmare, tried to spit in her face, to snarl, scream, and curse her a thousand times, but all I did was stand in place, my face unchanging, lips utterly silent.
And when Nightmare stepped back, her nails dragging along my cheek, so sharp they left tiny cuts, I found myself turning. My feet lifted one by one until I left the forest, crossed the campus, and stopped finally under a tree outside Milton Hall.
I waited, as still as a statue, until lectures ended and students arrived, and then the expressionless mask of my face changed, twisting into distress. Tears overflowed my eyes again. I didn’t choose to cry, didn’t choose to race out of the tree’s shadow and grasp Darya’s arm. I felt the texture of wool against my fingertips, but I was distant, any control I had overruled by Nightmare’s command.
