“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.Fuckthat. 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 tostop 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 forgetforget-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!”
CHAPTER 25
CAT
There was nowhere to go but back to the room, this time with Tor. My emotions were a tangled mess of relief, fear, and Miz’s electric panic through the bond. The warm rain of his soul had turned to an icy downpour and hadn’t stopped in the hour we’d been back in our room, once again trapped by leverage the psycho siblings held over us. How the fuck did they get Peach? She was supposed to be safe with Hunger.
“Do you think Hunger is…?” I asked tentatively when I got out of the shower, the flannel of my duck pyjamas sitting soft against my skin.
“I’ve sent a message,” Death replied, sitting on the windowsill and watching Ford’s grounds. “To him and the rest of our friends. I highly doubt Violence has found a way to kill him for good, especially since he’s already dead, but if he used the subjects against Hunger, there’s a chance he might be hurt.”
“Peach might be hurt,” Misery said with wretched pain in his voice. He was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, the way I left him ten minutes ago. Tor sat beside him, stroking his back, a hardness to his sharp and beautiful features. “They might be killing her right now.”
