“Grim, are you daft—?” Flora started, but much to my surprise, Johann interrupted.
“Let him pass, Flora,” said the old man.
“If it’s all the same to you, Johann, I’d like answers out of him fir—”
“I said, let him pass.”
Flora frowned and peered up at me. Then she quirked a brow. “She’s the soul, isn’t she?”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to. The answer was obvious. Flora was just digging, trying to find out what had driven me to this desperate move. She and Johann knew me better than anyone—and as well as anyone could. Both understood I wasn’t the desperate sort.
Yet here I was. Nailing my own coffin shut and inviting them to a front-row viewing of my soon-to-be-flaming pyre.
“Flora,” grunted Johann, an uncharacteristic note of warning in his weathered voice.
Finally, with a scowl, Flora made peace with the fact that she wasn’t going to get anything out of me, and doing as Johann instructed, she stepped aside.
Johann wasn’t exactly the “boss” of the Hallowed Halls—we didn’t have one of those. But out of the four of us, he presented as the oldest. Hewasthe wisest. And the authority his perceived seniority instilled in him was one we all respected—and heeded.
Most of the time at least.
I hadn’t lately. I’d betrayed his trust, too. Flora’s as well. So maybe the only reason Johann wasn’t giving me shit about this forbidden act was because he’d already given up on me. Knew my time was limited now, just as Cedric had said.
Maybe he evenwantedCedric to take my place.
I didn’t blame Johann for that stance. Couldn’t.
Didn’t mean his indifference didn’t sting.
I carried Helena to my statue, into the designated hand of which I called forth my scythe. The weapon materialized out of the ether, triggering the mechanisms that revealed the descending spiral staircase to my underground quarters.
“I found out the way,” Flora called to me—words that had me pausing halfway down the secret passage and glancing back to her.
By “the way” she must mean she’d done what I’d requested andfound an alternate route into the realm of the White Basin—one that bypassed the Basin itself.
“I appreciate your efforts,” I told her, “but… it’s too late now. I’ll talk to White myself when he comes.”
“Too late?” said Flora, her small shoulders dropping, voice sinking with an unexpected sadness. “Because of that dunderhead Cedric?”
“Flora,” called Johann. “Leave Grim to his business and come here. I wish to speak to you.”
Flora opened her mouth to say something back to Johann, but then, thinking better of it, she snapped her teeth shut and started reluctantly away.
Then, with Helena cradled in my dead arms, I descended the corkscrew stairs into the pure and all-encompassing blackness of my abode.
20HELENA
It was the silence that woke me.
Absolute and enveloping, it swelled around me, devoid of even the faintest ticking of a clock, hum of a fridge, murmur of wind, or rush of rain.
I opened my eyes slowly, disturbed even more by the absence of the background noises that usually swirled around my apartment complex—the swishing of traffic, the occasional blare of a horn or the moan of a siren, the trundling of a train…
“Mmph.” The murmur escaped me as I batted tired lids, eyes met with a blaze of crimson, cheek cushioned by plush softness.
But… I certainly didn’t own any velvet upholstered furniture. And even if I had, it wouldn’t have been the bright and unmistakable hue of fresh blood.
Slowly, the soreness in my limbs waking up right along with me, I pushed myself up from the huge Gothic-style couch someone had laid me on. Straight across from me, my pumpkin purse (looking rather worse for wear given that I’d used it as a weapon) sat in the center of a black and low-to-the-floor coffee table.
