Page 21 of All Hallows Trick (Sick and Twisted #3)
CHAPTER TWENTY
CAT
I hid the note between a copy of Aesop’s Fables and the Kama Sutra in the bedside table, but I felt the burn of those words all night. I could barely sleep, my heart refusing to slow down, my body too wound up to relax.
When I woke up the next morning, my head pounded and my mood was brittle, ragged. Listening to Madde chatter about anything and everything over breakfast had me grinding my teeth before I forced them open to choke down another mouthful of coffee. It was my favourite, and he must have gone to Earth to get it, but I couldn’t summon the will to care.
Your husband is dying, but I can save him. Meet me at Death’s garden. Tomorrow. 8PM.
Who? I rubbed my tired eyes, clutching my coffee in my other hand. Everything was so fucked up that I didn’t even know who the note meant. Misery—or Death? Another street had begun to slip away overnight, just vanishing into the blank nothingness that was eating the realm, and I knew it weakened Death every time. I’d watched him obsessively last night after I convinced Honey to expand our girl’s night to include the guys. I’d watched them all, searching for signs of illness and decay. Tor still held himself stiffly, and I told myself it was just bruises but I couldn’t know for sure. Miz was hiding how bad he really was; that was the thing that messed with my head. I knew he kept experiencing flashes of pain, and even the wisps of magic he had before were gone, but I could tell there was more to it.
Who was dying? And who sent the note?
I went over and over it all day, my mind running in circles. It could be Nightmare trying to lure me out, but she couldn’t get into the domain. If she could, I knew damn well she’d have marched through the gates already and killed us all. It could have been one of her followers, but if they were setting up a trap, they’d say to meet at Ford’s End, not the castle.
It was someone from this realm, someone who wanted to meet in secret, mysterious, maybe even elusive. And someone close enough to us to know one of my husbands was sick.
Your husband is dying, but I can save him.
It was either a glaring trap, and I’d be a fool to walk into it, or someone was trying to help us. But I couldn’t take the chance it was a trap. I wasn’t an idiot. If I went to the garden alone, I’d be murdered, or worse. I didn’t think there was much worse than turning into a monster perfectly content to slaughter my loved ones, but every time I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did. I wasn’t keen to reach my next level of suffering. The smartest thing would be to ignore the note.
Well, the smartest thing would be to show someone, but I couldn’t. I kept it tucked away in the bedside drawer and told no one. Virgil knew something was wrong; he kept trying to get me to talk, stubbornly refusing to budge from my side until I gave him something.
“I hate this,” I hissed after an hour of coddling. “I hate what I am now, and we still don’t have more of the antidote.” Madde’s master scientist was working on it, but it was taking too long and we had three vials left. Three.
Virgil had sighed and pulled me into a tight hug. He’d said only two words, “I know.” They were enough to make guilt scythe through my stomach. I didn’t like lying or keeping secrets. I didn’t even want to admit to myself why I was keeping it a secret.
And if Virgil followed me around for most of the afternoon, Madde did the opposite. After breakfast, he avoided me like I was infectious, leaving a room the moment I entered it. It hurt, piercing the vulnerable parts of me that were already too tender.
“He regrets it,” I said in a small voice, my eyes burning as Miz pulled me into his side. The two of us sat on the cerise sofa in the plant-dominated sitting room at the back of the house, my laptop open in front of me with a passing attempt at coursework. I couldn’t concentrate, my mind fixed on those four words, over and over and over. Your husband is dying.
Miz squeezed my hip. “Who regrets what?”
“Madde,” I said through my swollen throat, my snappish attitude from the morning turning to heartache. “He regrets being with me last night. He’s been avoiding me all day.”
“Cat, that man is obsessed with you.” Misery tucked a strand of colourless hair behind my ear. “I guarantee he doesn’t regret anything. He’s probably just reacting to…”
I glanced away, pretending to read the information on my laptop screen. “To what?”
“To how you’ve been all day. You’re troubled, my universe, and we can all feel it.”
I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I don’t mean to… to…” I waved a hand to encompass everything. “I’m just tired of pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. I’m scared, Miz. You’re getting weaker, Death’s pretending he’s fine, and Tor’s acting like he isn’t every bit as afraid as I am. Nothing is okay.”
Miz held me tighter, his lips feathering over my temple, so warm and sweet that he couldn’t possibly be dying. “It will be. We just need to get stronger and—”
“And take the block off your magic?” I asked. Pleaded. I locked gazes with him and hated the hesitance and pain darkening his golden eyes, pinching his brow.
“It’s not as easy as that, Cat. I wish it was but…I don’t even know how to remove it. And if it can be done, there will be risks. Not to mention…”
I turned, crawling into his lap and holding him with bruise-tight fingers. The scent of him surrounded me, snow-wreathed violets filling my lungs. Every time I breathed him in, there was a little voice in the back of my mind asking if it would be the last time. I cupped his face in my hands, fingers tracing his features, memorising the sensation of his warm skin against my fingertips.
I paused at the curl of dark ink above his collar, tentatively tracing the line. “This is new.”
Unlike Tor’s tattoos which appeared on his body by death magic, telling the story of his torment and that of others around him, Misery’s ink was intentional and done by hand. His hand.
“Show me,” I asked softly, curling my fingers in the collar of his shirt. He’d been wearing more casual clothes lately, loose white T-shirts with jeans or sweats, like he didn’t have the energy left to micromanage every last detail of his appearance like he used to. I’d noticed it but not pointed it out because it hurt. There were other things too, like his hair was tied back every day and not as glossy as before, he barely ate when he used to indulge in sweets daily, his posture had slumped, and he seemed… tired. All the time.
“I needed it marked on me like the others,” he admitted in a hoarse voice, not stopping me as I gently pulled his collar away from his skin. I recognised it instantly. I’d had dreams of that knife, had been haunted by it since the night I saw it drive into my best friend’s heart. “Like my other crimes.”
“It wasn’t—”
“My fault, I know,” Miz cut me off, his voice gentle. He wound a lock of my hair around his finger, his expression contemplative and miserable. “But I still killed him, and I needed it marked on me. It’s a story of my life, Cat, both good and bad. I won’t forget what I did to him. What I could do again if my magic is unbound.”
My heart hurt. So that was why he resisted the idea. “I don’t want to lose you, Miz. I can’t—don’t make me live without you. Don’t.”
My eyes stung fiercer as he pulled me into his arms, my head resting on his shoulder, his scent a reassuring mist all around me. I’d never get enough of this, of him. Even just the thought of losing him made me flinch, a weight crushing my chest.
“I won’t,” he promised solemnly. But I didn’t think he could promise that. All he could really do was hold me and give me the time he had now, in this moment, so that’s what he did, for long, long minutes.
I didn’t know how to word the feeling in my heart, so I didn’t try. The kiss started slow and indulgent. It was rare to have time alone, and I loved when Death and Tor were with us, especially the four of us tangled up in bed at night, but there was something special about one-on-one time. I was going to take full advantage of it.
I kissed him until we were both breathless, and it was still a little baffling to make a death god breathless, but Miz panted under me, his eyes glossy and deep with affection, his lips parted.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I groaned, and captured his lips in another kiss, deeper but just as unhurried, my fingers sliding down his chest. “No,” I protested when his hands began exploring me, too. “You’re still weak.”
“That’s not going to stop me fucking you, Cat.”
“Yes, it is,” I argued, brushing my lips over his, pushing aside my panic for the moment and just letting the warmth and love of him wrap around me. Every moment could be his last, but I didn’t think about that either, even if I wanted to take advantage of every second we spent together. These seconds were precious, finite.
“I’m perfectly capable of—” he began, that stubborn look I loved so much lifting his chin and pursing his mouth. I slid off his lap and onto the floor, stroking my hands over his knees, already thinking about watching that expression melt off his face.
“Let me take care of you,” I murmured, gliding my hands a little higher.
“Cat—”
“Please,” I asked, looking up at him through my lashes.
Miz’s groan was one of surrender, and brought a smile to my face. “You,” he said, “are dangerous.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I demurred, hooking my fingers in the waistband of his dark sweats and pulling them down enough that I could wrap my hand around his cock.
His head fell back at the first stroke, his eyelashes fluttering as his eyes fell shut, that stubborn look nowhere to be found. He reached for me when I kissed my way down his length, feeling him harden under my lips. His fingers landed on my arm before travelling up to my shoulder and wrapping strands of hair around his hand with a neediness that made me smile. I suctioned my mouth around the ridge of his cock and slid up and down, just for the ragged exhalation it coaxed from him.
“Fuck, that feels good,” he moaned softly when I let my tongue drag up his cock too, repeating the motion on the other side. “I love it when you—”
Apparently sucking him into my mouth and running my tongue along the slit was enough to rob him of the power of speech. Good to know. I flattened my tongue to the underside of his cock as I slid up and down, slowly enough that it would break his composure. The taste of him was an addictive tang, and I didn’t even try to hold back my groan of satisfaction when he jerked inside my mouth.
“Fuck,” he breathed, fingers tightening in my hair.
Just to torture him, I moved even slower, swirling my tongue around his tip before I swallowed him back down, hollowing my cheeks for the next suck.
“Cat,” he blurted, a delicious catch in his voice.
“Hmm?” I asked without pulling my mouth off him.
“Shit.”
I couldn’t help my lips curving into a smile.
“Cat, please, faster.”
I slowed even further. His groan this time was fifty percent whine, his other hand reaching for my hair in a clear attempt to take over my pace. I caught it before he could, locking our fingers tight and keeping them on his thigh. His head thrashed, nostrils flaring.
“Please,” he begged when I drew off him, kissing the head of his cock. One look at his face and I knew every trouble and worry he’d ever had was nowhere even remotely near his head. I’d guess his head was as empty as he made mine when he tortured me. I brought his hand to my lips to kiss his knuckles.
“Do you have any idea how much I love you?” I asked, stroking him in my other hand, my clit throbbing at how swollen and needy he was in my palm.
“If you loved me, you’d stop teasing me,” he gasped, his torso beautifully stretched and taut as he threw his head back.
“I’ll remember that the next time you tease me,” I said with a laugh, squeezing the base of his cock, delighted by the deep, throaty grunt it earned me.
I loved this more than I ever thought I would, loved being on my knees in a position of vulnerability but with Miz at my mercy.
I let go of his hand, smiling at the way it instantly flew to my hair, tangling in the strands as I sucked him properly, bobbing my head up and down. I expected his hands to tighten, for him to take control, but he just held onto my hair as if to anchor himself. I moved faster, twisting with my hands, a giddy thrill in my belly when his hips bucked, a breathless moan leaving my husband.
“If you let me come, I promise never to torment you again,” he blurted, his breaths quickening, his grip becoming frantic on my hair.
I didn’t believe him for a second, but I looked forward to reminding him of that promise. Relaxing my mouth, I took his cock as deep as I could, and it only took one suck to completely unravel him.
Misery’s breathy cry was sweeter than any music, the way his body arched more beautiful than any dance. I didn’t stop until he stilled in my mouth, swallowing around his cock, the salty taste of his cum a smug victory. I made him lose control, made my oh-so-dominant husband beg and plead and writhe.
“Goddamn,” he said on an exhale, his body melting into the sofa, his hands stroking over the back of my head and down my neck. “You are literal perfection. Get up here and kiss me.”
The fact he wanted a kiss when I had the taste of him in my mouth gave me a dark thrill. I wasted no time tucking his cock away and settling back on his lap. His arms wrapped around me in an instant, hands feathering across my back as my lips brushed his. Not satisfied, he kissed me harder, catching my bottom lip in his teeth to part my lips, immediately deepening the kiss and—
My stomach gurgled, my body sabotaging the moment. Miz laughed huskily, feathering a softer kiss across my mouth.
“Come on, I’ll make you something.”
“Jesus,” I blurted, and laughed at the sour expression he gave me.
“I’m a perfectly suitable cook, Cat, I don’t know why you’re laughing.”
“I was just thinking about the Sausage Incident.”
The cocky smirk that crossed his face made my heart flutter. “Which one? I can think of many times I’ve given you my saus—”
I grabbed a pillow and whacked his head. “Don’t finish that joke, Misery, you’re better than that.”
“You’re right.” He groaned. “Tor’s finally corrupted me. I’ve lost all decorum. I should have known this would happen.”
I laughed, crawling off him so he could stand, smiling as he caught my hands and pulled me to my feet. The expression froze on my face when he inhaled sharply, bowing at the waist.
“I’m fine,” he rushed out before I could even ask.
I grabbed his arms, cold prickling the back of my neck in warning. “It’s getting worse.”
“It isn’t. It’ll pass like all the other times.”
I shook my head, helping Miz back to the sofa, crouching in front of him with my hands on his knees so I could look into his face. Pain pinched his pale brow, tightened his mouth until his skin pulled tight over his cheekbones. Those gold eyes I loved so much could do nothing to hide how much he hurt—or how afraid he was.
It was that fear that made me choke back everything I wanted to say. I just leaned up to kiss him, a quick, reassuring press of lips.
“You’re right,” I agreed gently. “It’ll pass.”
Your husband is dying, but I can save him.
I stroked a wayward strand of hair off his sweaty forehead, my chest so tight it hurt to breathe. Nightmare could have sent the message, but there was someone else who was invested in Misery living, someone who might know how to save him because they were the reason he was dying.
Pain.