Page 70 of The World Undone

“Fix what?” I asked. “Izzy, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, the phrase rushed and flat. She opened and closed her mouth a few times, trying to decide where to start. After a moment, she shook her head, giving up. “Coffee. My brain is fuzzy.”

Darius’s arm had closed around me the moment the door opened, ready to defend and protect, but when he recognized my best friend, the strain in his arm lessened. Slightly. Until he froze and slid his intimidating glare from Izzy to the small cat curled into my side.

Shadow. She was soft and sweet, but Darius was fucking petrified of her—a realization that only seemed to enhance the cat’s obsession with him.

“Love,” he pressed a quick kiss to my forehead “I’ve accepted that you enjoy that wretched thing’s company for some ungodly reason, but please keep her off the bed, I beg of you. She knows she’s not allowed in here.”

We both knew the cat wasn’t in here for me. Cuddling with me while I cuddled with him, was the closest she could get to her true object of affection.

I lifted the cat in my arms, biting back my grin as Darius inched some space between us when Shadow purred, nodding her head into where his arm rested against me.

Shadow swiped lazily at Darius, and he hissed back, baring his fangs.

This seemed to only delight Shadow more.

Izzy hardly even noticed their interaction, which meant something was very, very wrong.

I rushed her into the small kitchenette area, giving Darius a few moments to put some, er, pants on and join us.

Thank the gods I’d begun making sure I was fully dressed when I fell asleep—made sleep-walking around the grounds and to the lake far less embarrassing.

I set Shadow down and watched as she pounced on Ralph’s back, coiling herself into a small donut on his bed of fur.

Ralph let out a small huff, but slid back into his soft snores and didn’t otherwise seem to mind the added few pounds of pressure.

Izzy did a double take. “Is that Ralph? Here?” She didn’t wait for me to answer the obvious questions, moving straight to the one I had no response for. “How? And that cat really has no sense of danger, does she? First Darius and now Ralph? Bravest little creature in the world.”

“No idea.” I poured two steaming mugs of coffee, thankful that Dec had clearly already woken up and left a pot on. My brain was cloudy after what could have been only two or three hours of actual sleep. Still, I supposed I should be grateful that I was asleep for so short a time that I hadn’t wound up submerged in the lake. “He showed up last night,” I handed Izzy a mug and nodded for her to follow me to the couch, “alone. We have no idea how he got here or why, or what that might mean about hell.”

Wade had clued us in on his dreamwalk with Serae, so we knew that things were unfurling at a rapid pace in hell, and that she didn’t have contact with Lucifer, but that didn’t explain how Ralph was able to travel here.

Unless Sam sent him somehow.

I drained half my cup, savoring the burn as it scorched away my conflicted thoughts about the man. He was a hellhound shifter, and hadn’t bothered to tell me about it—hell, he’d used it as a way to spy on me, using the hellhound form to get in on my good graces. Fucking prick.

“Sam said that Ralph would always be able to find me if I needed him, that we are linked somehow. Maybe that got triggered or something, or maybe the shadow magic between realms is so unstable that the barrier is thinning now. Portals keep showing up, so maybe Ralph just hopped into one?”

Or, and I couldn’t voice the thought because that somehow gave it life, more truth—and I wasn’t ready for that possibility yet—maybe Sam was missing too.

Izzy’s eyes were wide and bloodshot as she took a deep gulp of coffee, watching the unlikely animals snuggle on the worn carpet like conventional pets. “This world just keeps getting stranger by the minute, doesn’t it?”

I grunted. We sat in silence for a beat before the reason for her visit and the abrupt wake-up call came rushing back.

When Izzy’s eyes met mine, I knew that she could read the thoughts as soon as they unfolded on my face, as if the same realization rolled over hers in tandem.

“They both died,” she whispered the words, coffee cup pressed to her bottom lip as if catching them. “She’s the only one left. I’m sorry. I know how hard you’ve been trying to help her.”

She didn’t need to say more, I knew that she was referring to the two patients who’d been Sarah’s bunkmates. The ones who’d also been attacked by the drude. The only ones other than Atlas and Sarah who’d survived this long. Until now.

I licked my lips, my tongue rough and dry from sleep. “How.”

Izzy blinked away some of the moisture collecting in her gray eyes. “One of them succumbed the same way the others had. Their body just gave out, couldn’t fight past the drude’s power. Whatever stranglehold it had on them, finally won.”

She let the silence settle between us for a moment, and I knew I’d regret asking my next question. “And the other one?”

A stray tear fell down her cheek, unable to be held back any longer. “She ripped her own heart out. Literally. We think that she maybe had a lucid moment, like she came back to herself for a second, but couldn’t handle being pulled back into that torment again. We think—” she bit her bottom lip, “we think it was quick. I know it’s no consolation, but better than the alternative, I suppose.”

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