Page 16 of All Hallows Game

I showered numbly, getting as much blood from my ring as I could, frantically scrubbing under my nails until my skin turned red in protest. But it was still there, a line of dark red reminding me what had happened. Now, sitting on the edge on my bed staring at the blank wall opposite, I was too hollow, too afraid, too numb to convince myself this was a bad idea.

I called Tor first, mostly because I knew he’d never pick up. As expected, it rang four, five, six times. I dropped the phone from my ear, but I froze with my finger over the end call button when I realised it had connected.

“Tor?”

My voice came out too small, too broken.

“I don’t know if I want to talk to you yet,” he said, his tone perfectly even, giving no emotion away. But the sound of his voice after three weeks without it made my chest cave in.

“Can we just—pretend everything is back the way it was? Just for a few minutes. Please.”

“Cat?” His tone changed, honed and softened all at once. “Are you crying? What’s wrong?”

In a miserably small voice I said, “I can’t get the blood from under my nails.”

“Give me one minute.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me, even though I didn’t know what he needed a minute for.

“One minute, Cat. Okay?”

“Okay,” I echoed, and jumped when the line went dead. I lowered the phone, holding it in numb fingers. My head was swimming, thoughts returning to Caroline’s mauled body over and over, the clarity sharp in a way Byron’s death wasn’t.

Shock had clearly taken hold because when shadows swirled in the middle of my room I didn’t even notice, my whole body cold and trembling. I hadn’t even got dressed; I sat in my towel, the blood itching under my fingernails.

Calloused hands wrapped around mine, turning them over to inspect my fingernails, and I gasped in surprise, my whole body jolting. A lump rose into my throat. Tor knelt on the cream rug in front of me, a hard expression on his soft face and his familiar black leather jacket creaking as he lifted his head to meet my eyes.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head mutely, struggling to process the fact he was here, looking as handsome and dangerous as I remembered but so much more real. I’d forgotten the details—the faint scar through his upper lip, the gravel in his voice, the way his brown eyes looked like latte when the light hit them.

“Did she—whose blood is it?” he asked tentatively.

I swallowed, seeing the bite ripped out of Caroline’s arm, the deep claw marks across her stomach, her chest, her throat. “My grief counsellor’s.”

“Your grief—” Tor swore under his breath, his fingers tightening on mine. “Of course you have a counsellor. Fuck, I’m sorry, beautiful. I’ve been a pig-headed bastard. I was so focused on my own hurt, I forgot you were grieving.”

I shrugged listlessly, tasting the sandalwood and leather of him on my next breath. It hit me like a truck—how much I’d missed him. “I hurt you.”

“Doesn’t matter right now. Like you said, let’s pretend we’re back to normal.” Tor cast a glance around my room, like he was looking for something, and a scowl furrowed his brow. “What happened?”

“I was talking to her on the phone.” I licked my lips, my mouth so dry. “I heard her—she screamed and said something about a monster. When I found her, she was… it looked like an animal attack.”

“A reasonable, perfectly normal explanation,” Tor pointed out, his voice soothing. He brought my hands to his lips, kissing my knuckles.

“I could feel her there. Not—not like when she’s watching me, but… this was Nightmare. I know it was.”

He squeezed my fingers. “You sound like Miz.”

My chest cut through with pain. I had to blink fast to keep the tears in my eyes. “There were crows, watching me. Six of them.”

Tor sucked in a breath, a scowl pressing his mouth thin. “Right. Yeah, that shit’s got Nightmare written all over it.” He looked around the room again.

“What?”

“Wondering what’s taking so fucking long,” he muttered, sounding so familiar and annoyed that I couldn’t help but smile. “Wait here. I’ll get some water to clean your hands.”

He stunned me in place with a kiss to my forehead that seemed to catch him off guard as much as it did me. But we were pretending everything was normal, pretending we were together, and I hadn’t told him everything I felt was a lie.

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