Page 6 of All Hallows Game

No murder, Nightmare assured me with a mock graveness. I want something perfectly innocent from you. I have a gift basket I want to give to an old friend, but those dreadful death gods of yours keeping barring me at every opportunity so I can’t deliver it myself. All you need to do is come collect it from the edge of the shields around Ford, then take it to room fourteen in Everard Tower.

Who’s your old friend? I asked, well aware of how perfectly innocent her tasks were.1

She made Honey and I throw a bag of hay into the lake, playing her mind games so we didn’t realise we’d actually moved the dead body of Dean Fairchild. Did Byron know about that? He helped her kill the man, so I had to presume he knew all about her little task.

Elaina Jackson. Very sweet woman, completely oblivious to her family’s ties to my beloved cult but still useful.

Ford’s administrator? Was she like Darya, with a family who’d been asking how high when Nightmare told them to jump for years. For generations.

I’m not helping you recruit followers, I snapped, colder with every word she said.

Suit yourself, Nightmare replied amiably. I suppose you can wait a few weeks to see Virgil…

Bitch. I ground my teeth, my arms wrapped so tightly around myself that they began to tremble. Fine, I hissed, and knew I would regret caving to her demands. But my brother was fuck knows where, and she was doing god knows what to him, and if delivering one gift basket meant I could see him, hug him, tell him everything was going to be okay and I’d get him out of there… it was worth it.

No matter the consequences. No matter who else died.

Where’s the damn basket?

Manners, my terror. That’s no way to speak to your goddess.

You’re not my goddess, you’re my blackmailer. Where is it?

On the edge of Ford grounds. Walk beyond the graveyard into the southern edge of Rosalind Woods and keep going until you reach the brook.

I didn’t acknowledge her knowing my exact location. I didn’t want to think about her being able to find me wherever I was. Even freed of her curse, I felt every bit as watched. Haunted.

I didn’t reply to her. I pictured a solid stone wall slamming down around my mind for all the good it would do and strode out of the circle of mausoleums into the thick canopy of evergreens. I’d never gone into the woods on this side of campus, and I didn’t like the way the light was immediately suffocated by the tall trees, the way all sounds were muffled, not even wildlife stirring.

It could be paranoia, but after everything I’d been through since stepping foot on this accursed island, paranoia was a synonym for common sense. I scanned the woods as I walked, waiting for a student cursed as a werewolf to jump out and attack me, or for Darya’s ghost to drift through the shadows of looming tree trunks.

Ten minutes passed, then twenty, and my skin crawled with the feeling of being watched. It showed how scared I was—for myself and for Virgil—that I hoped it was one of the death gods, even if two of them hated me for breaking their hearts.

Not that they’d said as much to me. They hadn’t said a whole lot. Tor said it wasn’t my fault, that he didn’t blame me, but I saw the look in his eye—I hurt him so badly there’d never be any repairing the damage. Miz wouldn’t even look at me. I bet Nightmare was fucking thrilled.

Another ten minutes and I found the brook, the soft whispering of the water usually a balm to my nerves but only ratchetting them now. It cut across my path, trickling slightly downhill and disappearing around the sturdy roots of an old tree. I scanned the banks for a basket, a bright flannel blanket, or a brightly coloured selection of murder jams and poisonous mushrooms. I couldn’t imagine Nightmare filling a basket with fruit, cheese and finger sandwiches. Unless the filling was literal fingers.

I turned on the spot, squinting through the dim light at the tall, leafy trees with their intimidating high branches, the gnarled roots at their bases spreading out, taking over the loamy earth. No picnic basket, nothing at all out of place.

“Looking for this?”

Ice dripped down my spine. I froze. I almost reached for the solid wall I’d built around my mind to ask Nightmare to take care of this problem, but there’d be a price. There was always a price with her.

Instead, I turned, slowly enough to scan every little thing in the woods, making sure the bastard hadn’t brought backup. He stood in a patch of dappled cold winter sunlight a few metres away, looking golden and perfect and utterly harmless in khakis and a polo shirt, except for the twist of hatred on his face.2

“Alastor,” I muttered, choking back my fear and grasping for the numbness I’d been wrapped in for weeks. I needed it now, needed a shield against whatever Alastor Carmichael was about to do with me, alone in the middle of the woods with no one for half a mile.

“Figured you had to be looking for this,” he told me, a nasty smirk on his face as he lifted a perfectly ordinary looking wicker basket. Inside I could just about see bread rolls, a hunk of cheese, sliced meat arranged into roses, grapes, and a thermos of what I had to presume was wine. “But who are you here to meet, Cat? Secret rendezvous, is it? Are you fucking one of the professors?” He laughed. “Bet a snivelling bitch like you would settle for old, wrinkled cock. Gotta get that passing grade somehow, right?”

“Give me the basket, Alastor,” I demanded, darkness swelling inside me, hissing and coaxing, encouraging me to take a step. To rip his fucking throat out.

He snorted. “I know what—”

“You don’t know shit, Alastor,” I snapped, my patience worn thin. “You think you have all the answers, but you don’t know anything so back the fuck off.”

“Or what?” he challenged, matching my step, his broad shoulders tightening in his white and mint striped polo, his square chin cocked out.

I sighed roughly, striding across the loamy ground, carefully sidestepping roots that wanted to trip me. A little shiver went through me, equal fear that he’d attack me and eagerness to hurt him, to damage that golden face until everyone saw how ugly he was.

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