Page 76 of All Hallows Game

“It’s just a doll,” I murmured, twisting open the two halves and ignoring the perfect likeness of Guinevere’s face. Grief spiked my heart, a wound that had never stopped hurting, but I took strength from Death, Tor, and Cat, and despite knowing more heartache lay within I revealed the next doll.

Konrad, the second to die. My stomach plummeted. A coincidence, people had said. The poor man died of heartbreak after losing his beloved wife. Hung from the chandelier in the ballroom where we’d laughed and danced and teased each other. Two days after Guinevere’s death. Two weeks after the dinner where I first met the red-haired woman with the sly smile.

She hadn’t gone by Nightmare then, hadn’t wanted her prey to know a predator circled, waiting for blood. I shut out the memory of her name, a sneer curling my lip as I set aside the top piece of Guinevere’s doll and reached for Konrad’s.

Blood and cold slimy flesh met my fingers and I flinched back.

“Fuck!” Cat hissed, a shudder wracking her as she saw what I’d touched—a dismembered finger. “Whose?” Panic made her voice sharp and strained. “Whose finger is that?”

I began to hyperventilate, my fingers smeared in blood, the feel of that cold finger still embedded in my skin. I was going to throw up, going to scream or—

I was wrenched into a tight, squeezing hug, and I was so surprised to find Cat hugging me instead of the men that it cut my panic dead in its path.

“There are wipes in that wooden box over there, the one with the vines around the frame,” she said, her voice at once soothing and strong. Both were equally reassuring.

“I’ll get them,” Death said in the same tone, and I wondered if she’d learned it from him. My shoulders dropped, a sigh leaving my tight chest, but my fingers burned where I’d touched the finger. I screwed my eyes shut and saw Konrad’s body swinging from the chandelier, his eyes open and haunted, dressed in his suit as if he would spend the day in his office.

I jumped when Tor opened the top of Konrad’s doll, the wood protesting with a screech. The faces were so precise they could only have been painted by someone who’d known them. By Nightmare.

“Oh, goody,” he muttered. “It’s like a puzzle. Build your own corpse, piece by piece.”

He tipped out another finger onto Cat’s windowsill and shot her an apologetic glance. “I’ll clean this up.”

“So,” she said in a calm voice, like she’d reached her limit of surprise. “Safe to say every doll has a finger inside?”

“Here, love,” Death said in his gentlest voice, catching my bloody hand and meticulously cleaning every smear and drop. He disposed of the wipe and caught the back of my head, pulling me against his chest without separating me from Cat. “This is not your fault.”

The words flowed through me like water, never touching the darkest parts of me. I didn’t believe them.

“Toe this time,” Tor informed us, tipping out a sleek toe, the end bloody and ragged, like it had been hacked off. “I don’t think a monster did this, it’s too precise work.”

Cat rubbed my back when she felt me tense. My stomach knotted. The third doll looked exactly like Baldric, down to the furrow between his heavy brows and the unamused look in his blue eyes. Pain drove into my heart like a corkscrew and I dipped my head, a tear rolling down the bridge of my nose.

Rosalind and I had left dinner for ten minutes—that was all it took. Ten minutes to kill three brothers. Joanna had been crying upstairs, her wails carrying through a house that felt empty without Guinevere and Konrad. We’d sat with Joanna until she calmed, falling into a restless sleep, and when we went back to the dinner table, all three men were slumped into their soup bowls.

Baldric. Percival. Theodore.

My brothers.

All poisoned, all murdered while we were two floors above, oblivious. Joanna’s screams had covered their cries for help.

For a moment I just stared at them, shaking, everything very quiet within me.

Rosalind’s howling cries as she pulled at their shoulders, begging them to wake up, screaming their names, had broken the silence in my mind. I didn’t know who’d done this, but I knew then the Fords were being picked off one by one. I knew we had an enemy, just not who.

“We need to leave,” I’d said, my voice empty. “We need to take Joanna and run, Rosalind. We’re not safe here.”

She’d just stared at me, her hands shaking.

I caught her up against me, protectiveness burning against my ribcage. “If we don’t run, we’ll be next.”

“Who would do this?” she whispered, no heat to her tone, nothing but aching emptiness.

“I don’t know,” I’d replied in the same tone.

I didn’t know; I hadn’t lied. I hadn’t known that while Nightmare and I spent time together sharing stories and laughter, she’d wormed her way into my soul like a parasite, dripping poison into me with every smile and laugh. I hadn’t expected to find another god in Ford’s End; I hadn’t been shielded against her.

I hadn’t known the killer was me.

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