Page 80 of All Hallows Game

“She’s stopping some wanker livestreaming the memorial,” Honey said, exhaustion in her voice. “Because apparently this is a social event.”

Wil didn’t look surprised. “Don’t worry about these vultures, just focus on remembering Byron. We’ll take care of everything else.”

She nodded, looking right through him.

“I’ll come check on you later,” he told me and wove through the crowd of crushed velvet and raw silk, his head lifted like he was scanning for Phil. I couldn’t find her either, but almost every student at Ford had shown up tonight so the room was packed. God knows why; we’d been cursed and haunted and blackmailed. You’d think most of us would stay safe in our rooms, but I guess habits were hard to break. If there was a soirée, gala, or fundraiser, you went. It was social suicide to be absent; people would whisper, and whispers turned to rumours, and rumours led to plummeting share prices. It wasn’t even a conscious thing. If there was a party, you kept up appearances no matter how dark things got.

I jumped when a warm hand stroked my shoulder, then leaned into Tor when he pulled me closer, his arm stretching across to grip Miz’s shoulder.

“Deep breaths, beautiful. We’ll get through this.”

My eyes kept returning to the photo of Byron, my heart clenching hard. I was glad I hadn’t worn a black dress, and even gladder I’d worn the leather jacket.

I miss you, By.

And with every day, my anger was starting to fade, leaving only the yawning pit of loss.

Misery brushed a tear from my cheek with the pad of his thumb, an echo of loss in his eyes. Did my grief remind him of his? The family who took him in, who lived here, in this very building, were all dead. It couldn’t have been easy to come here, but he was at my side to support me.

I squeezed his wrist in silent thanks, swallowing the knot in my throat when Wil walked to the stage area and clinked a fork against the side of a champagne glass. I flashed back to a dozen different functions I’d attended with my family, Byron and Honey at more than a few of them. Another tear slipped free.

There were memories everywhere, inescapable. Not just of Byron, but of Virgil. Would I be attending his funeral next?

“First of all, thank you all for coming to remember Byron tonight,” Wil said when a hushed silence fell over the gathered people. Someone was still on their phone; I could hear the jump of music as they scrolled through video after video. Rage joined my hurt and I gnashed my teeth.

Rip the damn thing from their hands and shove it down their throat.

I shook the thought away. It would only be a temporary satisfaction before I was hauled in by the police. Like Duncan. Oh god, I hadn’t called the station to check on him today. What if they’d charged him?

I missed the first half of Wil’s speech, the words slurring into a mess of syllables that made little sense. A shudder went down my spine when I focused back on the sound of his voice, listening to him talk about the impact Byron had on the school he attended before Ford. By hadn’t made an impact on Ford; he hadn’t been here long enough. Nightmare had ripped any hope of that from him.

More tears burned the backs of my eyes, blurring my vision when I blinked.

“Byron had so many dreams,” Wil was saying, his voice both respectful and sad. I wanted to get up on the stage and yell at the top of my lungs that Byron should still be here and Nightmare had murdered him, like so many people at Ford had been murdered by her. But it was like we were in stasis, none of us daring to talk about her or even mention Halloween like Duncan said that day in the snow.

If people thought everything would go back to normal now, they were delusional. I was starting to suspect this island had always belonged to her, not the Fords. It was her hunting ground, her ritual site, the place where she’d murdered the entire Ford family all those years ago.

Except… how was Duncan here if the Fords had all died? How had Orwell been here, before Nightmare murdered him? There must have been cousins who inherited the island when the family were killed. I didn’t want to upset Miz by asking him about the family when he was clearly suffering.

“There are no words to quantify the loss,” Wil continued, his voice carrying across the room, “and it has touched every last one of us. I’d like us to have a moment of silence to remember everyone we’ve—”

The lights flickered overhead, and I startled. My men formed a protective huddle around me, like faulty electrics were a threat to fight with fists and magic. Shadows swirled around Death’s hand as he pulled me closer and it should have worried me, being so close to that deadly magic, but he’d never hurt me.

My heart skipped when the lights flickered again, and for a split second I thought it was Byron’s spirit coming through to tell everyone how fake their grief was when most of them had never met him and those that had ignored him. But his voice never sounded, and his ghost never formed, and on the next flicker, the lights went out entirely.

Panicked squeals and low, murmurs filled the room, making hairs stand on end all down my arms. “Honey?” I asked, reaching through the darkness for her. Even the fairy lights had gone out, leaving us in true, inky blackness, and I couldn’t quite ignore the paranoid voice in the back of my head that said this was Nightmare’s doing.

Movement began to swirl around us as people panicked, calling for friends, demanding the lights be turned back on, casting illumination across the stone floors and buffet tables with torches on their phones.

“Honey?” I called again, louder.

“This is totally wild,” a plummy male voice said somewhere to our left. “Check out this dead guy remembrance soirée I’m at. Totally a ghost-related blackout. If I never finish this stream, I was murdered by a poltergeist in a totally insane—”

His voice cut off abruptly, a ragged gasp leaving him. “I miss Mummy,” he blurted, stealing a laugh from my lips at the absurdity of the statement and his whining tone. “I’ve been so lonely since the divorce.”

“Tor,” Death bit out, making me jump—and then laugh as I realised Tor had tormented the dickhead live streamer into outing his mummy issues. “Tell me you didn’t influence that asshole.”

“Totally didn’t,” Tor replied, his low laugh sliding through me.

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