Page 10 of All Hallows Trick

“No, you had me first, then collected the other three when Nightmare cursed you. One plus three is four. You’re very bad at maths, my lioness.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or flee into the bedroom. Madde was completely and utterly mad if he believed him encouraging my violence meant we were married. Even if he’d been with me through my darkest times and given me strength by supporting me the whole way… that did not a marriage make.

“Madness, you’re really kind, and I’m genuinely so thankful that you’ve watched over me for years, but—”

Soft lips cut off my words and I released a sharp sound of surprise at the taste of honey on his breath. My hands fluttered up to push him away, a sense of betrayal for my men souring my stomach, but Madde was already sitting back, his glossy eyes fixed on my face as I flushed and panicked.

“No, thank you. I don’t want rejection; it doesn’t suit me.”

“I…”

“Your lips are lovely,” he told me, those intense eyes softening. “I’ve thought about them for so long. They’re even softer than I imagined. Do you want my darkness to put you to sleep?”

Talking to Madde was like getting whiplash. From compliment, to disarming remark, to a question that was alarming as it promised comfort.

“What?” I asked, dragging my stare from the confusing god to the dark town spread at the base of the castle. Distraction—that’s what I needed. And a cold shower.

The rooftops were dark, barely visible against the sprawl of the night sky, but lights shone in some of the Windows’s like silvered gauze. Was the doctor I scared down there living his afterlife? I still thought it was strange that the afterlife looked exactly like a lot of European cities I’d visited with my family.

I trailed my stare over the sleeping city, wondering if ghosts even slept or if they were stuck in habits from when they’d been alive, and jolted when I saw a figure standing on a flat rooftop at the edge of the city. I couldn’t make out more than a wall-like physique, a black coat covering him from neck to ankle, and the sharp silhouette of a top hat, but the prickling unease sweeping over mesworehe was watching us.

“My shadows can—”

“Madde, there’s someone watching us,” I interrupted, my voice a whisper. The panic came back with a vengeance, forcing me to accept that Madness had interrupted the loop of fear I’d got myself into, distracting me until I could breathe again. Now my chest cinched until all air expelled in a gasp, and a rock sank into my stomach.

There was a man stood on a roof and I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was staring right at me.

Madness changed in an instinct, shifting from relaxed and seductive to sharp, lethal danger as fast as a whip strike. My heart skipped at the dangerous expression on his face, at the writhing shadows that swept in around him as he stood. “Stay here. Wake Death if I don’t come back in two minutes.”

“What? Madde—” Panic made me breathless. He was a stranger and a madman but he was my darkness. Fear for him made my hand snap out. I grasped his arm just as the shadows rushed in to consume him.

I fell so fast, my head spun. My knees should have hit the balcony but I kept falling, tumbling through velvety darkness that was hot and cold at the same time. I couldn’t see anything but the void, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stop shaking and—

A warm arm curved around my back, grounding me, and I reached up, shaky hands settling on Madde’s chest. I twisted my fingers in the sleek fabric of his shirt as I tried and failed to see anything around us. Warmth pressed against me on allsides, oddly spiked with currents of ice, his presence as eerie and comforting as the darkness had always been.

The warmth blasted apart all at once, the darkness ripped away, but the arm tightened across my back, not letting me fall. I swallowed hard as moonlight illuminated Madde’s face in cold rage.

I got the sense I was moving but I couldn’t quite remember how my body worked, the sensation of falling still gripping every one of my limbs even if I felt steady ground beneath my feet. Madde pushed me behind him, bristling, his shoulders suddenly broader than they’d seemed like rage had made him bigger.

“Gone,” he hissed, making me jump. A dark laugh vibrated his back against my front. “You can run, little prey, but you can’t hide from—oh,” he muttered, his shoulders falling. “Well, that’s annoying.”

My head was still spinning, the world strange around me, like my mind couldn’t work out how we’d got from the balcony, through the void, to here. We weren’t on the ground I realised with a squeak, but on the edge of the rooftop where I’d seen the man in the long, black coat and top hat watching us. What were the chances he was a magician, and not the ghost of Jack the Ripper? A shudder knocked my teeth together.

“He’s gone, lioness,” Madde said, turning to face me with that chilling expression on his face that said he’d happily slaughter anyone in his path. I reacted with automatic fear, but my instincts remained calm, not howling at me to run like they had with Nightmare. Or with the cottage lab in the middle of the wood.

“Look at me,” he ordered softly, fingers finding my chin to lift my face before I could decide whether to follow the instruction. His thumb stroked a line of heat across my jaw, shocking whatever I’d been about to say into silence. “I’ve never seen eyes like these.”

“They’ve been this way since the curse,” I said, still trying to process the fact I was standing on a rooftop surrounded by dark rooftops and sleeping streets. “My real eyes are amber, but they’ve been silver for months now, like…”

“Like the mask?” He tilted his head, observing me. “It’s well concealed, but I can see where the skull lays.” He traced a circle around my eyes, following the hollows of my cheeks. I stayed exceptionally still, but his touch feltgoodand that knocked me back into myself.

“You shouldn’t touch me like that.” I caught his wrist and pulled his hand away, ignoring the velvet warmth of his skin. “I have three husbands, and I don’t like this feeling. I don’t cheat, that’s not who I am.”

Madde let me push his hand away, but he didn’t take his eyes off my face, staring into my eyes with an intensity that made my soul quail. “I was yours before they were yours, lioness.”

I didn’t have the nerve to hold eye contact, staring instead at the city spread below us, fear gripping my chest once again at how high up we were. It was only three storeys but the fall would kill me. Or break me so badly that I’d wish I were dead. I searched the dark, slanted roofs for the man I’d seen watching us, but like Madde said, he was gone.

“Can you track him? With your shadows?”