Page 22 of All Hallows Trick

This was what I forgot about Madness. He wound me up, pissed me all the way off, but it was very difficult to get truly angry at him because he just didn’t accept it. He acted so ridiculous that my anger bounced off him like water from a duck’s back. And that made me evenmorepissed off. I wanted an argument, dammit.

Glass crunched under my shoe and I looked down, seeing the fragments of test tubes on the floor.

“There’s nothing here,” Cat told us, appearing in the threshold to the other room, doing a fair attempt at hiding her panic. But I saw it in the stiff way she held herself, in her hands were pressed flat to her thighs. My jealousy faded just long enough for me to cross the room and pull her into me, hugging her hard.

“We’ll find the antidote. Or we’ll make it. Or you’ll learn to live as a kickass jaguar. It’s not the end of the world, my universe.”

Her arms came around me tight enough to make me inhale sharply, a sudden flare of pain in my ribs. No,behindmy ribs, between my heart and stomach. “I don’t want to be a jaguar forever. I want to be me.”

I tucked her head under my chin, holding her and pretending I wasn’t in strange pain. “We’ll figure it out.”

The warmth of her, the pressure of her against me, the squeeze of her arms, it all combined to take a weight off my chest. The jealousy still itched, but it didn’t burn.

“We’ll figure it out,” I repeated, because no way in Hell was I about to let my wife be terrified for the rest of her life. If killing Nightmare would have ended this, I’d have faced my fears and confronted her in an instant, but this was already done. A change at the biological level was hard to reverse.

I’d never heard of anything like this happening. Death gods could occasionally bestow magic on mortals, giving them temporary or permanent abilities, even lengthening their lifespans, but changing them from human to animal? It was unheard of, and I’d been around for hundreds of years. Nightmare had found a way to achieve the impossible using science, not magic. Or was it both? I squinted at the room for any hint of power hanging in the air, but everything looked normal to me. Not that I was an expert in this shit.

“Does anything look out of place to you?” I asked Virgil when he re-entered the room. “Anything that could hold or store magic? Or even extract it?”

“Until yesterday I didn’t even know magic was real,” he replied, a shadow chasing through his eyes, the expression on his face making him look ten years older. “But I’ll have a look. I’m a third year student not an expert, so you should get someone with more experience—”

“Bad idea,” Madness chipped in, lifting a test tube with silver tongs, a pair of goggles over his eyes. “We shouldn’t tell anyone outside our little circle about this. We don’t know we can trust them.”

“For once, I agree with the psychopath,” I sighed.

Cat snorted, her warm breath fanning across my neck and sending a shiver down my spine, arousal pooling at the base of my cock. “Like you’re not a psycho, too, Miz.” She drew back togive me a pointed look. “You two have a lot in common. You’ve both been stalking me, for example.”

“And you sound incredibly blasé about that,” Virgil muttered, pushing aside books and equipment to look inside cupboards and on shelves.

“She’s right, Miz,” Madness said, waving the empty test tube like a white flag. “Let’s be besties.”

I wrinkled my nose. “I’d rather drink acid.”

“Orange juice,” Madde replied with a firm nod, and no further explanation.

My brow furrowed; I gave Cat a questioning glance to which she shrugged.

“Orange juice has citric acid in it,” Tor said gruffly, brushing a hand down my back. “There’s a strange sort of logic amid all the insanity.”

“Thank you very much.” Madde sketched a bow. “Ah shit,” he sighed when the test tube fell, shattering on the floor. Cat flinched into me, turning her face into my coat, and I shot the bastard a glare as I held her to me.

“You’re fine, you’re safe,” I soothed, curving my hand over the back of her head the way Death did to comfort her. She wilted against me like I’d seen her do for him, and my heart physically strained to fit the sheer amount of love I felt for her within it. “It’s just an empty vial and Madde being a dick.”

“I know,” she breathed, but she began to shake in my arms.

And I couldn’t have my girl shaking with fear, so I slipped a hand into my pocket and opened the handy little app on my phone. It only took a few taps before her body jerked against me, her eyes flying up to mine, wide with shock and reproach. I kissed her forehead, a smile tugging at my lips.

Actually, this was exactly what I needed. Jealously tortured me, so in return I should torture my wife with the vibrator she wore for me.

“Beautiful?” Tor asked, squeezing her shoulder when Cat buried her face in my chest. I kept the vibrations low enough that no one should hear, but they were clearly enough to feel good because Cat’s fingers bit into my arm through my coat.

“I’m fine. I just need a moment,” she replied quickly, a beautiful strain in her voice.

“I’ve got her,” I promised him solemnly. Cat gripped me harder, like she was trying to hurt me. I suppressed a smile.

“I’ll help Virgil search this place,” Tor offered, his eyes lingering on her, but they gentled when he met my eyes, trusting me to take care of her. I’d tell him why she was really trembling later. He’d probably give me a dead arm and a wicked grin for it.

“What shouldIdo?” Madness asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet, still holding the tongs.

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