Page 66 of All Hallows Trick

“Cat,” a weak voice rasped, making my head snap up, a drop of Nightmare’s blood rolling off my chin.

“Death,” I breathed, and dragged myself across the dirt to his side. It took me a whole minute, but I finally reached him, brushing hair off his sweaty face.

“I’ll be fine,” he said before I could even speak. His instinct to reassure me made tears burn my eyes.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated. “I just need to regain my strength. Tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal.”

He was lying, but I just bent down to kiss his forehead, my heart hurting. “Where’s Tor?”

“Cruelty sent him somewhere, I saw him disappear,” Death rasped, his hand weakly clasping mine, clammy and cool when he was usually so warm. “We’ll need Madde’s help to find him.”

“Madde!” I gasped, scanning the garden, my heart beating faster when I couldn’t find him.

Madde?I asked, spearing myself into the darkness, desperately searching for him.Where are you?

Wind whispered through the garden, stirring my hair. The white strands of it were dyed entirely crimson by Nightmare’s blood. I shuddered in revulsion.

A rush of power, potent and sudden, made me jump, and I scrambled to my feet too fast, wavering so hard I almost fell back to the ground. But it wasn’t Cruelty who strode from a storm of rippling darkness—it was seven people, each as different as possible.

“Safe,” Death slurred. “I… called them…”

I trusted him with my life, so I didn’t hesitate to fold my legs and drop back beside him. His eyes had fallen shut, his brown skin lacking colour and life. “Death?” My voice was small, broken. “Daddy, please wake up.”

I put my fingers to his throat to search for a pulse, but he didn’t need a pulse, and I didn’t know how to tell if he was gone, forever gone, or—

I jumped hard when two people crouched beside me, a small, bespectacled woman with a black power bob and a tall man in his twenties with mousy curls both reaching for him.

“Still with us,” the woman said, raising an eyebrow at the throaty warning that left my throat. “But clinging on through sheer stubbornness.”

“He’ll be okay,” the curly-haired man said, his hand falling on my shoulder, that simple touch unravelling all my strength until a sob burst from my lips. I was covered in blood, my mouth smeared with it, and I shook all over. I didn’t know why thesestrangers were being kind, but Death said I could trust them so I let them close, even if my jaguar wanted to rip into them.

“We lost Tor and Madde,” I rasped, a tremor shaking my hand around Death’s. “I don’t know what happened to them.”

“We’ll find them,” he assured me, a wealth of kindness and sorrow in his voice. “We’ll find them, don’t worry.” He glanced at the others. “Fear, Hunger, can you track Torment and Madness?”

“As you say,” someone replied in a deep rumble. Two others disappeared in a plume of rippling darkness, the sheer power that smacked into me enough to blow my bloody hair off my face.

“Let’s get him inside,” the curly-haired man said, watching me with pretty hazel eyes. “Then we can assess the damage.”

I jumped at the low whistle someone let out, the sound crawling across the back of my neck, too loud, too sharp for the hollow roar of silence inside my head. “Well, well, look at this bloody mess,” a smoky female voice said.

I didn’t bother to look at who’d spoken, all my attention on the short woman with the black bob and canny eyes and the curly-haired, kind-faced man who lifted Death on a stretcher of taut shadow. I didn’t budge from his side as the stretcher floated towards the castle, our apparent rescuers close behind us. I didn’t ask their names, didn’t care about anything except finding my men and—and making sure we were all—that no one was—

“Here.” I startled when a hand thrust into my vision, a butter-yellow handkerchief hanging from long, artist’s fingers.

“For the tears or the blood?” I asked in a dead voice, not taking my eyes off Death’s wan face as the stretcher floated around the corner towards the front steps.

“Uh. Lady’s choice?”

I took the handkerchief in numb hands and dragged it over my face, staining the pretty fabric in an instant.

“Hey, didyoudo that to Nightmare?” the woman who whistled asked, clearly speaking to me.

“Not now, Wrath,” the curly-haired man said with remarkable softness. His was a voice that never raised, never snapped, never shouted. Must be nice, always being calm. I used to be like that.

“I’m just commending her on a job well done. I’ve been wanting to rip that woman to shreds foryears.”

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