Chapter 40

CHAPTER FORTY

MISERY

I shuddered the moment I walked into Cat's room at Ford, snapping my arm out to block her entry. Whatever good mood I'd had—mostly fuelled by the scratch marks my girl had left on my ass—suffered a quick and cruel death.

"Miz?" She frowned, listless and sad the way she'd been since we watched the video call with her brother.

"Stay here," I said, stroking a quick touch down her arm and giving Death and Tor a quick glance to keep her out in the hallway while I investigated the signature that made my skin crawl. Nightmare had been here, had touched Cat's things, another invasion of privacy.

My heart beat faster as I scanned the room, looking for anything out of place, sending out a fine gauze of darkness—the only bit of magic I had left—

I recoiled from the windowsill, my power snapping back into me so hard it was like being hit by a stretched rubber band. I gritted my teeth, winded.

"Miz?" Tor demanded, low and growly like he was already planning the murder of whatever had hurt me.

"I'm fine," I bit out, breathing through the pain, advancing another step. My eyes landed on the brightly painted matryoshka doll in the perfect centre of Cat's windowsill and another shiver went through me, so strong I nearly threw up. "That's not yours is it, Cat?" I asked, pointing to the offending doll.

"Oh, god," she breathed. "No. That wasn't there when I left."

I nodded, my long ponytail brushing my back, making me twitch like it was a threat I needed to eliminate. Nightmare's signature was here, she'd been in Cat's room, had left a ‘gift' for her, but she couldn't turn me into a weapon anymore. I'd cut off my power. All I had left were dregs. She couldn't use the twisted, parasitic connection we had anymore.

The Russian doll was like Nightmare, like she'd been all those years ago—beautiful and alluring. Enough to draw me in, to make me smile. She'd charmed me with jokes and clever anecdotes about us standing out amongst the rich upper class who owned Ford's End. We'd bonded over our common strangeness but there was more we had in common—a love of art and music, an appreciation for beautiful women, a fine taste in wine and food, but it was our mutual love of animals that hooked me. We became friends fast and all at once. Two weeks and we were spending hours talking each day, a platonic but deep connection formed. I told her about Tor and Death and how much I loved them. She told me about the love she'd lost years ago and never recovered from.

It was a beautiful thing, that companionship, and she used it to hide the vileness beneath. Used me to take her revenge on Death. The only comfort I had was that she failed.

I took steady steps towards Cat's windowsill, bright winter sun shining on the vibrant colours of the wooden doll. It was a head tall, and painted with a woman's beautiful face—dark hair, emerald green eyes, a patient smile that radiated kindness and contentment. My hands shook. I jumped when Death wrapped his arms around me from behind, a kiss landing on my shoulder.

I wished it was Nightmare's face painted on the doll, wished it wasn't Guinevere Ford's. The woman who'd been more a mother to me than my own biological mother, who'd made me feel loved and safe and welcome when I'd felt out of place even in my own mind, the Woe so strong I'd almost succumbed to it.

"Guinevere," I croaked, pain beating behind my ribs.

She was the first to die. Baldric found her in bed, her eyes milky, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, her body stiff. The physician said her heart had given out. A natural death. No one heard the strong thump of magic in the night.

"Wait," Death rushed out when I reached for the doll. Shadows streamed from his hands as he touched it before me, his power so much more potent than mine, strong enough to make my breath catch. "I can't find any booby traps but be careful."

I nodded, flinching when movement came from my left and right—Tor and Cat standing on either side of us.

"Miz?" she whispered. "Are you alright?"

"Trying to be," I replied with a tight smile, the best I could manage. Her eyes filled with the soft light of understanding, like I'd given voice to her own mental state. She was trying—she was a fighter, and she refused to give up, even on me, even if I didn't deserve her forgiveness.

I'd been ready to give up a week ago, ready to succumb to weakness and depression. But I was fighting, too. I wasn't ready to give up yet. I still had people to fight for, people worth living for. I still wasn't ready to forgive myself, and I knew I wasn't safe to be around even with my power bound, but—I was trying. I was fighting, just like my Cat.

I reached for the Russian doll, the painted wood cold on my fingertips. All three of them stiffened around me, ready to rip the thing out of my hands if anything bad happened, but there were no traps, no magic like Death said.

"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.

"Don't," I choked out when Tor set another toe and a tongue on the windowsill and reached for the next doll. I could hardly stand to look at Rosalind's face. I squeezed my eyes shut, flinching as her voice filled my head.

You killed them, Misery. Every last one died at your hands. You suffocated Mrs. Ford and hung Mr. Ford and poisoned their sons. Now you're going to take Rosalind and walk her into the lake; she won't fight you, I made sure she'd be a willing victim.

But she'd cried. Even as we were forced, both of us, into the ice of the lake, Rosalind had cried. She died with betrayal in her eyes, not understanding that I couldn't fight Nightmare any more than she could. She died thinking I'd infiltrated them on purpose, with the intention to kill them all.

Nightmare had reached into my mind and neatly removed any memories I had of killing them until the last moment. I didn't remember sneaking out of my room under cover of darkness, didn't remember pressing the pillow to Guinevere's face. I didn't remember struggling with Konrad, stringing him from the ceiling with a noose around his neck, or standing beneath him, watching the life drain from his eyes. I didn't remember slipping poison into the goblets of my brothers. I didn't remember what I'd done to Joanna, only finding her lifeless body in the grounds of the manor, her eyes unseeing and empty. I'd been so convinced I would be next, that the killer would come for me, that I'd never expected to find Joanna's tiny body left out in the cold.

And I did that.

"Jesus," Tor hissed, startling me out of the dark memories. Cat stroked my back, her kindness abrasive to my guilt-ridden soul. I killed them all. Nightmare wrapped me in her magic, poisoned me, controlled me, and forced me to kill my family.

"What is it?" Cat asked urgently, stiffening beside me.

"A heart," Tor hissed, shaking his head. "Well, this is the most fucked up thing I've seen in a day."

"Just a day?" Death asked, peering over Tor's shoulder.

He shrugged. "A lot of fucked up shit's happened. I can't sense anything from it. You?"

"Not even a hint of whose soul it belonged to," Death confirmed, his mouth pressed thin.

"She's taunting me," Cat muttered, pressing closer to me. "Or this is a threat."

"More likely the first," I rasped, wrapping my arm around her shoulders, pulling her into me. The closeness expelled a sigh from my chest even if a little voice hissed that I didn't deserve her closeness and would only get her killed like I got the Fords killed.

If I'd never gotten close to them, they'd have lived full lives.

"What's in the last doll?" I asked, a knot in the back of my throat as I looked at all the body parts lined up beside doll heads on the windowsill. Guinevere and Konrad, Percival and Baldric, Theodore and Rosalind. My chest shook, my breathing a shudder.

"That is the last doll," Death said, squeezing my elbow.

I frowned, but I was relieved Nightmare hadn't sunk to tormenting me with Joanna's face. She was so young, she should have been safe, but there were no lines Nightmare wouldn't cross. When I closed my eyes I saw her round face, the sneaky glint in her eyes, the crown of braids she always wore her hair in. I saw her storm across the banquet hall to me with determination in her eyes and a turkey leg in her hand.

"Don't be a fool," she'd told me in a spectacular rendition of Rosalind's voice. "Eat, Cai."

She'd thrust the turkey leg at me and stood there, tapping her slippered foot, until I took a bite. Satisfied, she returned to her spot at the table, ordering Theodore to boost her onto the tall seat like a queen.

She should have lived. It killed me that she hadn't.

"Whose… pieces are these?" Cat asked, gripping me a little tighter. Her eyes flit to the assortment of body parts, inevitably drawn back to where they left smears of blood on the sill.

"We should clean this up," I said, ignoring the throaty quality of my voice. "The victim will turn up sooner or later. They always do."

I didn't know if it was better or worse that Cat knew it was Nightmare killing all these people. I'd been oblivious, any suspicion I had wiped away by the hooks Nightmare had on my mind. I still didn't know how she had the power to control me. She was a god, but so was I—I should have been safe.

I'm safe now, she can't get to my magic with it bound.

"How am I supposed to go to a memorial ceremony after this?" Cat sighed, resting her head on my shoulder. "How am I supposed to pretend everything is normal?"

"You answered your own question, beautiful," Tor replied. "Pretend."