Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

CAT

W hen the darkness receded, a tremor started in my knees, my legs turning to jelly as I walked back through the campus, warily scanning the dark spaces between tree trunks for Alastor waiting to ambush me again. My shoulder throbbed, already becoming stiff.

I kept my head down as I made my way to Everard Tower, painfully aware that the last time I was out this way it was the night of the Christmas gala, and both my best friends were alive. I remembered walking hand in hand with Miz, remembered the way he looked at me, and I flexed my fingers around the wicker handle of the gift basket, wishing he was beside me. If he ever found out, if I outsmarted Nightmare and found a way to get Virgil to safety, if I could finally tell the death gods that I hadn't meant a single word she forced me to say… would they forgive me?

I swallowed the knot in my throat when Everard Tower's shadow fell over me, the name a misnomer for the three storey building that housed Ford's staff. There was no gazebo this time, no fairy lights strung between the trees, making the space behind the tower mystical and laced with magic. Instead, the woods watched, shivering in the faint wind, their branches dusted with snow that made me feel isolated.

Before Ford, I might have found the idea of a remote area peaceful and quaint. Now, I knew no matter how pretty it was, I was alone and surrounded by danger. Somewhere, Nightmare watched. The woods were full of her magic, her destruction, and most likely her followers.

I made sure I was alone—as alone as I could be with the goddess of nightmare's eyes on me—and tested the latch. The door swung open with a shrill creak that made every cell in my body go rigid. But no one came racing to see who'd entered, and there were enough faculty members that the residents must be used to people coming and going.

It took less than two minutes to scale the staircase—not winding as a real tower staircase ought to be, but straight and ordinary—drop the basket in front of room fourteen and get the hell out of there. The door's shriek grated my nerves to fine remnants of composure until I was shaking, panting, and covered in a fine sheen of sweat. But it was done. Nightmare's task was complete.

I want to see my brother now. I know you're listening.

"Of course I'm listening, my terror," Nightmare replied as I rushed down the path, making me jump so hard I bumped into the side of Ford House. I was glad the building stood between us and the rest of campus, or everyone would know what a traitor I was. Helping her commit her vile acts. One of them now—her followers.

"Take me to my brother," I demanded, storming closer and wishing I could hide the way my knees shook.

"Take you to him?" Her soft laugh cut all the way through me until my skin crawled. "Oh, Cat, is that what you thought would happen?"

"You said—"

"I said you would see him," Nightmare corrected with a gentleness that made me want to claw her face off. Lies. Every last bit of sympathy and feeling—all lies, all fake, all a trap to make me drop my guard. I knew the heart of this monster, and the softness was bullshit. She made the man I love kill my best friend and forced me to watch, frozen, unable to stop it. She kidnapped my brother and used him to drive a violent, Cat-sized wedge between me and my husbands, and between all three of them.

"Take me to Virgil right now," I snapped, darting forward, brimming with outrage and fury and so much hatred that it filled the back of my throat until I choked. "If you don't take me to him—"

"Here, darling," she said with that butter-wouldn't-melt voice, worried faux-sympathy on her beautiful, horrific face. Her eye still bled down her face, the outer gore reflecting her true nature. "Don't say I never give you anything."

I moved to bat the phone out of her hand when it neared me, but I caught a glimpse of the image on the screen and the breath froze in my lungs. I snatched it out of her hand, staring at the screen like it was oxygen and I was drowning.

It was a photo of Virgil, my kind, studious, stick-in-the-mud big brother. He was hunched over on a thin mattress, the white metal frame of a bed just about visible against a dark brick wall, the vest he wore stained and ragged, his trousers in a similar state. But it was his face that drew and kept my attention, that made my stomach knot and tears scald my eyes. He looked so different, haggard in a way that made me question how long Nightmare had him locked away. Four weeks? Five? Six?

His eyes were sunken, cheekbones sharper than they'd ever been, his frown pronounced. I couldn't stop staring at him, looking into eyes that were too haunted to belong to my brother. We were Wallisons; we had everything we could possibly want, more money than God, and so many opportunities and open doors that we could basically click our fingers and have our dreams come true overnight. Wallisons had no reason to look haunted. 1

I remembered him looming against the wall beside me at a glitzy fundraiser when I was eight, scaring off anyone who tried to talk to me when I was already overwhelmed by the noise, the people, the chatter, the fake smiles, and the ringing laughter. I'd been one smile, one and who's this charming little girl away from screaming and running out of the place. But Virgil never left my side, and when everyone was distracted by a speech, he bribed the wait staff to bring us a secret plate of hors d'oeuvres which we ate, knee to knee, on the old carpeted staircase of the host's mansion.

"What have you done to—" I demanded, snapping my head up to glare at Nightmare. "Fuck." I should have expected she'd vanish when my attention was elsewhere. She and Alastor fucking Carmichael had a lot in common.

I bit the inside of my lip as I stared at the photo of Virgil, and I wished I could say it was fake but as much as I loathed her, I knew Nightmare. She loved to blackmail and scheme and hurt with the truth. I never lie, my terror. She wanted to bring Death down at any cost, and kidnapping Virgil was just a step in destroying her enemy. I traced the sharp ridge of Virgil's cheek in the photo and didn't even try to cling to this being deep-faked or photoshopped. This was what Nightmare had done to my brother. She didn't need threats or words to tell me what would happen to him next.

Either I obeyed her, or he died.