“You look like shit,” Davy said.
“Thanks.” Hill reached out and stroked one of the tentacles absently. The brush of his fingers against it still mapped straight to Davy’s cock. It seemed crass to bring it up right now, though.He shifted his weight awkwardly instead. Before he could think of something to say, Hill spoke up. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Davy asked.
Hill gave a humorless little laugh. He reached up and stuck his finger in his ear, wriggling it briefly.
“For whatever is going to happen if Fraser doesn’t redeem himself,” he said. “You were right. I should have just let you kill him.”
“I know.”
This time Hill’s snort of laughter was genuine, and hard enough to make his eyes water.
Davy waited until he finished.
“I was definitely right,” he said. “I want that on record, but…I’d rather you were. It’s not the real world, but I like your world better. In your world,I’mbetter somehow.”
Hill sniffed and wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand. “But you still wish I’d just let you kill Fraser?”
“Somuch,” Davy said. He put a companionable tentacle around Hill’s shoulder. “But you didn’t, so we’ve got to convince Fraser to make right a lifetime of wrongs with a masquerade ball and a spirit with a mistaken identity.”
“By midnight.”
Davy checked the clock. “Five hours,” he said.
“You really think we can do it?” Hill asked dubiously.
“No,” Davy admitted. “But if all else fails, I’m just going to kill him and hope for the best.”
The rite clamped down on his jaw in punishment for that blithe threat. It felt like prongs being driven down into his jawbone, like how he’d always imagined muzzling to feel. But it made Hill laugh again, so he’d bear it.
Chapter Seventeen
Dec 24, 8.10pm
Hill hadn’t expected aparty on his side of the Veil, but there was one. The dead thronged among the living around the lake house, decked out in clothes that ranged from Prada to…whoever a famous Gilded Age designer was. Butt cracks and bustles were on equal footing.
All of them were muzzled.
Dogs and birds. Cats and rats. One woman in a dress that was just two translucent plastic hands that covered her boobs and her bits, and who had an insect’s flat green mandibles instead of a mouth. As he watched, a frilled proboscis flicked out to lap at her drink.
Even the servers who dodged in and out, between the living and the dead, had short finch-like beaks.
In the middle of it all, Hill felt oddly self-conscious about his lips and teeth. He tucked his chin down and pulled the zipper of his hoodie up.
“Is the lake house on an old burial ground or battlefield or something?” he asked Davy.
Davy stopped in the middle of the hallway as he puzzled over that question.
“How would I know?” Davy asked. “Why?”
“There’s a lot of dead people here.”
“There’s a lot of dead people everywhere,” Davy pointed out. “There’s more of us than there are of you.”
One of the staff hired for the party gave Davy a confused look. Whatever he thought of the man talking to himself, though, he didn’t ask any questions. Or rather, only one.
“Can I take your coat?”
