I stared into his flat gray eyes. There was no kindness. No sorrow. No love. No regret. Nothing but hate. They were Jagger’s eyes, but worse, because I knew what they’d looked like before he’d lost the last of himself. I didn’t know how long Justice had been in the Den of Depravity, but the time had turned his skin milky and pale. His freckles were stark and out of place, and the raised scars zigzagged angrily over him.
When I’d asked him what his depravity was, he’d said, “You.”
Was that still true?
Griff snarled, and Justice tore his gaze from mine. His smile no longer held any of his warmth—it was merely the stretching of his lips. “What? Don’t want to say hello? Aren’t we friends anymore, Griff?”
When Griff didn’t answer, Justice’s eyes narrowed. His jaw hardened, and I saw in him the same expression Jagger had right before he tore someone’s limbs free and laughed as they bled out.
“He can’t,” I said. And when Justice focused on me, I said, “He can’t speak. Jagger took his tongue.”
Justice nodded. Then he stepped back, dropping his hand from my neck. I wobbled on my heels, and Griff caught my arm.
Justice stared at the two of us, looking at us in a way he’d never done before. I had the feeling he was cataloging everything about us. It was a cold perusal, as if he were noting every potential weakness, every soft place to strike. How I was unsteady. How I couldn’t stand straight in my heels. How I was covered in blood and bruises. How Griff was harder, but also more brittle than he had been. How his nostrils flared like he was testing Justice’s scent and didn’t like the result.
Justice stepped forward. He ignored Griff’s warning growl and took a fistful of my dress’s tulle in his hand. He crushed the fabric, and some of the dried blood flaked free, falling to the floor.
“When I was in the den,” he said, his voice barely discernable over my drumming heart, “I became the den. I was every depravity. All of them. Do you know what that’s like?”
I swallowed. “No.”
Justice dropped his handful of tulle and stepped back. He clenched his hand on empty air. “Good.” He took another step away. And another. “Before we went to the den, Jagger offered me a bargain, and I refused. This time, he didn’t need to bargain. I’m going to do it for free.”
I watched him walk away. He was a long, thin, terrifying man. He’d been hollowed out and filled with something new. Before, he’d been a monster. Now, he was monstrous.
Griff touched my arm, a question in his gaze.
I nodded. “I know. We’re in trouble. I promise I’ll stay away from him. You too. I don’t think any of us are safe with him anymore.”
Griff and I had a quick breakfast of scones and tea, Rou lecturing us the whole time. I changed into jeans and a T-shirt but kept the pouch of explosives, poison darts, and blood snakes in my pocket. I even strapped the Smith’s folly to my chest.
Justice had spooked me. My dreams had spooked me. The Clarks always spooked me.
I thought about how the Finn in my dreams had told me he wouldn’t come to me again. I thought about how the real Finn had promised to kill me. I thought about how the Finn in my dreams had promised that when I woke up, I’d be free. I didn’t feel free. In fact, I felt farther from freedom, farther from hope, then I’d ever felt in my entire life.
It was a strange thing about human nature that when Last waved at me from the decimated Clark Mansion, I lifted my hand, waved back, and smiled.
76
The whole family had gathered in the catacombs for a cozy breakfast. I’d once wondered what the Clark’s ate, and now I knew. Lukewarm orange juice. Dry cereal. Those soggy bran muffins sealed in plastic that supposedly stayed fresh for months.
The catacombs were lit by conjured sconces. Their gas-green glow danced over the shelves of bones and slid across Last’s pallid complexion. Her eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, but I don’t think she’d been crying. She had a crackling, eight-cups-of-coffee, excited energy. She squirmed in her seat at the breakfast table, and her mouth kept twitching into an anticipatory smile.
The wind had blown through the Clark mansion, sweeping the thick layer of ash into hilly dunes and shaking loose the noxious fumes. The upstairs was still a charred, skeletal remain, but now it looked like the powdery surface of the moon, with the Clarks’ footsteps memorialized in the still gray ash. It was eerie to walk through the mansion’s gray-coated corpse, but even worse to descend into the catacombs.
I could feel the creature pressing at the walls. No. That wasn’t quite right. I could feel the creature pressing at me.
It knew me from my second death. It remembered me from the games. Both times, it had touched me with the tiniest tentacle of itself. Only the thinnest thread had ever been able to slip through the cracks of its dungeon. But that had been enough.
Most of the time, people believe the fears you have in childhood won’t be so terrifying when you’re an adult and you look at them head-on.
Unfortunately, most people are wrong about most things.
For instance, there is a monster under your bed.
And the beast locked in the basement is more terrifying than you could ever have imagined.
As a child, I was terrified of the monster in the Clarks’ catacombs. As an adult, I was petrified.
