Page 67 of All Hallows Fate

“I can guess.” Wil sighed. “There’s a secret hideout where he used to call me to receive orders.”

“Where?” I pressed, and nearly patted myself on the back for not borrowing Wrath’s spork to rip his eyes out.2

“Ford,” Wil said, slumping. “Under the lake in Ford’s grounds.”

45

Cat

Iexhaled shakily as we made our way down the aisle of cells beneath Wrath’s house. We knew where to find Violence. We could take the fight to him, knock him off balance and finally gain the upper hand. It shouldn’t have surprised me that he was at Ford. It was where Nightmare killed the Fords and tortured Miz. It was where Nightmare had come back to life and been Cruelty’s puppet. Of course it would come back to Ford.

“You’re going back,” a raspy, broken voice said when we walked past the next cell. I glanced into it and froze.

Phil.

I was stunned into silence, but my husbands didn’t have that problem.

“Don’t speak to her,” Madde hissed, throwing his arm in front of me and guiding me back. “Don’t even look at her or I’ll grow a shadow beak and peck your eyes out.”

She looked the same, even if her skin now shone with a silvery hue of the deceased. Same glossy hair in a high ponytail, same athletic body, same pretty face, but her eyes were haunted in a way Wil’s weren’t. Oh, he regretted what he’d done, or at least the fallout that led to his death, but Phil? She was tortured by it.

And a slow coil of magic within me began to unwind, an ear cocked as my inner judge paid attention. So I choked back the words I wanted to snarl.

“You’ll speak to Wil but not me?” she laughed, a hoarse, dead laugh that plucked at my sympathy. “After everything he’s done?”

I crossed my arms over my chest, gripping the throwing knives Madde gifted me.

“What has he done?” Pain asked, with a softness that surprised me. As if he sensed the hurt we could all see in her haggard face.

Phil shook her head, scoffing. “As if it would make any difference.”

When she retreated into the dimmer part of her cell, I approached the bars. “Phil. Tell us.” Meeting her eyes sent a crash through my heart. I still despised her. She helped distract us so Cruelty could kill Honey. She hit me over the fucking head. “Tell me.”

Phil swallowed, her arms wrapped around herself. “All of Nightmare’s disciples did her dirty work because they were threatened or paid. I did what he told me to. Wil.”

“You said something that night, in the cottage in the woods,” I said. “You said I don’t know what he’s capable of.”

She hesitated, and my magic went wild.

“Tell me what he did,” I said, far softer than I planned to. “I’ll make him pay.”

Phil looked at me, and seemed to notice my new confidence, my new power. She nodded, decision made, and wet her lips. A human gesture that made me even more sympathetic, even as I reminded myself what she’d done, too. But this felt less like an act than what we’d just witnessed in Wil’s cell.

“He held me down and injected me with that serum,” she said, barely audible. “I fought him, begged, promised him money and anything he could possibly want, but it made no difference,” she laughed, rasping and bitter. “I kicked and punched and screamed, and nothing stopped him injecting me. And he said—he said he’d let it take me, turn me into a mindless killer who’d eat her way through Ford unless I did what he said.”

“That piece of shit,” Miz snarled, half turning back the way we’d come, a dark look in his gold eyes.

“That’s why you lied to me, and why you attacked me that night. Why you left me in that place.”

Phil’s guilt went so deep, it was impossible to look at her without seeing it. “I never wanted to. I wanted—” She shook her head, pulled at the ends of her ponytail. “I never had a real girlfriend, isn’t that sad? Ford was the first time I had actual friends who gave a shit about me, not just what my money could do for them. I wouldn’t have wrecked that if he hadn’t injected me.” She held my stare, and I wondered if spirits could cry. “Cat, I’m so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted Honey—”

“Don’t speak her name,” Death warned, his voice rattling, but I brushed a touch over his shoulder.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I know you didn’t kill Honey,” I told Phil, “but you helped Cruelty kill her, whether you knew what would happen or not. You helped get Honey alone, and Cruelty used that to murder my last best friend on this earth.”

“Rude,” Wrath remarked, and I jumped as she skipped down the staircase at the end of the basement. “I thought we were besties. Right,” she said when Tor glared her way. “Not the time. Proceed.”

I ignored her, and the bickering she and Pain got into. I kept my attention on Phil. Wil threatened her, hurt her, turned her into a creature so she’d have no choice but to obey his orders—Violence’s orders. I sighed, my anger at Phil turning from a loud roar to a snarl. Still furious, but lower in severity. She was a victim, too, as much as I hated to admit it.