Page 46 of The Hangman's Rope

“The nightmares,” I said and I couldn’t keep the unhappiness out of my voice if I tried. “She’s fighting someone or several someone’s desperately in them. I think the memory is there, just below the surface and it’s only a matter of time before something breaks it.”

“Think it’ll breakher?” Torment asked and he honestly sounded a little too excited at the prospect. He did love to watch someone suffering.

I shook my head, “She’s quiet, but she’s resilient,” I said.

“You got a thing for her?” Haint asked and sounded a little surprised.

Synister snorted. “Don’t even try to hide it at this point, bro. I saw enough this morning – and don’t think I don’t see your play in involving Madisyn and her friend. I see everything.”

“Wasn’t trying to hide anything,” I said with a shrug, still captivated by Lorelai turning this way and that for the girls, smoothing her hands over the well fitted jeans over her hips. “I don’t think she’s a problem. I think if anything she’ll be her own solution if you give her enough time and breathing room and stop threatening her with locking her ass up in the vault.”

Somebody along the table tried to cover their incredulous laugh with a cough and failed miserably at it. Synister took the time to stop glaring at me to glare at them instead.

“So, what doyoupropose we do then, since you seem to have the all-seeing-eye,” Corvus asked, but he didn’t sound sarcastic in the slightest. Just curious.

“Keep playing it my way,” I said. “Give her the room to breathe a little. See what comes back. Workwithher. She’s a lot more pliable and responds best to patience and gentle.”

“Fine,” Synister grumbled. “You’re the corpse bride whisperer or whatever – but something has to give sooner rather than later.”

“You can’t force this,” Reaper said quietly and I glanced at him. He was looking up the table at Synister. “The human mind is a delicate thing – hers is trying to protect itself by forgetting. In order to remember she needs to feel safe enough to do so. Hangman is doing everything right.”

I blinked and all of us were a little taken aback.

“That was a whole-ass goddamn monologue,” Specter said. “You feeling okay?”

Reaper was looking directly at me when he said simply, “I thought she was dead,” and gave another inconsequential shrug. I made eye contact with Grim who seemed to understandReaper’s weird silent sublanguage better than any of us and he gave me a slight nod back in encouragement.

It clicked.

Reaper wasn’t sorry about what he’d been doing but hewassomehow sorry about how it affected all concerned. I guess this was his version of apologizing or making shit right… it was the best I could come up with in the moment but it was also the best I would get without Grim spelling it out for me; but if Grim was giving me the nod, then I would go with it.

“She’s not dead,” I said with a sigh. “But she’s okay. I think waking up with your dick in her hand is honestly the least of her concerns right now with this whole thing.”

“So, you’re saying we should be the big damn hero this time?” Death asked from down the table.

“What’s got you more fucked up?” I asked with a shrug of my own, “The fact she’s alive or the fact somebody out there was trying to use us as their fuckin’ errand boys no questions asked?”

“The later has me pissed off six ways to fucking Sunday,” Synister declared. “I want to know who in their right mind thinks they’re the top of the food chain in this city, because they need a lesson in hierarchy. No one tops the Wraiths. No one disrespects the Wraiths. That’s not how this works.”

“We’re nobody’s fuckin’ errand boys,” Corvus chimed in.

“So, it’s settled,” I said. “She’s not the priority. Finding out who thinks they can use us as their dirty cum rag is.”

Nods went around the table, and Synister said to me, “Don’t think you’re off the fuckin’ hook – you’re responsible for her. She dimes us out?—”

“I already told you I’d take the fall. Still stands. I don’t think she’d dime us out or dick us over.”

“You better be fuckin’ right,” Corvus said pointing at me. “You’re not, and it’s no one but your ass on the line.”

I nodded.

“I told Syn as much that first night and I fuckin’ stand by it,” I said.

“Fine, drop it, we don’t have the time to talk ourselves in a fuckin’ circle. The clock is ticking. She’s either going to have to go back to her life sooner rather than later or she’s going to become an even bigger pain in our ass than she already is.” Fear had been the one to speak and he wasn’t wrong.

I had been thinking about that, too. As much as I would love to give her all the time in the world to just hang and rest quietly in my home people were looking for her. She was on the news. Her disappearance was a big fuckin’ deal, and the clockwasticking.

“I’ve already thought of that,” Synister said making eye contact with me and I nodded.

---