Page 28 of All Hallows Masque

The dark plants seemed to lean towards me as I entered the conservatory, but that was just my overactive imagination talking. I wrapped the dressing gown tighter around myself and padded down the aisles made by tall flowers and deep, verdant plants that brushed my arms with waxy leaves. More comforting than forbidding. I let my shoulders fall and expelled the tight breath I’d trapped in my chest as I scanned the conservatory. I was alone. No one watching me or waiting to attack.

I sank to the cold stone floor in the middle of the conservatory beside a purple hyacinth so dark it was almost black and petunias that shone ghostly silver in the moonlight. There was something about sitting with the plants, surrounded by their tender quiet and dark beauty, that brought me peace.

My birthday didn’t feel quite so bleak, especially as a casa blanca lily unfurled its white petals to my left, strangely bright and out of place among all the black flowers. A pure, defiant light among the darkness. I held the sight of it close to my chest and nodded, as if the flower had spoken and told me not to give up.

“I won’t,” I breathed, turning my face up into the cool ray of moonlight that slashed across the floor from a glass pane in the roof. “I won’t give up until Death is safe.”

Determination chased away my loneliness, and by the time I opened my eyes I felt better. The moonbeam still shone on me, like benefaction from a goddess, a good one, not like Cruelty or Nightmare—

Wait.

I scrambled onto my knees, frowning at the silvery light cast across on the floor, catching on the edges of an oval-shaped whirl etched into the stone. It looked almost like an eye, the spiral at the middle forming the pupil.

“What the hell?” I whispered, leaning closer and pressing my fingers against the eye, my breath trapped in the back of my throat as I expected a hatch to unlock at my touch.

“Well, that’s anticlimactic,” I muttered when the stone proved solid. I shook my head, laughing at myself. “Cruelty didn’tbuildthis house; there’s not going to be a…secret hatch,” I finished breathlessly when I spotted another eye a few feet away.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding,” I said, climbing to my feet and staring at the floor. I looked ahead of the second swirl and, holy shit, there was a third. “It’s a trail.”

A secret path, only revealed under the moonlight.

A little shiver went through me, but it was of excitement instead of trepidation for once. I hurried to follow the curving path of spiral markings while the moon still shone down on the conservatory, my breaths loud in the silence.

There were twenty-one of them in total. By the time I found the last three it was obvious they led towards the solid wall at the back of the conservatory, where vast, waxy leaves splayed from a tall, potted monstera, obscuring the bricks. I gently pushed the leaves aside, and my heart skipped when I saw a thin seam in the wall, following the edges of the bricks in … holy fuck. In the shape ofa door.

There was enough of a gap that I could curl my fingertips around the edge and pull at the door, but it didn’t budge. Damn. It had been here for years; what if it was wedged shut?

“Come on,” I groaned, throwing my weight against it, tracing my fingers over the edge of the door for a handhold, a secret doorknob, a—

I screamed when the door swung inward all at once, my momentum sending me to the floor on my hands and knees. Pain cracked through my wrists, my knees, and I inhaled sharply, cradling my hands to my chest as a shadow fell over me.

My stomach knotted. I slowly lifted my head, and realised very quickly that I hadn’t managed to open the door from the outside. Someone else had opened it from the inside.

I saw the shape of him first, towering and imposing, a powerful body draped in black clothes, a hood pulled over his head, concealing every part of his face except a weak, butt-chin and a mouth that flattened into a sudden line of irritation.

“Holy shit,” I said, too loud. Fuck, I needed to drop my voice or Cruelty would hear me. Although maybe that was a good thing; she was less likely to kill me than this bastard. Murderous intensity and menace rolled off him in waves, making my bones lock, my hands curl into fists. “You should know Cruelty considers me her bestie, so killing me would really piss her off.”

The flat line of his mouth twitched. “Noted.”

I tried to peer beyond the hood into the darkness, to seewhohe was. Because this wasn’t Death. It wasn’t any of my husbands. The man towering over me was the Stalker.

18

Cat

The Stalker sighed. Heavily. Like I was a nuisance or a piece of shit he found on his designer shoe. I glanced down; he was wearing blue plaid slippers, not fancy shoes. And on second glance, his austere black clothes were actually sweatpants and a hoodie. But that accent spoke of old money and wealth so great he took it for granted.

The Stalkerwas wearing sweatpants, a black hoodie, and plaid slippers.1

“What are the chances I can close the door and you’ll go away?” he asked in that dead, rasping voice I last heard in Death’s garden when he attacked us. When he gave Tor a single cut and leeched him of all strength. That kind of power, that sheer level of threat, made me stiffen and throw the bastard a glare.

“Not a damn chance,” I replied, advancing on him and pleased when he backed up a step with another heavy sigh.

“Fine. But if Cruelty finds out, she’ll skin you alive. Although, by the looks of you, she already took an attempt at that.”

I snapped my teeth at him, my jaguar blazing through my bloodstream, but when he backed up and began to descend a short set of stairs, I pulled the door behind myself—leaving it open a crack because no fucking way was I getting trapped in here with a maniac—and followed him into the darkness.

“You could use some lighting down here,” I muttered, picking my way down the stairs carefully in the gloom. Dust was thick in the air, the oxygen thinner down here. It had a neglected feel, and an old, stagnant smell to match. “A sconce here, a stylish lantern there.”

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