Page 57 of All Hallows Masque

“—rewarded with a second life. Well. A third life, if you want to get technical.”

“What?” I choked out, my head spinning as I tried to breathe through the pain. Tears rolled down my face and soaked into my dress.

The woman in the mirror sighed, leaning closer to the glass. She was in her fifties with a halo of grey-blonde hair and transparent skin stretched over prominent bones. Large brown eyes. A pouty mouth turned down in a frown. Freckles scattered across her forehead and nose.

“Who are you?” I rasped.

“Kami Chamberlain. I lived in this house before its current mistress ousted me. And by ousted I mean trapped me inside this mirror.”

My brain was too scrambled, pierced with a thousand volts of pain. It took me slow, sticky moments to make sense of her words. “You mean you’re … not a ghost?”

“Fully alive, like you,” Kami replied with no shortage of annoyance. “Now that you’re paying attention,listen.You can’t tell either of those psycho twins where to find your father.”

I blinked, breathing through the agony in my middle. “You know why they want him.”

“Theydon’t even know why the other wants your father. But I’m trapped here, and I hear everything. You’re not the first person they’ve tortured in this room. You wouldn’t be the first they’ve killed.”

“All those people hanging on the wall,” I croaked, gasping for air, my head suddenly light.

“Oh, there’s more than those. All the topiaries in the garden. All those people she’s made into ice sculptures. And let’s not forget her supposed friends, rendered in plaster and stone.”

Cold spread through my blood. “She’s insane.”

“Glad we’re in agreement about that.” Kami pressed closer to the glass, as if she could escape the mirror. Could she? “Do you know what happens when a death god is killed?”

“True, final death,” I answered. A fresh wave of tears raced down my cheeks. My husbands—had any of them survived? Were they waiting for me on the other side of the ruined gates, or was every last trace of them wiped out? Had new gods taken their place? I hiccupped on a cry.

“No,” Kami argued with something eager and urgent in her voice. It killed my sobs, at least for a moment. “They’re returned to life as a reward for helping manage the balance between life and death. Their memories are wiped of all that happened during their reign as a death god, and they don’t recall that they lived a previous life. Two previous lives. But they don’t die. They arereborn.”

That shut me up. My sobs petered out, shock setting in. “What?”

If Miz had died, he wouldn’t have stopped existing. He’d have been replaced by a new person whose duty it was to sow misery among mortals and … he’d have lived a new, ordinary life somewhere without me? My throat swelled, a new, sharper pain cutting through my chest.

“If they die, they’ll forget me,” I rasped, a tremor in my bottom lip. “Forget everything?”

“Look, I can tell you’re visibly upset, but we don’t have time for this. I feel bad for you, girl, but get your shit together and pay attention. Cruelty wants your father because hewasCruelty.”

Silence. So heavy and complete I could hear blood drip to the floor. The gold spine had cut into my back after all, or maybe Violence had opened wounds on my ribs. It certainly felt like he had.

“No,” I laughed brokenly when I regained the power of speech. “No, he’s a finance officer. My dad’s not a god.”

“Not now,” she agreed, meeting my stare with sharp intensity. “But hewas.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Think about it,” Kami urged, her eyes wide and urgent. “When gods are killed, they forgeteverything.You’d never know if your father was a god, becausehedoesn’t know. But Violence and Cruelty have unlimited power. Corrupt, far-reaching power. They uncovered the names of everyone who was a god before them. What Cruelty wants above everything else is for all this to end.”

“What she wants is power,” I hissed, nostrils flaring with a higher crash of pain through my ribs.

“I’ve watched her torture people in this room. Watched her demands, heard all her screeched interrogations. She hates being a goddess. She hates being Cruelty.”

I scoffed.

“Think what you will, but that’s the truth.”

“Sure,” I rasped. The siblings had put this mirror here to mess with me. I couldn’t believe a single word Kami said. For all I knew, Cruelty had given her a script.

“If they find your father, she believes she can force him to take back his mantle as Cruelty and she’ll be freed. At peace.”

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