No armor! He was dressed all in black—button-down, leather pants, and boots. No helmet covered his blond hair; it was longish, grazing his jawline, creating a perfect frame for his chiseled features.
Naturally he could pull off leather pants and long hair. He looked like a normal gorgeous young man, who was at home here amidst all this wealth. Like the heir to a fortune. Highborn.
And still, my first impulse was to stab him with a table knife. But I knew he was too fast for me to ever get the drop on him.
Without looking up, he said, “I go without armor in my own home, creature. Especially since there are no threats to contend with.” Arrogance rolled off him in waves, nettling me. He was the hostage-taker. The jailor. The reigning victor over a defeated foe.
At the very least, I needed to slap him, my mission seeming farther and farther away. Ignoring me, he turned the page. Why would he be interested in old news?
“Reading an outdated newspaper, Death? How expectedly retro of you.”
Lark said, “He reads anything and everything. He’s already memorized all the books here . . .” She trailed off at his glower.
I noted this chilly exchange. Information was there for the taking. It was time to bite back bile and cozy up to Lark.
When she padded over to a sideboard topped with silver warming pans, I followed to find scrambled eggs, french toast, and, yes, bacon. I picked up the pitcher beside the coffee pot. Fresh cream. They had a dairy cow? “This is quite a spread.”
“We’re not without resources here,” Death said from behind his paper. “We have luxuries—and the means to protect them.”
“Does Ogen do the cooking?” I grabbed a plate. Fine china. Only the best.
Lark speared french toast with a serving fork. “Not quite. We have a human servant. You’ll never see him if you don’t go looking for him.”
I turned to Death. “Then where is El Diablo? If he sits upon Lucifer’s knee, shouldn’t he be at Death’s right hand?”
“He lives in the guardhouse,” Lark muttered. “Not allowed in the manor.”
I gave Death a sympathetic look. “Housebreaking ogres is such a bitch, am I right?”
Finally he glanced up, pinning me with his uncanny amber gaze. “By your demeanor, I can assume you’ve been contacted by the Fool. Perhaps all in your alliance survived?”
“Every last one.”
Lark’s plate dropped, shattering. Cyclops lunged forward to scarf up the food—and the pieces of china. Crunch, crunch.
“Sorry, boss,” Lark said. “Still tired from the trip.”
This was interesting. “Finn lived,” I said analyzing her expression. “His leg’s healing.”
She shrugged, but I could see her relief. So the feelings had gone both ways. Then why would Lark betray the boy she cared for? Maybe Death was coercing her.
I turned back to the food. In the last serving dish was fruit: melon, pineapple, strawberries. When I sensed the energy and potential in those tiny seeds, my head swung around to Death. “These are fresh.”
“As I said, we have luxuries. My home shames any other.”
God, the smugness! “Gas generators for lights? Running water? Big deal. Selena’s house had more electricity than Joules—and a swimming pool. I don’t suppose you have one?”
He waved a negligent hand. “Fauna will show it to you later.”
They had a freaking pool. “How are you growing food? Where’s the garden? It can’t be outside.” I narrowed my eyes. “Are you using indoor sunlamps?” I’d bet a sunlamp could give me the strength I needed to “chew off my own arm.” Which would be preferable to seducing this conceited man.
“Suffice it to say that we don’t use Empress blood.”
“Show me the garden.”
He gave me an incredulous look. “Never. All you need to know is that we’re equipped to pass a comfortable apocalypse.”
“Until you kill us all.”
He inclined his head. “As I always do.”
I gazed at Lark. She was cool with this? Without a word, she headed to the opposite end of the table. She stared at her plate.
Testing Matthew’s theory—proximity, seduction, freedom—I sat directly beside the Reaper. He lowered his paper to frown at me.
When we’d been out on the road, he’d smelled of rain and steel. Now I perceived his innate scent: masculine, underscored with hints of sandalwood and pine.
Which was heavenly to a girl like me.
“What do you want?”
At his question, I blinked to attention, remembering why I was here, remembering that I hated this man. “Whose icon is that?” I pointed to the small markings on his right hand. The image beside Calanthe’s looked like miniature scales. “Who else did you kill? I’m guessing it must be Spite.”
“You don’t recognize it? You remember even less than I thought.”
“Wouldn’t you know exactly what I remembered since you were able to read my mind for weeks?”
“I could. However, that did not mean I wanted to be in your thoughts every second of the day. I had a game to play, and I could endure only so many banal and tedious musings.”
I didn’t know why, but that insult piqued me worse than any of his others. Trading barbs about murdering each other was one thing, but this . . .
An obviously intelligent immortal had been inside my head and found me lacking.
Then I reminded myself that I didn’t give a damn what a serial killer thought of me. “So how does this supermax work? My incarceration?”
“During the day, you’ll have free range of the compound—with your guard, of course. Certain areas of the manor are off-limits to you. Fauna will point those out to you. You will respect my privacy.”
“Privacy? Or is it caution? Your request has nothing to do with the fact that I almost spanked your entire alliance out on the road?” When I bit into a perfectly crisp piece of bacon and couldn’t stifle a moan, he gazed at me with a peculiar expression.
A forkful of eggs confirmed they were fresh as well. So in addition to a dairy cow and pigs, they had chickens too?
“That cuff has made you a non-threat, the weakest of the Arcana,” he pointed out. “Further, I don’t make requests. I give orders. If you follow them, you might keep your head a little longer.”
“No ganking me today?”
He stowed his paper, surveying me. “Not yet, creature.”
“Not that I’m complaining, but why are you holding off?”
“At present, I don’t have enough information to make that decision.”
My mom used to say that, refusing to be pushed into any decision she wasn’t prepared for. No one can make you choose anything before you’re ready. No one, Evie.
I supposed Death’s decision was whether to “keep me.”
“And of course,” he continued, “I enjoy tormenting you with your upcoming execution.”
Or not. “How about you stop killing altogether? If you free me now, I might consider allowing you to enter the truce.”
“Which involves trust. Understand me, Empress, I listen to your call. I know you don’t say those words lightly.”
“Your loss.” I noshed another slice of bacon.
“You truly believe your plan will work? Strange, you weren’t willfully naïve in any of your other lives.”
“My truce has already proven itself. Joules and his crew could’ve killed me, but they looked out for me instead.”
He gave a mocking laugh. “You and that boy allying? Did you know that one of the first Tower cards had an image of lightning striking a tree? Not a castle tower. Hmm, why do you think that might be?”
I hadn’t known that. “Fascinating. But if Joules and I had grief in the past, it’s ended. You said history repeats itself—I don’t believe it has to.”
Another puzzled look. “Does it not?”
“Nope. Which means I have a solid alliance of seven Arcana, all bent on taking you out.”
He exhaled. “Your ‘solid alliance’ will devolve as soon as the necessity of allying wears off. They always do.”
“I told you—there won’t be a necessity. Because I’m going to stop the game. I never agreed to it. Want no part of killing.”
Death gazed at me with that unnerving intensity. “Did you decide this before or after the Alchemist? Perhaps after you poisoned the cannibals’ limbless captive? Tell me, did you already know you were going to envenom his corpse when you volunteered to murder him?”
I set down my fork, tossing my napkin on my plate. “His name was Tad. And no, I’d never thought to use him after his death. I just wanted to end his suffering.”
“Don’t tell me you possess empathy this time around.” He sounded amused. “Do you think other cards are of like mind? Do you believe, for instance, that the Lovers will honor your truce?”
Their powers were temptation and mind control, among others. What had Gran said? The Duke and Duchess can control any who love, warping them, perverting them. Pain becomes pleasure. . . .
Okay, we might have to take the Lovers out too.
“They have an army,” Death continued, “larger than any in all the history of the game. Exponentially larger than the Hierophant’s miners. They drive north toward us now.”
“Great. Then all signs point to you finally losing. Even you couldn’t defeat an army, huh?” Then I frowned. “Which army?”
“One you’re familiar with. The Army of the Southeast.”
My mouth went dry. Vincent and Violet, the twin children of General Milovníci, were the Duke and Duchess Most Perverse?
“The twins will not be brought to heel as easily as you think,” Death said. “They marched thousands of men on your home just to capture you.”
The Army grinds on, a windmill spins—Matthew’s words, and now I understood them. Haven, that army’s destination, had been equipped with windmill pumps. In his own way, Matthew had been warning me about the Lovers.
Death steepled his fingers. Such a condescending, king-of-the-castle gesture. “Before taking your head, they had intended to torment you with their . . . contraptions.” In a dry tone, he added, “I’m told capture by the Lovers is a fate worse than Death.”
They were the ones who’d tortured Clotile, Jack’s sister. I swallowed. Had she experienced their contraptions? Oh, God, that poor girl. Jack must never find out about this!
“Those two hunger for pain.” Death rose, staring me down. “Do you really think they’ll bow out of a game so rife with it?” With that, he strode away, his boots echoing through the corridor.
28
“What the hell was that?” I demanded. A hair-raising roar had just tolled over the entire compound.
After exploring the kitchen, the media room, and, yes, the pool after breakfast, Lark and I had just started touring the humongous barn, filled to the rafters with her free-roaming menagerie. Prey and predators milled together, obeying her command to ignore the food chain and play nice.
At the roar, Lark had ducked behind a stock-still lioness. Even Cyclops hunched down, his frizzy fur quivering. Seeming oblivious, a Komodo dragon waddled past, flicking its tongue.
“Tell me what’s going on!”
Under her breath, Lark said, “Ogen. He’s pissed about something.”
“But he sounds a thousand times worse than he did before, even in battle.”
She shrugged. “Look, we can take the grand tour another time. He’s having a fit.”
“Does he have them often?”
“There are a ton of dates that are sacred to him, annual Sabbats. And not like cool Wicca Sabbats either. These are dark. I try to keep track of them, but I haven’t been with him for a full year to chart them all. Bottom line: sometimes he hankers for the occasional . . . offering.”
“Will he hurt me?” I asked.
“Death ordered him not to hurt anyone.”
“Does Ogen follow orders?”
In a low voice, Lark said, “There’s a reason the Devil’s horns keep changing lengths. Whenever Ogen disobeys him, Death lops off an inch. Once there’s no more left to cut, Ogen gets beheaded. That’s their deal.”
How sick. “Why did Ogen agree to a deal like that?”
“Death had him at sword point. Told Ogen he’d spare his life for a time—on a couple of conditions, of course.”
I heard those towering gate doors groan open, then slam shut.
With a relieved exhalation, Lark straightened her cap and stood. “He’s off the grounds.”
“Why would you stay in a place like this—with him? Wait a second, I know what’s going on here. Death is holding these animals hostage, coercing you to work for him.”
“He’s not like that, at least not to me. We hooked up because my dad managed this menagerie for him. At least Dad had before he went on a surprise acquisition run and bit it in the Flash.”
“So if Death isn’t pulling the strings, then screwing us over is all on you?”
“I never said he didn’t pull the strings. He does, often.” When a peacock strutted over to her, Lark skimmed her fingers over the edge of its tail fan. “For the record, after I met you guys, I told him I couldn’t go forward with the plan if you were all going to die.”
This was surprising, soothing a bit of my hatred toward her. “Let me guess—he assured you that we’d be fine?”
She lifted her chin. “If you think back, I was the one who got Death to spare you in the beginning. And then to save you from drowning.”
“I wouldn’t have needed help if you hadn’t betrayed us in the first place! I can’t believe I took up for you against Selena. Unlike me and Finn, she had your number from the start!” As my voice scaled higher, more creatures eased over to Lark, surrounding her protectively.