Page 52 of All Hallows Fate

The cool air hit my face, making me aware of how warm it had been inside.

“Not you,” the woman said, her voice a crack through the silence of shuffling feet and the low whisper of wind through fog. She was staring at Misery, her mouth set, arms crossed over her chest. “If you want my help, you can stay.”

35

Misery

“You don’t have to,” Cat said instantly, her voice pitched low and her hands coming up to frame my face. Her palms were warm, comforting, and a knot unwound from my chest. “We have no idea who this woman is, and I don’t care how nice her kitchen is, I don’t trust her alone in a room with you.”

“The clinically insane one can stay, too,” the gruff woman called from within the blue house.

Cat’s jaw clenched, but I saw the smile she fought at Madde’s wild laughter and victorious fist pump. “It’s your choice, Miz,” she said, a thumb stroking my cheek. I loved her touch on my face, craving the reminder that I had her back. Those minutes we’d lost her were as long as years, and part of me still couldn’t move on from them.

And if Violence got another goddamn inch of control over the domain, I wouldn’t just lose her—I’d lose everyone. Everything.

So I eased Cat’s hands from my face, kissed each palm, and said, “It’s fine. I can handle myself against one woman.”

Inside, barked laughter echoed.

“Come on.” I hooked my arm around Madde’s neck and hauled him back into the blue house. And I couldn’t fathom for one moment what the woman could want with me.

“This better be good,” I told her, the back of my neck crawling when the door flung shut on a ribbon of magic brighter and sharper than any I’d seen before.

“Oh, it’s good,” she promised, grabbing a whistling teakettle and pouring herself a cup of what smelled like peppermint. None for us, I noticed. Maybe it was an intimidation tactic. Either way, it pissed me off.

Madde put his hand in the air, and the woman’s expression flattened.

“What?” she grumbled.

Madde gave her his best smile. “May I have some tea, pretty please?”

“You may not.”

“May I enquire why?”

“You may not.”

Madde turned to me. “I don’t like her.”

“The feeling’s mutual,” she said, taking a seat at the table in the middle of the room, a landscape of rolling hills painted across its surface. I looked at it absently and then darted forward like someone had grabbed me by the throat.

“That’s…”

“Ford House,” she agreed. “Sit.”

I sat, considering the woman. I’d never seen her before. That didn’t mean she wasn’t a disciple of Nightmare. Cruelty and Violence could have easily smuggled her into the domain and given her this house. But… the surface of the table was scratched, worn back to the wood in places. She’d lived here a long time.

“Who are you?”

“Depends what question you’re asking,” she replied, frustratingly mysterious. “One question’s very hush hush, and I doubt you’ve even thought to ask it. Maybe you never will. But the question you’re asking is easy enough to answer. I’m Joanna Ford.”

The name was a fist swung into my chest with enough power to crack bone. It hit my heart and stopped it. My head swam. Joanna. Little Joanna, the youngest of the Ford family. My family.

“Uh.” Madde gave her a weird look. “Who?”

“Joanna,” I rasped, pulling out a seat and dropping into it. “I thought Nightmare killed you.”

The woman—Joanna, all grown up—shrugged. “She gave it a damn good try.”