Endless Knight (The Arcana Chronicles #2)(5)

—Alchemist no more!—

—She’s worth two icons now.—

The others fell silent when Death spoke: —The Empress’s blood is mine to spill. Govern your game accordingly.—

Having been threatened by him for months, I wasn’t even fazed by his words. Death wanted to gank me? Must be Tuesday.

Finn asked, “How come Death gets to talk to everybody?”

Like Matthew, Death could mentally communicate with all of us. But especially with me.

“He’s won the last three games,” Selena said. “He’s over two thousand years old. I’m sure he’s figured out some tricks.”

I supposed as the last victor, he was king of the airwaves or something. Did that explain how he could read my thoughts?

If Selena expected Jackson to enter the dialogue, she was disappointed. He didn’t reply, didn’t ask a question. Why? He was a puzzle-solver, and if there were ever a puzzle to be solved . . .

“The guy you offed was the Alchemist, huh?” Finn asked me. “What? No Serial Killer Card? Or The Deranged Murderer?”

I shook my head. “Also known as the Hermit Card. He had healing serums and potions to give him superhuman strength, but he didn’t even know about the game. He told me he was archiving folks’ stories of the apocalypse and promised me a meal if I let him tape mine.” A total ruse. “I noticed that he’d drugged my drink, so I played along, acting out-of-it, because I thought I’d heard someone in the basement.” My eyes darted to the dungeon. “He had four girls chained in there, experimenting on them. One hadn’t survived it. I freed the others.” I turned to Matthew. “Will they be safe tonight?”

“The girls are fleeing Requiem. Two will live. Third wouldn’t in any scenario.”

My heart sank.

Selena said, “So you made the Alchemist pay.”

Seriously? “I didn’t want to hurt him, never wanted to kill anyone. Part of me refused to believe that only one of us was getting out of here alive. Not until he told me to dig my new collar out of those remains and put it around my neck!”

“Duuude,” Finn murmured, the word imbued with sympathy. “Looks like the Alchemist dicked with the wrong chick.”

I didn’t deny that, because, well, he had.

“Now I get why Matthew keeps talking about killing bad cards,” Finn said. “Are most of them homicidal? Are those freaks going to be coming after us for that immortality prize? And hey, why were you two talking about killing each other?”

Matthew stage-whispered, “Kill the bad cards.”

When he’d first said that a few days ago, I’d thought he meant a battle between good and evil. How na?ve of me. In a way, we’d all been born to do evil.

“Bad cards, Matto.” Finn raked his fingers through his sun-bleached hair. “We’re not bad. So nobody’s offing anybody. We’re all friends. Right, Selena? I mean, yeah, I broke apart our new little fam unit with my ill-timed illusion,” he said, his dudebrah accent thick. “But I’m hereby saying I’m sorry. I screwed up—my bad. Guys, I didn’t mean anything by it.”

Ill-timed illusion? Had he used his powers to make himself look like Jackson, then kissed Selena? I’d begun to suspect as much—or rather, to hope. “Finn, that was you, with . . . her?”

Finn gave a pained nod; Selena stared daggers at him.

I recalled that same night when Finn had asked me how to win her over. He’d told me he would “devise something.” God, had he ever.

Then where had Jackson been? We met gazes. He lifted his chin as if to say, You had me all wrong.

How did I feel about him, knowing he’d never kissed her? I tried to take a mental inventory of my emotions. Everything was raw and numb. But it didn’t matter how I felt about him. He’d revealed his disgust with me.

The sign of the cross, Jack? Really? Did he think I was some sort of demon to be warded off? Should he? I looked for my red ribbon. At some point he’d either tucked it into his pocket—or discarded it.

Selena told Finn, “You’re lucky to be alive after what you pulled with me. See, Evie? I’ve already made sacrifices for this alliance. Normally I would’ve punished the Magician for using his powers on me. He played me—”

“For a fool,” Matthew said.

Selena glared at him, then said, “But I’ve made allowances to keep us strong.”

“Are we an alliance?” I asked. As of a few days ago, the Archer had been plotting to kill me. “Why the turnaround?”

Her eyes flitted to Matthew and back. “We’re an alliance,” she said in a firm tone. He must’ve told her something about the future.

“Punish me?” Finn snapped. “Stop talking like you’re a warlord, Selena. I didn’t mean to treat you like a fool. I can’t control it . . . sometimes I have to trick people—”

More skittering upstairs. I jumped when one Bagman gave a sharp wail.

“I don’t understand this,” Selena whispered. “Shouldn’t they be happy in the rain? Why aren’t they standing there with their mouths raised to the sky?”

“Back to the subject at hand.” Finn’s gaze fell on Selena’s bow. “Tell me you hadn’t ever planned to kill us in this game.”