The fake Death stood, dragging me to my feet with him. “When your mother was dying, why did I allow you to decide that her soul shouldn’t be collected? Why did I allow such a young child to watch her mother’s body continue to decay from a disease that should have long since killed her? Collecting her would have been a mercy. Why did I make a five-year-old have to finally ask me to release her soul from the dying prison of her body? Why did I feel that was a lesson that had to be taught just because the same frightened five-year-old had begged me not to take away her mother?”
My blood turned cold, an icy sweat breaking out on my body. “Stop it. Shut up.”
“What is my name, Alex Craft?”
“I don’t know.”
“What is my name?”
“I don’t know!” I shoved the fake Death, and he stepped back, laughing. I wanted to scream. I’d thought maybe my brain had spit out a good hallucination this time, but no. This fake Death may not have been attacking me with clubs, but his words pierced me deeper than a sword. They cut into my fears, my doubts.
He laughed again. “What is my name?”
“Alex?” a new voice asked as hands closed on my upper arms.
I twisted away, wrenching my body from the touch, and spun to face the newcomer.
Falin stood behind me, just inside a door that was now visible. Or at least, it looked like it was visible.
“Are you real?” I asked.
He raised one eyebrow in question, the other dropping and bunching in confusion. Then his gaze moved to the fake Death, a frown cutting across his face. “What is going on?”
I backed up another step. He could be an illusion. Just another glamour inspired by the drug. The door could too. Hell, everything in the room was suspect. I had no idea what was real. What wasn’t. Death kept thrusting questions at me. Questions I had no answer to but had wondered about.
Falin held up his hands, moving slowly as if approaching a wild animal. “What happened?”
I might be going mad. It was wholly possible Falin was just another hallucination created by the Glitter Ryese had force-fed me. But what if he wasn’t?
Ryese was setting a trap for Falin. He’d said as much. For the trap to spring, the real Falin had to show up, right? Was I more or less crazy if I tried to warn a fake Falin on the off chance he was real? I’d already fought a hallucination, and argued with one. Why not try to work with one?
“I’ve been drugged.” I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I told him about the struggle with Ryese and what he’d said, and I summed up the fight with Tommy Rawhead. I didn’t explain Death’s presence. “He’s not real,” I said, nodding to the fake collector. “Ignore him.”
That statement didn’t make the fake Death very happy. He began bellowing his questions, pacing around me as he jabbed at my insecurities.
“Let’s get you out of here,” Falin said, taking me by the arm and guiding me toward the door. “We need to find the queen. And Ryese.”
Chapter 32
“Wait,” I said, jerking my arm out of Falin’s grasp and stumbling backward.
If Falin was another illusion, I couldn’t follow him anywhere. Things were dangerous enough trapped in one room, but what would happen if I left? And who else would my hallucinations endanger? And if this wasn’t another mirage, what kind of danger was I putting Falin in?
Ryese had said I was Falin’s weakness. If I was the bait, where was the trap?
“How did you find me?”
Falin frowned. “I received a note. It said you’d left your quarters and were in trouble. Then it told me how to find you. I’m assuming Ryese sent it and I should watch my back.”
Well, that seemed plausible. And coming here was definitely something the real Falin would do, but the fact I thought so meant my imagination could have conjured up the explanation.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
Falin’s frown deepened. “What?”
“To prove you’re real. Tell me something I couldn’t know about you.”
Falin stepped back, evaluating me, or maybe the request, I wasn’t sure which. Then his gaze cut to the fake Death still yelling questions at me. “Why does he keep asking you his name?”
“Because I don’t know it.”
“But aren’t you . . . ?”
He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to. I knew what he was asking. Wasn’t I Death’s girlfriend? His lover? His something, at the very least? Hell, he was my oldest and dearest friend before he was . . . whatever he was now.
And I knew nothing about him.
After several moments of only the fake Death speaking, Falin sighed.
“If I tell you something you don’t know, how will that prove anything? You won’t know if it’s true or not.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I pressed my palms against my eyes. Then I stopped.
My eyes. I hadn’t been able to pierce the hallucination of Rawhead, hadn’t been able to disbelieve him away, but his lack of soul had betrayed he wasn’t alive.
I dropped my hands and opened my shields. I blinked, looking around. Death remained exactly the same as I opened my mental sight to the other planes, but Falin had a hazy silver-blue glow haloing his form. A soul.
I smiled in relief. He was real.