Jaxon and the Bloodletter exchange a surprised look.
“Who are you talking to, Grace?” Jaxon asks.
“They can’t hear me,” Hudson reminds me, and I clamp my jaw tight.
“It’s okay,” the Bloodletter says. “I know Hudson is in there with you. I’m the one who put you to sleep when I realized just how strong Hudson’s hold on you is.”
Part of me wants to ask how she knows, but then I figure, why wouldn’t she? What’s the point of being that old if you don’t know a lot about a lot?
“Oh, please.” Hudson lets out a long-suffering sigh and steps away from the shadows again to pace in the narrow space next to my bed. “She makes me sound like a cult leader. I haven’t forced you do anything you didn’t want to do.”
I turn to him in shock. “You mean besides stealing the athame and trying to kill Cole? Oh, and the fact that I’ve now blacked out three times in as many days?”
“To be fair, Cole deserved it. And we didn’t try to kill him.”
I watch as the Bloodletter grabs Jaxon’s arm and pulls him away from the cage bars to tell him something privately. Fuck my life. More secrets.
But I use the space to hiss quietly back at Hudson. “You’re right. We didn’t do anything. You did.”
He sighs and leans against the ice wall again. “Potato, po-tah-to. But back to the situation at hand. I warned you not to trust her.”
“You warned me after she’d already put me in a cage. What good is that?” I snipe back.
“And besides, you’re the reason I’m even in this cage, so you’re the one I should be blaming.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same song, different singer.” He waves a careless hand.
“I have no idea what that means.”
“It means more powerful people than you have bent over backward trying to absolve my little brother of guilt. I don’t even know why I’m surprised that you’ve turned out to be just like the rest of them.”
“I’m not trying to absolve Jaxon of anything!” I whisper-shout. “I’m just trying to get out of this damn cage. How did you come back without a body so that I’d be lucky enough to have you trapped in my head in the first place?”
“I came back with a body.” He shakes his head and glances at Jaxon, still conversing with the Bloodletter. “I was confused, too, but I know that much. The last thing I remember is my brother trying to kill me and I was moving on instinct, fading toward him to protect myself. When you turned to stone, I’m pretty sure you took my faded body that was still re-forming with you. And, well”—he spreads his hands wide—“here we are.”
That makes a twisted kind of sense to me, even though I don’t want it to be true. But what else could have happened? I didn’t shift to my gargoyle form on purpose—I didn’t even know it was possible. But if he was fading into me at the exact same time, maybe it messed with how I shifted. Or maybe I messed with how he faded. Either way, it really might be my fault that he’s trapped in my head. Ugh. So not what I wanted to realize.
I turn back to the Bloodletter with that knowledge churning in my head and try to get her attention again. “What do I need to do for you to let me out of here?”
The Bloodletter and Jaxon walk back to the cage bars. Jaxon’s face looks extremely worried, and I suddenly have the urge to hug him, to tell him everything is going to be all right.
“You’re the one in the cage, and you want to ease his suffering. Point fucking made,” Hudson growls, but I ignore him, holding Jaxon’s gaze instead.
The Bloodletter interrupts. “You need to let me teach you how to build a wall so you can lock Hudson out. You have to put a barrier between the two of you, Grace. Hudson can’t be trusted.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?” she asks. “Do you really? Because I don’t think you can fully understand until you know him. Until you see how he operates, up close and personal. You may not believe it, but the time will come when you want to empathize with him.”
“I would never—”
“Oh yes, you would. You will. But you can’t. You have to stay strong, to be on your guard at all times. No one in your world is more dangerous than Hudson. No one else can do what he can. He’ll tell you anything you need to hear, everything you want to hear. He’ll lie to you, he’ll trick you, and when you lower your guard, he’ll kill you. Or worse. He’ll kill everyone you love, just because he can.”