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Chapters (60)
  1. DAW Books Presents
  2. HAPPY HOURINHELL
  3. Copyright page
  4. Contents
  5. Dedication
  6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  7. prologue
  8. one
  9. two
  10. three
  11. four
  12. five
  13. six
  14. interlude
  15. seven
  16. eight
  17. nine
  18. ten
  19. eleven
  20. twelve
  21. interlude
  22. thirteen
  23. fourteen
  24. interlude
  25. fifteen
  26. sixteen
  27. seventeen
  28. eighteen
  29. nineteen
  30. twenty
  31. twenty-one
  32. interlude
  33. twenty-two
  34. twenty-three
  35. twenty-four
  36. twenty-five
  37. twenty-six
  38. twenty-seven
  39. twenty-eight
  40. twenty-nine
  41. thirty
  42. thirty-one
  43. thirty-two
  44. thirty-three
  45. thirty-four
  46. thirty-five
  47. thirty-six
  48. thirty-seven
  49. thirty-eight
  50. thirty-nine
  51. forty
  52. forty-one
  53. forty-two
  54. forty-three
  55. forty-four
  56. forty-five
  57. forty-six
  58. forty-seven
  59. forty-eight
  60. epilogue

She turned, looked quickly in my direction, than looked away again just as fast. Candy and Cinnamon were still talking to each other, not even watching her. “Whoever you are,” she said with quiet urgency, “go away. You can’t imagine how bad . . .”

“Oh, yes, I can,” I said. I edged a little closer so I could keep my voice low. My fingers were really beginning to hurt. “Because I’ve been through it. He already sent that thing with the horns after me, remember?”

I saw her face swivel toward me again, sudden and pale as the moon appearing from behind trees, but only for an instant. “Go away,” she said, or at least I thought so. I could barely hear her over the crowd.

“Have you forgotten me already, Caz?” I was desperate to get back onto the ledge because my fingers felt like they were caught in a giant mousetrap, but it was her, it was her and she was talking to me. “Your locket saved me. I never got to tell you. It saved me.”

She went still as stone. For long moments I thought something had happened to her, that her soul had flown right out of her body. When she did speak, she still kept her face turned away.

“I don’t know who you are, but if you say another word I’ll call the guards, and then Grand Duke Eligor will peel your skin off and carve your bones into toothpicks. Do you understand? Leave me alone.” She started back down the stairs. Clearly irritated to have to move again, Candy and Cinnamon fell in behind her, a wall of nasty gray muscle. I could only hang helplessly against the amphitheater stones like a dying lizard as she left.

twenty-nine

breath of heaven

CAZ WALKING away like that—well, it felt like a tornado had touched down in the middle of my chest, torn up and destroyed everything inside me, and then suddenly moved on. I could hear the damned and their jailers all around me, screaming with glee at the spectacle below, but all that horror was suddenly just noise. I was so shocked I could hardly think.

At last, my survival instincts kicked in. Obviously I couldn’t just cling to the facade of the colosseum all day, so I worked my way back to where I’d been and crawled over the rim and into the Circus. The customers below me didn’t notice because they were busy bellowing their pleasure as the last two crippled, bleeding almost-men confronted each other on the sand below, each with a long dagger in his teeth, neither able to crawl the rest of the distance to victory without disposing of his rival. The spectators were also throwing rocks and other heavy things down at the two struggling figures, either trying to help the one they’d bet on or just wanting to see a little more suffering.