Duke’s mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments. He wanted to cry. Or shout. Or laugh. It was patently absurd. He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. He was — he was — He looked around, trying to find — something. Proof that Lucifer was wrong. That he was lying.

(Lucifer never lied.)

They’d been at the Gull. But they were at the mansion. Octavia was here, but now she wasn’t, and —

And he couldn’t breathe.

(Dead men don’t breathe.)

“No,” he said, voice unfathomably small. “That’s. No.”