Narcissus in Chains Chapter Twenty Four

Anita has the bald faced brass balls audacity to once again ask how to get Gregory back according to werewolf law.

Despite them already going over this in the beginning, the rules turn out to be randomly different now. If Anita can track Gregory by scent, that will be good enough. That is a pretty low bar isn't it? Oh, turns out it has to be something only a shapeshifter can do. Huh. You'd think vampires could follow scent trails too. But hang on, it has to be something only a shapeshifter can do, but she's allowed to use her animator powers.

Anita does something fairly clever. In her vision of Gregory he was lying on a pile of bones, so she gets the bright idea to track not Gregory himself, but the death that surrounds him. I think this is the only halfway sensible thing she's done in the whole book, and we are now at 53% done. THIS BOOK IS ALMOST HALFWAY OVER AND THEY STILL DON'T HAVE GREGORY BACK. Anita makes a crack about how the necromancy might help or it might make her run around finding "old Indian graves" because obviously, Native Americans are all dead and gone.

Narcissus in Chains and all the shit that happened there feels like it happened so long ago, it might as well have been a different book.

Oh great, Anita is going to call the magic werewolf rape ghost. Apparently metaphysical stuff is always there  but people "choose to ignore" it despite this being a world that has never had a divide between the mundane and the magical. By the way, no one in Richard's pack can call the rape ghosts. Oh, I mean the munin. But Anita can! What a surprise. She can also cure cancer and bake ten souffles while playing a guitar with her feet, and that guitar playing is for the benefit of children in the AIDS ward, and also she feeds the souffles to the homeless.

"I didn't like sharing my body with another being, dead or alive." 

Then stop doing it so fucking much! But without things like magic to take the place of emotional evolution, where would we be? In a beautiful, mystical land where this book never existed, that's where.

Raina and Anita have a special bond.

Finally, an explanation of why the wolves at least have the urge to eat each other. That's how they induct a newly dead werewolf's spirit in to the great beyond, making them part of munin. I actually love this. Why can't we have some more world building?

Anita solves the puzzle box and Raina shows up, half possessing Anita. Raina is evil and I can tell because she's a WHORE and a SADIST. She calls Richard her "honey wolf" which is the worst nickname ever invented.

WAIT. HOLD UP.

STOP EVERYTHING.

Anita just called the ghost of Richard's rapist in to a politically charged situation where he has to maintain complete control, otherwise he will have his throat ripped out by his subordinate. 

RAINA RAPED RICHARD. REPEATEDLY. AND ANITA JUST CALLED HER ON PURPOSE. DURING THE LUPANAR.

GUYS. GUYS. ANITA DID THIS ON PURPOSE.

Even Raina doesn't like Paris, because:

"You can't have too many alpha bitches in one pack without them fighting amongst themselves." 

Anita empathizes with Raina. I am so angry I have tears in my eyes. Never have I encountered a writer that was so shit to women, men, and genderqueer/intersex/trans people. You'd think the constant hate on for women would be enough but no, she has to take digs at male rape victims at every fucking turn. Men in this world are big fucking babies, subservient to Anita, or they have girl cooties because they allowed themselves to be raped. 

"...in her own twisted way she did care about the pack and she and I were in perfect agreement on one thing: Richard had been careless with it." 

1). Raina has raped and tortured her way through the pack. Even Anita acknowledges that she's had sex with most of them.

2). Raina repeatedly raped Richard.

3). Anita KNOWS THESE THINGS

4). Anita, despite HAVING ANOTHER IDEA ABOUT HOW TO FIND GREGORY, WHICH WOULD HAVE SPARED HER FROM CALLING RAINA, CALLS RAINA ANYWAY

5). EVEN THOUGH RAINA IS A RAPIST AND RAPED RICHARD OVER AND OVER

6). ANITA THROUGHOUT THIS WHOLE BOOK HAS SHOWN ZERO EMPATHY, AND SUDDENLY SHE EMPATHIZES WITH RAINA

Congratulations Anita, you're a sociopath. You're a callous heartless asshole and I wish you would get hit by a truck. And the worst part is, the person who wrote you believes in your moral rightness. If you were meant to be a psychopath fine. But you're not.

Hey remember when God cosigned all this shit?

"Either I had been corrupted, or Raina had never been quite as corrupt as I thought."

I swear I remember Raina actually eating Nate's penis (he's a wereleopard, it grows back) bite by bite, without his consent, on tape.

"I never liked it when my friends were afraid of me."

What is even happening in this chapter. What the fuck. I can't.

Raina shows Anita the oubliette where Gregory is being held. Even the ladder spills! Raina is shown injecting a trussed and blindfolded man with drugs as he weeps. This is the woman Anita empathizes with. In fact, this is the only  person Anita has empathized with in this entire book. Turns out the man in the vision is being tortured to death for talking to the media about werewolf culture.

YOU ARE AT A GATHERING OF ALMOST A THOUSAND PEOPLE, IN THE WOODS, WITH TORCHES BURNING. If people don't already know about the werewolves and what werewolves do, they're even dumber than Anita.

Anita for once shows a reasonable emotional response when she starts screaming at Richard, demanding to know who Gregory's captors are, and who has been feeding him drugs to keep him from shifting. Raina takes her over and she punches Richard in the face, which by all rights should get her unceremoniously murdered. Of course since it's Anita, she'll come up roses.

Raina thinks this is all very funny. That makes one of us.