Like he’s… scared of me.
“That was… something,” I manage to say, once I feel like I won’t immediately crumple into a heap of ash.
The other two are already moving, scanning the space as if expecting the wraith to reappear at any moment. Talon crouches over the shattered Skystone, poking at the pieces like they might bite him back. Nathaniel tightens his grip on his knife, which, realistically, we all know is about as useful as a plastic spork against a wraith, but sure, buddy, you hold onto that false sense of security.
Talon lifts a handful of the fragments. “Shattered,” he mutters. “So I guess now we know what happens when the soul of a murderer escapes the prison, huh?”
“Yeah,” Cassian replies. “Not really keen on doing that ever again.”
But nobody is addressing the actual issue here. The giant, neon-lit elephant in the room.
My gaze meets Nathaniel’s.
And he knows.
He fucking knows.
“She's coming back.” The words drop like a funeral bell. “This isn't over. We need to clean the murder scene, get rid of the body, and dig up every goddamn book about the veil and the beyond we’ve ever skimmed through to find out how to get rid of a wraith.”
Talon hums. “That’s gonna be a lot of reading.”
“Yeah,” Nathaniel agrees grimly. “It is. But we don’t have a choice.”
I drag a hand down my face. My pulse is still jackhammering, my hands still aching from how hard I’d been gripping my scythe—like it was the last lifeline keeping me from being swallowed whole.
I'm shaken.
Cassianhurtthe wraith. Or… somethinglikethat. Which means it can be beaten.
The problem? We have no fucking idea where it went.
And we cannot just sit around waiting for it to crawl back out of whatever abyss it just slithered into. Whether these guys like it or not, they just threw some real weird shit into the world, and it's now on us—on me—to fix it before it gets even weirder.
Nathaniel’s already rolling up his sleeves like we’re about to do some light tidying up instead of covering up a full-blown homicide. The corpse—the candy maker, the monster, thething—is slumped in the corner like a broken puppet, her expression frozen in a mixture of horror andoopsie-daisy, I got what I deserved.
Talon scoops up all the shattered Skystone fragments, while Cassian—who apparently never lets a crisis stop him from being a problem—turns to me.
“How do you make this thing small?” He lifts the scythe. “I've seen you do it. You make it like, I don't know, a keychain or some shit. How do I do that?”
I stare at him.
“How the hell would I know?”
“Becauseyoudo it?” he barks back.
A-ha. The niceties are officially over. Good to know I can rely on him for saving my life and for being a consistent pain in the ass. I should have named my raven with his name instead. It would fit even better.
“Pain does it for me,” I say, trying for a neutral tone but instead sounding like a whole-ass bitch. “And unless you’ve got a pet raven that does mystical bird shit on command, I don’t think you’re gonna have much luck.”
Cassian’s expression twists like he doesn’t like that answer. Well, figures.
“This thing is impractical,” he mutters, shaking the massive weapon in his hand. “It’s bigger than all of you. Combined.” He clicks his tongue, then turns toward Pain, who is currently sitting on one of the candy maker’s creepy body-part-in-a-jar collections.
“Try doing it to mine,” he orders the bird.
“What?” I blink at him, because clearly, he’s lost his damn mind. “That's not how it works.”
Cassian rolls his eyes. “You don’t know until you try.”
