The boy raises a brow, unimpressed. “Why don’t you ask your friend here where hers is?”
It hits wrong. Perplexing and offensive.
Because yeah, I don’t have a scythe.
And he knows it.
But instead of offering proof, he throws me under to make a point.
For a moment, no one moves.
We just stare at him, silence thick with unspoken questions.
Finally, I draw in a breath, ready to shut this whole thing down and follow Cassian’s lead, my gut feeling be damned—
And that’s when it happens.
The air shifts.
The wind arrives.
And everything starts to go wrong.
My body reacts before my mind can catch up. Static creeps beneath my skin, raising the hairs on my arms, sending a chill down my spine. My bones recognize the feeling before I do.
The boy snaps his head toward the hospital exit.
“She’s here,” he says. For the first time, his voice carries something other than defiance. Panic.
Cassian’s blade is in his hand in an instant.
Nathaniel drops the salt pouch and shifts back into position.
I take a step back, adrenaline coiling in my gut.
“Let me out,” the boy says, suddenly urgent.
A high-pitched keening starts up, barely audible but awful. It scrapes against my eardrums, and my knees nearly buckle from the sensation.
Talon mutters something under his breath. I don’t catch the words.
I don’t need to.
Because something’s forming just beyond the ward’s edge, a blur of movement, smoke curling where there’s no fire.
She doesn’t walk.
She seeps into existence.
Tattered robes flutter around a body that barely qualifies as human, more presence than flesh, more nightmare than form.
The wraith.
Her eyes, if you can call them that, lock onto us.
No. Ontome.
My breath hitches.
